A Little bit strange... Former Aston Villa boss Brian reveals bizarre phone call
Through a managerial career which spanned three decades, Brian Little became used to receiving some strange phone calls.
Yet there was none more bizarre than the one he once got from physio Jim Walker during his time in charge of Villa in the mid-1990s.
Walker was the man responsible for alerting Little to any urgent off-field, out-of-hours incidents players might have got themselves involved in. Typically, that meant parties, yet not on this occasion.
“Jim got the sentence out as quick as you ever could,” recalled Little. “He said: ‘It’s Sasa Curcic. He’s in London. He’s having a nose job at eight o’clock in the morning and he won’t play on Saturday’.”
Curcic, the Croatia international midfielder Little had signed from Bolton for £3.5million, ended up missing six weeks after going under the knife.
“He had a Roman nose and he came out with his tiny little pert nose,” said Little. “My options were to fine him two week’s wages or get rid of him. He had cost me £3.5m so we could not do that.
“Sasa ended up doing it twice. He had two operations which meant he missed matches in the middle of the season. But that sort of thing happened, silly things like that.”
The Curcic incident, one of several anecdotes delivered by Villa legend Little during an appearance this week on In The Stiffs, the podcast co-co-hosted by former Wolves midfielder and Express & Star columnist Dave Edwards, came at a time when players were just beginning to earn big money through the riches of the Premier League.
It was a far cry from the start of Little’s own playing career, which began when he joined Villa as a 15-year-old in 1969 and certainly a world away from his first taste of management, which came in 1986 when he took caretaker charge of Wolves for 36 days.
Little had initially joined the club to assist Sammy Chapman at the end of the 1985/86 season with the club on the brink of oblivion during the final days of Bhatti brothers regime.
“The club was in a right mess,” said Little. “There were only three stands open at the ground. I worked at Wolves for three months and never got paid.
“On a pay day you used to get cheques given to you and whoever got to the bank first got their money.
“I ended up being caretaker manager for seven games. I won my last two and then got invited into the boardroom.
“Everyone was patting me on the back saying you are getting the job. But they sacked me because Graham Turner was coming in.”
Little would go on assist former Villa team-mate Bruce Rioch for three years at Middlesbrough before taking his first proper managerial job at Darlington, where he won two promotions.
From there he joined Leicester, taking them to the Premier League through the play-offs before an emotional – and somewhat controversial at the time – return to Villa, where he built one of the club’s best teams since the 1982 European Cup win. Their 1996 League Cup victory, achieved on his watch, remains their last major trophy.
While Curcic was one signing who did not really work out, there were plenty more who did, none more so than Gareth Southgate, upon whom Little had a huge influence.
The current England boss was initially signed from Crystal Palace as a midfielder in the summer of 1995, with Little targeting Wales international Chris Coleman to play in defence. But those plans changed once pre-season had begun.
“We tried Gareth at centre-back in a few pre-season friendly matches and straight away thought woah, hang on, we don’t need Chris Coleman, we’ve got Gareth Southgate.
“We went chasing Mark Draper after that. When you first met Gareth you knew you had a good lad. When he started playing, you knew you had a great player too.
“People always ask me, did I have to coach them? No. I gave them rules. We had a guideline of how we wanted to play.
“Southgate I never told how to play football once. It was just a case of: ‘This is how we play Gareth, this is what we do. This is what I don’t want you to do’. Of all the teams I have ever had, that one at Villa was the most together.”
The In The Stiffs podcast, which also features Edwards' former Shrewsbury Town team-mates Sam Aiston and Gavin Cowan, is available via any podcast platform.
