No Nonsense Read online

  Can I guarantee I will never relapse? No. Did prison alter my outlook? Yes. My love intensified for the woman with whom I realised I wanted to live, for the rest of my life. My bonds to a small circle of family and friends drew tighter. I learned that some relationships are sacred, while others disappear, like dust borne on a gust of wind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HERO

  When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, and turn up at St James’ Park. The chaos I discovered on my return to Newcastle United from the peculiarly comforting certainties of the drugs-free wing at Strangeways was straight from one of Hunter S. Thompson’s mescaline-fuelled fantasies. Mike Ashley’s ‘Cockney Mafia’ were intent on making their bones.

  They were an eclectic bunch, fond of a bracket to express their titular significance. Dennis Wise, a professional irritant, was executive director (football). Tony Jimenez, an obscure property developer, was vice president (player recruitment). Derek Llambias, an equally obscure casino executive, was managing director (sanitation).

  I might have made up that last embellishment, but truth was stranger than fiction. Here was a football club being run contrary not just to convention but to common decency and common sense. Human beings were regarded as blots on the balance sheet, inanimate objects to be shifted like cheap tee-shirts.

  I’m resigned to my expendability, but even I was surprised to receive a call towards the end of the summer transfer window, informing me that the club had agreed to sell me to Portsmouth without consultation. I was ordered to travel to London to meet Tony Adams, Harry Redknapp’s assistant, who was overseeing their end of the deal.

  It didn’t add up. I had made a two-minute comeback as substitute in a 3-0 defeat at Arsenal on 30 August, having worked hard, alongside the youth-team squad, to regain fitness after missing the first team’s pre-season training camp in Majorca. Kevin Keegan spoke enthusiastically on the journey home about his plans for me, once the FA had thrown their dollies out of the pram.

  I liked Tony, having known him through Sporting Chance, and paid him professional respect by listening to what he had to say. Something was not right, since I was unconvinced by his response to basic questions about the short- and medium-term goals of the club. He seemed to lack insight. His team-building strategy was as vague as his assessment of the extent of the owners’ ambitions.

  It took time to discover Pompey’s progress was built on financial quicksand, but I was immediately spooked. My gut instinct was to call Keegan, and confront him about his apparent betrayal. I must have learned something on those long nights inside, though, because I opted for a more measured approach, through his assistant Terry McDermott. He had been hugely supportive in the lull before my imprisonment.

  Terry recognised my vulnerability, sensed I needed the security of a family environment, and regularly invited me to his house for gammon, egg and chips. He was a football nut, and the evenings would inevitably end with him bringing out his medal collection to stimulate stories of legendary European nights. They were told with special relish, since he knew full well I was a bluenose.

  Our relationship broadened to include shared evenings on the road, assessing players and opponents. Cynicism is a default position for a footballer, but I trusted him implicitly. His bafflement when I told him about the Portsmouth episode was persuasive. He was adamant he knew nothing about any deal, and promised to call Keegan because he understood I could only make my decision if I had access to all the facts.

  Kevin called 10 minutes later. He, too, didn’t have a clue. He reiterated his faith in me, both personally and professionally. I had nearly three years left on my contract, and he urged me to stay. To be frank, he was pushing on an open door. I told the Newcastle hierarchy in no uncertain terms that I was going nowhere.

  At the very least, they were guilty of unbelievable naivety. Anyone who has been in football for more than five minutes understands that players are inveterate gossips. It took about that long in the dressing room before training the following morning to learn that Michael Owen and Alan Smith had also resisted pressure to leave the previous day.

  The manager had been cut off at the knees, since he had briefed the press he had hopes of bringing in four additional players in the window. His authority had been blatantly undermined by the unwanted departure of James Milner, and attempts to sell three more senior pros behind his back. His resignation was regrettable, inevitable, and entirely honourable.

  He would be vindicated in October 2009, when a Premier League arbitration tribunal ruled in his favour against the club, which was found to have made untrue statements and given profoundly unsatisfactory explanations for its conduct. He was awarded £2m, in addition to appropriate interest, for the systematic abuse of his managerial ability and experience. The cost to Newcastle United’s credibility was incalculable.

  It had hardly been enhanced by the identity of his successor, Joe Kinnear. The public perception that he represented the crazier element of the Crazy Gang at Wimbledon was hardened by his infamous, 52-expletive, ‘you’re a cunt’ rant at the press. It was football’s equivalent of a Chubby Brown stand-up set which, to be honest, went down brilliantly in the dressing room.

  I got on well with Joe, despite his eccentricities. My first game for him, following my FA suspension, wasn’t exactly the stuff of Geordie legend, since it coincided with Sunderland’s first home win in the Tyne–Wear derby for 28 years, but I warmed to his withering honesty. It was a strange time, and the club was in a very strange place.

  I tore my medial knee ligament in a 2-2 draw at Wigan in November, and JFK – as he was inevitably christened following his potty-mouthed tirade – wasted little time in calling me into a meeting with Ashley. He wanted to take the temperature of the dressing room, and evidently thought of me as a kindred spirit.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to take that.

  ‘What’s going on here, then?’ he asked, brusquely, before I’d barely had time to settle in my seat. This was his version of consensual management, which cannot be found in the self-help section of your local bookstore. Never mind the bollocks, give me the truth.

  He wanted to know the underlying problem; so, embracing his spirit of bluntness, I told him. He needed to cull a couple of the more temperamental foreign players, and warn the rest that cliques would not be tolerated. Ashley had to see sense in the transfer market, and sanction the purchase of seasoned English players, who’d give consistent seven-out-of-10 performances.

  Charles N’Zogbia, about as useful in a dogfight as Charles Aznavour (ask your nan, kids), went to Wigan in an exchange deal involving Ryan Taylor. I’m not entirely sure whether wires were crossed or JFK regarded his birthplace, the Republic of Ireland, as a foreign land, but Shay Given was shipped out to Manchester City for £6m.

  Kevin Nolan came in from Bolton on a four-and-a-half-year contract. The board had obviously not done their homework on him, since he is the strong-willed, highly driven sort of player who is unafraid of calling out his supposed elders and betters. It was all a bit higgledy-piggledy, but I still believe had Joe stayed in charge we would have avoided relegation.

  He underwent a triple heart bypass operation in mid-February, and Chris Hughton became caretaker manager for the second time that season. I didn’t play a single game for him, because I had broken my left foot on 28 January, in my first game back at City following my move. It was a freak injury, sustained when I sought to turn, but my rehab went well and I was training with the first team when I turned again, and felt my foot go pop.

  An immediate scan suggested severe bone bruising, but a clean break would have been better, as I would have been able to get it pinned and allow nature to take its course. As the weeks out of the team extended to months, the pain refused to go away. Whenever I tried to run, it felt as if a nail was being hammered into the sole of my foot.

  It’s up to you whether you believe this, but there is a fair amount of guilt floating around in such a situation. I felt as if I wa
s not earning my money, and the imminence of relegation challenged my professional pride. The emotional stakes were raised when Alan Shearer was brought in, on a whim and a prayer, with eight games remaining.

  Superman had arrived to save the day. I had played golf with Al a couple of times, and shared a few pints without admitting I had once successfully badgered Dad to buy me his Blackburn Rovers shirt, with a red number nine on the back. I understood the hero worship, the schoolboy crush on the local lad who wheeled away from the Gallowgate with his right arm extended to the heavens in triumph.

  I identified with what he represented as a player, and appreciated his disciplinarian approach as a manager. He stressed the club’s social significance, and warned us about going out on the town when we were playing poorly. His mistake was to accuse the group of lacking fitness. His imposition of morning and afternoon sessions, so late in the season, was counterproductive.

  His choice of Iain Dowie as assistant, which led to the ridiculous spectacle of a limited former player attempting to lecture Michael Owen on the finer aspects of goal scoring, completed the alienation. It took four games of Shearer’s tenure, defeats against Chelsea and Tottenham punctuated by draws against Stoke and Portsmouth, for the mood to become funereal.

  I was in the gym on the Monday morning, following the goalless home draw with Pompey, when Shearer approached to ask how I was getting on. I was working on the strength and flexibility of my ankle with one of the physios because, as I explained, I couldn’t deal with any physical loading on my foot. I told him I was ‘kind of’ getting there.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We need you back. I’ve got no legs in the middle of the park, no mobility in there. I’m desperate for you. If you’ve got anything, then give it to us now. We need a bit of fire.’

  I responded to the aura of a hero, rather than the desperation of a novice. I liaised with the medical staff and levelled with the manager. I would be half-fit, at best. I would have cortisone injections to numb the foot. They would reduce the pain, but compromise my quality. I promised to run around, get the rest of the team at it.

  I had thought the lads would pull us out of trouble, but it didn’t look promising. I told Al I didn’t realistically fancy our chances at Liverpool, but if I got 70 or 80 minutes under my belt I reckoned I would be better placed to help us eke out the two wins we required in the final three games, against Middlesbrough, Fulham and Aston Villa.

  So much for Joseph Anthony Barton and The Art of War.

  When I look back at footage of that Anfield match I notice two things: the omnipresence of Xabi Alonso and the fact I am soon running with a limp. Cortisone combats inflammation, but its anaesthetic effect wears off after a while. That’s when the body does its best to compensate, by producing adrenaline as a natural painkiller.

  Xabi and I had history. He blamed me for knocking him out in what he thought was a deliberate clash of heads in one of our earliest contests, and I blamed him for stealing my move to Liverpool. All that remained to be agreed with City was the fee, when Rafa Benitez took over from Gerard Houllier. I was in Dubai when I was informed he had instead decided to sign a kid from Real Sociedad who had just broken into the Spanish national team.

  That turned out to be £10.7m well spent. Xabi is one hell of a player, whose passes have great range and accuracy. Whenever we played, I sought to get the game on my terms, which were relentlessly physical. He didn’t mind that, since he had been prepared for the remorselessness of English football by John Toshack, who made him captain of the Basque club at the age of 20.

  The game at Anfield was less than 10 minutes old when he elbowed me in the back of the head as he ran past me to close down our fullback. I turned to the referee and wondered whether he had seen it. It was Phil Dowd, so he hadn’t. I knew I would get a chance to even things up, and was prepared to wait as long as necessary.

  Thirteen minutes remained. Liverpool were two up, cruising, and playing keep-ball. The Kop conducted an incessant, infuriating chant of ‘Olé, olé olé!’ The smug mood must have lulled Xabi into a false sense of security, because he retained possession near the corner flag fractionally longer than was prudent.

  That gave me the opportunity to fly in, and disguise my malicious intent as best I could. The crowd bayed, and Alonso milked the moment with a barrel roll. I expected a yellow and was shown a red. That meant a three-match ban, the end of my season. I had let a lot of people down, not least the physios who had given me a chance to make a difference.

  Shearer blanked me as I left the pitch, and was steaming when he entered the dressing room. I couldn’t argue with him when he ranted at my idiocy. I didn’t demur when he accused me of betraying my team-mates. But then he stepped over the line, and into mutually dangerous territory:

  ‘You’re a shithouse. You’re a fucking coward. You tried to break his leg.’

  This was personalised abuse, not professional analysis. I’ve never hidden my animosity towards Alonso. We’d had it out on many occasions, but kept it in check. Sure, I’d gone in late. He would be feeling it in the morning, but it wasn’t a tackle designed to jeopardise his career. I have never tried to top him.

  I told Shearer to fuck off.

  The Duke, Mark Viduka, was sitting next to me. ‘Leave it, leave it,’ he hissed.

  ‘No,’ yelled Shearer. ‘Let’s hear what you have to say. The floor is yours.’

  I’m conscious of the silence, the fascination of players watching the scene unfold through eyes shuttered in self-defence. Fuck it, he’s getting it. I am only following orders.

  ‘You don’t want to deal with the truth. All you want to do is listen to the sycophants who surround you, telling you how great you are. Someone needs to tell you that it is not all about you. You were a great player, but that’s done. Let’s deal in reality, because I can deal with that. I’ve been a stupid cunt. What about you? Have you ever done anyone? Do you remember kicking Neil Lennon in the head? You’re a cheat.

  ‘You are miles off the mark, miles off. To be fair, that’s where you’ve been at since you walked into this football club. I’ve been watching everything that’s gone on. Keeping people out for afternoon sessions when it is about energy conservation and uniting the group? Is that a fucking wind-up? The training has been all wrong.

  ‘I loved watching you as I was growing up, but you are no hero to me.’

  Dowie decides to intervene, and squares up like a fighter in a fairground booth. I can’t remember this, but the lads assured me afterwards I said, ‘Hang on, you. You keep it shut, boxing-glove head.’ That was his training-ground nickname, because, let’s face it, he’s never going to be accused of being a natural beauty.

  I do recall the rest of my retaliatory volley. I called him a head on a stick, a cart horse. Dressing rooms are evil places in such circumstances. I was about 20 feet away from Shearer, and four of the senior pros eased into no-man’s-land between us, just in case hostilities escalated. We shouldn’t have spoken to one another in such terms, but swapping insults, however personal, is better than trading punches.

  I was scapegoated, as expected, in the subsequent press conference but was caught off guard coming out of the cinema the following evening. I returned a missed call from a club official, who told me I was suspended until the end of the season. I was banned from the training ground; if I needed treatment, the physios had been instructed to work on me at home.

  I was persona non grata at the three remaining matches, so completed my community service instead. I cut lawns, cleaned toilets, humped furniture and picked up litter in the local park. My only football involvement was coaching a group of underprivileged kids. I wanted Newcastle to stay up, but was made aware that Portsmouth, West Ham and Bolton were interested in taking me.

  The Sky cameras loved the tears, tantrums and broken tiaras of that supine single-goal defeat at Villa Park, which meant we went down by a point after 16 seasons in the Premier League. The rebuilding process would, by its nature, be private and profound.
Shearer preferred to return to punditry where, to be fair, he has excelled after losing his creosote conformity.

  Chris Hughton stepped up once again, but Ashley didn’t seem convinced, and asked me to play golf with him. He wanted to be my partner in a fourball match against Smudger Smith and Llambias, but I insisted on playing with my team-mate; we beat the owner and his chum quite comfortably. We all understood the subtext, a chance to set a new agenda. I explained the need for stability, and the flaws in the Superman experiment. In as many words, he was told to trust an experienced core to support a rookie manager.

  The agenda for a pivotal team meeting after an embarrassing 6-1 defeat at Leyton Orient in a pre-season friendly was set by a group that also included Nobby Nolan, Steve Harper and Nicky Butt. Immediate promotion would be achieved through self-policing; anyone who wanted to leave was advised to make arrangements asap. Cheats would be exposed and excluded.

  The delicacy of the balance of power created complications. I apologised to Chris and his assistant Colin Calderwood for storming out of a training session following a disagreement about our defensive shape, which I insisted left us vulnerable to free kicks swung in from wide areas. He said he appreciated the gesture, but dropped me to the bench for the opening fixture of 2009/10, a 1-1 draw at West Bromwich Albion.

  We were both victims of the subsequent scramble. He was rightly aggrieved, and understandably suspicious, when he was reminded of his caretaker status and ordered to reinstate me. I resented the implication that I’d conspired in my recall because, despite our occasional differences, I regarded Chris as a man of the greatest dignity, the highest integrity.

  Ashley had evidently pulled on his hobnail boots after removing his golf shoes. The message came down from on high that they wanted me off the wage bill. If only it were that simple.

  I did my best for Hughton, playing some part in six of the first eight games, but came off in the 59th minute of a 3-1 home win over Plymouth when the pain from my foot became too much to bear. I had become morose and withdrawn at home, crying my eyes out as I tended the foot for hours in a Game Ready ice machine. My brain was so scrambled I contemplated deliberately breaking it, to force the issue.