A former Football League manager infamously went viral for a half-time rant where he sacked his former team-mate and offered two players out for a fight. But he insists it’s no different to Pep Guardiola’s antics when he was under pressure at Manchester City.
Former Chelsea and Millwall defender John Sitton is most commonly remembered by football fans outside of London for his furious team talk while manager of Leyton Orient during a 1-0 defeat against Blackpool in 1995.
Orient were playing in Division 2, then the second tier on the English football pyramid, and were in financial disarray off the pitch and a relegation battle on it. They had appointed former player Sitton as manager from his role as youth team coach, but despite survival in his first season at the helm, the O’s slipped towards the drop.
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Channel 4 were running a documentary at the time with Open Media at the club, called Orient: Club for a Fiver, the first of its kind as a fly-on-the-wall docuseries which are now incredibly common.
And at half-time of the home match against the Seasiders, with his team losing 1-0, Sitton lambasted his players and sacked his pal and club favourite Terry Howard on the spot after nine years at the club.
Sitton also offered to fight two of his other players, telling them to “bring their dinner” and “gang up” on him. However, the savage dressing down didn’t pay off, as Orient went on to lose the game and Sitton left the club just months later.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Sport, Sitton recalled the incident and how the “circus” of the club’s ownership had driven him to snap.
He said: “There was loads of stuff going on behind the scenes, lots of arguments, lots of toxicity, lots of rows. I was advised by the youth development officer, Bernie Dixon, not to take it.
“I just said I just want to cope, I just want to do a good job for the club. He said, ‘If you take this job, you’ll regret it. Stick with the youth team, we’ll give you a longer contract, we’ll give you a rise.’ But I took the job.
“The bottom line is we got the number of points we needed to stay up, which a lot of people forget. And then in the summer of 1994 I was offered the job on a full-time basis, but, very naively I agreed on really Mickey Mouse money and not a long contract, not a substantial rise in pay.
“When I said about addressing certain positions on the football field that I couldn’t have any new players, I was then told that the squad had to be trimmed because for this would be the fifth year and the previous four years the club were losing £520,000-a-year.
“The way it turned out, it cost me my career, it cost the club.”
Among Sitton’s many roles he had to burden in the sinking club, he also brought the idea of having a docuseries to the board after he had been approached.
“The Channel 4 documentary is concerned, I was approached by a committee in the summer, they said they were approached by a young lady from Channel 4. And it turns out that she put the idea to an independent production company,” he said.
“I relayed it to the board and they said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said: ‘Well, the truth be told, it could be a good idea because when you look at what we’re doing behind the scenes’.”
But the most remembered moment from the series was his half-time outburst, which he raged at two players after sacking Howard: “You’ve had two good performances and you think I’m ‘Bertie Big B****** tonight, I’ll f****** play how I like.’
“But you won’t play how you like, because if you play how you like, I’ll f****** stick the youth team in. If I’m going to take abuse from a bunch of cockroaches behind me, I’ll take abuse by doing it my way. And that is f****** conformity, not f****** non conformity.
“So you, you little c*** when I tell you to do something and you, you f****** big c*** – when I tell you to do something, do it. And if you come back at me, we’ll have a f****** right sort out in here.
“And you can pair up if you like. And you can f****** pick someone else to help you, and you can bring your f****** dinner. Because, by the time I’m finished with you, you’ll f****** need it. Do you f****** hear what I’m saying or not?’
The clip has been seen by almost every football fan, and it’s something Sitton regrets being made public. He said: “I’m quite embarrassed by it if I’m honest. The embarrassment wears off but initially I was completely embarrassed, and I just thought, God, what have I done.
WARNING: VIDEO CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE
“It’s like most chances I’ve had in life, I was given a chance at a big club and I blew it. I was given a chance in coaching, I’ve had various chances in business, and ironically for not being ruthless enough, I blew it.”
Legendary boss Guardiola has also come under criticism for his emotional outbursts on a mini-series about his time at City, including an occasion when he ranted about his divorce from his wife, Cristina Serra, after a 2-0 defeat to Juventus in the Champions League.
Holding back tears, the Spanish coach fumed: “I’m f****** divorced from the most beautiful woman on your planet. I love her unbelievably, but we lost the passion. How do you play football, because you are paid? Or because of something inside? Where is the passion?”
Referencing the moment, Sitton said: “I was so fed up with the apathy, with the lack of investment. Like every manager, if you see Pep Guardiola on A Beautiful Obsession. You’re talking about allegedly the best cultural manager in the world. He loses the plot.
“Even on the working conditions that he was working under, he had a meltdown and lost the plot. He starts getting personal with players. He starts getting emotional instead of being like erudite and forensic.
“He starts bringing his personal life into it, which me and my wife agreed, that’s basically nothing to do with the players, it’s emotional blackmail, his divorce is between him and his wife.
“It’s not caused by the players, and it’s nothing to do with the players. So what’s he trying to do? Get them to feel sorry for him?
“The bottom line is the common denominator is when you’re in and you’re taking part, you want to win.”
Sitton never returned to professional management after leaving Orient, but did spend time as a scout at Manchester City and a coach at non-league clubs in and around London.
In October 2016, he released his autobiography ‘A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing – A Life In Football’, which offers more insight behind the scenes of how football clubs operate as well as his fascinating career. The book is available to buy on Amazon.
Sitton also hosts the ‘John Sitton Podcast: Football Uncensored’ featuring Rob Kirton on YouTube.