3

TRAINING DAYS

That first year of training flew by. I was at secondary school by then, Nugent in Edge Hill, and I’d take two buses, straight after school, to train at LFC, then another two buses back home again. I didn’t know him well at this point, but all the talk among the trainees was about a local lad, Steve McManaman, who had made the step up into the main squad. Steve Heighway took over from Mal Cook as head of youth development and Liverpool were starting to talk to Dad about another 12-month deal. As much as I was keen to renew the agreement, Dad wanted to keep things informal while I was still a schoolkid. He never said as much, but maybe he was still harbouring dreams of Everton coming in for me. More likely, he was just looking out for me, as he always did.

That summer of 1987, Granty and I both got the letter inviting us to come down to Nottingham for trials with England Schoolboys. It was to be a week of training, five-a-side and full games, with the 100 or so who had been invited ultimately being whittled down to a core squad of 25. These lads would then go on to Lilleshall, which was the FA’s newly opened Centre of Excellence, near Telford. In theory, that squad of young players would stay together right throughout the age groups, growing and gelling as a squad until they eventually became the basis of the main England team for years to come. Before the trials, I got a letter from Steve Heighway:

Dear Robbie,

A quick note to wish you all the best at the England trials next week. All the staff here are very proud of you and wish you well. If you need any ‘kit’ to take with you that your parents cannot provide, just give me a call.

Robbie, I promised we would not pester you and we have not. It was great to see you on Tuesday. This place is an open door for you in your school holidays. When you get back from trials, come and see us. Perhaps you would like to watch the first team train or, better still, train with us for a couple of mornings – you choose!

See you when you get back. Very best of luck,

Steve

Granty and I were put on a train to Nottingham and we were met at the other end by an FA official. The training camp should have been a lot of fun, but I found it daunting right from the start.

There are two versions of me. Most of the time I’m outgoing and, I suppose, quite loud and perky when I’m in my comfort zone, around people I know. But I can be quite shy as well, and I’m never at my best in those early moments when you’re meeting new people for the first time. We got out onto the training pitches and I don’t know, it just didn’t happen for me in the way I’d become used to. Everyone out there on those pitches seemed really big, for one thing – and they were all really fucking brilliant, too! In my mind, they were all at least as good as me, many of them loads better. I had never doubted myself up until then, but I found myself afflicted by a sudden lack of self-confidence and, as the week went on, I just couldn’t break free of it. Maybe it was being away from home for the first time, maybe it was because I was still very slight, but things just didn’t work out at all. It was no surprise to me when I wasn’t invited to join the Lilleshall set-up, but I was shocked that they didn’t pick Tony Grant, either. I thought he’d done well out there, yet neither of us got the nod. It was the first time I had ever tasted rejection or disappointment as a young footballer and the train journey back to Liverpool was mired in self-doubt. Up until then I had just taken it as read that I was well on a pathway that would lead to me becoming a successful professional footballer. Now I was being told I wasn’t quite up to it. What if they were right? What would I do if I couldn’t make it as a player? I really did not have a Plan B!

The best way to deal with rejection is to channel it into a positive force. ‘I’ll show them!’ is one of the greatest forms of human motivation and after the initial disappointment subsided a little, that raw desire to prove the FA wrong is what picked me up and kicked me on. I took Steve Heighway up on his offer, spent the remainder of my summer holiday up at Melwood and gradually got my confidence back. By the time the rest of the schoolkids returned for training, I was flying again. What really helped was that I loved training and genuinely loved coming into Melwood and all that it entailed. The curriculum at LFC was always more technical than tactical – in fact, I don’t remember playing in a ‘proper’ game there until I was about 14 or 15. It was all small pitch drills (sometimes just the corner of a small pitch), pass and move, control, technique, making sure that whatever position you played in, you were comfortable on the ball – basically, the same things I’d been doing with my dad since I could walk.

If you look at the big soccer academies now, there’ll be at least two specialist coaches for every position, at every level and age group. But, back when I started training with Dave Shannon and Hughie Macauley and then Steve Heighway, they were with you all the time doing little manoeuvres, turns, step-overs, different ways of using set plays, corners, free-kicks – the real basics of elite-level football. Whatever the special aspect of the game we looked at, the focus was always 100 per cent on the technical side of it. So, whereas the FA and England might have wanted bigger, more physically imposing players at Lilleshall and the accent there was on athleticism, I don’t remember ever doing anything at Liverpool that wasn’t grounded in skill, expertise and technique. We’d work in the smallest, most confined spaces and try to use speed of thought, physical speed, skill and ingenuity to get ourselves free and carve out a shooting opportunity.

The Sweat Box was an adaptable mini pitch surrounded by wooden walls (some of them marked out with circles, A, B, C, etc.). For one session, you might chip the ball against one wall, turn and ‘pass’ it against the next wall, then your coach would shout, ‘C!’ and you’d have to try to spin and hit that circle with the ball. Everything you learned in the Sweat Box or on the five-a-side pitch was what you’d take onto the bigger stage. The idea is that you learn to see the smaller picture as part of the bigger picture but, again, it’s the basic one-touch, two-touch, pass and move. You’d learn everything – spins, peeling off a player, shooting from ridiculous angles and aiming for the most acute spot because the miniature goals are so tight, the keeper looks massive. It shouldn’t come as any big thunderbolt to anyone that I loved scoring goals but, more than anything, I loved sticking the ball away into the bottom corner. It might look brilliant, slamming it high into the top corner – and I’ve had my share of those, too – but you’re half-giving the keeper a chance if your shot is aimed high. The majority of goalkeepers are right-handed, so if you try to keep the ball low and hard to their left-hand corner, it’s almost impossible for them to get down, let alone keep it out.

GOAL!!!

When training was at the Vernon Sangster Centre, it was all indoors. Obviously, there weren’t touchlines in the traditional sense, so we integrated the walls into a lot of our drills. Hughie or Dave would designate a corner of the pitch, 10 x 10 feet or 15 x 15, and the idea was that, using one touch only, you had to work your way out of the corner, up and back again, just playing one-twos or using the walls. If there wasn’t an obvious pass on, you had to use your imagination, nutmeg your opponent, whatever – but you could never stand still. It was far from easy but those short, sharp spaces are what eventually made you into a player – and I loved it. And we did loads of five-a-side. Anyone who follows football will know that, going right back to Bill Shankly’s day, five-a-side is a huge part of the Liverpool philosophy. I don’t think five-a-side is used as widely in the modern game, but it’s something I will definitely incorporate into my own training and coaching regime as I make my big move into management.

For me, five-a-side’s core ingredients of speedy, one-touch play are the ideal platform for a young player to learn the fundamentals of the game; like a bridge from Youth football into the professional game. If you think about your peripheral vision in a five-a-side game, it’s very narrow and your options are always quite restricted. It’s up to you to find solutions. But take those basic principles onto a bigger pitch, where your peripheral vision is wider, and with 11-a-side, you obviously have more options.

I’m not saying it comes easier, necessarily, but after the monotony and repetition of all that practice and training, it starts to become second nature and you do everything faster, instinctively and a lot more clinically – the one and two touch give and go, little spins around corners, that quick look over your shoulder to see who’s on you, who’s with you. Even the basics like following up when someone’s taken a shot, just in case the keeper spills it. That’s what makes you a player – those quick, instinctive plays in short, sharp spaces. And that was the basic journey for me, from Sunday League to Liverpool Boys, to the LFC Centre of Excellence, a strange progression from 20-a-side to 11-a-side to five-a-side.

All of this of course pre-dates the highly organised world of Academy Football that we see today, where most top clubs have representative squads and teams from Under 8s all the way to the Under 21s, coached to pursue that club’s philosophy and brand of football right from the very start. Back in my days at the Centre of Excellence, LFC didn’t have Under-13 or Under-14 teams, so my main outlet for competitive football was with Granty and Dele Adebola with Liverpool Schoolboys. Our head coach was Bob Lynch, who I admired and respected so much that I only ever referred to him as ‘Mr Lynch’. Even when he came along to see me make my England debut, I spotted him during the warm-up, trotted over and said, ‘Thanks for coming, Mr Lynch!’

With one or two exceptions, the basically schoolboy squad stayed together right through to Under 16s. That Under-16 team was brilliant, the optimum blend of tough, robust defence with a creative midfield and a lethal attack. But, not for the first time, Granty and I were to taste disappointment when Sheffield beat us 1–0 via a horrible, deflected own goal in the replayed final of the English Schools Trophy at Anfield. Nevertheless, that team was a big leg-up for me, emotionally and practically, at a time when I was starting to question my own ability. The camaraderie, the wins, the goals and the near-misses, along with Mr Lynch’s astute tactical analysis and the sheer confidence he gave you going out to do battle, were a major factor in my development over a notoriously difficult period.

That age, around 14 or 15, is critical in the life of a young footballer. There is so much to distract you and knock you off balance in your teenage years. Time and again, you see the best young players you’ve grown up with start to fall away around that age.

That didn’t happen with me; I had a great set of mates who understood how much my football meant to me. Even on Saturday nights, when most teenagers are getting on with what most teenagers do, my pals would stay close to home with me, knowing that I would usually have to be up bright and early for training, or for a match. And on those odd occasions when they did lead me astray (I was always completely wide-eyed and naïve, as you’d imagine), there were my dad and the rest of my family to remind me where my priorities lay. On top of all that support from family and friends though, I really do believe that run with Liverpool Schoolboys was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. I felt what it was like to be part of a team again, what it was like to get to a final. And I felt what it was like to run out onto that beautiful pitch in front of a big crowd at Anfield.

I was going to turn 14 in April 1989, which meant it was time for Liverpool to start making their mind up about who among that year’s trialists was to be offered Associate Schoolboy terms. The pathway to your first full contract as a pro footballer would typically be a year or two on Associate Schoolboy terms then, once you left school, a year or two on YTS terms – that was the Youth Training Scheme which had replaced the traditional Apprenticeship system for school-leavers in the 80s – before signing full professional terms. Within that basic framework, there’s room for negotiation.

Steve McManaman was another boyhood Blue, but one of the key things that steered him towards Liverpool was the club’s willingness to take a longer-term view. Macca was small and skinny and there was a feeling that he would need more time to develop and grow. LFC was prepared to offer the security of a three-year deal (Everton would only offer one-year firm) and I was hoping the club would offer me something similar.

I knew I was doing okay. Steve Heighway had started talking in a general sense about the challenges and pitfalls of being a professional footballer. Some of the behind-scenes people like Tom Saunders started coming down to take a proper look at me. Tom was a lovely man, a club director who was highly respected among the LFC establishment, but known and loved by everyone at the club, too. The Liverpool Echo used to refer to him as ‘Crack Euro Spy Tom Saunders’ but his role at Liverpool went way beyond checking out the opposition ahead of big European games. Tom was a scout, a confidant, a diplomat and way before it became commonplace for clubs to have them, he was an Ambassador for LFC, travelling all over the world to represent the club – and he started coming along to watch me play.

I had an inkling my dream might be about to come true when I was standing at the bus stop after training one freezing February night in 1989. It was one of those evenings that’s so cold, you can see your breath in the night air. I’m hunched up, flapping my arms to keep the cold out like a penguin, just praying a bus will come along soon. Next thing, Kenny Dalglish pulls up in this big Mercedes. He was the manager by then, obviously, as well as being probably the greatest player ever to pull on a Liverpool shirt, and he’s pulling up at my bus stop, sliding down the window of his Merc.

‘Jump in!’ he goes. ‘I’m headed your way.’ Oh aye, I’m thinking, you live up in Southport and I’m in Toxteth, it’s not exactly on your way, Kenny! But of course, firstly, I respected him too much – in fact, I was probably too scared of him – to say anything back to him. On top of that, a part of me realised he wouldn’t be giving me the time of day if he didn’t know that Liverpool were interested in signing me. And an even bigger part just wanted a ride in his supercar. The final factor was I was desperate to get out the fucking freezing cold! So, in I jumped, tongue-tied and wide-eyed at all the buttons and lights on the Merc’s dashboard – the padded leather gear stick, the smell of luxury. If this was what you could get from being a good footballer, by God I wanted it!

I managed to mumble and point the way back towards Liverpool 8 and Kenny kept the conversation flowing about how he used to walk to training at Celtic when he was kid and how hard work was at the root of everything good in life. As we turned left by The Rialto, I started smiling inside at the thought of this Liverpool F.C. legend pulling up outside ours in this big posh car and me getting out, giving it the Big I Am. If I could’ve got Kenny to beep his horn as he went up our street, I swear I would have had no problem with that – I wanted everyone to see me getting dropped off by King Kenny. Goes without saying, as sod’s law would have it, it was so Baltic cold, no one was out on the street.

Kenny Dalglish dropped me off and the entire neighbourhood was buttoned-up indoors! Not even my dad saw him.

A few weeks after my 14th birthday, a letter arrived at my dad’s place. He made a big thing of opening it dead slowly, telling me it was just another red arrears bill. I was leaning over his shoulder and even though the LIVERPOOL FOOTBALL CLUB letterhead was laid out in huge block capitals in those days, all my eyes could focus on was the little Candy logo underneath – they were the sponsor on the Liverpool shirt worn by Ian Rush and John Barnes and our latest Scouse goal-scoring machine, John Aldridge. I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to wear that shirt with that logo. Dad was holding the letter away from me, playing out the moment for as long as he could. Eventually, he read it out:

Dear Mr Fowler,

As we have suggested to you for some time, we have been impressed with Robbie’s performance and we have come to the time when we would like Robbie to sign as an Associated Schoolboy with the club…

That was it! I didn’t need to hear the rest – I was off down the street, not exactly sure where I was going or who I was going to tell, just this big, mad grin all over my face as the message began to sink in. I was on my way, I was going to be a professional footballer!