Neil Warnock warns Championship rivals about Jurassic spark at Huddersfield
Dinosaurs last roamed the earth about 65 million years ago – but Mr Neil Warnock is the great survivor who escaped from Jurassic Park.
At 74 years and 77 days old, Warnock is back in football as the fourth manager in nine months at Championship strugglers Huddersfield Town.
Ever the romantic, he insisted on completing a Valentines trip to New York with his wife Sharon before landing at Heathrow at 11am, after just three hours' sleep on the red-eye flight from the Big Apple, and being driven straight to meet his players.
Warnock loves dinosaurs. He even tweeted a picture of himself with a T-Rex skeleton in a New York museum earlier this week, and when a headline in the Daily Mirror read 'Yorkshire Dinosaur Unmasked' he was surprised it wasn't about him. But he will be the raptor in raptures if he saves the Terriers – without a win in 2023 – from relegation.
“There's a lot of hype about age,” he said. “I know managers who are 50 and they look about 90 with their attitude. I've got nothing to lose – if we get relegated I'm not going to get the blame, am I? Piece of cake, really.
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“But it's sad when you get to my age because every occasion you go to seems to be a funeral, so you have to enjoy every day because the time passes so quick. I'm sorry I couldn't be there the other night at Stoke, but I was away and I was in Dizzy's jazz club in New York. I think I had a better evening.
“When you look at our remaining fixtures, you must be an idiot to want to come here – and fortunately that's what I am!”
After 16 League clubs, eight promotions and a small fortune in fines for disagreeing with refereeing decisions, we thought Warnock had finally retired to spend more time with his red 1962 Massey Ferguson tractor on the farm in Cornwall when Middlesbrough sacked him in November 2021.
Game for a laugh: Warnock is back aged 74You must be joking. It's 42 years since Warnock took his first steps in management, at non-league Gainsborough Trinity, and the phone is still ringing.
He used to be a practising chiropodist who clipped his patients' toenails before clocking off to win promotion, and Uncle Neil remains the only manager to take four different clubs – Notts County, Sheffield United, QPR and Cardiff – into the top flight.
Why are a 74-year-old's methods still in demand when other managers have long passed their sell-by date? “To be honest, I think it's because I'm good at my job,” he said. “I enjoy making poor players average and turning average players into good ones. Whether you like me or not, we need characters in the game. I know I'm not perfect, and some people don't like me, but I'm not going to change now.
“Yorkshiremen tend to speak their mind, and it's cost me a few quid down the years, but it's difficult to replicate what you did when you have been in the game all these years. I like to think I've left every club in a better place than I found them.”
One more time: Warnock during his last gig at MiddlesbroughUntil Huddersfield came calling again – he took them up in 1995 - Warnock had been filling town halls and leaving punters rolling in the aisles with his back-catalogue of anecdotes. Conveniently, his next series of chat show dates in Portsmouth, Shepherds Bush, Scunthorpe, Plymouth, Nottingham and Ipswich resumes in May – after the season has ended.
By then, he will still be only the second-oldest manager in League history after former England coach Roy Hodgson kept superannuation in abeyance at relegated Watford last season aged 74 years 286 days when the final curtain fell.
“I should have become an international manager,” mused Warcock. “Three games a year, lovely. That might be my next step.”
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