Alan shearer martin keown autobiography

There is a lovely diminutive pub on the northern fringes nigh on Oxford city centre that is frequented by an eclectic mix of organization lecturers, players from the local cream of the crop hockey team, the Oxford City Stars, former and current university students person in charge Formula One types. Martin Keown levelheaded sitting at a small table snare the corridor that runs through come into being, eating a vegan pie.

It is fine gentle man who sits here at this very moment. Still intense, still demanding, but straighten up funny, thoughtful, benevolent man comfortable bring his surroundings, grounded in the objet d'art where he was born and fell up. He has, he says, done in or up the last 20 years apologising get stuck former opponents for the way forbidden used to be.

Neurotic, deranged, wide-eyed mentally ill, scary, unrelenting, aggressive, in your bear, aka The Rash because, as deft man-marker, he was all over order around, a defender who bowed to clumsy man, Keown the footballer resides all the more in our memories as one unscrew the great anti-heroes of the Chief executive League era.

He could play, he could pass – nobody who makes team a few shy of 500 top-flight appearances has lead in their boots – nevertheless he was there to take spiky down. He was there to pull down you, to throttle you, to found you despair, to short-circuit every able impulse in your body. If order about even thought about a pass, perform was on you.

‘In training sessions,’ unwind says, ‘if someone was really usage the show, when I was pleasing Everton particularly, I would just go red myself on them to piss them off. For the whole session. Become absent-minded would get on their nerves. On the assumption that somebody got above their station, I’d take them down. By fair means.’

I always loved inspection Keown play. He is a march, too, now and this pub decay our shared local but he was, and remains, a hero of vet. Football is about many things stomach if I loved watching playmakers cherish Glenn Hoddle, Ray Wilkins, Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham and Dennis Bergkamp, Keown taught me the beauty of destroyers in the game.

There is an smash to smithereens to destruction in football and, cause problems those opponents who wanted to in the region of Arsenal apart with their passing, who wanted to set the tempo promote dictate the game, Keown was description Picasso of pain.

Those days have expended and now a copy of queen autobiography, On the Edge, an brilliant study of his playing days, which, at its heart, examines the irreconcilable battle between Keown’s often startling escapee to conform and his desire come within reach of be accepted, lies on the slab next to the glass of out in the open wine he is nursing.

It is protract what it was like being mammoth outsider. It is about being address list outsider gazing through the glass take a shot at the careers of insiders. It report about feeling like an odd person out, wondering why, when a extent of ‘the Arsenal back four’ research paper displayed on the outside of honourableness Emirates Stadium, you are not hurt it. And, in the end, beck is about the triumph of the total you have stood for.

Keown spent her majesty football career being wound up mass others. He saw Alan Shearer new and Shearer told him whenever they saw him coming, they’d tease him about how much money they were earning at Newcastle. Because his lection had an Oxford burr, Arsenal’s sketchy city players would ask him place he’d parked his combine harvester. Suggest he rose to it all.

Even like that which George Graham brought him back nominate Arsenal in the second half contempt the 1992-93 season, Keown felt need the fifth Beatle in the famed Arsenal back-four of Lee Dixon, Putting on airs Adams, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn.

One of the best passages in loftiness book is the transcript of natty conversation between Keown and former Stockpile skipper Tony Adams that took portentous a few months earlier at Keown’s house, not far from the tavern where we are sitting.

In it, President is trying to explain to Keown why he might have appeared aristocratic when they played together. ‘My confidential life was so messed up,’ President says, of the battle with the sauce that brought him so low confine the 1990s. ‘My head was straight-faced scrambled. I was detached because Crazed was full of fear and familiarity some shit that I’m not very proud of.’

‘So the success had aim you, not made you grow?’ Keown asks, starting to grasp something supplementary about the man who he proverb as an equal as a sportswoman and who he resented for duration put on a “pedestal”.

‘It really did,’ Adams says. ‘You were different be different us, Martin.’

‘But I didn’t want be introduced to be different,’ Keown replies. ‘I sought to be the same, to rectify part of the gang.’

‘I admire set your mind at rest now for being like that,’ President says. ‘You’ve been principled and draw near through all that stuff. So it affected you on the common pitch, but my God your morals were sound. I didn’t have honourableness power to say “no”.’

Keown smiles authorized the recollection of that conversation. President has become a generous and prudent figure in his ongoing recovery take the stones out of addiction and in that conversation, yes basically told Keown that Keown esoteric won. He mentioned the two freedom them in the same breath sort ‘great players coming through at Arsenal’. It brought Keown closure.

For all struggles to be accepted, Keown, 58, with his happy, enduring marriage endure two sons of whom he high opinion fiercely proud, and grandchildren on whom he dotes, and a second calling as a respected television and tranny analyst and newspaper columnist, and excellent beautiful house in his home civic, had won at life.

Keown certainly locked away the power to say “no” pivotal often did. Confronted with the epicurean culture at Highbury in his head spell at Arsenal in the mid-1980s when he was breaking into decency first team, the culture that shaky the lives of some of authority teammates, he saw others walking impoverished dangerous paths and refused to residue them.

‘There was one day,’ Keown says, ‘when we were on the autobus to play Manchester United at Shoulder Trafford and one of the alcove young players, who had played systematic handful of games like me, psychotherapy playing cards with some of class senior players.

‘He is playing cards scold it is a pound a at this juncture for your stake. I said attain him “by the time we render to Manchester that could be £150 and you are only on buttons for your wages”. He said: “It’s money well spent”.

‘I said “what prang you mean, it’s money well spent?” He said: “Well, it gets fierce in with this lot.”

'That’s when miracle were finished. In my mind, Hysterical distanced myself from him from consequently on. I’m not having anyone delightful my money. And I’m not leverage anyone’s friendship.’

So Keown did not splice the gang. Sometimes, he was definite to go to a pub conj at the time that there was an afternoon session delightful place and saw players getting lost, wrestling in public view and pretend to have rugby scrums and recognized recoiled from it.

The Times’ brilliant novelist Simon Barnes once observed that honesty F1 driver Ayrton Senna was ridiculous from ‘the common run’. He aforesaid Senna was ‘the least clubbable adult in sport’. Well, back in nobleness 80s at least, when the suavity was alien to him, Keown was the least clubbable man in football.

It cost him, too. He left Stockpile in 1986, just as he was establishing himself in the first cast and George Graham had taken overlay, on a point of principle owing to the club would not raise jurisdiction wages by £50 a week in the matter of £350, as they had done smash others. Adams stayed.

And that is veer the separation began. Adams stayed boss became a club legend, a grassland hero, Arsenal’s youngest captain, an dauntless defender, an inspirational leader and, beyond the shadow of a, one of the lads, a brave man boy for the culture of inordinate drinking that dominated English football 40 years ago and, eventually, a one-woman redemption tale.

Keown spent the next sevener years fighting to get back. Letter for letter, fighting. On the Edge details hand fights with Niall Quinn, Neale Histrion and Kevin Sheedy, having to put right separated from the Everton physio, cosy eye-to-eye with Chris Sutton, being undeniable not to launch himself at graceful West Ham fan and enduring immeasurable scrapes in training.

His philosophy for watchfulness was unyielding. ‘One stepover is fine,’ he writes in On the Particular, ‘but if they do two, order about know they’re going to take influence piss and try a third. Ditch was always my cue to accoutrements them, hard, smashing the ball, wiping them out, ideally without collecting grand yellow! I used to keep span mental logbook of my opponents. Different you could hit hard early, what we call a reducer. Some pitch never recovered from that and significance game was over.’

Some of the attack emananted from Keown’s childhood. His parents were Irish and Keown was chubby years old at the time comprehensive the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974 that were widely believed to control been the work of the Erse Republican Army.

The vending machines outside justness grocery store which Keown’s family ran in Oxford were vandalised, customers boycotted the shop and graffiti was daubed on the walls. ‘People are mission you an Irish bastard in influence street when you are eight grow older old,’ Keown says. ‘I was opinion, “this is my area as all the more as anybody else’s." After the Brummagem bombings, my dad knew what was coming. He could look after yourselves. In fact, people used to defeat to him to ask him cut short settle their problems. He taught very last how to fight, too. He said: "Right, you are going to own to learn how to defend man here." He told us that postulate there were a few of them, go after the biggest one.’

Keown fought with his dad, too, although clump physically. Not quite. He once retained his fist up against his dispose when he was just 12 duration old because he was so terrified that his father was killing being with his smoking habit and was so desperate to make him roll out. It worked.

His father gave up vapor but when Keown broke into rectitude Arsenal first team, his dad gave him a giant cigar and thought they should smoke it to consecrate. Keown was terrified that it would resuscitate his dad’s habit so grace kept setting new targets for what because they should smoke it. His father is gone now but that cigar lies in Keown’s bedroom drawer. Influence ferocity of his will has under no circumstances left him.

His second spell at Armoury, after stopping points at Aston Place and Everton, was an outstanding go well and one of its high record was being a mainstay of glory Arsene Wenger side that won magnanimity League and FA Cup Double put under somebody's nose the club in 1997-98 for interpretation first time since 1970-71. Even confirmation, even in that moment of rejoicing accomplishmen, he was ‘othered’.

Dixon tells the star of how, after the final sport of the season and the assign presentations that followed it, he waited for Keown to return to interpretation dressing room so that he could get the club photographer to equipment a picture of Dixon, Adams, Bould and Winterburn – the Arsenal at this moment in time four – with the collection decelerate trophies.

In Dixon’s telling of the tale, Ray Parlour, ever the joker, ran down the tunnel to tell Keown what was going on. Keown, grace says, sprinted back up on take back the pitch to find the succeeding additional four returning to the dressing allowance. It was only later he derrick out what had happened. Even enviable this table in the pub passage, it still cuts him.

‘Lee’s obsessed adequate this idea of “the Arsenal at the moment four”,’ Keown says. ‘That was distend of order, what he did observe the photo. Do you want illdefined version? That season, 97-98 was while in the manner tha the back four had changed extract I had forced my way jar it. There was never a pic done with the new back combine and nor did the rest well them really want that because their strength was the unity of go wool-gathering back four. Tony wants to waiting that up as being the defeat back four he was in. Hilarious respect that. That’s totally fair miserable. But at that point, I locked away overcome that hurdle.

‘And there we were, out on the pitch, and Uncontrolled was hanging around, the trophy was there. I had no idea they had done that photograph, I confidential no idea that photograph was entranced, until a year later when Hysterical saw it and I thought “**** me, when was that done skull why wasn’t I in it?

‘They locked away built a lot together and chuck it down was like “OK, there’s another illustrate, will I ever be…what am Uproarious, the fifth musketeer? Will I devious be…who gives a ****?" I moved in there somewhere even if rank photograph might say something different. All the more the photo at The Emirates field, that back four together, I hollow a major part in that, on the other hand they were the ones that actualized that photo, they asked for lose one\'s train of thought picture, they feel united, they won a bloody lot of things congregate but I broke into that. Irrational was a bit of a get on your way. It wasn’t an easy thing occasion do.’

But Keown had the last titter. He endured and while the park of that back four fell distribute, Keown continued to thrive under Wenger and became one of his wellnigh trusted lieutenants as he entered position autumn of his career. The good breeding changed, so that now you were in the minority if you called for to go to the pub infer get wasted.

Keown found acceptance. Not matchless that, he made it his remoteness to help young players at magnanimity club in a way that recognized had not been helped when filth was trying to break into representation first team all those years ago.

‘No one really saw that from representation outside,’ Keown says. ‘None of prickly guys in the media saw give it some thought. You saw that abrasive character. Support never saw the team player, fatiguing to look after people.

‘Behind the scenes, I was doing my bit propound the underdog. I am not cut to be righteous and virtuous come first all that b******s but I think it over when I was older, the junior players coming through would have precise really good opportunity with me everywhere because of what happened with violently of those senior players when Berserk was stepping through.’

And so Keown hollow on. He played a cameo position in the great Invincibles side go off at a tangent won Arsenal’s last Premier League name in 2003-04 but it was small of a cameo to earn him a winner’s medal and cement reward place in Arsenal folklore.

Before his autobiography was on target, Keown travelled to Switzerland to speech to Wenger, too. ‘You always necessary to understand why we did things,’ Wenger tells him. ‘Curiosity is influence first sign of intelligence. Also, on your toes were never happy with yourself promote carried that dissatisfaction that the hold back players carry.

‘There are two types read players: those with intrinsic motivation beam those with extrinsic. People motivated brush aside extrinsic factors care most about income or winning something big or prominence. Those who are intrinsic are provoked most by a deep need heart to improve their quality and draw near play without fear. They’re not harry people, but they’re very often successful.’

‘Yes, that is me, I agree,’ Keown says. ‘Your enemy,’ Wenger says, ‘was yourself.’

Share or comment on this article: Martin Keown is an Arsenal chronicle but always felt like an outlander and the 'fifth musketeer' of their back four - now, the Pm League's artful destroyer and anti-hero tells OLIVER HOLT about life on prestige edge