No Nonsense Read online

  Mark Hughes was appointed as Warnock’s successor at QPR within 48 hours of his sacking, following a suspiciously swift and successful lobbying campaign. I did what all players do at such a crossroads, and called my mates who had played for him at Manchester City. It is fair to say the read on him wasn’t entirely flattering.

  I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu as I settled down to another heart-to-heart in the tiny manager’s office in the left-hand corner of the main Portakabin at the training ground. There was no point in being coy; I told Hughes about the divisions within the squad, and was upfront about the issues I discussed with the owners before Warnock’s departure.

  He was watchful, and spoke carefully, but seemed to accept my explanation and analysis at face value. He rejected my offer to give up the captaincy; it wasn’t until he settled in, and started to throw his weight around, that I realised his trust was shallow, at best. He obviously intended to use my prominence within the group to his advantage.

  The standard of our training sessions, and the quality of our pre-match planning, improved markedly. Yet my relationship with Hughes worsened when he began to call me out in front of the squad, often without reason. I got where he was coming from; he had survived some hard schools as a player, and wanted to make a point by publicly putting me, as a dominant personality, in my place.

  I played along with it to a degree until his idea of internal discipline degenerated into personal belittlement. I wouldn’t take that from anyone, even though I recognised weakness and vulnerability in his stage-managed shows of strength. There were times when I gave him too much leeway; he rightly substituted me 62 minutes into one of the worst performances of my career, against Liverpool at Loftus Road.

  With me safely sidelined, and booed all the way to the bench, Rangers scored three times in the last 13 minutes to win 3-2. I had a whinge at the fans on social media, which wasn’t that smart in retrospect, and was dropped for the following match, at Sunderland. He compounded the snub by making me warm up continually, with little apparent intention of putting me on. The Mackems gave me dog’s abuse.

  I wasn’t in a great place, personally. I had started drinking again, and the reaction of Hughes to a brief, quickly forgotten spat with Shaun Derry during a 1-0 defeat at West Bromwich Albion proved to be the flashpoint. The manager threatened to strip me of the captaincy, but changed his mind after I told him he had lost me, for good.

  He obviously had a mole in the dressing room because a little while after I told the lads about his blustering, he challenged me in front of them. I followed him down the corridor into his office, and closed the door behind us. There wasn’t room to swing a cat, let alone a decent punch, but we squared up. I could see in his eyes, and his flared nostrils, that he was desperate to get it on. He was aggressive as a player, but as a manager knew he had more to lose.

  I stopped just short of following my subsequent advice to Brad Orr, when he was trying to get Hughes to release him from his contract. That would have involved turning over the desk and sending the lot – laptop, scouting reports and the paraphernalia of management – crashing to the floor. We merely shouted and screamed at one another.

  I left nothing unsaid. He knew how intensely I disliked him as a man, regardless of our differences in football philosophy. He must have been in shock, since he picked me for the final four games of the season. I played particularly well in a 1-0 win over Tottenham, a match in which Adel Taarabt surpassed himself by getting sent off after scoring the only goal.

  No one seems to remember that we survived on the last day because Stoke City drew with Bolton Wanderers, who went down instead. It is remembered for Martin Tyler’s orgasmic yelp of ‘Aguerrroooooo’ when the Argentine forward snatched the title for Manchester City with their second goal in added time, and for the mayhem triggered by my clash with his fellow countryman, Carlos Tevez.

  They only run to plastic flags at the Etihad, but the reaction to my sending-off had the whiff of flaming torches, carried by a lynch mob. They called me an animal. I can’t say that was unjust, but the slurs didn’t take into account my uncanny clarity of thought during one of the most notorious sequences of my career.

  I get asked about the incident all the time. I can rationalise it, without excusing it. It conformed to a pattern; most of my major controversies have been preceded by two to three months of intermittent turmoil, usually out of the public eye. It’s a bit like a volcanic eruption. Pressure builds, plates shift and then booooom! . . . the pressure is released with spectacular, destructive force.

  This will sound borderline insane, but I was completely in control after I responded to Tevez’s sly punch to the side of my face by throwing an elbow. When I watch CCTV of the city-centre fight for which I was imprisoned, I am out of control. When I watch the Tevez controversy, I am analytical, detached.

  I knew what was coming when referee Mike Dean advanced towards me after consulting with his linesman, Andy Garratt. Shaun Derry was on his shoulder, in his ear, but he was reaching into his pocket for the red card. I calmly handed Dezza the captain’s armband when I heard Bobby Zamora hissing, ‘Take one with you.’ We laugh about it now, but I remember thinking, ‘Good idea!’

  I bought myself a couple of seconds by protesting, and the dominoes soon began to fall. Aguero was close by, and emotionally engaged because I’d cuffed his mate. I kicked him in the thigh, hoping he would retaliate, but he went down with the speed of an overmatched undercard fighter, seeking sanctuary on the canvas.

  Vincent Kompany bustled forward, shoulders braced and chest extended. He was wide open for a punch, but I feigned a head butt to see if he would react. Tyler, a brilliant commentator, by the way, observed, ‘This is crazy’, but he couldn’t read my mind. I was calmly considering the odds of taking on Joleon Lescott before Kevin Hitchcock and Eddie Niedzwiecki, the QPR coaches, could reach me.

  Micah Richards, a friend from my City days, helped them hustle me off the pitch. It was only then that I spotted another unused substitute, Mario Balotelli, posturing like the comedy professional he was, and always will be. I headed for him before I realised the futility of fighting with him, since getting him sent off wouldn’t influence the game.

  Reality, and guilt, kicks in as I walk down the tunnel of my own accord. I’ve fucked my team. I’ve screwed things up, yet again. I am in deep, deep shit. As I stand under the shower I do what I tend to do in such circumstances. I distance myself from the inevitable consequences, try to deflect blame.

  It is a default position that disturbs me, to be honest. It is self-delusion, a play on the words if, but and maybe. If that lad in Liverpool city centre hadn’t kicked Nadine, I wouldn’t have battered him. If Dabo hadn’t turned and run at me, I wouldn’t have taken him out. If Tandy hadn’t set fire to my shirt, I wouldn’t have attacked him with the first thing that came to hand.

  My inner child, the immature character who is scared, vulnerable and fearful, tells me I’m powerless in those sorts of situations. But I am a grown man. I want to be seen as older, wiser, an elder statesman. The more mature, more rational part of my psyche scolds me, tells me I am better than such warped reasoning, such damaging behaviour.

  The kid attacks, the man suffers. The kid says, ‘Shit happens’, the man feels remorse. I can’t walk around every day, carrying the burden of that conflict. It is energy-consuming, and I just have to let things go. My problem, compounded by my reputation, is that others have no intention of doing so. They come for me.

  Football has an unerring knack of highlighting personality defects. I watched the closing stages of the match at the entrance to the tunnel, where I had an uninterrupted view of Roberto Mancini’s meltdown when City were losing 2-1 to ten men. I had never seen a manager lose the plot so completely. He was running up and down the touchline in a frenzy, continually screaming ‘you are letting me down’.

  Trust me, those sort of slurs are not washed away by celebratory champagne. Players are used to dealing with pressurised situation
s, and that sort of weakness is neither forgiven nor forgotten. I am convinced that afternoon, and the scene of his greatest managerial achievement, signalled the beginning of the end for Mancini in Manchester. His players could no longer trust him.

  Of course, I had more immediate matters to deal with. I was a mess after the match, and couldn’t relate to everyone’s relief at avoiding relegation. I even had a go at Samir Nasri for coming on to our team bus to share his joy at winning the title, because we had nothing to celebrate. The owner attempted to console me at the airport by praising my contribution to the season, but I wasn’t convinced by the strength of Hughes’ farewell handshake.

  With good reason, since the club hierarchy met to decide my future before the FA disciplinary hearing into the City clusterfuck. I received an unprecedented 12-match ban and a £75,000 fine, exactly as had been predicted in that morning’s papers. I am sure such prescience was coincidental, since briefing is obviously beneath the guardians of Our Great Game.

  The rest was as per programme. I was assigned to the bomb squad on my return to training. The club fined me six weeks’ wages and banned me from a pre-season trip to Asia. I had more chance of climbing Everest than retaining the captaincy. Hughes took time out from making some weird and wonderful signings to confide that he had sorted me out a loan deal at Sheffield Wednesday.

  With as much diplomacy as I could muster, I told him to do one.

  Did I need football at that stage of my life? No. Had I fallen out of love with everything to do with the game? Yes. Walk away, then. But why should I rip up a contract that still had three years to run? QPR had been desperate to make a statement by paying me a lot of money. Why make a fuss? I could sit there, let them all vilify me, and still have an easy life.

  I’m no one’s fool, since I offered Fernandes the option of sacking me. He would be obliged to pay me the £4.5m balance of a £6m signing-on fee, but would save on the basic wages liable as part of the original deal. He refused and was suitably astonished by my contingency plan. I wanted to be allowed to join Fleetwood Town, newly promoted into the Football League.

  It was not as daft an idea as it might have sounded. I was good friends with Andy Pilley, the Fleetwood chairman, and with Andy Mangan, a forward who subsequently left, and is in his second season at Shrewsbury Town. I wanted to train hard, and make the best use of my time by reconnecting with old-school, mortgage-on-the-line, balls-out football.

  I wasn’t there for a long time, but a good time. Initially, I had no intention of playing any games, risking injury when several clubs, including Fenerbahce, were circling, but I was persuaded to have a 45-minute runout in a 4-0 friendly win over Kilmarnock. Micky Mellon, the Fleetwood manager, did a nice line in mock outrage when I subsequently missed a training session to travel to London.

  There was literally a sliding-doors moment when I walked into the Chelsea Harbour Hotel. Jose Bosingwa was walking out, having completed his move to QPR. He would last less than a year, and be seen laughing when relegation was confirmed. My meeting with Vincent Labrune and Jose Anigo, respectively president and sporting director of Olympique de Marseille, was as amicable and productive as I could have hoped.

  Conversation flowed freely for a couple of hours, despite the limitations of having to involve a translator. They were men of stature, whose intention was to progress from the Europa League to the Champions League. I think the depth of my knowledge of French football surprised them, and I had given prior thought to how I could best suit the team, as a deep-lying midfield player.

  We discussed the politics of the far right, but only after I had reassured them that rumours I had a racist tattoo were unfounded. Fernandes subsequently removed the final barrier by agreeing to pay a small percentage of my wages. I thanked him, and suggested he should brace himself, because Rangers would not win a match for the first two months of the season. I was wrong. It was nearer three.

  That was none of my concern, in the short term at least. I had the sense that Marseille fans liked their players to be distinctive, so I decided to make a political statement, of sorts, by wearing a black tee-shirt I had received from the Hillsborough Justice Campaign at my official unveiling in the south of France. It featured the names of the 96 victims on the front, and the heartfelt message – ‘Don’t buy the S*n’ – on the back.

  That gesture went down well, but I was unprepared for the scene that greeted me when I turned up to watch my new team-mates play Rennes at the Stade Velodrome. There, behind the goal, was a huge banner which recognised my twin passions, football and The Smiths. The message was written in white gothic letters on a red background.

  ‘Welcome Sweet And Tender Hooligan.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LOVE AND LOSS

  ‘And it’s a Grand Old Team to play for,

  And it’s a Grand Old Team to support,

  And if you know your history,

  It’s enough to make your heart go wooooah.’

  That, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of my childhood. It is the terrace anthem that triggers my earliest memories of watching football at Goodison Park, the song which proclaims Everton’s status as the People’s Club. It hints at deeper passions, broader themes, and goes a long way to explaining why I found it so easy to settle in the south of France.

  They know their history at Stade Velodrome, on the south side of the great Mediterranean port. Olympique de Marseille was formed in 1899, 71 years before Paris Saint-Germain, the club that represents the cultural arrogance and economic dominance of the French capital. L’OM are anchored to the people, with a fan base estimated at 14 million which stretches from Normandy to North Africa.

  PSG are the plaything of the petit bourgeois, a product of political expedience and a prime example of the rootlessness of much of the modern game. Purchased by the Qatar Sports Investment company and repackaged into a supposedly global brand, they are too posh to push in anything other than the Champions League. At some point, their importance as a marketing tool will diminish, the money will dry up and the mercenaries will melt away. All that will be left is a void, where tradition and community should be.

  L’OM were the perfect club for me when I pitched up there in August 2012, at the start of a season’s loan. They are a huge but very human organisation, a unifying force across different creeds and colours in a city that, like Liverpool, has been shaped by immigration. They romanticised me as a rebel and identified with me as a man. It is only now, with the passage of time, that I realise how much of an impact I made on them, and how much they made on me.

  The people retain their love for those they adopt as one of their own. I was staggered by the warmth of the welcome I received when I returned to Marseille for this summer’s European Championships. Riot police were on the prowl a matter of yards away, as the old port became the focal point of unrest, but groups of L’OM supporters encircled me. ‘Come back,’ they urged, ‘we have no balls in our team.’ Such fans remind me how important it is to relate to passion and ambition.

  The club drove a hard bargain, so I gained the perspective of accepting a wage cut of around £25,000 a week for the season. Money was no longer the primary reason to play football. The media gave me room to breathe instead of endlessly recycling my rap sheet. They actually preferred tactical dissection of my performances to the usual cop-out, mock outrage.

  People were intrigued, open-minded. I responded in kind by being frank in interviews and embracing their enthusiasm. It made me stand out, because I was surprised by the distance between my new team-mates and the fans. They were haughty, wary. I didn’t get it because I thought it was only in England that working-class lads made good, and forgot where they came from.

  L’OM reminded me of Newcastle United, but on a slightly bigger scale. There would be a couple of hundred people at the training ground every day. They were young and old, and had come from all over France to pay their respects in return for fleeting recognition from the players. Most would drive straight past them on t
he way in, or out.

  I was one of the few who stopped at the gates to sign something, or pose for a picture. I’d park up, get out of my club car, a Renault Clio, and spend half an hour with the fans. It was the least I could do; I was once that kid, waiting fruitlessly outside training grounds at Bellefield or Melwood on Merseyside. The disappointment of being ignored stayed with me.

  Speaking to the fans, through friendly body language as much as the strangled Franglais I used in that infamous press conference after my debut, was part of my spiritual rehab. I formed a rapport with them. My team-mates struggled with such close contact, since they are taught to be suspicious of the politicised supporters’ movements in French football.

  The ultras are powerful lobbyists, with individual identities and tribal loyalties. The club’s third kit is often in their colours – red, yellow and green in the case of the Velodrome’s North Curve, which houses Marseille Trop Puissant, Yankee Nord Marseille, the Fanatics and Dodgers. A hard core known as Virage Nord are agents provocateurs, close to the away enclosure.

  Similarly, the influence of the South Curve ultras was recognised by the introduction of an orange change kit. That end of the ground is occupied by Commando Ultras 1984, the South Winners, Amis de l’OM and Club Central des Supporteurs. The groups are left wing politically, to a greater or lesser degree, and traditionally have the right to ask players to attend their functions.

  As the resident rosbif, and time-serving enfant terrible, I was wanted by them all. I regarded it as a compliment rather than a chore, and wanted to thank them for embracing me as part of their football club. They gave me a greater understanding of the nature of the region, and I tried to put across the lessons of my own upbringing.

  They left me in no doubt about my sacred duty, to kick anything that moved when we played PSG, whose investment in David Beckham typified the difference between the clubs. I’ve never bought into the purity of the Beckham brand, or his supposed world-class status, though his work ethic and ability to reinvent himself are exceptional, even in retirement.