How Not to Be a Professional Footballer. Paul Merson

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СКАЧАТЬ take the piss out of the rest of us, and George wasn’t having that. Everything had to be done seriously, or there was no point in doing it at all.

      Centre-half Steve Bould was the best addition to the first-team squad as far as I was concerned, because along with midfielder Perry Groves, who was signed from Colchester in 1986, he became one of my drinking partners at the club. His main talent, apart from being a professional footballer, was eating. Bloody hell, he could put it away. On the way home from away games, there was always a fancy table service on the coach, complete with two waiters. The squad would have a prawn cocktail to start, or maybe some salmon or a soup. Then there was a choice of a roast dinner or pasta for the main course, with an apple pie as dessert. That was followed up with cheese and biscuits. In the meantime, the team would get stuck into the lagers. If we’d won, I’d always grab a couple of crates from the players’ lounge on the way out.

      Bouldy was six foot four and I swear he was hollow. We’d have eating competitions to kill time on the journey and he would win every time. Prawn cocktails, soup, salmon, roast chicken, lasagnes, apple pies, cheese and biscuits – he’d eat the whole menu and then some. Everything was washed down with can after can of lager. By the time the coach pulled into the training ground car park, we’d fall off it. I’d have to call my missus for a lift because I couldn’t drive home, but Bouldy always seemed as fresh as a daisy as he made the journey back to his gaff. He probably stopped for a curry on the way.

      George worked us hard, really hard, and training was a nightmare. On Monday, we’d run in the countryside. On Tuesday, we’d run all morning at Highbury until we were sick. We’d do old-school exercises, like sprinting up and down the terraces and giving piggybacks along the North Bank. Modern-day players wouldn’t stand for it, they’d be crying to their agents every day, but George could get away with it because we were young and keen and not earning huge amounts of money. We didn’t have any power.

      Still, it was like Groundhog Day and I could have told you, to the drill, what I was doing every single day of the week for the first three months of the 1988-89 season. Most of it was based on the defensive side of the game, George was obsessed by it. We would carry out drills where two teams had to keep possession for as long as possible, then we’d work with eight players keeping the ball against two runners.

      In another session, George would set up a back six of John Lukic in goal, Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn as full-backs, and Tony and Bouldy as centre-halves, with David O’Leary protecting them in the midfield. A team of 11 players would then try to break them down. They were phenomenal defensively. If we scored more than one goal against them in training, we knew we’d done well. Sometimes George would link the back four with a rope, so when they ran out to catch a striker offside, they would get used to coming out together, arms in the air, shouting at the lino. It wasn’t a fluke that clean sheets were common for us in those days, because George worked so hard to achieve them.

      We did the same thing every day, but the lads never moaned. If anyone grumbled they were soon dropped for the next match, and so we worked every morning on not conceding goals without a murmur. Everyone listened to George, because we were all frightened of what he would do if we didn’t live up to his high standards. He was nothing like the laid-back player everyone had heard about.

      As a tactician he was brilliant, and his knowledge was scary, but he was even scarier as a bloke. If you didn’t do what he’d said, like getting the ball beyond the first man at a corner, he’d bollock you badly. When George walked into a room, everybody stopped talking, and nobody ever dared to challenge him if they thought what he was doing was wrong or out of order.

      Our defender (or defensive midfielder, depending on the line-up) Martin Keown was the only person to have a go at George in all the time I was there. I remember we went to Ipswich and had a nightmare. God knows why the argument started, but it ended up with Martin shouting at George in the dressing-room – giving it, trying to start a ruck.

      ‘Come on, George!’ he yelled as the lads stared, open-mouthed. ‘Come on!’ He didn’t play for ages after that.

      Fans wondered why George didn’t stay around the game much longer than he did, but it’s pretty obvious really – the players wouldn’t stand for his methods of management today. They earn too much money, they wouldn’t have to listen to him. They’d be moaning in the papers and asking for a move as soon as he’d got them giving piggybacks in training.

      Wednesdays were great because George always gave the squad a day off. That meant I could get hammered on a Tuesday night, which I did every week. Often I was joined by some of the other lads, like Steve Bould, Tony Adams, Nigel Winterburn and Perry Groves. We’d start off in a local pub, then we’d go into London and drink all over town. We wouldn’t stop until we were paro. The pint-o-meter usually came in at 15 beers plus and we used to call our sessions ‘The Tuesday Club’. George knew about the heavy nights, but I don’t think he cared because we were always right as rain when we arrived for training on Thursday.

      Bouldy was always up for a drink in those days, as was Grovesy, but he was a bit lighter than the rest of us. Sometimes he’d even throw his lagers away if he thought we weren’t looking. I remember the night of Grovesy’s first Tuesday Club meeting. It took place during his first week at the club, and we went to a boozer near Highbury. He stood by a big plant as we started sinking the pints, and when we weren’t looking he’d tip his drink into the pot. Grovesy threw away so much beer that by the end of the evening the plant was trying to kiss him. When we went back to training on Thursday, everyone was going on about what a big drinker he was, because he’d been the last man standing.

      The following week we went into the same pub and one of the lads stood next to the plant. I think they’d worked out that Grovesy wasn’t the big hitter we’d thought he’d been, and he was right. After three drinks, Grovesey was paro and couldn’t walk. As he staggered around the pub an hour later, he confessed that he’d been chucking his drinks because he was a lightweight. That tag didn’t last long, though. After one season, he’d learnt how to keep up with the rest of us. He joined Arsenal a teetotaller and left a serious drinker.

      It wasn’t just Tuesday nights that we’d go for it – I’d take any excuse for a piss-up. My problem came from the fact that I used booze to put my head right, to calm me down or perk me up. When I was a YTS player, drinking stopped the panic attacks, but when I started breaking into the first team, beer maintained the excitement of playing in front of thousands of Arsenal fans.

      It’s a massive buzz playing football, especially when everything is new, like when I got my first touches against Man City at Highbury, or that goal at Plough Lane. The adrenaline that came with playing on a Saturday gave me such a rush. And if I scored, it was the best feeling in the world, nothing else came close. The problems started when I realised the buzz was short. I felt flat when I left the pitch, and I’d sit in the dressing-room after a game, thinking, ‘What am I going to do now? I can’t wait until next Saturday.’ And that’s where the drinking came in. It kept my high up.

      I should have known better, because before I’d made it into the first team regularly, boozing had already got me into trouble. When I was 18, I got done for drink-driving. It was in the summer of 1986, I went to a place called Wheathampstead with a few people and we rounded the night off in the Rose and Crown, a lovely little boozer near my house. After a lorryload of pints, I decided to drive home, pissed out of my face, though I must have crashed into every other car outside the pub as I reversed from my parking spot. I missed the turning for my house, went into the next road and ploughed into a lamppost, which ended up in someone’s garden.

      I panicked. I ran back to the Rose and Crown and sat there with my mates like nothing had happened. My plan was to pretend that the car had been stolen. It wasn’t long before the police arrived and a copper was tapping me on the back.

      ‘Excuse СКАЧАТЬ