by Simon Hughes
Evans never tried to be friends with the players, according to Redknapp. Yet he did not instil discipline either. Again, this was the Liverpool way. Evans had been at the club since the late fifties in a variety of capacities. It had been standard practice for the senior playing staff to govern the squad day-to-day, with management interfering only when it was really necessary.
‘There were one or two things Roy could have nipped in the bud sooner – things the players couldn’t deal with,’ Redknapp continues. ‘Like when Stan [Collymore] went back to Cannock every day and started missing training sessions. The boys felt like he wasn’t pulling his weight and he’d stopped making an effort with people, becoming distant. If Roy had stopped me going down to London every now and then, I would have done exactly as he said, no problem at all. We needed the iron fist a little bit more.’
Collymore had arrived at Liverpool in the summer of 1995 after Evans asked Redknapp about the striker’s ability and character.
‘We’d played against each other a few times and he was a right handful. Stan had the lot: pace, power and a ruthless finishing ability. In terms of talent, signing him was a no-brainer. I’d met him on a few nights out too and he seemed all right. I’d spoken to the Forest lads and they said he’d been as good as gold. So I said to Roy that he’d be fine with us. With hindsight, he was a bit difficult. I wouldn’t have liked to manage Stan.’
There were other personalities. Evans had the courage to change Liverpool’s formation from a standard 4–4–2, as it had been for thirty years, to 3–5–2. He signed Jason McAteer and converted him from a central-midfielder to a right wing-back. He also brought in John Scales and Phil Babb to play in defence. Babb became the most expensive centre-half in British football by signing for £3.6 million from Coventry City following a World Cup where he’d managed to shackle one of the tournament’s best players in Roberto Baggio during Ireland’s opening game.
‘Babbsy was the boy about town. He knew everybody. He treated everybody as his friend and no one differently. He could be hanging about with Robbie Williams or the kit man. It did not matter. Babbsy had a lovely left foot and struck the ball really well. I always knew as a midfielder that if he was fizzing the ball into me, it was going to be a good one and it would allow me to get things moving quickly. Unfortunately for Babbsy, he’s probably remembered more for crashing into the post when we drew with Chelsea at Anfield, nearly cutting his ball-sack off. I still wince when I see that.
‘Scalesy was different. He was quieter than Babbsy. Some of the lads called him James Bond, because he was well spoken and knew how to conduct an intelligent conversation. There was a bit of mystery about him, because on nights out he’d just disappear.
‘I think Jason wanted to be super famous but because he played right-back nobody was that bothered. Unlike some, I thought he was a sharp lad.’
In the autobiographies of a number of Liverpool players it is claimed that Redknapp, Babb, Scales and McAteer became regulars on the London club scene between 1995 and 1997. With Evans granting Sunday as a day off when games were played on a Saturday, it was common practice for the quartet to fly to Heathrow from Manchester Airport immediately after the end of a 3 p.m. game at Anfield. They would stay at the plush Halkin Hotel in Knightsbridge, where bags would be dropped off and by 9 p.m., they’d be in Soho, taxiing between Chinawhite, the Emporium, Ten Rooms and Browns. This was a brave new world. From Conservative to Labour. From synthesizer to Britpop. Footballer to celebrity. Small time to big time. It was socially intoxicating.
‘You’d turn up at a lot of places, you didn’t have to say anything and they’d be on to you,’ Redknapp says of his experience of women on occasions in the capital, though he insists he was not out as much as the critics believe. ‘If I had my chance again, I probably wouldn’t have done it as much,’ he admits. ‘But my dad was West Ham manager and my brother lived down there, so there was more of a natural pull for me. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed a night out, and which young lad doesn’t get a buzz out of female attention when you’re single?
‘In the same places, I’d see Ryan Giggs and the United boys. In fact, Giggsy’d be out a lot more than me. My friends would tell me. I’d be tucked up in bed and Giggsy would be out. The difference is, nobody cares when you’re winning. If you’re just falling short, everybody wants to let you know about it. When you’re winning, everybody wants to buy you a pint and indulge in the glory. It says just as much about society as it does about footballers.’
Redknapp insists that Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman, Dominic Matteo and Steve Harkness only accompanied the group on ‘a couple’ of occasions. ‘Neil Ruddock was thrown in with our crowd in the press because he was a Londoner,’ Redknapp continues. ‘But Neil was a pub man. He preferred finishing a match, going home then heading to The Grapes in Formby.’
Redknapp can’t remember the first time he read about the ‘Spice Boys’, a moniker given to Liverpool’s supposed hedonistic party animals, a group of which he was allegedly a founder member.
Liverpool may be a city of storytellers, a place where taxi drivers present gossip as undisputed fact. Yet there were some undisputed facts. Rob Jones, for instance, the unheralded rightback signed from Crewe Alexandra in 1991, became friends with Robbie Williams in the months before he left pop band Take That. Williams integrated into the Liverpool squad’s social circle seamlessly and was invited on the team bus for an away game at Aston Villa in May 1995. Later that month, Williams accompanied a group led by captain John Barnes on an end-of-season booze-up in Magaluf. Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay, who had no interest in football, was also invited by Phil Babb but did not turn up at the airport. Within twelve months, Robbie Fowler was going out with Emma Bunton, better known as Baby Spice. Whiston-born Melanie Chisholm, Sporty Spice, was a Liverpool fan and regularly seen at Anfield. While Jason McAteer started a relationship with Donna Air, voted the fifth sexiest woman in the country in 1996, Redknapp dated Louise Nurding from Eternal, the four-piece R&B girl group who preceded the Spice Girls as the most popular band in the UK. It all contributed towards a general impression about the priorities of Liverpool’s players.
‘It progressed quicker than anyone could comprehend, when you consider players were having beers and fish and chips on the bus after games just a few years earlier,’ Redknapp says. ‘We were focused on what we had to do as professional football players and what happened on nights out had nothing to do with what happened when we took to the field. Look at Robbie [Fowler], for instance. There were all kinds of rumours about him [taking drugs] but they were all absolute rubbish. Robbie’s a great lad. He could be a bit of a rascal and he liked a night out, although he probably came to London only twice, because he, Macca and others like Dom and Harky preferred drinking with their own mates in Liverpool. They didn’t even like London. Robbie said on a number of occasions that he considered it too flash for him and Macca particularly. Robbie’s attitude on the training pitch and during matches was spot on. He scored more than thirty goals in three successive seasons. He wouldn’t have achieved that if the focus and drive to do well hadn’t been there.’
Redknapp concedes his relationship with Louise did him no favours with the media.
‘I met a pop star. Then I married a pop star. And we’re still together all these years later. I didn’t like her because she was a pop star. I liked her because she’s a lovely person. It goes without saying that I liked the look of her. It’s very simple: we fell in love and now we have two kids. Yet it added to the whole Spice Boys narrative. People thought image meant more to me and the other lads than football. That was rubbish. The only people I speak for are myself, Robbie and Macca, because they’re the ones I was closest to and the ones I still see now. Football meant everything to me. I never did anything that would stop me training well, never mind playing well.’
When Redknapp did interviews back then, the line of questioning became predictable and his answers were almost spat out.
‘It used to frustrate the life o
ut of me,’ Redknapp says. ‘I wanted to talk about football. Most of the journalists wanted to talk about the Spice Boys. I became resentful. Maybe that wasn’t the right way to deal with things. Rather than laugh about it, I got angry. I remember doing interviews and being really prickly. It might have given the wrong impression: that I was too defensive about it. If the papers knew it wound us up, maybe they went for it even more.’
On the pitch, Liverpool faltered at crucial times. In three successive seasons, there were mystifying results just when it seemed Liverpool might progress in a cup or win the league.
‘We’d play some great stuff one week and be awful the next,’ Redknapp admits. ‘I can understand why people might figure that we’d dine out on a victory by going out partying, therefore losing our focus. But it was as frustrating for us as it was for them. We didn’t have that figure on the pitch who’d guide us through games when things got really tight.’
Solid leadership was absent in the build-up to the FA Cup final of 1996. From the team’s Sopwell House Hotel base in St Albans, Liverpool made their way to Wembley in a bus sponsored by Soho’s Emporium nightclub, a venue that had been hired by the players for a party after the final was over – win or lose. Draw, and the event would have been cancelled due to the impending replay. It was another occasion where Liverpool were not necessarily unprofessional – just not professional enough. There was also the issue of the white suits.
‘If I’d been twenty-nine or thirty in that situation, there’s no way we’d have worn those suits,’ Redknapp says. ‘I think Rushy was the captain – it was his last game. If I was Rushy, I would have said, “Lads, I don’t care what we do but we’re not wearing them.” The manager should have done something too.
‘Jamo [David James] got the blame because he was an Armani model and knew the people there. I got a bit of the blame because I was dating a pop star. Everybody took a fair bit of stick. But the truth was, I was twenty-two years old and still learning my way in the game. It should have been the top people sorting it out.
‘When I work with Graeme [Souness] on Sky, he always talks about senior players. In our team, they should have said, “Listen, no fucking way.” We had two club suits anyway, one black and the other navy. Why not go to Wembley in them?
‘As it turned out, it was a shit final. United were shit. But we were shit too. It was a terrible game. The football was poor. Maybe the pressure got to everyone. Gary Neville [United’s right-back who is also now employed by Sky] said years later that Alex Ferguson didn’t need to do a team talk after he saw our suits. He claimed that Fergie told them to target crosses into the box because Jamo would be too busy focusing on waving to the Armani people in the stands. Fuck off. That’s rubbish. You were shit, we were shit, you nicked it. If Jamo catches that corner, Cantona doesn’t volley it in. It wasn’t as if we were diabolical. It should have gone to a replay.’
Instead, by around midnight, the Emporium was a who’s who of celebrities, all of them there to celebrate with the losers. Not for the first time, Liverpool’s players were partying with nothing to party about.
Redknapp believes the result of the final was more significant, as it had far-reaching consequences for the rest of the decade.
‘Had we won the FA Cup that year, I honestly think we’d have gone on and dominated for a long time, like Man United did. It was a pivotal couple of weeks because it was the first time the Nevilles, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes experienced success with the first team. They got the taste for it and carried on. It gave them the confidence to grow.
‘We had the potential to be a really great side too, but we never experienced that taste. We beat Bolton in the League Cup final a year earlier but we were expected to win that one. We needed that experience of beating one of our rivals to a trophy. But it never happened. It’s a frustration of mine, even talking about it now. It makes me angry. We were close.’
Within a month, Redknapp had broken his ankle playing for England at Wembley against Scotland during Euro 96. He’d been introduced as a half-time substitute by Terry Venables with the game scoreless and was pivotal in securing a 2–0 victory before falling in a heap.
‘That summer I went away with my mates to Ayia Napa. The right thing to do would have been to head straight to Melwood to start rehab. But nobody at the club suggested that to me. I was twenty-two years old and didn’t have all the answers. If I was a manager and I knew a player had an injury like mine, I would have been straight on the phone telling him to come in.’
It was the beginning of an eighteen-month period where it seemed that Redknapp appeared in women’s magazines more often than in Liverpool’s first team. It took him until January 1997 to break up the John Barnes–Michael Thomas midfield axis and regain his place. He was then injured on England duty again during a friendly with South Africa.
‘The thing some fans never understand is that it takes a while for a player to regain his sharpness after an injury. They presume that as soon as you pull on a red shirt, that’s it, you’re fit. I had spells with the fans where I wasn’t the most popular. Ronnie Whelan had similar periods even in the eighties when the team was successful. I’d talk it through with my dad. It felt like I’d give one ball away and they’d be straight on to me. Other players would give three or four away and nothing would be said. These times seemed to coincide when I’d just returned from injury and I wasn’t as confident with my body as I should have been. It affects everything: your movement, judgement. My dad gave the best advice. He told me that as long as I made tackles and chased the opposition, putting them under pressure, the Liverpool crowd would respond positively. And he was right. The Liverpool crowd were educated football people. They weren’t doing it to be nasty. I had to realize I was playing probably the most important position on the pitch. I had to do more to impress people. I remember scoring one against Birmingham, sticking it in the top corner. I ran over to the crowd screaming. They realized it was frustration on my part. The next week, they really backed me.
‘Then there are other times when it’s going badly. You’re a goal down and you’re giving the ball away. The crowd are on you. Individuals in their seats wait for a moment when it’s quiet inside Anfield to give you a bit of stick. Each match is like a life in ninety minutes because it encapsulates all the extreme emotions you feel as a human being: the happiness, the sadness, the frustration, feeling fortunate. It’s a pressure cooker. You have to be tough to survive.
‘Then there were times at Liverpool when life felt so, so good. There were games when everything went right. You had forty-five thousand people roaring your name or celebrating a goal. When the ball hits the back of the net, you don’t hear a sound. It’s like a silent explosion. When you spray a pass thirty yards and it meets the target and everyone applauds, you feel a million dollars.’
Another nugget of advice Redknapp received from his father was to speak to the manager as soon as possible if he was ever left out.
‘Roy Evans will tell you I carried that with me throughout my career, because he wasn’t afraid to drop me. On a Sunday or Monday, I’d be straight into his office. My dad’s thinking behind that was from his own experience. If he had a player banging down his door every time, he’d think twice about doing it in the future. It wasn’t always easy with Graeme Souness, because I was scared stiff of him.’
When he regained full fitness and had persuaded Evans his name should be on the teamsheet, Redknapp became a scapegoat for some poor performances. The Anfield crowd, fed up of watching players like Roy Keane and Nicky Butt power Manchester United towards trophies, decided it wanted midfielders with the aggression of a Graeme Souness, Jimmy Case or Steve McMahon, midfielders who could pass but also win possession back quickly.
‘I was sensible enough to realize I wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea,’ Redknapp admits. ‘I used to think that the way I looked was my biggest problem, because I had long hair. It was easier to have a dig at me because I looked like I didn’t fancy the ro
ugh stuff. But that wasn’t true. There are different types of bravery – being able to put your foot on the ball when everyone inside the stadium is telling you to move it quicker is brave.’
Nevertheless, Roy Evans must have agreed that Liverpool needed brawn as well as brains and soon enough Paul Ince had become a part of the midfield, arriving for £4.5 million from Inter Milan. Despite more rumours, these linking Redknapp with a move away from Anfield, he never came close to leaving.
‘Roma made a bid for me when I was twenty-one. Their captain Giuseppe Giannini had retired and they were looking for someone to play as their number 10 in midfield. My agent felt I should go but I didn’t want to. The club rejected the offer and I always felt wanted at Liverpool. In terms of contracts, if you were doing well the club would always look after you. There was no messing around or haggling. I realized that when I went to Tottenham, because there they would haggle all evening even if it meant pissing off the player.’
Redknapp became Liverpool’s captain in 1999 under Gérard Houllier after it was decided that Ince should be sold. Ince had an annoying habit of doing little for eighty minutes before trying really hard in the final ten, prompting fans to leave the stadium all saying a similar thing, ‘At least Incey put a shift in.’ Houllier was on to him straight away and sold him to Middlesbrough.
‘When I see the TV and it describes me as a former Liverpool captain, I still can’t believe it,’ Redknapp says. After scoring against Derby County, Redknapp sustained the knee injury that he says finished him as a Liverpool player. ‘I could hear clicking. I knew I had a big problem. That’s what upsets me most. I never had the opportunity to lead the team from a position of strength, where my body allowed my mind to take a proper leadership role on the pitch. I could see Steven Gerrard developing into a worldclass player. The club were also trying to sign Didi Hamann. I wanted to be a part of that midfield. The way I played, it would have been perfect.’
