From the Big Sleep
Vivian: I don’t like your manners.
Marlowe: And I’m not crazy about yours. I didn’t ask to see you. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.From The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The first time Lawrie Sanchez confronted the press as Fulham manager I sensed something different about the man. Used to the sniffling platitudes of unravelling nice-guy Chris Coleman, Sanchez’s direct and honest answers to what could have been awkward questions were quite refreshing. And he’s brighter than the average football manager, and he knows it. I was trying to think of who he reminded me of. Then last night, in between my first attempt at sleep (interrupted by a weird screeching sound at the window) and the second, successful one, it came to me: Philip Marlowe.
Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s fictional private eye, is an honest man. His whole schtick is his integrity in a world that seriously lacks it. He’s a good man dealing with people (in crime and crime prevention) who are more powerful but less worthy, and his intelligence and wit shines like the early morning sun rising through the Bay City smog. He spends his evenings re-enacting old chess games; he has had drink issues; he actively sets himself apart from many of the women who are drawn to him. He is a man apart who cuts through the crap and sorts things out.
“Kissing you is nice,” he tells her, “but your father didn’t hire me to sleep with you. . . . The first time we met I told you I was a detective. Get it through your lovely head. I work at it, lady, I don’t play at it.”
You can see this in Sanchez can’t you? He was reputedly an outsider in Wimbledon’s old Crazy Gang dressing room, yet stood his ground in conflicts with such strong personalities as John Fashanu and Vinnie Jones. He was an average player - one who studied for an economics degree while playing - but had a couple of notable successes (not least his 1988 FA Cup winning goal against overwhelming favourites Liverpool) and moved into management without a great fanfare. Maybe Wycombe wasn’t ready for him, maybe he wasn’t ready for Wycombe, it sort of worked out and sort of didn’t. Word was that he overstayed his welcome.
Then he moved to Northern Ireland. Underdogs, outsiders, he turned a certified shambles into a team that became capable of beating far stronger organisations. For every Northern Ireland victory over England, Sweden, Spain, think of Marlowe smuggling himself onto Laird Brunette’s offshore gambling boat in Farewell My Lovely, getting beaten unconscious, being shot full of dope and held in a weird and mysterious private prison, being mistreated by dodgy Bay City cops who are supposed to be on the same side, but bouncing back to track down Moose Malloy and still work out what the hell’s been happening around him. All while putting his client’s needs before his own.
This is Lawrie Sanchez. There’s a mess on Stevenage Road and someone has to fix it. It’ll take blood, sweat and tears, but also deep thought and cunning. Maybe Sanchez can help. COYW!
WMC, I`m starting to think you and I are made for each other! Now, before you take that the wrong way, what I`m getting at is that I too am a great fan of Raymond Chandler. And guess what? Last evening I was watching . . . The Big Sleep! How spooky is that (as they probably say these days).
LS as PM - don`t about that. PM was a bit of a tortured soul, wasn`t he? Not sure LS, or any manager, is quite like that. You must have to be thick-skinned and no shrinking violet to be a manager. I can see how you might come to picture LS as a knight-errant (makes a change from an errant Knight!) going down the not-so-mean streets fo Fulham) to sort out the mess created by Chris “The Cookie” Coleman, one-time boss of a struggling outfit called Fulham FC, owned by a fat, shady dago who operates from outside the country`s legal jurisdiction.
Seriously though, I have felt for a long time that the team was in need of some kind of moral or spiritual or psychological (whatever is your taste) renewal. The team and everyone and everything connected with it seems to have gone stale and perhaps complacent. Even though they win pretty much everything in sight at Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal, you never see any complacency in their managers, do you?
Wing Half
18 Apr 07 at 12:17 pm
Hurray! Good stuff. Chandler’s great isn’t he?
I started all this because I was reading about Dashiell Hammett yesterday and my initial thought was Sanchez as Spade, but the more I thought about it the less that worked. Spade’s too canny, too hard, too smooth. More of an Alan Pardew even, which I find very hard to type (what next? Sam Allardyce as the Continental Op?). I see a vulnerability in the noble Sanchez, but one that’s well hidded by a carefully developed steel. That said Marlowe to me. And Marlow had a thick skin too, annoying people in the name of duty or maintaining a stone integrity come what may (e.g. The Long Goodbye). I take your point though.
And I think you’re right about the moral renewal, which is also why Marlow appealed for this purpose. Marlowe, above all else, believes in *right*. Sanchez reportedly has the players focused, working hard, dedicated. Doing what they should be doing all along.
weltmeisterclaude
18 Apr 07 at 1:08 pm
(oh, and nice point about Cookie Coleman and the shady MAF in the background! I completely missed that line of thinking earlier, but great stuff: Al Fayed’s a perfect honourably dodgy Chandler baddie isn’t he?)
weltmeisterclaude
18 Apr 07 at 1:10 pm
Nice one, WMC! Yes, you could be right about Sanchez. Coleman has the vulnerability of someone who is unsure of himself and not very clever to boot. Sanchez (like Marlowe) seems to have the know-how and a dash of pure bloody-mindedness.
Although I enjoyed the Hammett stories, I never felt that the Spade character was drawn with the subtlety of Marlowe. The tales were much more straightforward good v. evil stories. Chandler`s books are, in my view, real literature. As well as Marlowe, Chandler introduces a host of memorable other characters too. True, Hammett has given us Caspar Guttman, Joel Cairo and Brigid O`Shaughnessy - but all in the one story.
Let`s just dream, shall we?
Wing Half
18 Apr 07 at 8:13 pm