The following interview has been reproduced with the permission of Soccernet
Nick Townsend finds a manager looking forward to checking his side's progress. Mervyn Day hoists aloft the FA Cup and just for a second he is a latter-day H G Wells, taking us back in time to Wembley Stadium on a Saturday in June 1975. Images of a lap of honour with his West Ham colleagues flood the mind as Hammers' fans amid the 100,000 crowd celebrate, as only East-Enders know how, the 2-0 eclipse of Fulham. Then, it is back to reality. It is Brunton Park, home of Carlisle United, where, the manager calculates, he has been in charge for a year and a day; the famous trophy is authentic enough, but more likely destined for a locality south, down the M6, if not tomorrow's opponents Sheffield Wednesday.
'I honestly don't remember a lot about that final,' he says. 'I was a brash 19-year-old and Bonzo (Billy Bonds) said to us: "Make sure you really drink in the atmosphere," but you don't because at that age you think: "I'm bound to be back."' The intervening years were a rollercoaster ride of despair and elation before Day joined the managerial big wheel and a semblance of stability in Cumbria. As if to emphasize the point, he interrupts the conversation with a bout of coughing. 'Sorry, must be too much fresh air,' explains the Essex exile, who lives with his wife Moira and three children near Leeds, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
The articulate Day - a goalkeeping boy wonder at 16 and who now presents a sports programme on Radio Cumbria - maintains there are no regrets at any unsated ambition. Day, 41, says: 'I made 750 appearances, have a Cup-winner's medal, played in a European Cup-winners Cup Final and I'm still involved in the game. I've never been out of work and I enjoy life. What is there to regret? I had a meteoric rise, hit a sticky patch when I was at Orient, then came back to the big-time with Aston Villa and Leeds. Where, perhaps, I failed to fulfil myself as a player, maybe I will do so as a manager.' He was PFA Young Player of the Year in 1974, a player whom manager Ron Greenwood predicted would be West Ham's keeper for a decade but those 10 years proved to be only five. He was once reportedly told by Ken Knighton then manager of Orient that he was overweight and 'a joke'. It is a fair assumption that Michael Knighton, his present chairman, takes a rather better view of him as a manager, under whom the club, relegated last season, stand second in the Third Division.
In the summer he had to sell players but his imports, Owen Archdeacon from Barnsley and Stefan Pountewatchy, who was playing in the French First Division last season, have been significant in the renaissance of United, who are unbeaten since early November. David Pleat's men, he accepts, will be a different prospect, even before a capacity 16,300 home crowd. Day adds: 'My lads are confident ... though only in terms of Third Division opponents. But several have the potential to do well at a higher level and this will be an excellent barometer of our progress.'
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