Michael Owen: Off the Record - Michael Owen

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up.’

      As we sat down, the manager announced he was going to make a change. I automatically thought, ‘Well, I’m the kid, and I’m surrounded by big, established stars, so it’s bound to be me.’ Instead, Roy Evans looked at Stan Collymore and said, ‘Stan, you’re coming off.’ I was in shock. It wasn’t in my nature to analyse Stan’s deteriorating relationship with the manager or the club; I just thought, ‘I must be playing better than Stan Collymore!’ which gave me a fresh injection of confidence.

      I played the full 90 minutes, and won the free-kick from which we scored our equalizer. The 2–1 loss at Wimbledon had put us out of the championship race, and the draw with Sheffield Wednesday deprived us of a Champions League place, yet there I was coming off the pitch with a beaming smile.

      Stan left Liverpool under something of a cloud, but to the best of my knowledge there was no tension between him and the rest of the players. As a kid looking in, my guess was that he found it hard to be close to people, though he was always friendly and shared our laughs and jokes. He was good pals with Jamie Redknapp and Phil Babb, among others, but it’s fair to say he was a loner. I did admire him as a player, though. What he did at Nottingham Forest got him his move to Liverpool, and his whole career was built around that. He was by no means a failure at Anfield, where he made a cracking start. He was always fit and made and created plenty of goals. But Robbie Fowler was on fire at that time and was plainly the main man. It’s possible that Stan found it hard to play the supporting role, and certainly there was friction between him and the manager; as a player, you can just sense it. There was no single falling-out between them; it was just a gradual icing over of the relationship. The manager starts bringing a player off early in a game, the player gets resentful; if he’s two minutes late for training the next day, it seems a bigger issue than it really is. I should say that as far as I was concerned Stan was never a problem in terms of not turning up for training, or arguing with the staff. He was just one of those characters who live within themselves.

      Although I’d trained a few times with the first team, because Liverpool had a system of plucking the odd player out from the reserves to practise with the seniors, I certainly hadn’t been a regular companion for them on the training ground. I didn’t really know the men I joined in the closing stages of the 1996/97 campaign, and the squad at that time was packed with big names and big personalities. With those first few kicks at the end of my debut season, I didn’t have time to form firm opinions about the lively characters around me, but in retrospect I can appreciate that it was a great laugh coming into that dressing room. We had a terrific team spirit, which can count for a lot.

      There was a negative aspect to the ‘Spice Boys’ image that some players acquired, but I honestly don’t think anyone did anything to the detriment of the team. Yes, they came in and talked about girls, or said, ‘Hey, come and have look at my new car.’ If you look at the Melwood car park now and compare it to the one we had in my early days they are simply miles apart. It’s true that before Gérard Houllier took over Liverpool players were less self-conscious about showing off their wealth. The culture was more laddish, closer to the stereotype of how young footballers behave. It wouldn’t be unusual to see the odd girlie mag lying around the changing room. But it was harmless lads’ behaviour. I know from talking to my brothers, who work in factories, that pranks and jokes are a feature of the workplace everywhere. I couldn’t condemn it, not least because I was part of it. I enjoyed being one of the lads and going out for a drink from time to time. It was definitely a different atmosphere to the one we have now. Enjoyment was a large part of the training routine. If someone played badly in practice we’d make a joke of it to lift his spirits. These days, if a player is awful on the training ground it’s no laughing matter. He’d probably be dropped.

      David James, or Jame-o, our goalkeeper at the time, is a great lad and always one for the banter. When I first arrived in the Liverpool dressing room he wasn’t the first to put his arm round me or go out of his way to make me feel comfortable. For that reason I often felt a bit nervous in his company. He was so lively, and he would take the mick out of anyone, no matter how important they were. If he had it in for you, you’d be on the wrong end of his chat for quite a while. When you develop, you can give it back, but at that stage he was a bit too big and clever for me to be taking on. I didn’t have much to do with him in those days, but he lives quite near me now and we often speak on the phone. We’re good friends. But I admit I was very wary of him at first. He wasn’t nasty, but he could take the mick out of you in front of the other players. I tried to avoid him doing that to me.

      The main difference between English and foreign players is the sense of humour. If you get up to a prank with someone’s toothbrush in the team hotel, a lot of foreign players just won’t find that funny. But I’m laughing even as I say this. In my early days Steve Harkness was the biggest prankster. Didi Hamann has an Englishman’s sense of humour, but apart from him I’ve yet to meet one overseas player who laughs at the things we do. In training, if you make a silly mistake the English lads will laugh their heads off, whereas the foreign lads are much more serious in their approach. They are all good guys so I’m not trying to label them in any way. I’m just trying to highlight the difference between the two cultures. I can remember Robbie Fowler getting thrown into a puddle and covered in mud at countless training sessions. They were just harmless, laddish things. I’m not saying it was better or worse, just different. The trick, I think, is to strike a balance. It’s scientifically proven that alcohol is not good for you too close to a game. But then, our occasional nights out helped us to develop such a strong team spirit. We would have died for one another.

      According to Liverpool tradition, training wasn’t practice for the game on Saturday. We had a different mindset. The warm-up would last five minutes; now it’s half an hour. Five-a-side used to be the centrepiece. Only on Fridays did we prepare for corners and other set-pieces. Otherwise five-a-side was the religion.

      I didn’t know it then, but Liverpool were coming to the end of this boot-room era, in which the manager’s job would be passed along the line by men who had been around the club for years and understood Liverpool’s unique culture. If anyone was to point the finger and say, ‘You partied too much, you did this or that wrong,’ it was certainly outweighed by the team spirit we built up. From every negative you can draw a positive. If you do everything by the book – train every minute, eat only the healthiest food, sleep for 10 hours a night – it might be great for your physical preparation, but if your mind goes stale and you’re not enjoying your life then it can become counter-productive. If a get-together on a Tuesday night before a Saturday game brings players closer together, you won’t find me always condemning that as wrong.

      I’m not a big drinker myself, and on a Thursday or a Friday alcohol ought to be out of bounds. But it’s too simplistic to condemn all socializing as irresponsible or unprofessional. In part, I remember those early days for the amount of time I spent laughing and enjoying myself. We looked forward to training because the camaraderie was so good. Also, people forget how good some of the Liverpool performances were during those years. I can remember going to watch the first team between the ages of 14 and 17 and being entertained every week. We were winning games 4–3 and playing fantastic stuff.

      Temptation is a fact of any young Premiership player’s early career. Suddenly there is money and a thriving social life on offer. But I think of my elders during my first two seasons at Anfield as really good men. A myth has grown up that some of them were rebels who didn’t care about the job. It really wasn’t like that. I was 17 years and 144 days old when I made my first appearance – Liverpool’s youngest debutant – and the senior players could see I was a decent player who needed looking after. If anything, they protected me. If we had a night out, there was no peer pressure to get drunk or behave stupidly. If you wanted to drink Coca-Cola all night then that was fine. They wanted me to do well and they looked out for me. They didn’t try to lead me astray. Quite the opposite, in fact.

      I did, however, have to grow up fast. I was mixing with 25- and 30-year-olds who were a lot more worldly than me. That forced me to be more mature than I otherwise might have been. I learned the rights from the wrongs very quickly.

      Robbie Fowler was the top man. When I joined the club properly he was the one I looked up to. Even though Ian Rush was still

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