Journeyman (2 page)

So that potent Valley Green squad stayed together until we all went our own separate ways to embark on the next part of our careers. I joined Arsenal while Lee Boylan, who was our star striker, went to West Ham. Gary’s son Ryan joined Ipswich and a couple of other lads played regularly for lower-league professional clubs.

I trained initially at Arsenal’s regional training centre in Grays, Essex. It was a small indoor ball court at Grays Athletic FC and, as I mentioned
previously, it was a really select group. The sessions always involved players from my own age group (the under-12s) and the year above. This was the first time I came up against players I knew were better than me. One player, Lee Hodges, was especially brilliant.

Lee was one of the older players but he was head and shoulders above everyone. He reminded me of Gazza as he had such quick feet and was brilliant at dribbling with the ball. He finally left Arsenal and went to West Ham but never fully broke into the first team and eventually played in the lower divisions for the likes of Bristol Rovers and Scunthorpe United. I think his career was curtailed prematurely by a persistent knee injury, but Lee is the first example of many players you will read about in this book who, for whatever reason, did not go on to realise their full potential.

Joining Arsenal put me in contact with the next big influence on my career. My coach at Arsenal was a guy called Andy McDermid. He was superb – everything a player could want from a youth football coach. He was enthusiastic, energetic, outgoing and, most importantly, knowledgeable. Without a doubt he was one key person who helped mould the football philosophy I hold to this day.

As I recall those training sessions, I remember we did not do anything groundbreaking. Often we would only have six or eight players and we would just play knockout competitions in pairs with Andy in goal. But, whatever we were doing, there would always be a theme to the session and he would drop in pieces of advice and information. As there were so few players you got loads of contact time with the ball. The philosophy of small-sided 4v4 games that everyone preaches now is what we were doing twenty years ago.

I specifically remember learning what a third man run was and how to do it. We practised it for weeks on end until everyone got it. For the uninitiated, a third man run is when two players combine to then play a pass through to a third man making a late forward run, hence the name.

As much as I enjoyed Andy’s sessions, I also really liked him as a person. 
He was always teasing us and telling us about his own football career. Apparently he played in goal for England under-16s and he even brought an England cap to training once. I was never convinced it was his though as he was about 5 ft 7 and not a particularly good goalkeeper, but he was adamant. Whether it was true or not didn’t really matter as it inspired us to try to show him what good players we were.

After a couple of years at the Grays training centre I progressed to training at Arsenal’s old Highbury Stadium. The club used to have an indoor training facility under the old Clock End called the JVC Centre and I would go there a couple of times a week. I cannot remember who the coach was but I remember continuing to enjoy the training. Among the other players was one Frank Lampard.

At that time Frank was a decent player, but not someone who really stood out – and definitely not someone you’d have predicted to go on to have the wonderful career he had with Chelsea. However, even at that age he had a great attitude towards training. I think Arsenal knew that his loyalties were always with West Ham but they had a go at taking him on anyway.

So, at the ripe old age of fourteen I played solely for Arsenal and everything was going well. I always felt like one of the stronger players in my age group. By the time I came into my last year at secondary school I had been with the club for five years. I had been one of only a couple of players who had signed those precious schoolboy forms two years previously, so I was relatively confident I would be offered an apprenticeship. In those days an apprenticeship was through the YTS scheme and would last two years.

However, the one fly in the ointment was the strength of the players in the age group below. My team only had about seven regular players and, in hindsight, that was because the year below was so strong. There were about twenty players in the younger age group with some really talented boys. We would regularly play against them in school holidays and, more often than not, lose.

Arsenal eventually made a decision just after Christmas to offer me a contract. Leading up to that time I also received interest from Leyton Orient and Cambridge United. You may think that there was not a choice to be made there but I do often look back and wonder whether I made the right one. Yes, at Arsenal I would get the opportunity to train with world-class players and coaches and use top-level facilities but, realistically, would I ever get anywhere near the first team?

However, if I were to join Leyton Orient or Cambridge, I could quite realistically be in and around a first team within a year. If that happened, and I impressed when given the opportunity, then it may not have been long until another big club showed an interest in me.

On the flip side, I was also conscious of the fact that if it did not go well at one of the smaller clubs then where do you go from there? I would’ve had to rebuild my fledgling career in non-League football. Even if it didn’t work out at Arsenal, I was at least pretty confident I would get another opportunity lower down the League. Every coach knows a person has to be of a certain standard to have been at a club like Arsenal for the amount of time I had been there so they would, as a minimum, give me an opportunity to impress.

So, after about five seconds’ thought I put my fears aside and accepted Arsenal’s offer of an apprenticeship. I do not think you would have found many sixteen-year-old boys who would have passed up such an opportunity, and the kudos I received at school was enough justification (let alone all the other positives).

Signing the contract was my first of many career mistakes, however. I instantly decided that signing guaranteed me superstardom and riches beyond my wildest dreams and, as a result, there was no need to concentrate on my GCSEs, in my opinion. I just downed tools at school.

I still took all my exams and picked up some decent results (five A–Cs and five Ds) but I could and should have achieved so much more.

Not that this bothered me in the slightest at the time. In a display of arrogance I did not even go and pick up my results, confident in the misguided idea that I would never need them. I was busy preparing for the next chapter of my life and conquering the world of professional football. It did not quite go according to plan…

I have somehow managed to make it to half-term at the school. Teaching is so much harder than I imagined. That extra £1,000 in my last pay packet was a tax rebate, by the way – just another illustration of how far I have fallen financially.

Currently I am teaching ICT, maths, philosophy, citizenship, science and a little bit of football. It seems ironic to me that the one area in which I am an expert is the one in which I do the least.

I pretty much resigned last week. The headmaster asked me to a meeting and said he wanted to retain me after my one-term contract expired. He asked me how things were going and, as he’d caught me in between my worst couple of days, I told him exactly how I felt: ‘I’m teaching lots of stuff I know nothing about.’

He seemed to sympathise with me but I was warming to the theme, going on to say I did not think teaching was for me and that I wanted to resign as soon as possible.

As I have no other job lined up, was that a brave or stupid thing to say? Over the past month I had applied for five jobs and not been asked to even one interview! It seems, worryingly, that I am over-qualified for most of the positions I have been pursuing.

However, I’ve decided being unemployed is better than my current reality – I simply do not look forward to going into work. I know in my previous job I was lucky enough to get paid to indulge in my passion, but I also loved going in for training. There were plenty of times when things were not going well personally or professionally but as soon as I got onto the training pitch all those problems dissipated and I felt free. Working at the school is so different, probably because I am absolutely winging it. I’m frustrated that the school has got me in this position. How can they put someone who has never taught before, or had any formal training, in charge of a classroom? I used to think I was a resilient and focused person but now all I think about is quitting.

Having written that, I do think in the back of my mind I could actually become a good teacher within a year or two. The real question is: do I want to go through all this shit to get to that point?

I recently had one of my lessons observed by a senior member of staff who graded me on criteria set by teaching governing body Ofsted. You can be marked as either ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. I also looked for ‘crap’ but apparently that is not one of the options.

Anyway, I surprised myself by earning an overall ‘requires improvement’ grade with some elements of ‘good’ thrown in. The person who graded me said she was really impressed, considering I only had three weeks’ experience. I do like building relationships with the pupils too, which helps, although sometimes I probably blur the line between friend and teacher by engaging in some of the classroom banter.

A couple of days after that meeting with the headmaster I told him I would at least see out my contract and re-assess the situation nearer Christmas. I am sure I can do this now and, more importantly, be good at it. I just need to keep reminding myself to be patient.

Meanwhile, like an ageing journeyman heavyweight boxer, I have been lured out of football retirement for a few extra quid.

I was convinced, after being deemed surplus of requirements by AFC Sudbury, that I was hanging up my boots for good, so I made no attempt to find another club and was instead looking at coaching and scouting options. However, the reality is you have to work much harder doing either of those things to earn less than you would through playing, even if it is at a low standard in front of one man and his dog.

A couple of weeks into my ‘retirement’, Mark Stimson, the manager of Ryman Premier League side Thurrock FC, rang me and asked if I would come and play for him. He offered me £200 per week after tax plus £25 an appearance and £25 a win. Considering they were bottom of the League with one win all season I was not banking on the win bonus too much!

I was not in a position to turn down that sort of money from a manager I really respected. I’d spent a month on loan at Kettering Town with Mark in the 2011/12 season – the club itself was a shambles but I took to him straight away. He’s a brilliant coach who simplifies the game and paints pictures for his players in training sessions. We also share similar footballing philosophies, which is important when you become a stubborn senior player and are less likely to submit to managers who can be, especially at this level, less qualified than yourself.

Only two weeks into the arrangement, however, and I’m already struggling to motivate myself – so let’s see how long it lasts. I need to regain my full love for the game; there is still opportunity to earn good money playing in the lower leagues but I have got to want to do it. Money has never been my main motivation to play football, but it is at the moment – and it’s not enough.

W
ITHIN A MONTH
of finishing my GCSEs in the summer of 1995 I was embarking on my first ever pre-season as a full-time player alongside David Donaldson, Lee Richardson, Jason Crowe and Mark Thorogood – all of whom had also signed two-year YTS contracts. It seems like another lifetime ago, but I can recollect some memories vividly.

The then assistant youth development officer Steve Rowley gave me a lift to my first day of training and I bounced into the training base at London Colney confident in my own mind that I was going to be a superstar.

My first day also coincided with the first for new manager Bruce Rioch. He had the unenviable task of taking over from the hugely successful George Graham, who had been relieved of his duties after being found guilty of receiving illegal bungs. I had grown up watching Graham’s team (youth players were given complimentary tickets to every home game) and although the style of football was not aesthetically pleasing, the team was superbly
organised and built on strong foundations, with sprinkles of genius from the likes of Ian Wright, Paul Merson and Anders Limpar. But, being honest, Arsenal under Graham did not play my kind of football.

We were not the only new boys on that first day either. Arsenal had also signed two undeniable superstars who were massive heroes of mine: the mercurial Dennis Bergkamp from Inter Milan for £7.5 million and David Platt from Sampdoria for £4.75 million. I used to watch Bergkamp every Sunday afternoon on Channel 4’s coverage of Italian football and Platt was the sort of box-to-box attacking midfielder I had tried to base my game on.

I will let you judge who you think was the most successful of all these new signings arriving at London Colney that day, although what I will ask is this: did Bergkamp or Platt ever grace the hallowed turf at Hereford’s Edgar Street?

My youth-team manager was Pat Rice, the legendary ex-Arsenal right back. He was the ideal youth-team manager – a tough man who would come down on you like a ton of bricks if you stepped out of line but would also build up your confidence when he felt it necessary. I have never really feared authority and have always been pretty cheeky, which I think he quite liked, but he often gave me a bollocking when I crossed the line between being confident and gobby.

In those days at Arsenal, everyone (first team, reserves and youth-team players) trained together during the first week of pre-season. There were a total of sixty players. I remember this as I was number fifty-eight – I believe it was sorted out via alphabetical order, not ability!

We were then mixed up into several groups to work at one of the different stations spread around the training ground for thirty minutes at a time. These stations included a body weight circuit, the dreaded perimeter run (around the outskirts of the whole training ground), shorter shuttle runs and head tennis.

The late George ‘Geordie’ Armstrong was in charge of my group and,
while I cannot remember everyone in it, I can recall defender Nigel Winterburn’s behaviour. We were doing some simple weaving in and out of poles but Nigel decided he would just run through them and clothesline them all like a WWE wrestler. I was stunned! All the senior players just laughed at him and Geordie did not say much. I bet he was pissed off though.

In those days, pre-season was not taken very seriously, especially for the first couple of weeks. A lot of players came back overweight so the first priority was to shift that excess via lots of running – not like it is nowadays where footballs are often incorporated on the first day.

Having said that, there were balls used for head tennis, of course. It is called ‘head’ tennis but you can use any part of your body to get the ball over the net. I had gone from playing ‘headers and volleys’ with my friends in the park to playing it with experienced Premier League and international players. Suffice to say I was a nervous wreck and my sole aim was to ensure I was not the one to make a mistake.

Paul Dickov, the fiery Scottish striker, was in my group and prided himself on his head tennis expertise. He could not care less if you were an established player or a spotty teenager – if you made a mistake he deemed preventable, he gave you both barrels. Luckily one of my strengths has always been my first touch so I managed to get through that unscathed.

On one of those early days my group had just completed its perimeter run and we were waiting for our turn on the head tennis court. Dennis Bergkamp was playing in the group ahead of us and produced a piece of skill that left me open-mouthed. The ball came over the net from about 10 metres in the air, but Bergkamp cushioned and caught it on his foot in one motion and then nonchalantly flicked it back over the net. Everyone went mad! It was amazing and my words probably do not do it justice. Even in those early days it was starting to dawn on me just how good you needed to be to make a career for yourself at the highest level.

The first few months were a real learning curve. My adolescent body
was struggling to adapt to the rigours of full-time football and I had gone from being a top player in every team I had played in to being one of the weakest. Physically and mentally I was still a boy and I soon realised I had a massive challenge on my hands to make a career for myself at any level of professional football, let alone playing in the Premier League.

My home in rural Essex was geographically on the cusp of Arsenal’s clubrun accommodation boundary. As a result, they let me make my own choice and I decided I wanted to stay with my family and friends.

This was another mistake.

I should have moved to north London and immersed myself in trying to be a professional footballer. Instead I spent a lot of time on the train commuting to and from Highbury.

As an apprentice footballer in those days I was paid the princely sum of £29.50 per week in my first year. On top of that, the club also paid my dad £60 a week to look after me and they covered my travel costs too. As you can see, this was long before the pampered lifestyle of young scholars nowadays.

My week consisted of training Monday and Tuesday, attending college in King’s Cross on a Wednesday, more training Thursday and Friday and then a game on Saturday mornings. When the first team was playing at Highbury, our week would finish by watching them in the afternoon. However, these were only half of our responsibilities.

Every player was in charge of looking after three professional players’ match day and training boots. The players who had the dubious honour of me cleaning their boots were David Seaman (at that time the England national team goalkeeper), Ian Selley (who I thought was a brilliant central midfield player before his top-level career was ended prematurely by injury) and Matthew Rose (a young professional who went on to have a good career with the likes of Queens Park Rangers). The best memory I have of Rose is that he had a very attractive girlfriend!

Now I say it was a dubious honour mainly because I took no pride in
cleaning my own boots, let alone anyone else’s (even if they were a current England international!). I have been criticised throughout my career for having dreadfully dirty boots – often having it cited as a lack of professionalism. However, I like to argue that my boots were always dirty because I loved football so much and was always using them.

To make matters worse, Seaman was very particular about the preparation of his boots. He insisted the Nike logo on each one be painted with a well-known paper correction fluid and that there be no black polish on the logo at all. Now this probably does not sound too taxing but you have to factor in that I am not artistically gifted. Seaman was thankfully one of the more laid-back professionals, however, and would show any displeasure with a loud, deep laugh, accompanied by a headlock. We mutually parted ways early in the New Year of my first season and his boots were passed on to another apprentice who took more pride in his responsibilities. However, this still gave Seaman the opportunity to illustrate his displeasure with me via his Christmas tip.

At Arsenal there was a tradition where you had to sing a Christmas carol to the whole playing staff in order to get your tip – no song equalled no money. As I am sure you can imagine, this was a pretty daunting prospect for anyone, let alone a seventeen-year-old fresh out of school.

Legend has it that when Ray Parlour was an apprentice he sang ‘Little Donkey’ to Tony Adams. The defender allegedly showed what he thought of the song by chasing Ray around the training ground – but I never found out whether he caught him or not!

I got the Cliff Richard classic ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ to murder – and that I did. I am one of those unfortunate people who is tone death but thinks they sound good until they witness the quizzical look on the face of any onlookers, who often cannot tell if I’m being serious or taking the piss. I can’t even compensate with some eye-catching dance moves as they are arguably just as embarrassing.

So the first team and reserve players would be watching and baying for blood with buckets of freezing water, saliva and God knows what else. If you were good the players would sing along until you finished and you’d escape a soaking. If you were terrible you would get booed off and covered in whatever inhabited those buckets. Needless to say, I suffered the latter.

Now, if I knew the size of the tip coming my way from England’s No. 1 I do not think I would have bothered at all. I could not believe it when he handed over £50 … £50?! A conservative estimate would say he must have been on £10,000 a week. Probably more. We have established that I was not the best boot boy in the world, but surely he could have given me a couple of hundred quid. Other apprentices were getting bundles of £50 notes, new boots and as much sports clothing as they could carry. Maybe he was teaching me an early lesson?

Selley gave me £30, which, considering he liked to clean his own boots, was acceptable, although still a little tight in my opinion. Rose gave me £25 – another paltry amount…

On top of boot-cleaning, we apprentices also had other duties to carry out. Chores included taking all the training kit from Highbury to the training ground, preparing all the equipment for said sessions, packing the players’ boots for away games, cleaning Highbury before and after games and keeping the youth-team bus clean.

I remember early in my apprenticeship, we had packed the kit and boots for an away youth-team game, arrived at the venue and started to unpack the huge metal skips, and realised one of them seemed really light. Turned out it was empty. The lads on duty that day had picked up the wrong skip and left the kit at home. Laurence, the youth-team kit man, went apoplectic. The lads responsible got a right bollocking. As it was nothing to do with me I found it hilarious, although I’m not sure those sentiments were shared by those involved!

Highbury would always have to be cleaned on a Thursday before a
Saturday home game and, on such days, I would leave home at 7 a.m. and not get back until 9 p.m. – not exactly what I had signed up for. I soon realised that a lot of apprentices are taken on as glorified cleaners. Back then I believe a lot of clubs, especially lower down the leagues, recruited enough players to play in their youth team and carry out all menial jobs, knowing full well that the vast majority of them had absolutely no chance of making any type of career in football.

That first year as a full-time footballer was a huge learning curve. I could not break into the youth team in my favoured position of central midfield but, due to the fact I was comfortable with both feet, I managed to nail down a place on the left. My performances in the first half of that 1995/96 season were very up and down, though, as I struggled to find any real consistency.

I either played really well and would be one of the best players on the pitch or play horrendously and be the worst. Unsurprisingly, the latter resulted in me being on the wrong end of Pat Rice’s hairdryer treatment on more than one occasion. This was the first time I had been on the end of such aggression and I was not too sure how to handle it. You have to quickly realise that it is not personal and that at some stage of the season everyone gets a kick up the backside. I just managed to get more than most.

My most memorable dressing-down came when we played an FA Youth Cup match at Highbury against Wimbledon. Leading up to the game I had been struggling with a hip problem. It was not enough to stop me playing but it was causing me discomfort. The coaching staff was undecided about whether I should play or not, but I insisted I was fit and they took my word for it. In hindsight, I definitely should not have played as the game was a complete disaster, but it was my first opportunity to play in such an iconic arena and the best ground I had played at before then was Colchester United’s Layer Road in an under-10 cup final for Valley Green.

We were totally outplayed in the first half and were getting comfortably beaten by half-time. I had been at the club long enough to know
that a rollicking was coming our way and that there was every opportunity I would be one of its recipients.

I was not disappointed. Rice initially went mental at everyone and then I had the misfortune of catching his eye. He exploded, saying how I had let him down as I clearly was not fit.

He was pretty much foaming at the mouth and saliva was going everywhere as he launched into the finale of his dressing-down, which involved him thumping his fist on the treatment table in front of me. He did it with such ferocity that his watch broke and fell onto the floor. Even in my petrified state I had to suppress the laughter swelling inside me. He did not find it amusing and it was the end of my participation in that game.

It always made me chuckle when I used to hear Arsenal fans on radio phone-in shows saying there seemed to be nobody on the coaching staff giving out criticism when the team was underperforming. Pat Rice, who spent sixteen years as first-team assistant manager until the end of the 2011/12 season, would have had no hesitation in letting his thoughts be known – believe me!