8

THE ORIGINAL GUCCI GANG

I returned for pre-season training in July 1995 with a brand new, canary-yellow swede. Once again, I had gone on a genteel summer sojourn with Dom Matteo and my long-time best mate, Ste Calvey. Someone came up with the inspired idea of bleaching our hair with lemon juice but, by the time the Mediterranean sun set on our respective bonces, we were more Paul Calf Yellow than platinum blond. I’m saying that Matteo was the big brain behind Operation Lemonhead, he swears it was me … so let’s blame Calvey!

I also came back to a new colleague (or was he a rival?): Stan Collymore. Logic said that having paid Nottingham Forest £8.5 million for Stan, Roy Evans wasn’t planning on keeping him back as an impact sub. Logic also suggested if anyone was going to be vulnerable to the new arrival, it was more likely to be Rushy, who would turn 34 later that year. From my first days training with the First Team squad, Tosh (Rushy’s nickname, after the character Tosh Lynes from The Bill) seemed to take to me. I learned countless invaluable tips from him – how and when to bend a run to stay onside, how to anticipate a goalkeeper’s spill, how to defend from the front – and I loved playing alongside him. I thought we made a brilliant ‘Dad & Lad’ partnership (only messing!). But, playing devil’s advocate, this was the start of Roy Evans’s second full season as manager. He’d had a chance to assess where our strengths and weaknesses lay, he’d won his first cup with the squad he inherited and now came his big chance to mould his own team, back his own judgement and build for the future as well as the present. One of football’s great truisms is that Goals Win Games and you can’t really argue with that. For Roy, signing one of the most lethal young strikers in the country wasn’t just a bold move, it was common sense.

But, just as in any workplace, in any walk of life, you’re going to have colleagues and employees who don’t get on. It’s human nature. Anyone with their eyes open could see the ridiculous talent Stan Collymore had. He was skilful, he was a beautiful striker of the ball, his movement was graceful, his touch was good – we should have formed a brilliant partnership because, when we were good, Stan and I were very, very good. Yet, in terms of our personalities, we were like chalk and cheese: me being quite lippy and outgoing, Stan almost brooding and insular.

Looking back, we should have seen the signs that Stan had his demons. A few weeks into the new season, we signed Jason McAteer (who had played brilliantly against us in the League Cup final against Bolton, back in April). Very recently, prompted by the suicides of two greatly loved young Liverpool fans, Mick Woodburn and Neil ‘Yozza’ Hughes, Jason made a thought-provoking, heart-breaking documentary with LFCTV about his own mental health called Through The Storm. To us, in 1995, part of your rite of passage was to be able to ‘dish it out’ as well as take some stick. We would forever be burning each other with jibes and practical jokes and a lot of that banter came pretty close to the knuckle. To us, everything was fair game and we would do anything or say anything for a laugh. Many of us were fortunate enough to be able to take our share of the stick, but a lot of us found it difficult, too.

To give it a bit of perspective, let me say again how young we were – a group of relatively immature working-class lads, catapulted into the limelight, playing the game we loved for a team we loved and being very handsomely paid for it. Yet we had absolutely no privacy. No normality. This is not a bleat, it’s a fact – people staring at you as you sit down in a café, standing vigil outside your house, beeping you and slapping on your car window at traffic lights, continually shouting out to you – it takes a fuck of a lot of getting used to. I’m as ordinary a fella as anyone could ever meet and being absolutely honest, I would far rather be left alone to get on with my everyday life. But I very quickly realised that waving farewell to any last shred of normality is all part and parcel of the footballer’s contract. There is no preparing for it; it is really, really weird.

But we develop a shell; we stick together, as players; we take the piss out of the more extreme episodes we encounter, and we take the piss out of each other. That’s the culture. Unbeknown to the majority of the squad, Jason really struggled with that. It’s only 20-odd years ago, but it was a different era, and no one would ever own up to psychological frailty then. If we’d had an inkling that Stan and Jason were troubled, the sad but honest truth is we probably would have roasted them even more. Our culture was still ingrained with the idea that Real Men don’t show their feelings, so any hint of introspection would have resulted in merciless ribbing. We used to call it ‘slaughtering’ each other. To me, it was hilarious – I could take it and dish it out, so it never remotely occurred to me that anyone in our position wouldn’t necessarily be loving every minute of it. I have the utmost admiration for Jason, standing up, speaking out and putting a name to his condition (and I’d urge anyone who hasn’t yet seen Through The Storm to look it up on LFCTV or YouTube). In retrospect, I wish we’d all known more about Stan’s issues, if only for a better understanding of why he seemed so aloof. His coping mechanism was to remove himself from the banter. To us, he seemed to think himself a cut above – and that would never be good for team spirit.

Rushy seemed destined for the chop, but when the new season kicked off with a home game against Sheffield Wednesday, guess who was left out? Yep, it was top goal-scorer and current PFA Young Player of the Year, Robbie Fowler. I was on the bench with Michael Thomas while Rushy and Stan started up front – and I was gutted. Stan had a blinder, too. He harried, made runs, shot from all distances and all angles then just as it was looking like Wednesday would shut us out for a month of Saturdays, he cut a gorgeous left-footer from the edge of the box and curled it around their keeper for the only goal of the game.

I came on for the last ten minutes and straight away carved out a chance, but being honest about it, I was pig-sick when Stan came off with a few minutes to go and the whole ground gave him a standing ovation, like he was Liverpool’s great new hero. Was it my peroxide barnet that had put Roy Evans off me? Okay, Collymore had cost us mega-millions but I felt that, as a local lad who had come through the system and seized my chance with both feet when it came, if anyone deserved the adoration of The Kop it was me. So once again, just as I was starting to think I’d earned my keep as a guaranteed starter, the gaffer reminded me that I was just another cog in the system. There never was, and there never is, any preferential treatment at Liverpool and the only solution was to get used to it and get on with it. I was finding it pretty hard to understand – I was just a young lad and I badly wanted to be the best. Realising that I still wasn’t Roy’s automatic first choice stung, at first. But I quickly worked out that if the manager didn’t think I was his best striker, it was up to me to prove to him that I was. I was going to have to take it on the chin, get my head down and work even harder in training.

As so often happens in footy though, someone else’s misfortune handed me an opportunity: Rushy twisted an ankle in the ‘Tony Yeboah’ game at Elland Road. All these years on, and a relatively mundane game against Leeds is remembered for that outrageous screamer of a goal, volleyed past David James by Yeboah from about 30 yards. Poor Jamo stood no chance – and poor Rushy did his ankle. So, I was in against Spurs – where I scored – and from there, I went on a run that included me bagging four against Bolton and lining up at Old Trafford in what was being billed for weeks in advance as Eric Cantona’s Comeback Game.

Before that, though, was the little matter of a European hike – a 2,500-mile hike each way, in fact – as we faced Spartak Vladikavkaz (technically in Russia, but geographically closer to Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea). In those days, especially for the longer trips, it was quite common for the press – sometimes even the fans – to travel on the same plane as the players. The local media turned up at Speke Airport (i.e. Liverpool Airport, before it became John Lennon International) and The Echo took a photo of me and Macca waving ourselves off. From that innocent, promising start, the Vladikavkaz game was to become one of the great European yarns. For the team and the 38 Liverpool fans who made the journey, it was a tale of bravery and suffering as they survived the ardours of Hotel Fukk Me (essentially, a grey concrete housing block) and some of the most challenging international cuisine this well-travelled bunch had ever faced. For me, though, it will always be The One Where I Came To Blows With Neil Ruddock.

Let’s be in no doubt about this, Razor Ruddock is an absolute nutter. He’s the original force of nature – generous, funny, loud, over-the-top, filthy, undisciplined and unfiltered. Razor drives a Porsche – at fast and furious speeds – and he’s like a high-powered dynamo battery in real life. It’s impossible to measure the energy and positivity he brings to a dressing room – he’s just one of those non-stop comic typhoons, like Gazza, who are at it from the moment they arrive at the training ground to the moment they wheel-spin away from the car park. Me, Macca and Jason were local lads who weren’t exactly naïve, but even us three would be pop-eyed at some of the things Razor got up to.

One time, close to Christmas (so he does have the excuse that it was f-f-freezing!), we were playing Arsenal at Anfield. We had a corner at the Kop end. Razor trotted up from defence but instead of his usual tactic where he would hang back and time a late run from the ‘D’, he went into the box and leaned against the near post. Next thing, the Arsenal defenders – we’re talking Lee Dixon, Steve Bould, Tony Adams here – hardly shrinking violets themselves – are backing away from Razor, genuinely stunned as his shorts go from red to black in a matter of seconds and there’s steam rising up from the pitch. The boy Ruddock was only answering nature’s call and relieving himself, straight through his shorts, without a care in the world. It may sound difficult, that, but Razor made it look piss easy!

Vladikavkaz was, to be tactful about it, an absolute fucking shithole. There were insects climbing the bedroom walls that Doctor David Bellamy would struggle to identify. I swear one thing, half-cockroach, half-hornet, looked me in the eye before it leapt on me, digging its feelers into my wrist. I wasn’t heartbroken to spend the game on the bench, considering no one ate or slept for 24 hours – I was knackered just watching. Miraculously though, we managed a 2–1 victory, care of a Macca tap-in and a beauty of a free-kick from Jamie Redknapp.

Everyone was in high spirits as we made our way back to the airport, though most of us had our eye on getting some much-needed kip as soon as the plane took off. I was completely flat out when I began to feel a bit of a cold breeze – so much so that it woke me up. My training shoes had been deftly removed from my feet and thoughtfully cut up into tiny pieces. Bastards! The list of suspects immediately came down to three: McAteer, who was sound asleep himself – and the giggling schoolboys a few rows ahead, Neil Ruddock and Steve Harkness. Okay, I thought to myself, revenge is a dish best served cold. I’ll get them back at training tomorrow or the day after – just when they least expect it.

I chuckled to myself, knowing what Razor didn’t know – which is that I had a spare set of wheels in my kit bag, stored in the overhead locker. I got up, stretched and reached into the locker to grab my bag … which fell right through my hands, down into the aisle of the plane. Ruddock and Harkness were staring straight ahead, wetting themselves (so, nothing new for Razor, there!). They’d cut off the handles of my sports bag too and to add insult to injury, smeared ketchup, mustard and vinegar into the soles of my spare trabs. Bastards! Once again, though, I sat down and bided my time, waiting for the great ogre to nod off.

Once he eventually set the plane rattling to its axis with his Richter-scale snoring, I knew nothing could wake the snoozing Ruddock. I sneaked down the aisle, removed his soppy white slip-ons and using the snippers from the First Aid kit, cut them into strips. Satisfied with my work, I tucked the shredded remnants under his feet, patted him on the head and went back to my seat, waiting for Mount Razor to erupt. I must have fallen asleep again because, next thing, there’s a big tornado cloud looming over me, whining at me in a strangely high, injured tone of voice.

‘Goochy! They was Goochy!’

Being an Essex lad – or so I assumed – I took it that Razor was telling me that his daft white dress shoes had been a present from the England cricketer, Graham Gooch. I started laughing, which only made his voice go higher and more hurt.

‘Listen, you mug – they cost, right? Big time! And it ain’t me who’s paying for a new pair!’

Before too long, the whole plane was shouting: ‘Gucci, man! They fucking cost!’

But Razor wasn’t taking it well. The combination of sleep-deprivation and lack of sustenance was slowly transforming him into a B-movie cockney gangster caricature. As we finally landed and everyone got up to exit the plane, he leaned into my ear and said: ‘No c**t mugs me off, Growler! You’re only a kid so I’ll give you a chance to make this right.’

I started laughing again and carried on imitating his Ray Winstone accent as we trooped off the plane. We got onto the tarmac and were all speed-walking towards the team bus. I’d already forgotten about the whole thing, when bang! Razor chinned me. Blimey! I was, quite literally, gobsmacked. I thought we’d been having a laugh and Razor just came up and stole one on me, making me bite my tongue. As I put my hand to my mouth, there was blood trickling through my fingers. When I looked up, he was just sauntering ahead towards the team coach.

I ran after him, jumped on the bus and went for him when a pincer movement of David James, Macca and Jamie Redknapp got in between us and held me back before the whole thing escalated. Macca was hissing at me, reminding me the press were still around and this little spat could very easily end up all over the newspapers. They kept me and Razor apart for the rest of the trip back to base. By the time we were all back at training, me and him had spoken on the phone, had a laugh about it and settled our differences, though the shout of ‘That was a Gucci ball, you mug!’ and ‘Gucci tackle!’ rang out over Melwood for weeks to come.

Having cemented my place in The Kop’s affections by scoring against Everton and then notching hat-tricks, fours, fives, goals in semi-finals and, already, many, many other big goals, it seemed only right that I should open my account against our great foe, Manchester United.

For years and years throughout the 70s and 80s, United had been jealous onlookers while Liverpool went out and won every prize going, but now the roles were starting to be reversed. United had won the Premier League in 1993 and 1994, and were already the runaway leaders, while Liverpool were nowhere near. The previous year, exciting as the game was, I felt we were a little too made up when we clawed back a 3–0 deficit to draw 3–3 with them in a volatile night game. Any Liverpool team should be looking to beat Man United as a benchmark, yet at 3–0, their fans in the away end were chanting, ‘So fucking easy, oh, this is so fucking easy!’

We definitely owed them one.

To give them their due, Sky TV had started ramping up live football as a major event. From the days of the BBC and ITV having one camera and an almost matter-of-fact approach to commentary, Sky were bringing a rock’n’roll vibe, with multiple cameras and a huge amount of build-up ahead of the biggest games. Eric Cantona had been out since his infamous kung-fu kick back in January. If our game against United had taken place on the Saturday, 30th September, as scheduled, then Cantona would have missed it. By pushing the game back to Sunday, 1st October, Sky ensured United’s king would return in front of his adoring supporters, against their biggest rivals, in a live television spectacular.

All week, they whipped up the anticipation, visiting Manchester to speak to the fans. ‘God is back,’ said one. ‘So I am!’ said me. We walked out that Sunday afternoon to a sea of French tricolours. Old Trafford was being redeveloped, which meant our following had been cut to a hardy few hundred – but they were in for a treat. The 1995–96 season was a good one for kits and lining up in that bottle-green and white ‘harlequin’-style jersey, I had a real strong feeling that we were going to make a statement in front of those cameras.

A feeling that lasted exactly two minutes as Man United came storming out of the blocks and Nicky Butt put them into a 1–0 lead before we’d even worked out which way we were kicking. Needless to say, Cantona was heavily involved, pulling the ball back for Butt to run onto. His first touch was a mis-control, but the ball ran kindly for him and his second touch lifted the ball over Jamo, into the net. Cantona just stood there, nodding his head as though this was exactly what he’d envisaged. It used to do my head in the way someone else would score, but Eric would stand there with his collars up, hands on hips, waiting for everyone to run over and congratulate him – which the entire Man United team duly did.

Maybe we should have taken a leaf out of their book and treated our own maverick loners to the praise and affection they craved – it certainly worked for Cantona. But we gradually started to grow into the game, Macca drifting past Phil Neville at will and getting crosses into the box – we were looking good. There’s always a part of you, when you’re creating chances against a strong team at their place, that thinks, we need to slot one of these, they’re not going to give us many more opportunities. We were into the last part of the first half and, apart from their high-tempo start, United’s intensity had slowed and with half-time beckoning, they’d gone into their shell a little. Macca picked me out over on the left flank with a nicely weighted ball. I took a touch, saw that Peter Schmeichel had taken a step forward and a step to his left, anticipating a cross – and smashed it right past him on his near post. Schmeichel just stood there, barely able to believe what had just happened. His face just seemed to say, where did that come from? It was far and away the best goal of my young career so far, and what a place – and what a time – to score it! We went off at half-time buzzing, knowing we had United rattled.

We came back out and I did it again. This time it was a gorgeous, 40-yard through-ball from Michael Thomas that dissected their defence. Gary Neville was half a yard ahead of me, but I burst past him, easing him out of the way with my comely builder’s hips. (Big thanks to my dietary consultants, Mick’s of Windsor Street, for calorific assistance – I knew those chippy dinners would serve me well in the long run!) As Neville Senior floundered to catch up with me, Schmeichel came out, spreading out in a ‘star’ shape, trying to close me down. I didn’t even think twice: he’d left three-quarters of the goal wide open to me. As nonchalantly as you like, I just sand-wedged it over his outstretched leg with my right foot. It was one of those that you just knew was in from the moment you hit it and I stood there with one arm raised, ready to take the acclaim. Our tiny band of followers was going mad in the corner, while the Old Trafford faithful stood there in silence.

‘God is back,’ indeed!

Needless to say, the ref gave them a highly questionable penalty when Jamie Redknapp made an immaculately timed challenge on Ryan Giggs as he burst into the box. If there was VAR back then, it would be an immediate No Penalty, but the script had already been written and Cantona stepped up to claim his goal. Still, we knew we were the better team on the day. The confidence flowed through the squad and we went on a little run that included an away win at Southampton – never an easy place to go, with Matt Le Tissier in his pomp – and a thumping 6–0 win at home to Man City (Fowler: 2). Ian Rush was back and the gaffer was rotating the squad, picking horses for courses. Rushy would generally start the away games, where we’d naturally have more defensive duties and Stan Collymore would start in those games you’d expect to be more open. I was back to being a first pick, home and away, and before you knew it, we were up against United again – only two months after we beat (sorry, drew with) them at Old Trafford.

Even though the scoreline shows that we only beat them 2–0, we absolutely stuffed Man United that day. I got both our goals and the win signalled the start of a tremendous run right through Christmas and into the New Year. We beat Arsenal 3–1 (Fowler: hat-trick), drew at Stamford Bridge and then, on New Year’s Day, we were up against Stan’s former club, Nottingham Forest. I gave us an early lead, but Forest went 2–1 up after about 20 minutes. Their fans made the elementary mistake of booing Stan every time he touched the ball and singing, ‘What a waste of money.’ Oh dear! I equalised just on the stroke of half-time and Stan shoved the Forest fans’ words back down their throats with a second-half brace. Having won 4–2, we found ourselves at the dizzying heights of second place in the League. We went on to beat Leeds 5–0 (Fowler: 2), Villa 2–0 at their place (me and Stan: 1 each), away wins against QPR (Fowler) and Blackburn, and Aston Villa again at home, where I bagged another two and we went 3–0 up after eight minutes. Villa would be sick of the sight of us – and me – by the end of that season!

Stan was getting his share of goals, too – things were generally starting to work – and we were right back in the mix for the title. United were top, Newcastle were second, and now we were only four points behind them. This, then, was the backdrop to one of the greatest games it has ever been my privilege to take part in – the visit of title-challenging Newcastle United on 3rd April 1996. Anyone in that rare minority who hasn’t witnessed this remarkable game, do yourselves a favour right now and go look it up – it was astonishing!

The bare beats of the game are that we were on the front foot from the first whistle and I put us 1–0 up after a minute. It was a delicious cross from the left by Stan just begging to be buried, which I duly did – nodding it down and into the net. We seemed a little dazzled by this, stood back to take stock, in which time Newcastle were devastating on the counter. Les Ferdinand equalised and David Ginola put them 2–1 up, all in the first quarter of an hour.

Second half – I scored again. Macca seemed to bamboozle half their team just by shaking his hips; he feinted right, he feinted left, he steered the ball into my path as I ran in and I punched it, hard and low, right under Pavel Srnicek in the Newcastle goal: 2–2, with half an hour to go. Newcastle had only signed Tino Asprilla right at the end of January to help see Kevin Keegan’s team over the line as they battled Man United tooth and nail for the title. Rob Lee slid a pass between Steve Harkness and Neil Ruddock, and Asprilla just hit it past Jamo first time with the outside of his right foot: 3–2 to Newcastle and difficult to see any way back for us at this stage. Cue Stan Collymore – and possibly his finest moments in a Liverpool shirt …

His first – our equaliser to make it 3–3 – came from an unplayable bending cross by Jason. What a ball! You just can’t defend against those. He curved it inside the nearest defender but away from the keeper, who just didn’t know whether to come for it or stay on his line. In the end, he did neither and Stan ghosted in at the far post to prod past him: 3–3, and the scene set for a grand finale.

This is where fortune favours the brave, arguably. Roy Evans brought Ian Rush on for Rob Jones in a bold, aggressive statement of attacking intent. Kevin Keegan’s answer was to bring on Steve Howey to shore up their defence.

With the Newcastle fans content seemingly to settle for a draw by now, and the game entering its second minute of time added on, we launched one last attack. God knows (well, I don’t, to be fair!) how our senior statesmen, John Barnes and Rushy, stayed calm as they patiently picked out passes to feet on the edge of the Newcastle box. Every single player was crowding the area when, somehow, Digger had the composure to look up and see Stan Collymore, once again all alone to the left of the box. Wiggling a bit of room for himself, he clipped a nice left-foot pass for Stan to run onto. He took one steadying touch and blasted it inside the near post with his next. I don’t think Stan ever felt so much love in a football match! We all ran after him, delirious, while the fans went wild. It was an unbelievable end to a phenomenal, end-to-end game of football, which is often voted by TV viewers as the greatest game the Premiership has ever seen.

We could, and should, have kicked on from there but in true Liverpool style, we managed to come unstuck at Coventry, a few days later. So that was that – any lingering hopes we might have had about making a late charge for the title hit the buffers once and for all. Still, we had an FA Cup semi-final to look forward to. The draw had kept us away from our old adversaries, Manchester United, though we’d be playing – you guessed it – Aston Villa at United’s ground.

Brian Little had made some shrewd buys and turned Villa into a very slick outfit. Mark Bosnich was an underrated keeper, the late great Ugo Ehiogu was terrific, with Paul McGrath at the back, and Savo Milosevic and Dwight Yorke made a pretty deadly partnership up front. We seemed to have twice as many fans as Villa inside Old Trafford. Today, there’s a lot of resistance to the idea of both semi-finals being held at Wembley and I’d go along with that. Wembley should be special – the FA should keep it sacred, for finals and internationals. A big part of the argument against playing a semi at Wembley is that it’s so expensive for fans, more often than not involving a lengthy trek and an overnight stay. Yet, here was a semi-final between two highly attractive, very attack-minded football teams played at a reasonable hour in a stadium no more than 90 minutes away from Villa Park, an hour from Anfield – and it didn’t sell out.

Not that that bothered us – our fans had three sides of the ground and there was no way we weren’t winning that game! As the game started, it was actually Jason who had our first decent shot on goal, before I got on the scoresheet with a diving header. Somehow, I managed to get in front of Ehiogu and steer a low cross away from Bozzy and into the net. We didn’t really look back from that point. Digger hit the post, I went on a run past three or four Villa players, that very nearly ended in a goal – then netted one of my all-time favourites. Jamie Redknapp sent a deep cross in and Agent Staunton provided a lovely assist, nodding the ball out to the edge of the box. It dropped at a nice height for me to chest it down, lean back and curl it on the volley, just inside the post. That was 2–0 to us, Jason added a third and Jamo kept out a piledriver from Alan Wright towards the end, to keep it 3–0.

We were off to Wembley for a mouth-watering FA Cup final against Manchester United!