A coffee with Charlie Woods
Charlie Woods, the late, great Sir Bobby Robson's trusted chief scout, has revealed how Newcastle United signed Laurent Robert – and missed out on Xabi Alonso.
Nicolas Anelka was in no doubt.
The striker had been asked a question about one of his Paris Saint-Germain team-mates.
That player was Laurent Robert, who would become one of the poster boys of Sir Bobby Robson’s Newcastle United team in the early 2000s.
Charlie Woods, the club’s chief scout, took a call from Sir Bobby while on holiday in Spain.
“I was on holiday with my wife in Jerez,” said Woods, speaking over a coffee in a leafy Newcastle suburb.
“I got a phone call from Bobby, and he said ‘Charlie, think about a wide player’. I said ‘OK – I like the boy Robert from Paris Saint-Germain’.”
Woods had scouted Robert while chief scout at Tottenham Hotspur, but George Graham, the club’s manager, wasn’t convinced by the defensive side of his game.
“I’d been to see him a couple of times when I was at Tottenham, and I liked him,” said Woods. “Lovely left foot, could beat people. The worst part about him was that he wasn’t great at tucking back in when we had lost the ball.”
Robson’s phone had got Woods thinking about Robert again, and a chance meeting in Jerez would set up a deal for the mercurial winger.
“It was a golfing complex just outside of Jerez, next to the where the Grand Prix used to be,” said Woods. “We were sitting there one morning having a coffee in the lounge, and a bus pulls in. I said to Pat ‘there’s a football team here’. And it was Paris Saint-Germain.
“They were playing Seville. They were staying there because Seville was about an hour away.
“I saw the coach, and I asked him if I could go and watch them train. I said I worked for Sir Bobby Robson. He said ‘you work with Bobby? You come and watch us train’.
“I saw Robert, and he worked hard. Afterwards, I phoned Bobby, and asked ‘what do you think about the boy Robert? You know I like him’.
“He said ‘I haven’t seen him’. I told him he was a good player going forward, but, defensively, he’d had to teach him that side of the game.”
The question Woods was asking himself was whether Robert could prosper in the Premier League.
Fortunately, Anelka – who had played in England with Arsenal – had the answer.
“The next day we were having a drink, and in walks Nicolas Anelka,” said Wood. “So I said to him ‘Mr Anelka, may I ask you a question?’.
“He said ‘yes’, and I said ‘could Robert play in the Premiership in England?’. He said ‘not a problem’. I said ‘are you certain?’. He said ‘absolutely’.
“So I phoned Bobby, and, I think, in the next three days he’d signed. It was quite remarkable how it happened.”
Job offer
Whitehaven-born Woods – who had started his own playing career at Newcastle – had been one of Sir Bobby’s first appointments at St James’ Park, having previously played and worked for him at Ipswich Town and also scouted for him during his time as England manager.
“I was chief scout at Tottenham,” said Woods. “I got this phone call from Bobby, who said ‘I’ve got the job at Newcastle – I want you to come up’.
“I said ‘I’ve got a good job at Tottenham, Bobby’. He said ‘just come up, and see the chairman and myself’. That’s how it started. I went up for the interview, and got the job.”
The rest is history.
Woods helped recruit the likes Craig Bellamy, Jermain Jenas, Hugo Viana, Jonathan Woodgate and Sylvain Distin during his time on the club’s staff.
The team, in the relegation zone when Sir Bobby succeeded Ruud Guillit in late 1999, went on to compete at the top end of the Premier League and play Champions League football.
“It’s a wonderful club, and the years I was there with Bobby, I thought he did a remarkable job taking them from where they were to where they were when he eventually left the club,” said Woods. “I enjoyed it very much.”
It was an enjoyable time for everyone associated with the club, which came agonisingly close to reaching a major European final 20 years ago this month.
Newcastle were denied a place in the 2004 UEFA Cup final by Olympique Marseille, whose two goals came from Didier Drogba.
That team was sprinkled with talent scouted by Woods, who had been tasked with finding more youth to compliment the experience of the likes of Alan Shearer, Gary Speed, Rob Lee and Shay Given, Robson’s “blue-chip brigade”.
“We’d had a couple of meetings, Bobby and I,” said Woods. “He said ‘we’ve got some good players, but we’re obviously on the lookout for younger ones. We need some more players around us’.
“We got Bellamy, because he was very quick in behind. We had Jenas, who was signed from Nottingham Forest who could command the ball, see a good pass and make runs up to and beyond the strikers. He was a good player.
“The big centre-half we got on loan, Sylvain Distin, he was a good player. We tried to keep him.
“I watched Viana in the European Under-21 Championships in Switzerland. I saw him play a couple of times for Portugal. He was outstanding. Lovely left foot. He could pass the ball beautifully. He worked hard.
“We just added people to the squad, and it evolved from there. All of a sudden, we’re in Europe, which was a remarkable turnaround.”
‘Hidden’ talent
However, not all Sir Bobby’s signings were high-profile deals. In the summer of 2004, an unfamiliar face was photographed being put through his paces during squad’s annual pre-season visit to Tynemouth Longsands.
“I think one of our scouts had seen him, and his agent said he could come for a trial,” said Woods. “He came to the training ground, had a game. I remember Shearer coming across and saying ‘Charlie, where have you hidden this one?’.
“The same with the left-back, Olivier Bernard, from France. Good player, strong, went forward well. He did very, very well.
“Names out of nowhere. Nobody had heard of Bernard. Nobody had heard of N’Zogbia.”
Woods didn’t get every player he wanted.
“We had a meeting with Freddy (Shepherd),” said Woods. “I had a list of foreign players who I had seen.”
At the time, then-chairman Freddy Shepherd had wanted the club to recruit more British players.
Woods, though, felt that he had identified a “special” player who could strengthen Robson’s team.
“It was Xabi Alonso,” said Woods. “Ronny Rosenthal and I flew out to San Sebastian. We watched him play for Real Sociedad against Barcelona. I’ll never forget it. It rained all night during the match, and he was outstanding.
“I had a chat with the sporting director, who Ronny Rosenthal knew, and I said ‘look, we’ll be in touch’. It didn’t happen, which was rather sad. He goes to Liverpool. What a player we missed there.”
Alonso – who guided Bayer Leverkusen to the Bundesliga title this season – went on to win the Champions League as a player with Liverpool.
Steve Nickson, meanwhile, has had a lot of success as United’s head of recruitment, and Woods is full of admiration for one of his finds.
“They were talking on Sky about Bruno (Guimaraes),” said Woods. “He’s got a (release) clause in his contract, and can go for £100million. I hope they sell him, because he’s a special player. He’s top class.”
On United’s success under Howe, Woods added: “Long may it continue. I hope they go from strength to strength.”
For more information on the work of the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation, click here