No Nonsense Page 9

  NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE

  As a connoisseur of nightclub brawls, this was one of the most violent I have seen. It kicked off when Nico Anelka and a bunch of his mates decided to recreate the Alamo in the VIP area of a bar in central Manchester. They took on allcomers with anything that came to hand and, for once, I heeded heartfelt advice.

  ‘Come on, Joe, stay out of the way,’ said Robbie Fowler, who was sitting with me and Steve McManaman on the edge of hostilities. They knew there’d be hell to pay in the morning, since collateral damage from footballers’ Christmas parties is as inevitable as death and taxes. Right on cue, Kevin Stuhr Ellegaard, our reserve goalkeeper, was knocked out by a crude right-hander.

  I’ve seen variations on the theme down the years. Football clubs are volatile places, in which resentment is usually expressed in the relatively controlled environment of a training ground, where everyone is sober. Put the same people in an artificial situation each December, add silly quantities of drink to the mix, and the consequences are predictable.

  Someone, typically the quiet one, says something he can’t really take back. Someone else, similarly emboldened by alcohol, invites a teammate outside for a straightener. Sometimes this needs to happen, especially when the team is struggling. Harsh words and handbags tend to flush the toxins out of the system. The trick is to avoid the involvement of civilians, contain the fallout, and avert preying eyes or camera phones.

  Anelka, a sumptuous plyer but a solitary, conflicted character, got away with it that evening. He’d taken his lumps in the fracas, but, just as when he confronted Kevin Keegan in a public row which involved the manager comically screeching, ‘Speak English’, the consequences were minimised. There wasn’t a murmur about his party piece in the media, apart from three lines at the end of a piece hanging me out to dry.

  They’re artless toilers in the red-top tabloids. They prefer simplistic slurs, half-truths and innuendo to nuance and facts which inconveniently undermine preset agendas. They made sure all anyone wanted to talk about was me and a youth-team player who had been kicked out of the bar an hour before the French contingent went to war.

  Jamie Tandy. A nonentity, but you might have heard of him.

  Here’s the myth: innocent kid has cigar stubbed out in his eye by thuggish Premier League star. He suffers ‘major psychiatric deterioration’ and his promising football career disintegrates. His life is ruined, since he drinks heavily and has difficulty sustaining personal relationships.

  Here’s the reality: gobshite invites retaliation by setting fire to the shirt of a player who was a year above him in the academy and comes from a similar background. He lacks the character to eke out a career in professional sport and is consumed by self-pity. He is convicted of assaulting two female partners.

  Was I in the wrong on that night out? Absolutely. Do I regret what I did to Tandy? Every single day. Would I change the outcome? In a heartbeat. Do I have sympathy for him? Not in a million years.

  I have grown tired of being the excuse for his sad self-justification. More than a decade on, he is still blaming me for his intermittent jail time and periodic appearances before the judiciary. My concern is reserved for those he has hurt along the way, the girlfriends he has left bloodied and bruised.

  For the record, I never intended to stub that cigar out in his eye. Have you ever considered how difficult that is? The victim’s instinct is to turn away. There are so many distortions in the story – from the fantasy that I was dressed as Jimmy Savile to the downright lie I held Tandy down before inflicting damage – that it needs to be told from the start.

  We were on the lash, in fancy dress, from 11 that morning. I went as one of the Beatles from their mop-top era in the mid-sixties, John Lennon if memory serves. It started to get silly in mid-afternoon, when Robbie Fowler set light to the tassels on Paul Bosvelt’s pirate uniform. He retaliated by setting fire to Bob’s commando outfit, and everyone wanted in on the act.

  It was childish, but bloody funny. Nicky Weaver’s Ali G wig got the treatment and I spotted my chance with Tandy, whom I knew from the reserve team. He was wearing a white sailor’s uniform with a silly peaked cap, and I saw he was distracted by the mayhem. All it took was a quick strike on a plastic lighter, and his jacket began to smoulder.

  He was livid, and started whingeing about losing his £100 deposit on the gear. I was vaguely aware he came from Wythenshawe, a tough, sprawling estate on the south side of Manchester, so it was no surprise that he made a point of retaliating quickly. It was no big deal. We were all bevvied, and the bouncers circulated quickly, confiscating lighters.

  A couple of hours later, it was forfeit time. The younger players were forced to sing for the senior pros. I did a karaoke Beatles number, but Tandy’s song abused Scousers. I was too pissed to draw the obvious inference, but he was shouted down by the boys. By just after eight o’clock we had all changed into street clothes, eaten, and got back on it in a private area at the bar.

  It was a time for tall tales and taller drinks. I sat in a square with Danny Mills, Shaun Wright-Phillips and his brother Bradley. We were swapping stories about managers when I felt a strange dampness on my back, followed by instant, searing pain. The bottom six inches of my white shirt were on fire. I ripped it off, sending the buttons flying, and stamped out the flames.

  I’m bare-chested, demeaned, dangerous. I’ve been bred to bite back, to take revenge. No one makes me look small, or stupid. Tandy, standing five yards away, tried to be too clever by half. He was studiously looking in the opposite direction, making out he was the only person in the room oblivious to my distress.

  I think clearly when I’m angry, even though my actions are irrational. Tandy had made me look a fool. I can still remember the thought process as my eyes settled quickly on the glass ashtray in the centre of our table: ‘You cheeky little cunt. No one gets away with that. You are getting hit with this.’ The ashtray was bolted to the table, so I grabbed Danny’s cigar, which was smouldering on the rim.

  My logic was warped, shaped by instinct and circumstance. I intended to inflict pain by stubbing the cigar out on the back of his head. But, as I advanced, he must have sensed my presence. He turned into my path. I was committed to my lunge, and the cigar hit him on the lower eyelid. He fell backwards, clutching his face.

  The scene takes on a surreal, slow-motion quality. I feel several sets of arms entwine around my body, pulling me backwards. I struggle and scream that I want to finish the job, by battering him. I see Sylvain Distin, our club captain, leading him to the toilets to assess the damage. I sense his shock when he returns. ‘Christ,’ he says ‘you’ve got him in the eye.’

  I compute the consequences in a millisecond. I’m suddenly cold, scared. This is out of control. I could have blinded him. I might have meant to burn his hair, even scald his skull, but no one will dwell on detail. This is serious. I need to see him for myself.

  ‘Where is he? . . . You’re fucking dead, Barton . . . ’

  My thoughts are interrupted by the sight of Tandy’s elder brother running at me. I stand my ground, brace my body, adopt the pose. It is an automatic process, honed on the streets and in the Lackens’ garden in St John’s. I slip the first punch, manoeuvre myself into position, and hit him on the chin with two quick jabs. He stumbles backwards and I hit him twice more. He bounces off the wall, and crumples on to the floor.

  He is not getting up in a hurry, but I have no time to contemplate the next move. Jamie Tandy is running at me with a banshee wail. He’s an easier target, because he is seized by rage, panic and fear. His first punch, a roundhouse right hook, misses by six inches. He’s wide open. I give him several digs to the stomach, which wind him, and hit him in the face, exacerbating the original injury. The lads and the bouncers pull us apart, and the brothers are launched out of the club.

  I’m bundled to a table, out of harm’s way. Steve McManaman, Trevor Sinclair and Robbie Fowler form a tight, protective semicircle around me. Bob gives me his jacket
and orders me to calm down. I’m not listening. The adrenaline is surging. I’m breathing deeply, rapidly. The madness of the last few minutes unfolds in my mind like a grotesque Gangs of New York parody.

  I’m suddenly aware of Bob’s voice in my ear. ‘Get a grip,’ he says. ‘This is a massive problem.’ I’m still drunk, but the defiance starts to dilute. Before the madness mutates, and Nico’s crew bring a chaotic night to a close, I begin to form a game plan. I need to get to Tandy first thing in the morning, before we are called in to see Keegan. He needs to understand how football works.

  I am not condoning what I did. It was malicious, reckless, indefensible. But I know what is coming. There’ll be a lot of talk about the club’s image, and our responsibilities as role models, but ultimately, as players, we are commodities. I’ve just signed a new contract. I’m a first-team regular, an emerging cult hero. Tandy is a borderline reserve, who will probably never play at the highest level. I’m valuable. He’s expendable.

  I’m aware the following exchange may sound callous. It is easy to misinterpret my actions as those of a bully. But when I found Tandy at the training ground I had to gauge the emotional and physical fallout. Could he handle the bitter reality of our situation? Did he have any interest in a pragmatic solution? His eye was a mess; his eyelid and lower lashes were singed.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘We’re both going to get in the shit for this. I’ll take my end of it, but, to be honest, we’re better playing this down. It was tit for tat. You don’t burn my shirt, I don’t come at you with the cigar. It is going to be easier for them to fuck you over, because you are not playing in the first team week in, week out.’

  He smiled, sourly. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘You’re fucking out of order.’

  I shrugged. ‘Sound. Play it out however you want to play it out.’

  We were both fined and I took the biggest hit, losing four weeks’ money, around £60,000. He was eventually sent on loan to Koge, a provincial club in Denmark. Instead of using it as an invaluable development opportunity, as other young players had done before him, he became bitter, twisted and self-destructive. He played semi-professionally in Australia, cleaned windows and trawled around non-league in the North of England. I often wonder whether his revenge, selling the story to the Sun, was worth it from his point of view.

  I’m still living with the consequences of the double-page spread, complete with close-up photographs and judgemental, moralistic ‘reporting’. Every halfwit on social media thinks he is the first to throw a cigar-themed insult at me, but the damage is deeper than such dribbling, since initial coverage of the incident crystallised the view of me as an unfeeling, unprincipled thug.

  People began running with half-truths, leaping to the conclusion that I intended to blind him. At the risk of becoming boring through repetition, I do not condone my actions. But the headlines were hollow. There was no semblance of balance, no reference to provocation. Stupidly, I had thrown the burned shirt into the bin at the club. I had no tangible evidence with which to defend my name. Trebles all round, chaps.

  It was open season on me. I was an easy target for the paparazzi, a demon to be exorcised in print. It was an editorial duty to think the worst of me, whatever the circumstances. The rules of the game became clear the following May, when I accidentally ran over a Liverpool fan who had been celebrating the team’s defeat of Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final.

  It was 2am, and the city centre was bedlam. People were singing, intermittently blocking the road outside O’Neill’s pub. I’d watched the game with some mates, but hadn’t been drinking. I tried to swerve to miss the fan, who stumbled into my path, heard that dreaded, resonant thud and stopped immediately.

  I had been doing no more than 10mph, and was breathalysed on the scene. Police confirmed I was stone-cold sober, unlike the Reds fans who abused me as I waited with the victim before the ambulance arrived. I went to see the guy in hospital a couple of days later. His leg was broken, but he was apologetic.

  He offered to call the papers, to put his side of a typically one-sided story, but there was no point. Truth is an early victim of perpetual circulation wars. The story was spun to fit the stereotype of a rich, reckless footballer causing havoc when he should have been tucked up in bed with a malted milk and a copy of the Gideon Bible.

  If only they knew . . .

  I did have a problem. When things were going well I had an instinct to intervene, to my detriment. I was struggling with myself. The compensation of playing well wasn’t enough. I needed regular transfusions of anger. I began scanning the papers for negative stories about me, so I had something at which to rage. I looked on fans’ forums, listened to local radio. The amount of time I wasted on such self-flagellation was ridiculous.

  Come to me with a bunch of roses, and I am looking for the thorns. I want to pierce the skin with them, feel the tang of pain and watch the rivulet of blood run down my finger. I want you to dislike me, because that gives me the fury I use as fuel. Write me off. Belittle my family and my character. You know you want to.

  Who am I kidding? I was grossly unhappy. I was drinking to try to escape my misery. It provided a brief, cherished release. The weirdest thing was that I was playing really well, and becoming increasingly insecure. The drink dulled the pressure of expectation. It muffled my tormentor, the voice inside my head.

  The mantra was unyielding, unchanging, unrelenting: ‘They’re all going to realise you’re a chancer. They’ll see you’re shit. You’re weak, Mr Strongman. You want to be the people’s friend. You’re sensitive. You’re skin deep. They’re going to see right through you. They’ll discover everything about you, and use it against you.’

  Imagine that rattling around your brain. Someone would say something smarmy, or give me an unguarded glance. The voice would be off again . . .

  ‘This cunt thinks he’s better than you. Who’s he? He needs to be told. Tell him how much you’re earning. Tell him exactly what you think of him. Tell him if he does anything about it physically, you’ll go head-to-head with him. Put him on his toes, challenge his manhood. Promise to destroy him.’

  Surprise, surprise, I became a target. A Premier League ponce to be taken down a peg or two. I might throw myself into a tackle in front of millions, but compared to really hard men I’m nothing. The fights you’ve never read about are the ones I’ve lost, when I’ve been smashed by a random juicehead or been given a good kicking by bouncers in a darkened alleyway. I’d get away with cuts, bruises, a sore jaw.

  I’m hardly going to go to the police and say, ‘Excuse me, officer, I’ve just been filled in.’ I was seized by illogical, convoluted bravado. I took pride in the fact I’d never been knocked out, apart from in the clash of heads during that painfully irrelevant trial match at Scunthorpe. I took confidence from the granite chip on my shoulder.

  How perverse was that? My values were inverted. Achievement was something to be mistrusted, even resented. Rejection was something to be relished, a reconnection with the streets on which my sense of justice and self-worth was formed. I wouldn’t back down from anything. My moral compass was going haywire.

  It took me years to understand the turmoil, to ask myself the most pertinent question: Who actually wins in a fight? You can win and go to jail. You can lose and go to hospital, or a morgue. At that stage in my life, fighting was all I knew. My values were forged in a brutal environment, where it is considered better to front up and die than curl up and surrender.

  Unsurprisingly, Stuart Pearce wasn’t aware of what he had on his hands when he became caretaker manager, following Keegan’s departure that March. We judged one another on assumptions and superficialities. He saw me as a diligent, urgent and consistent presence in his midfield. I liked what he stood for. I’d always communicated well with him, and obviously had the utmost respect for him as a player.

  I had seen him flitting around the edges as a coach, quietly measuring the strength and direction of the political winds. He wasn’t being dis
loyal to Keegan, but he was subtly distancing himself from him. That’s fine. Ambition manifests itself in many ways. Just as coaches work out how to avoid being casualties during periods of regime change, players make snap judgements about managers, based on self-interest.

  A small group of us, including Richard Dunne, concluded that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for Pearcey to get the job full time. There was no bullshit with him. He was fair. He was inclusive and recognised our influence, as core members of the group. We liaised on strategies, tactics, formations. We wanted to play for him. We helped to get him on the directors’ radar by going on a nice little run until the end of the season.

  It couldn’t last. It never does. When he got the job that summer, he changed. He felt he had to impose himself. He no longer courted opinion; he imposed his principles and personality on us. Approachability was recast as weakness. That was his prerogative, but on the pre-season tour of Thailand the delicacy of his position and the troublesome nature of his inheritance became clear.

  We were playing in the second edition of the Premier League Asia Trophy, one of those absurdly overhyped four-team tournaments designed to sell shirts and provide televised methadone for football fans suffering mid-summer withdrawal symptoms. We were up against Bolton, Everton and the Thailand Under-23 team.

  I scored in our so-called semi-final against Bolton, which we lost 5-4 on penalties following a 1-1 draw in normal time. That was enough for me to be ‘rested’, along with Richard Dunne, from the third-place playoff, in which we beat Everton 4-2 on penalties. Pearce was quite happy to allow us a couple of beers with the team meal. It was a rookie’s mistake, since his concession was a little too liberating.

  I take after my grandad, in that I am an angry, articulate drunk. He was the nicest man you could wish to meet, but spiteful, verbally, after he’d had a few. He would use alcohol to project his deepest frustrations on to those he loved most. I’m more indiscriminate. When Dunney had the bright idea of ordering a couple of bottles of wine, and then a couple more, the tenor of the night was set.