Musings on Football

My column in the Daily Telegraph newspaper

I’ve seen it all in football. I know what it means to walk out at Wembley with the Three Lions on your chest and take your place in a Legends XI versus the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Theakston and that bloke who is mates with Robbie Williams.

And I know how the media can build you up (“journeyman sometime professional Ronnie Matthews shares a joke with opponent Cheryl Baker after coming off second best in a 50-50”) just to knock you down (“the living personification of everything contemptible in football and indeed Britain today”).

When you read comments like that from the Professional Footballers’ Association, especially attached to a joint petition by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Nick Griffin and the RSPCA, it hurts.

As everyone always says, it’s recognition from your fellow professionals that really matters, but that can be a double-edged sword in fairness.

But that is when the football community pulls together. Community in football is more than just the thing that took over the Charity Shield, more than something you have to do after an unfortunate drink-driving incident, more than the intense festive season schedule of taking some tins of Quality Street to sick kids.

It’s about coming together in a dark period, and we have seen a great example of that this week when Joey Barton has put his hand up and broken his silence on the situation with Big John Terry.

Joey has had his own demons as he would be the first to admit, and like many football people he cannot see why he got a 12-game ban for a bit of handbags where John is 220 large in the hole and looking at four games nodding politely next to Mrs Abramovich just for repeating what someone had said to him.

If we are going to start punishing people for parroting words they have heard then to be fair the likes of Alan Shearer might as well just set up a direct debit to pay off the fines and get on with it.

It’s not for me to comment on whether John did or did not do the racism, but I would like to tell you a little story that I think sums the man up.

I was lucky enough to meet JT when we were second and third place respectively in the 2009 Branston Pickle Humanitarian of the Year Awards. I was admiring JT’s Bentley in the car park after the ceremony, and I’ve seen him coming over.

Given JT’s pace, I obviously had plenty of time to think about what I was going to say, but in the end I got star-struck.

As I’ve stood there gawping, he’s thrown me the car keys and joked: “Well go on then, you pleb.” I thought he meant I could take it for a spin, but in fact he wanted me to park it.

After he explained the mix-up, we had a right laugh, so I am sure whatever was said or not said to Anton was probably banter anyway.

Point is, in football a difficult situation can lead to an opportunity. That 12-game ban has given Joey the opportunity of a lifetime to expand his horizons, play in a different league and put himself in the shop window for a post-career pundit’s gig on French Match du Jour.

So on my advice, Joey is proposing a solution to the FA where John and him share their bans and serve eight games each, giving John a chance to come out to the south of France for a bit of R&R away from the press and the legal system while Joey gets himself back to west London to add bite to the QPR midfield.

That to me is what football is all about: a community coming together in a crisis to achieve the best outcome for all parties.

(Cheers to the lads at the Telegraph and especially to Christine Odone for help with some of the spellings. In exchange, I’ve put the fear of God up one her daughter’s boyfriends)

John Terry: Captain, Leader, illegal merchandise conspiracy fall guy stitch up?

Lot of people are saying that Big JT has got off lightly with a four game ban. Well I tell you what, those people don’t know jack about football. To normal people four games might not seem that much but believe me four games is like a lifetime in football.

When I was a Portsmouth I got a four-game ban for trying to sell what turned out to be pirated Premier League merchandise (shirts, DVDs, Gary Neville duvet covers) on eBay as a sideline. They done me for bringing the game into disrepute and I got a letter saying I was banned for four games. In those four games I lost my place (in the reserves; to be fair I was not really in serious first-team contention at the time), drifted out of favour and Harry Redknapp used it as an excuse to drum me out of the club in the transfer window.

It was only years later that I found out from a very good contact at the FA (my cousin was having it away a friend of Faria Alarms) that it was all total bull. The Premier League and FA don’t have the authority to ban someone for anything like that. Turned out that Portsmouth themselves had told me I was banned because Milan Mandaric was sick of the sight of me, done a letter on forged paper and basically used it as Trojan Horse to force me out of my Fratton Park dream. I’m not saying that Chelsea have set JT up because he’s got a load of moody training tops from a bloke in China, but on the other hand if I was John I’d be keeping a very close eye on things for them four games and definitely not buying anything without getting a receipt.

Berbatov has let himself down with Fergie departure jibe

As a player, I probably did not have too much in common with Dimitar Berbatov. Berba is more what you would call an artist, a Bulgarian or a lazy so-and-so. I was all action, a craftsman, toiling in the trenches, carrying the water, sometimes carrying the magic sponge as well. That said, I did once go to Bulgaria on a stag do, and let me tell you something it’s no wonder Berbatov always looks a bit sleepy and knackered. The women and the drink are top drawer, but to be fair my blood sugar got dangerously low because it was so hard to get anything decent to eat. By the end of the weekend I was as weak as a kitten and I would say that Ferige giving me the hairdryer treatment would be the absolute last thing I would of needed.

Berba’s been and left saying “thanks very much, respect to all at Old Trafford” but has not passed up the opportunity to settle a few scores with Ferrguson. Schoolboy error there from the Big Bulgarian. You want to save a bit of that for your first autobiography, that would set the cat among the pigeons. To be fair though I suppose your Bulgarians are not big readers. When I left Peterborough the second time I got a tattoo saying “Eff You Barry Fry” in Chinese but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t regret it in later life. Especially when I found out that my tattooist, Wang, had actually gone and wrote “I want bum-bum Barry Fry” on it in revenge for me having given him a bounced cheque when I paid him for my dorsal three lions.

Transfer deadline day brought back a lot of memories

For a player who was never afraid to take on a new opportunity, like I was, transfer deadline day was always a massive day in the calendar. I moved a lot in my career: sometimes if I didn’t fit into the system, sometimes if I wanted to smash the system from within, sometimes if I had a personal situation with the manager and on one occasion, when I had a personal situation with the manager’s wife that led to a personal situation with the manager and the manager’s two brothers behind the changing rooms at the training ground. Be it seeking pastures new, realising it is time to move on, being told you are surplus to requirements, or being beaten up and told to leave town tonight, sometimes in your career you can find yourself checking Sky Sports News every five minutes and hoping that Jim White has GOT NEWS OF A MASSIVE DEAL INVOLVING RONNIE MATTHEWS.

For a while it seemed like hardly a transfer window went past without me being either bought or sold by Harry Redknapp and still to this day if I see Harry sticking that big old face through his car window to talk to a reporter I get an involuntary twitch in the wallet region. To anyone that never got their dream move this weekend I will just say: stay focused, chin up, keep doing the simple things well and start really making an effort come December time to hopefully put yourself in the shop window for January.