No Nonsense Page 26

  I liked him for the sense he made of that devalued word, legacy. He will move on in time, naturally, but he understood the importance of his role as a custodian of the club. I’m very respectful of his position, because he has established a clear boundary between player and manager. That hasn’t always been the case in my career.

  I recognise that, as a leader, he has to be constantly on his guard. He cannot afford to worry about the consequences of his decisions, because he needs to get the job done. I can accept his authority and still have a two-way relationship with him. I studied the nature of his job, and he took time to understand my motivation and mentality.

  Football is increasingly cutthroat. Dressing rooms are insecure, because clubs have the disposable income to take a chance on more players. Managers are pressurised by agents who have a vested interest in creating an unsettled environment, which helps them regulate the transfer market. Owners seem happy to allow the inmates to run the asylum.

  It helps that Sean still thinks as a player. He identifies with the senior pro who is determined to fight for his place in the pecking order. He recognises the integrity of a player who refuses to yield and responds positively to pressure. He puts up with the sound of my voice because he understands I am a compulsive communicator.

  It amazes me that so many football clubs do not carry out due diligence in their human investments. Blackie worked in the NFL with Denver Broncos, 15 years ago. They had two in-house private detectives, assigned to build a character profile of any potential signings. Their recruitment decisions were informed by the objective and subjective, data and personality.

  When I joined Burnley, on a one-year contract in late August 2015, the squad underwent psychometric testing. Our so-called Insight Profiles gave us an external assessment of our aptitudes and attitudes. The manager wanted us to share them, but most of the lads took them home, as though they contained deep and dark secrets. I stuck mine on my locker, so that everyone knew what, or who, they were dealing with.

  This is me, as a person. It is spot-on.

  Joseph Barton

  Behavioural Style Overview

  Strict. Demanding. Analytical. Introspective. Serious. Direct.

  Fast-paced. Intense. Calculating. Pragmatic. Dissatisfied. Impatient.

  Problem-solver. Creative. Inquisitive. Factual. Self-starter. Expeditious.

  Systematic. Exacting. Critical. Abstract. Resourceful. Logical.

  Communications style is direct, straightforward and no-nonsense, perhaps blunt.

  Good with abstract, creative thinking and critical problem-solving tasks.

  Tends to be easily bored with too much routine and repetitive tasks.

  Can seem thin-skinned, often fussy and dissatisfied.

  Emphasis is on bottom-line results. May be seen as demanding and tough.

  May be critical, sceptical and suspicious. Needs to analyse facts personally.

  Often wants to move forward with a decision but needs to weigh facts first.

  Good ability to cut through facades and get to the heart of the matter.

  May have difficulty delegating work due to a high need to control and monitor.

  Makes decisions based on data and logic, not necessarily others’ input.

  Tends to be goal-oriented but can be fickle and may change mind often.

  Not easily impressed. Questions information and wants proof.

  Can be defensive when criticised and censured by others.

  Job-related Stressors

  A lack of challenging work, and opportunities for growth and advancement.

  Not having enough time to think, reflect and analyse situations thoroughly.

  Too many questions about private thoughts and personal matters.

  Not achieving goals at a high level and as quickly as he feels is necessary.

  Being confined or having to sit for long periods of time.

  Little opportunity for creativity, diversity and spontaneity.

  Style Report

  Assertiveness – Initiative

  Consistently high in initiative, Joseph will be assertive and decisive. Determined and goal-oriented.

  He tends to be very determined, enterprising, competitive and proactive. Likes challenges.

  Good drive and ambition for accomplishing his goals. Prefers the leadership role.

  Sociability – Extroversion

  Joseph tends to be naturally serious and selective in his interactions with others.

  He tends to be a direct and straightforward communicator with large groups and new people.

  Joseph is usually reflective, analytical and logical on the job.

  Patience – Calmness

  Joseph’s tempo or pace is restless, quick and impatient. Emphasis is placed on immediate results.

  Change, diversity and variety, as well as being physically active on the job, are important to him.

  He prefers a non-routine work environment and will show impatience with repetitive tasks.

  Compliance – Conformity

  Joseph tends to be somewhat structured, detail-focused and co-operative on the job.

  His tendency is to follow policies and procedures and to carefully approach risk-oriented situations.

  Decision-making is usually handled with a conservative and thorough approach to ensure accuracy.

  Would you have signed me? You decide.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BUBBLE OF STRENGTH

  I turn off my phone at 9.20pm, and settle down to read an article on the aesthetics of football by a Scottish lad named Jamie Hamilton. It is very good. I already sense I will sleep soundly, deeply. I’m never conscious of dreaming, and tomorrow’s task is tangible. I intend to finish the season as a champion.

  I’m in a typically featureless hotel room in south London, a plastic perception of home. It is comfortable enough, neat but bland. I retrieve my washbag from the bathroom, and pull out a small cream folder. It is worn at the edges, stained and slightly torn down one side.

  On it is written: ‘Game Preparation and Personal Game Application’. The initials SPDB are inscribed in the corner. Steve Black has the best mindset I have come across in professional sport. If I had met him at 18 I would have captained England. My life would have been so different. That’s easy to say when it is hypothetical, but I really believe it.

  I understand why Jonny Wilkinson achieved so much in rugby, how he closed off the outside world and explored the darkest recesses of his mind. I appreciate the self-imposed disciplines, the determination to give everything. Blackie was his guide, his soulmate. Now he is my mentor and my friend. People may think I am a hard-nosed, thick-skinned bastard, but we share our vulnerabilities. He tells me we can only get there if we care.

  I have a playing career to complete before a new journey, hopefully into coaching and maybe into management. Tomorrow, 7 May 2016, is another step along the way. If I help Burnley win at Charlton Athletic we will win the Championship title. We secured promotion to the Premier League four days previously, by beating QPR 1-0 at Turf Moor.

  It wasn’t much of a game, to be honest, and I didn’t have time to appreciate the irony of the opposition. We were mobbed when the final whistle blew. That’s a bizarre experience, a blur of faces and strangers trying to string incoherent sentences together. You are kissed, hugged, unintentionally battered. There’s always a scally begging for your shirt or tugging at your shorts.

  I somehow crowd-surfed towards the Jimmy McIlroy stand, and my family. Cassius was passed over the barriers. I put him on my shoulders, plunged back into the madness, and headed in the general direction of the tunnel in the corner. My son was bewildered, but I wanted him to share the moment. He will be able to look back at photographs, and understand what his dad did for a living.

  It is easy to drift off, and lose myself in other memories. A dressing room awash with champagne and laughter. The Libertines blasting out from Andre Gray’s sound system, which incorporates flashing disco lights. A Burnley version
of ‘Alouette’. A proper lap of honour in the evening sunlight. The subsequent players’ party in Manchester, which lasted until 5am. But I’ve got a job to do.

  I visualise everything the night before a game. I enter what Blackie calls my ‘bubble of strength’. He uses the analogy of someone wanting to come into my house and traipse across my new cream carpet with muddy boots. This is me refusing him entry. I close the door in his face. I’m in control. I’m empowered.

  No one gets to me on match day. Tomorrow will be a little unusual because the Charlton fans will be too preoccupied by their protests against the club’s owners to give me the normal welly, but I’ll have wind-ups to deal with from their players. They’re relegated, disillusioned, but the game is live on TV. They will play for personal pride, if not for the club or the manager.

  I pull three postcards out of the folder. The first has an image of Wastwater in the Lake District on the front. I turn it over, and begin to get my game head on. The opening line, written in black ballpoint pen, reads: ‘First half. Win it or lose it in the first minute or the last minute.’ Underneath, the word ‘focus’ is underlined. Beneath this lie four complementary messages: ‘Keep Talking. Stay Connected. Keep Encouraging. Play at Your Best Rhythm.’

  The bottom half of the postcard comes under the heading ‘Half-time’. Again the messages are simple, direct: ‘Keep Moving. Hydrate. Refuel. Reconnect to Each Other. Start the Second Half Big.’ I have read these exhortations constantly over the past two years but they still feel fresh. The pattern is comfortingly familiar.

  I respond well to visual, rather than verbal, prompts. The second postcard features a photograph of the ruins of Dunstanburgh Castle on the Northumberland coast. It has a timeline on the back. The title ‘Night Before’ frames the first list: ‘Rest. Visualisation. Emotional Commitment. Food. Hydrate. Sleep Well.’

  My timetable and trigger points for the following morning are listed below: ‘Breakfast – visualisation. Commit to Quality Contribution. Rest – hydrate. Lunch – not too much.’ The messages merge, seamlessly, into my match preliminaries: ‘Warm Up – lots of touches, passing. Multi-directional Movement. Multi-pace.’

  The third postcard, which features another Lake District scene, at Ullswater, completes the cycle. It takes me into the dressing room in those precious minutes before the buzzer sounds, and the lino comes in to check whether you have a flick knife smuggled down your socks. There are only two instructions: ‘Be Truly Together. Look in the Eye and Commit to Each Other.’

  All that remains is a final checklist: ‘Big Start. Win Confrontations. Disrupt Their Possession. Play at Your Pace. Get and Keep Momentum. Lightning-fast Transitions from Attacking to Defending (and vice versa).’ Since this is the last thing I will read before I turn out the lights, it percolates through my brain.

  I am in a reflective mood. I think about the emotional connections I have made through football. They have nothing to do with playing ability. When I look back at my career I will value friendships. Nobby Nolan, Clint Hill, Brad Orr, Shaun Derry, Trevor Sinclair, Jamie Mackie, Heidar Helguson. Good men, great lads. This is about who they are, what they represent as people.

  At Burnley there is a new set of lads, for a new phase. Tom Heaton, Andre Gray, Matty Taylor, Matt Gilks, Scotty Arfield, Ben Mee. Young Keano, Michael, who I speak to all the time. Young Longy, Chris, the former Everton kid I drive in with. Boydy, George, a lad I’ve grown to like immensely. In a drunken moment, in the days to come, I will describe them as ‘the greatest group of human beings I’ve ever been involved with’.

  I couldn’t have formed such strong attachments 10 years ago. Maybe I am finally getting out of my own way. Maybe I don’t feel as fearful. I am aware of my own mortality as a player. I’ve got a few years left in me, but I’ve started to see the end. It is important for me to pass on nuggets of experience. I’m not a player-coach by any stretch of the imagination, but the lads come to me as a senior pro. They look to me for advice.

  My last Instagram post before the Charlton match, an adaptation of a 1934 American poem by Dale Wimbrow entitled ‘The Guy in the Glass’, is part of the informal education programme. I came across it, amended as ‘The Man in the Mirror’, in a book by Wayne Bennett, the legendary Australian rugby league coach. He sends it to his players, to remind them where ultimate responsibility for performance lies:

  When you get what you want in your struggle for self

  And the world makes you king for a day.

  Then go to your mirror and look at yourself

  And see what that man has to say.

  For it isn’t your father, your mother or wife

  Whose judgement of you – you must pass.

  The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life

  Is the guy staring back from the glass.

  He’s the man you must please, never mind all the rest,

  For he’s with you clear up to the end.

  And you’ve passed your most difficult and dangerous test

  When the man in the glass is your friend.

  You may be like another and chisel a plum,

  And think you’re a wonderful guy.

  But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum,

  If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

  You can fool the whole world, down the pathway of years,

  And get pats on your back as you pass.

  But the final reward will be heartaches and tears

  If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

  I won’t cheat him. I promise. The end comes to us all in football. Sometimes it engulfs us, and we go too quickly. Sometimes it toys with us, lures us into staying too long. Infinitely better players than me have had difficult passages out of the game. I look around the dressing room at the Valley, and remind myself I have come to Burnley to enjoy it.

  I still have to deal with that inner voice, the insecure kid who tells me I will be shit on Saturday. He will always be there, but now I communicate with him on my own terms. I bombard him with facts about my consistency of performance. It’s funny how he quietens when I remind him I’m on the verge of going through an entire season without picking up a red card.

  I don’t miss a day’s training. I still have one of the highest data outputs in the team. Not many 33-year-olds graft in a midfield two. I’ve seen players five or six years younger than me struggle in that role, which is fucking scary. Other old boys, like Gareth Barry, need to play in a five. That’s where the world is at.

  The younger lads think it’s hilarious when I complain about doing their running for them. Lazy bastards. I tell them age is a state of mind, a number. My prime attributes, awareness, application and competitiveness, are more enduring. So many players are done when they lose even a fraction of their pace; I’m fortunate because I’ve never had any to lose.

  Teddy Sheringham and Dennis Bergkamp never needed extreme pace because they had a brain. That, for me, is the last thing to go if you look after yourself properly. The best players, in any sport, have the intelligence and imagination to see what is going to happen, three moves ahead. Just as Ronnie O’Sullivan is on a different plane in snooker, Roger Federer’s anticipation and technique have made him a legend in tennis. I can think my way through matches in a way I couldn’t during my mid-twenties.

  I believe I have got better as I have got older. Sean Dyche can’t get his head round the fact that I play golf on Sunday mornings, as part of my active recovery. I’ve broken my feet, but my knees, hips and back are fine. My head, my mental approach, is the main thing. If you believe you are fit, you will feel young and strong. Having a young family keeps me active.

  The gaffer believes in consistency, continuity. It felt strange not having the foundation of a solid pre-season to build upon, so he gave me a month to work up to full fitness before I started for the first time, in a 2-1 win at Rotherham on 2 October. The match at the Valley will be my 40th appearance of the season, my 37th start. Outside, security guards are fri
sking pensioners in case they are concealing missiles. Paranoia is in the air. Sniffer dogs are on patrol.

  The changing room is narrow, cramped. I settle on the bench and reach inside my washbag for a refresher course. The folder also contains four plain postcards, which contain Blackie’s ‘messages from the moment’. These are designed to clarify my thinking, and complete the process of immersing myself in the impending task.

  The first section involves tactical touchstones when we are out of possession: ‘Get Shape. Get in Right Place (make decision). Get in Right Position (body-wise). Direct Opposition’s Decisions. Disrupt Their Flow.’ It concludes with the following priorities when we are in possession: ‘Runs into Box. Getting Shots Off. Pull Trigger Early. Be Aware of Game State.’

  They are followed by memory-joggers, mood-setters: ‘Play Your Own Game. Play What You See. Get on Ball – change pace. Pass It – drive tempo. Stay Involved – connected. Be Fulcrum. Be Available. Be Passionate. Be Focused. On a Bed of Discipline . . . ’ The lessons come from other teams, other sports.

  I’m reminded of the All Blacks’ ability to manage the game, and the disciplines they expect of anyone who wears the sacred shirt: ‘Get Officials Onside. No Reaction. Don’t Waste Energy. Use It Wisely. Have That Bit in Hand for an Emergency.’ A boxing comparison is underlined: ‘Jab. Jab. Work the Opening.’

  It is personalised shorthand, and works for me: ‘If You See It, Do It. Short, Sharp Simple Passing. Work on Availability. Talk – demand it. Lead by Example of Doing It Well. Stay in JB Bubble of Strength and Influence. Solution-based. In Control. Show Football Intelligence. High-energy Execution. Not Physical – that could spill over.’

  Pros take pride in the state of their game face. It is meant to be stern, taut and concentrated. Yet the last set of personalised messages seeks to transport me back to the simple pleasures of childhood: ‘Enjoy Your Game. Enjoy Your Work. Enjoy Your Skills. Enjoy the Outcomes. Enjoy Influence. A Smile on Your Face . . . ’