Bend It Like Bullard Read online

  Al-Fayed was actually a really down-to-earth normal bloke – for a billionaire. When I first signed for the club, the deal was agreed before the end of the season so I wasn’t allowed to play. But they invited me to watch a game so I went along to Craven Cottage with my mum, and Al-Fayed spotted me in the bar and came over to talk to us.

  He was really warm and friendly, although my mum was a bit miffed that she didn’t get a Harrods discount off of him. Whenever he came to visit the training ground, the word would go round that the big dog was coming and an air of expectancy would rise over the place.

  Socks would be pulled up, floors would be cleaned and we’d all brush our teeth … okay, that last bit was a joke. In fact, the whole act was a bit of a joke because from what I could tell Al-Fayed wouldn’t have cared about any of that as he just wanted to have a bit of banter with his players.

  And that’s why the gaffer had no choice but to laugh along with the chairman, who was actually quite open and crude with us. He’d tell us what he’d been up to on the weekend, go into details on any mishaps he’d had and generally try to be a bit of a lad.

  If Hodgson had heard any of us talking like that, I’m sure he would have done his usual headmaster routine and said: ‘Oi, you! Curb it!’

  But in front of the chairman, he’d have to laugh along with all his chatter. We were all too aware how awkward Roy found that, which made us love it even more.

  The one thing everyone knew about Roy was his inability to pronounce his Rs properly and that wasn’t something that a group of players were going to let pass without comment. I developed a bit of a reputation for doing a ‘Woy’ impression, as did several of my team-mates. I was certain that the gaffer would’ve heard us doing it, and it even made the papers.

  So we took the piss a bit, but there was no doubting Roy’s coaching know-how and ability to attract top players. Especially Scandinavians. Within a month of turning up, he’d signed Brede Hangeland, a top-quality Norwegian defender who most people in this country had never heard of, Erik Nevland, a Norwegian striker and Jari Litmanen, a former European Cup winner, who’d played for Ajax, Liverpool and Barcelona.

  Unfortunately, the latter signing didn’t work out. Jari didn’t manage to make it on to the pitch during his time with us, but if football was judged on stretching alone, he’d be the greatest player in the history of the game. He stretched so much that I honestly thought there was something wrong with the bloke. Whenever we were out on the training pitch, it always seemed to be a cold morning and he’d have his tracksuit bottoms on doing stretches. Those groins and hamstrings must have taken a battering over the years judging by the way he worked on them.

  The manager would turn up and Jari would be straight on his toes, doing little sprints up and down on the spot before going back to the stretching. I’d look at him and think, ‘Is this fella alright or what?’

  One day I looked over at Danny Murphy, tilted my head towards the permanently stretched Jari and said, ‘What the fuck’s he doing?’

  Danny had a bemused look on this face, but he just said: ‘Do you know how good he is?’ and I replied: ‘No, I don’t even watch football.’

  All the while, Jari was still stretching away – he’d even do it in the middle of a training drill or a match – but I could never approach him. In the rules of football banter, I wasn’t officially permitted to question him because the bloke’s a legend. If I’d asked him what the hell he was doing, he could’ve just replied, ‘Barça. What have you done?’ and I’d have nothing to say except, er, ‘Wigan’.

  Putting the stretching to one side – which is hard because that’s all he ever did – when we did ball work in training, you could see straight away what a class player Jari was even if his pace was gone. His touch and vision were amazing, a class above anything I’d seen up close – apart from some of the Premier League’s finest talents I was now coming up against on a weekly basis.

  Sometimes, I had to do double-takes on a football pitch and actually say ‘Wow’ out loud, such was the quality of some of the players out there. I’d say I was sharing a pitch with them, but in terms of the football they played, we weren’t even in the same universe. There are three occasions which spring to mind when I just had to concede that some of these boys were playing a different game to me.

  The first time was when I was playing for Wigan at Arsenal in the Carling Cup semi-final and Thierry Henry gave me an education. I really wanted to see just how fast he was and early on in the game I was running alongside him trying to close him down as he had the ball.

  He was going so fast I could barely keep up, and then he’d just stop. In a split second. Then start again. I have no idea how he did it. He showed me a fake shimmy, stopped and carried on in the same direction and in the meantime, I’d already headed off five yards in the opposite direction.

  And he did it all so bloody fast. He was like shit off a shovel. I looked at my midfield team-mate Graham Kavanagh and said, ‘You can mark him.’

  The second time was in the subsequent final against Man United, where I was chasing a ball that looked like it was going off the pitch and Cristiano Ronaldo was in front of me. The section of the crowd I was running towards happened to contain my parents, family and friends, who had come to watch me play.

  Ronaldo managed to control the ball that was supposedly going off the pitch, kept it in and then, with the same touch, he caressed the ball with his foot for a second or two as I ran towards him, before slipping it through my legs and running towards goal.

  Excuse me, could you run that one by me again please?

  I had no idea what the hell had happened, but I knew it had happened in front of everyone who was watching me. So I did the only thing I could in that situation, which was chase after the bastard and try to hack him down. Even then, he was still dancing around me with the ball as I fouled him three or four times, but incredibly the referee didn’t blow his whistle. I even came away with the ball in the end, but the victory was all his.

  The third jaw-dropping moment was playing for Fulham against Man United. An attack of theirs had just broken down and there was nobody within a mile of me, so our keeper Mark Schwarzer bowled the ball out to where I was near the halfway line.

  The closest player to me when the ball left Mark’s hands was Wayne Rooney, but he was at least twenty-five yards away so there was no danger there. Yet, as the ball dropped and I was about to control it, I could feel Rooney’s breath on my shoulder and he went straight through me with a tackle that was the equivalent of a runaway roller coaster smashing me over.

  What he did was impossible. Actually impossible. To this day, like the Ronaldo bit of skill, I still think somebody must have helped him. It’s not just because of those miraculous things, but those three opponents were in a class of their own.

  When I was called up to the England squad in 2008 and had the chance to train with Rooney, he didn’t disappoint. He was definitely capable of doing things that no other players could do.

  At that point, it was the start of the 2008/09 season and my form for Fulham going back to the start of the year had been recognised. It was definitely the pinnacle of my career, which is why I would never have believed anyone who would’ve told me then, that I’d be a Hull player by January.

  But this is football and anything can happen, both on and off the pitch. Things like the future manager of England playing golf instead of turning up to a meeting with me to discuss the possible extension of my contract.

  Having suffered that horrible knee injury, I was worried that the sixteen months left on my Fulham deal would not cover me sufficiently if it should happen again. So I asked the club if they would consider giving me a new, longer deal to make me feel more secure. I was playing well and I’d had the England recognition so I really didn’t envisage any stumbling blocks with this one.

  A meeting was set up between me, my agent, the Fulham chief executive Alistair Mackintosh and Roy Hodgson. I was hoping that it wouldn’t tak
e too long so I could just get on with focusing on my football, but it didn’t quite pan out like that.

  Andy Evans and I met up with the chief exec, but there was no sign of Roy. Alistair was a bit confused by that and called him, only to find out he was playing golf and wouldn’t be coming. Talk about an awkward situation – that was the end of that meeting.

  I thought it was bang out of order. It doesn’t matter if you’re the chairman, owner or manager, you have to treat people with respect and that’s pretty much what I told Roy to his face the next time I saw him. I asked him where he’d been when we were supposed to have had a meeting and I told him it showed me and my agent a lack of respect. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hostile towards him, but his decision not to attend that meeting spoke volumes.

  We clashed from that day on and, despite several attempts to set up another meeting, it never happened because, in my opinion, Roy didn’t want it to happen. I think he felt that I was holding the club to ransom when all I wanted was to sort out my future. He certainly didn’t want to address the issue, which proved to me that neither he, nor the club, wanted me. If they did, they had a very odd way of showing it. Finally, Alistair told us that if it was down to him he would’ve signed me on a new, longer contract but it had to be a joint decision between the manager and chairman and, given that wasn’t happening, I was free to talk to other clubs.

  So there I was with sixteen months remaining on my contract and the distinct possibility that I could be out of work at the end of it, especially if my knees were to disintegrate again.

  I never understood why Fulham weren’t more upfront about telling me they didn’t want me. I’m sure it was because of my knee and I guess they didn’t want to say anything like that officially in case it would scupper the chance of another club signing me, taking me off their payroll and handing them a nice transfer fee in the process.

  This wasn’t football, this was business and once again my eyes were opened up to the fact I was just a valuable asset to them rather than a player.

  Fortunately, a number of clubs were interested in me despite my knee, but Hull backed up their inquiry about my availability with a brilliant offer and a load of ambition to boot.

  Sadly, Fulham put stories out which suggested that I’d just upped and left for the money, which was clearly not the case, but in football, whenever a player’s version of events differs from a club’s, everyone seems to believe the club.

  I had to take that on the chin, but the blow was softened as Hull were providing the financial security I’d been seeking and, equally importantly, manager Phil Brown really wanted me to play in his side. Like Chris Coleman, he wanted to put me in the free role I loved so I could entertain the fans in the process.

  That was music to my ears, but not to my right knee, which clearly had ideas of its own.

  * * *

  REMEMBER THE OLD ADAGE: FAME IS TEMPORARY, CLASS IS PERMANENT. OR SOMETHING ALONG THOSE LINES . . .

  * * *

  ‘If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.’ Lao Tzu

  If you’re ever at Chester Races, my advice to you is never bump into a drunken Duncan Ferguson. Especially, if you’ve recently offered him out in the tunnel after a game.

  That’s exactly the predicament I was in a few weeks after Wigan had played Everton, and I was shitting myself. I’d been drinking with my team-mates at the races and we were all having a blinding time, when someone spotted Big Dunc in the room, sipping champagne and smoking a cigar.

  Immediately, the boys were on at me, telling me how he was going to batter me or worse – everything you’d expect to hear from your mates. My heart was racing faster than the drinks were being downed, my face went red and I started to sweat.

  It had all started with an incident which had been seen by almost every football fan in the country, thanks to Soccer AM. The video of it had become an instant YouTube classic and is probably the moment that most people mention within seconds of meeting me.

  On the video, you see Duncan Ferguson about to be sent off for Everton after punching my team-mate Paul Scharner. As he’s standing there with hands on hips, you see me sidle up to him and look him straight in the eyes, talk to him, then think better of it. My facial expression, as I look towards a team-mate, is an absolute picture as I have no idea whether I should be laughing or really crapping myself.

  To fill in a few gaps, what actually happened that night was that Big Dunc had been brought on by David Moyes as a substitute with the match level at 1-1. There were about twenty minutes left and the idea was that Ferguson would cause us a few problems up front, given the fact he’s an enormous presence at six feet four – I was glad I wasn’t one of our defenders that evening, especially poor Scharner who was marking him at corners.

  He certainly caused us problems, but not in a footballing sense, as seven minutes after coming on, he showed us why they called him Duncan Disorderly when he gave Scharner a belting right-hander in the stomach in an off-the-ball incident, seen by almost everyone including the ref Mike Dean. He absolutely walloped him and Paul went down like a sack of shit in the penalty area.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d seen so I instinctively went over to Big Dunc to see what had gotten into him, but I took one look at him and that’s when I did my double-take, that weird look that the cameras picked up.

  I’d never seen anything like the look on his face that night. His eyes were deranged, wild and angry. He looked like he wanted to kill everyone on that pitch, probably his own team-mates included.

  Not too keen on the vibes he was giving off, I called over his team-mate, James McFadden, who I kind of knew from seeing him out and about, and said: ‘Is he alright him or what?’

  But McFadden just straight-batted that one back at me: ‘I’m having nothing to do with this.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ I thought. ‘I’m in a bit deep here.’

  I looked back up at the big man and said: ‘Dunc? You alright, son?’

  It was probably the most stupid question I’d ever asked in my life. Even more stupid than when I asked my teacher if spelling counted in the school spelling test. Of course, he wasn’t alright. How many people that are alright punch a man in the stomach for practically no reason? His response, although unsurprising, certainly made me back off.

  ‘Do you fucking one want as well, pal?’ said Dunc.

  ‘Nah, you’re alright son,’ I replied, quickly backing off as Mike Dean approached to show him the inevitable red card, which happened to be the eighth and last of his Premier League career – so it was a bit of an honour for me to be present at such a landmark moment.

  I should have left it there. Most people would definitely have left it there. But I can be a cocky bastard and, once Dunc was a safe twenty metres away, I called out: ‘See you in the tunnel, Dunc!’

  My team-mates looked at me as if I was as mad as him, and who could blame them? It was pure theatre and bravado on my part. At roughly the same time, Dunc stripped off his shirt and flexed his muscles for the benefit of the two benches as he walked straight off the pitch to the changing room.

  I did not want to be seeing him anywhere for a long while, never mind in the tunnel at the JJB straight after the game.

  I managed to avoid him after the match as I made sure I took as long as possible to get ready – this hair does not look after itself, let me tell you.

  Dunc’s reputation was not just made on the pitch, he had a pretty good track record off it too. I’ve heard stories about him fighting off burglars. Once, two blokes broke into his house while he was sitting on the sofa and he greeted them by saying, ‘Alright boys, I think you’ve picked the wrong fucking house.’ Those poor burglars. One ran off, but he sat on the other one until the police came.

  Another time, he found a bloke about to nick loads of crates of whisky and champagne from h
is storage house. That daft sod received a firm wallop around his chops (in self-defence of course) and spent two hours in hospital once the old bill came to arrest him.

  Back at Chester races, I was thinking about those burglars as my team-mates continued to wind me up. And things soon took a turn for the worse, when these so-called mates literally picked me up in the air, carried me over to where Dunc was quaffing his champers and sucking on his cigar, and just dumped me right in front of him. I might have missed him in the tunnel after the game, but there was no missing him right now.

  Deal with that.

  He looked me up and down, drank a bit more champagne then lunged towards me.

  Shit!

  But instead of the expected Glasgow kiss, Dunc gave me a big hug.

  ‘Hello, wee man!’ he said. ‘Here, come and have a drink with me.’ And as he said that, he handed me his bottle of champagne, then walked off, chomping on his cigar.

  I never saw him again.

  I couldn’t have been more relieved and yet, across the room, the Wigan boys couldn’t have been more disappointed. ‘How the fuck have you got away with that?’ they asked as I rejoined them.

  The mad bastards fully expected me to get a hiding from Big Dunc and they wouldn’t have done a thing to stop it. Just as well he was on the champers as that must have chilled him right out. Moyes should have stuck some in Dunc’s water bottle before bringing him off the bench – and they say I wouldn’t make a good manager.

  Dunc wasn’t the only player to scare me on the pitch, although he was the only one who made me fear for my life. Paul Scholes and Steven Gerrard were also hard bastards to play against in midfield.

  Scholes tackled like a battering ram, I would dread going anywhere near the bloke. The first time I played Man United, he must have fouled me about five times in the first twenty minutes alone.

  And there was no harder tackler in the game than Gerrard. I don’t think I ever saw him shirk a challenge on the pitch. When he tackled me, he used to clump me so hard my knees would knock.