Journeyman (3 page)

At that age, such setbacks had a detrimental effect on me. After that game, my form suffered for quite a while, which did not go unnoticed by some of my teammates. Generally in football there is very little sympathy handed out and this case was no different. Players would come out with comments such as, ‘Where were you Saturday?’ or ‘Shock, you gave the ball away again.’ Sometimes it would be under their breath but always loud enough for me to hear. In the long term it spurred me on to improve, but in the short term it made life tough. I remember sometimes during that first year, especially in the early days, dreading going into training.

The situation was not helped by the fact I also had to handle the embarrassment of getting subbed before half-time in a youth-team game once. It was after that game that I first learnt managers will sometimes be conservative with the truth.

Thanks to the ever unpredictable British Rail I had missed training on the Friday before the match. The ritual in the youth team on a Friday was to do functional work, which consisted of working on the formation we were going to play, trying some set-piece situations and finishing with a small-sided game. I had missed all this.

The next day I threw in one of my worst performances and was dragged off after about twenty-five minutes. I thought I was going to get another dressing-down, but Pat must’ve realised how low my morale was and made up some cock-and-bull story about me not knowing the formation we were playing. We were playing 4–4–2, which, even at the age of seventeen, I had played hundreds of times before. I suppose it was his way of protecting me, but I was intelligent enough to know the real reason.

However, as the season wore on, my confidence both on and off the pitch did begin to grow. I started to feel at home with my teammates and slowly won the respect of the group. I had found a niche for myself in the team on the left side of midfield and began to add some consistency to my play.

Bruce Rioch seemed to take a liking to me as well. He was a regular at youth-team games when the first team was playing at home. One particular game, I cannot remember the opposition, he seemed to take a real interest in my performance. It may just have been that I was playing on the side of the pitch where he was standing, but he was giving me lots of advice that I attempted to take on board.

I was amazed the manager knew my name, let alone took any interest in my performance, but it gave me a lot of confidence and I felt I was making progress.

I had always been technically gifted with a football and, even in the youth team at Arsenal, I knew I was one of the better in the group when in possession. In those days I thought that being good with the ball was enough, so, unfortunately, I did no extra fitness work and would regularly cheat when doing the bodyweight circuits. Pat Rice would refer to me as
‘Fatty Arbuckle’ – he said it in jest but it was a dig and I knew it. In those days one of my heroes was Paul Gascoigne and, in my mind, I thought that if Gazza could get away with being a little chubby then so could I. Obviously I was wrong. My diet was terrible too, but I do not blame the club for that. My education on such matters was and always is my responsibility.

Putting my physical deficiencies aside, I was definitely making progress – although I was acutely aware of the strength of the age group below who were due to be first-year apprentices in the 1996/97 season. A lot of the names will not be as recognisable to you as they should be, but the likes of Andrew Douglas, David Livermore, Julian Gray, Tommy Black, Greg Lincoln and Paolo Vernazza had the ability to become mainstays in Arsenal’s first team. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say those boys could and should have had the same impact as the famous Man United class of ’92. To be fair, the likes of David Livermore and Julian Gray went on to have good careers, but that batch as a whole underachieved.

The biggest problem I had was that the best of the bunch, in my opinion, was Paolo Vernazza – and he played in my position. When he came to train with us in the school holidays he would do things with the ball that would just make me go ‘wow’.

Now, anyone who knows me will know that I am my own biggest fan, but even I could not put a convincing argument forward to say that I was a better player than him. In those days I saw things as being very black and white. I thought someone was either better than me or they were not. I did not think about other factors such as desire, determination or attitude – all key ingredients required to become a top player.

Putting these fears aside, I was relatively happy with my progress in my naïve mind. In that first season I played the most games out of anyone in the youth team. However, if I knew then what I know now, I would have realised I was not doing anywhere near enough – either on or off the pitch – to be a successful player at any decent level.

At the end of that 1995/96 season I got my first taste of how a change of management can have a huge impact on someone’s career.

Pat Rice was clearly wasted working with the youth team and, although he was doing a fantastic job with us, he deserved to be working with international players and not chubby teenagers like me. With him moving on, I was going to get my first experience of the so-called managerial merry-go-round. The man who eventually got the job was Tom Walley, who had a great pedigree in youth football with the likes of Watford and Millwall, including winning the FA Youth Cup with the latter. During my career I came across lots of players who spoke very highly of Tom, but, unfortunately, I cannot share their sentiments.

He was very strict. Now, I can understand the phrase ‘If you give footballers an inch the vast majority of them will take a mile’, but Tom took it to the next level.

By the end of that first season, the apprentices fortunate enough to have signed professional contracts were training with the reserves and the others were off trying to win contracts at other clubs. This was Tom’s cue to run the legs off us ‘little fuckers’, as he would say. The season was about to end and I could not understand why we were doing athletic work and not technical stuff.

I do not think my sharp tongue and sarcasm impressed him. I remember on one morning he was telling us where to put the equipment for the reserves and first team. There were four stations – three were a few hundred metres away and one was about 5 metres from where we were standing. I thought it would be funny to just move the equipment to the nearest station. Well, that went down like a lead balloon and got me the first of many Tom bollockings!

Even though our relationship had not got off to a great start, I put any fears to the back of my mind and went away for the summer looking forward to the new season – though I was aware that with the quality of the
players coming through I would have a real challenge on my hands to earn a place in the team.

Stupidly, however, I did not really work hard over the break to gain an advantage over my teammates. Instead I took it as an opportunity to continue my inappropriate lifestyle.

As ever, the break flew by, and next thing I knew I was back at London Colney preparing for my second season as a full-time player. Going back as a second-year apprentice gave me a lot of confidence: I was no longer the new boy and I knew what to expect.

That pre-season training was as intense as any I had ever done. Anyone who knows anything about youth football will know that lads going from school to training every day have to be treated very carefully. Not only is your body still growing and going through changes but it is adapting to the demands of professional football. This was not a philosophy shared by Tom and, over the course of the 1996/97 season, many players suffered from stress fractures. One or two could have been a coincidence, but not the amount we encountered.

His aggression continued and I saw him on more than one occasion make players cry. This hostility did not seem to have much of an effect on me. In fact, I found it quite amusing although I know a lot of my teammates did not see it that way.

As that season wore on, my initial fears about the talented group joining our team were confirmed: fifteen of them had been signed as apprentices. Considering they only took on five from our age group, it was clear how highly they thought of this pool – and rightly so.

I was beginning to get frustrated because I was struggling to get into the youth team, let alone push for the reserves like I needed to doing be at that stage of my development.

The club must have sensed my disappointment as, out of the blue, I got the opportunity to train with the first team on a couple of occasions. This
was brilliant as I got the chance to work alongside the likes of Adams, Bergkamp and Ian Wright. I seem to remember performing pretty well on those occasions, but it didn’t change anything.

The sessions were not really any different to those we did in the youth team, but the speed and intensity was of a different level. Strangely I do not remember being overly nervous either; I suppose at that age you just take it all in your stride. I remember the senior players being welcoming but giving us no extra leeway once the session started.

Around October of that season I made the decision that I did not want to hang around until May to be told I was not being offered a contract. Instead I went to speak to Liam Brady, who had been appointed as the new head of youth, and asked for permission to try to win a professional contract elsewhere, which he agreed to. In hindsight, this might have been a rash decision as it was still early in the season, but I didn’t want to waste time at a club where I didn’t seem to have a future, even if that club was Arsenal.

I also thought that being associated with Arsenal would have clubs queuing up to sign me and that it was just a question of which one I wanted to sign for.

Again I was very wrong…

Clubs invest a lot of time and money in their youth players and become emotionally attached to them. This means that if you go to a new club and attempt to win a contract already earmarked for one of their established players, you need to be head and shoulders above your competition.

I sent my CV out and waited for the avalanche of phone calls. There was not exactly a deluge but eventually Southend United took the bait. Peter Johnson was the youth-team manager there and asked me to come down for a couple of weeks. This was ideal for me as, at that time, Southend was in what is now the Championship – and only thirty minutes from my family home.

The initial trial went well and they asked me to stay until Christmas. I
was playing regularly in both the youth team and the reserves and felt I was good enough to earn a contract. Unfortunately, I think the main reason they wanted me to stay was that I was better than the apprentices they already had and they just wanted to use me for as long as they could get away with.

The situation eventually came to a head just before Christmas as my frustration was getting the better of me. During one Friday training session we were playing a small-sided game where you were restricted to a maximum of three touches every time you had the ball.

Someone took too many touches.

Now I know it sounds petty but I have always been a stickler for the rules of these games. I complained loudly to Peter and made my feelings known when he did not make, what I believed to be, the right decision.

He clearly did not like that as, when I went to see him after training to find out what time we were meeting for the game the following day, he told me I was not required for the game – or indeed ever.

I hope that doesn’t make me come across as a troublemaker because I am definitely not. However, I have always been opinionated and I do not think there are many managers who like players with an opinion – especially players who have just turned eighteen.

I was still not learning lessons off the pitch either. During my spell at Southend I regularly went out with friends at inappropriate times. At that stage in my life it was more important for me to go out with my friends than concentrate on what had the potential to be a successful career.

I was now back to square one. I had burned my bridges at Arsenal and was deemed not good enough for Southend. This was a real wake-up call as I realised clubs were not desperate to sign me. I had a battle on my hands to find a club that would give me an opportunity to progress.

As I have done many times throughout my career, I sent out letters asking for a trial to all the local professional teams. The first club to respond this time was Brentford FC. At that time they were riding high at the top
of what is now League One and were managed by ex-Chelsea player David Webb (who ended up managing me at two different clubs during my career).

The manager of the youth team at Brentford was a guy called Bob Booker and I initially went there for a couple of weeks. As soon as I arrived I knew I would be one of the better players and I felt comfortable when training with the younger professionals as well.

What really struck me during this entire phase of my career was that it seemed even lower-league professional clubs signed apprentices as a form of cheap labour. It was clear the vast majority of players in the Brentford youth team had no chance of forging any kind of career in football, but they were being used to do an abundance of totally unrelated tasks dressed up as ‘learning your trade’. Surely the best way to do that was to be out on the training pitch working on technique rather than cleaning kit and painting dressing rooms? The one bonus of being an apprentice on trial was that I didn’t have to do any of these jobs.

I ended up staying at Brentford for about a month and the end result was the same as Southend: they told me I was not good enough. My star was waning and I was dropping down the leagues rapidly. I found it really hard to believe that I was not good enough to sign for either of these clubs and, for the first time, I became a bit disillusioned with football.

I was still contracted to Arsenal so should have returned there, but I knew that there was not much communication between Arsenal and Brentford so I just decided not to go to training.

In hindsight, that was a ridiculous thing to do. My assumption that there was no dialogue between Arsenal and Brentford was also misguided, as proven by the phone call I got from a very irate Liam Brady, who had realised I was no longer training at Brentford. He basically said if I was not at London Colney the next day I would be sacked. I decided I did not want that on my CV and sheepishly returned to Arsenal.