When you’re competing for a league title it’s like walking around with a constant, irritating companion.
Wherever you go, whatever you do, it’s right there with you, chirping away. You go to bed and it infiltrates your brain. You toss and turn because sleep doesn’t come. It’s the first thing you hear when you finally wake up. There’s no hiding place from that piercing, nagging voice forever reminding you exactly what’s at stake.
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In the next few weeks, Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City players will tell us that all they’re doing is focusing on their own games, just concentrating on themselves. They’ll tell us they have absolutely no interest in what the other teams are doing. Let me tell you something: it’s bulls***. I said it myself when Blackburn Rovers were trading punches with Manchester United all those years ago and I didn’t mean a word of it. It was a defence mechanism.
You say the same when you go head-to-head with your big competitors, like City and Arsenal are doing this Sunday. Big clubs routinely employ sports psychologists to promote the idea of approaching every fixture in exactly the same way no matter the venue or opponent — which is a nice idea, but there’s no denying those games take on heightened significance. Adrenaline courses through you. Everything is magnified.
As for Liverpool, they’ll be watching on when their home game against Brighton & Hove Albion finishes, keeping everything crossed for a draw.
As a footballer, I prided myself on being able to block out the world. The pitch was my zone and I zeroed in on it. I was tasked with banging in goals and nothing and nobody would stand in my way. I rarely, if ever, doubted myself because that doubt had no fertile ground to grow on. Even in rough patches, I knew that if I kept doing my job, kept repeating what I’d honed on the training ground, fortune would turn.
Off the pitch, I wasn’t too dissimilar. I’ve never been a worrier or an over-thinker; it’s just the way I’m constructed. As a professional athlete, that even keel always helped me and it was something I played up to in public. I gave little away in interviews, I was Mr Chicken and Beans (my regular pre-match meal), who supposedly celebrated Blackburn’s Premier League title in 1995 by creosoting my garden fence (I didn’t; I plied my father-in-law with drink while he did it).
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Yet I would be lying if I claimed I was never afflicted. As that season inched towards May, we were all jittery. The season before, we’d been neck-and-neck with Manchester United in early April, when we beat them 2-0 at Ewood Park. It was an important moment for us. It was around that time everybody started thinking, “This Blackburn side is not going away, they’re going to keep going until they actually win it.” We were thinking it, too.
We could and maybe should have done it that season, but eventually Manchester United stretched away. So there was a balance; our big victory was a big boost and we started again the following August with no hangover and full of confidence, unbeaten in our opening seven league games, winning five times and scoring 16 goals.
Come the following spring we were still aware of our own inexperience, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s fine, ferocious team knew exactly what it took. Eventually, Blackburn fought and clawed our way to the title, but Jesus, we hardly sprinted across the line. We stumbled over it.
This is why my instinct is to make Manchester City favourites to win it now, even though they’re third in the table, a point behind the other two. They’re more familiar with this position. No side has ever won four consecutive Premier League titles but the track record they have is precious. If you’ve done it before, you understand defeat isn’t a disaster; you trust yourself and each other and draw upon your knowledge. If you’re new to it or less versed in it, hesitation can fester.
People say the first trophy is the hardest and there’s truth to that, although at this juncture I’m duty-bound to point out that Blackburn’s first was also our last. We got to the pinnacle and walked off the edge. Kenny Dalglish became director of football, we had a disaster in the Champions League and just couldn’t rediscover that alchemy. There was a huge exhalation of breath and we couldn’t go again.
A year later, I joined Newcastle United, my boyhood club, who had just endured their own disappointment in the Premier League. Having led Fergie’s team by 12 points in mid-January 1996, Newcastle’s failure was spectacular, but what’s rarely talked about is just how relentless Manchester United were in the second half of that season. They won 19 of their last 21 games in all competitions, an astonishing record. They backed themselves to chase anybody down.
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At Newcastle then, just as it is again, the big idea was winning something and it was always beyond us. Doing it once helps soothe the hiccups that invariably come. It won’t be perfection for City, Liverpool and Arsenal over the next two months because life is rarely like that. It’s about learning to live with those hiccups — it’s not the end of the world, so you move on. At Blackburn, every setback would be fuel for that little voice: “Oh my god, we’ve f***ed it, we’ve messed up, game over.”
I told anyone who would listen I couldn’t care less what Manchester United did. I told them I avoided their matches like the plague because what good could come from squirming through those peaks and troughs of emotion? I told them if you couldn’t control it, why put yourself through it? In reality, it was the opposite. I watched every game, hoping and praying they got beaten. Hoping and praying we’d get a favour or two.
In any case, I couldn’t avoid it even if I wanted to. As players, we talked about other matches in the dressing room, but usually in passing and usually with a sense of reserve, almost as if it was a weakness to even acknowledge the existence of Manchester United. Looking back, that feels strange, but perhaps the psychology was not wanting to show you were talking or thinking about the other team. We just had to take care of ourselves.
We might have fooled each other, but away from the training ground, it was a different story. The newspapers were full of stories and reports. Fans reminded you of what you were playing for whenever you bumped into them. It was all over the television. It’s much, much worse now because there’s more radio, more TV channels, while the filter-free mania of social media is only an app on your phone away. It’s impossible to completely switch off.
Having three teams going for it rather than two will amplify the noise and crank up the pressure. It’s great for neutrals, but if you’re part of it, the negative little voice will be reminding you that every time you stumble a pair of rivals are waiting to pounce. So much of elite sport has to do with the mind, which is why Sir Alex knew exactly what he was doing when he jabbed at us and pushed our buttons in his press conferences.
In those circumstances, it helped having Kenny as our manager at Blackburn. He had seen it and done it at Liverpool and had dealt with Fergie’s mind-games. His deadpan demeanour helped drain pressure away from us. When Fergie said we’d have to do a Devon Loch to lose the title, a reference to a horse that led the Grand National and fell on the final straight, Kenny replied, “Isn’t that an expanse of water in Scotland?”
When people refer to Blackburn’s story it’s usually in the context of Jack Walker’s money, but we were also the underdogs. We were much the smaller club. For my first 12 months there, I was taking my own kit home to wash every night and we didn’t have a training ground. That mentality, us against the world, it definitely helped. So, too, did the type of players Kenny recruited. There were no massive egos and everybody was treated equally.
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Kenny kept ramming home simple messages, about how good we were, how we had already proved it, to keep doing the things we were doing. There was never criticism of us in public — and in private, it was always with a purpose. Towards the end of the season, we went through a tricky spell when we picked up four points from four games, Sir Alex piped up again, and Kenny called us together for a team talk. He reminded us it was still in our hands. It calmed us all down.
We needed it. By that stage, my little voice was more like a blaring scream. Notwithstanding my ability to block things out, I was having trouble sleeping. After games, my brain wouldn’t stop whirring, replaying everything I’d done or could have done. I would catch myself doing rudimentary maths, working out all the possible outcomes and permutations. Burning up all that emotional energy was exhausting.
Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester City will be feeling the same — if not now, then soon, as the matches tick by. The game might have changed a lot since my day, but I don’t think that part of it has. It’s going to be fascinating to see how it plays out, how each team responds to the spikes and dips that lie ahead, how momentum shifts.
Each of them have their own motivations and contexts. Arsenal haven’t claimed a league title for 20 years, but vied for it last season; does that help or hinder them now? Arguably, they have the toughest fixtures. Liverpool have won it once under Jurgen Klopp, in a season extended and affected by Covid-19, and are desperate to add another before the manager leaves. Does that propel them or smother them? In my view, City will be the most relaxed, but that can change.
When that little voice starts chirping, there’s only one way to shut it up.
(Header design: Eamonn Dalton, photos: Getty Images)