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CONTENTS
For KB, who made it happen
and
for Laura, always.
PROLOGUE
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I forget who said that – possibly Bryan Robson. I’d ask him, but last I heard he was rounded up and forced to perform hard labour in the phlebonium mines on Gralka IV. He’ll be disappointed with that.
But either way, it’s true. You go through a great deal in your life and in my seven or so decades I’ve maybe seen more than most. Some things I’ll treasure: my Liverpool days, my time in Germany, taking over at Newcastle. But then there are the things I’d sooner forget: that header at the ’82 World Cup, falling off that bloody bike on Superstars, giving Paul Ince my phone number (seriously, there are only so many times you can tolerate receiving a breathy phone call at three in the morning as Incey says, ‘Gaffer – it’s happened again.’). And, of course, the lowest of the low: 1995–96.
Everyone likes to harp on about how my Newcastle lads threw away the league title that season, chucked a twelve-point lead in the bin and allowed Man United to pip us on the final day. But the thing that I’ve always said – and I absolutely stand by this today – is that if the league season had finished in January rather than May, we’d have won the title. And that’s what makes it such a bitter pill to swallow.
But whichever way you look at it, 1995–96 was a gut-punch. I really thought we were going to do it. We had Pete Beardsley and Les Ferdinand up top and Daz Peacock and Warren Barton at the back – and if you think you can name any other defensive pairing with more luxuriant hair than those two then frankly you’re lying. And yet it wasn’t enough. My one tiny consolation at that time was that I was convinced I’d never be able to feel any worse. I had hit rock bottom and Sir Al Ferguson was riding high. But the more things change the more they stay the same. Now it’s not Sir Al Ferguson that I’m up against.
It’s the bloody L’zuhl.
Adapting to life on a new planet is a lot like taking the reins at a new club – you don’t know your way around, you can’t remember anybody’s name and you worry constantly about being vaporised by an aggressive alien race. Well, maybe not that last one.
Life on Palangonia hasn’t been easy, even a year down the line. When the L’zuhl invaded Earth and laid waste to everything