Game Changers: Inside English Football: From the Boardroom to the Bootroom. Alan Curbishley

features. Years ago as a player at West Ham if I’d wanted to coast through a training session I could probably have got away with it. That couldn’t happen now. When I went to Leeds the challenges there were a bit harder and the targets different, and then when I moved to Manchester United they were even harder – and so were the demands.

      ‘When I started at West Ham and got into the squad it was a case of “all-dayers” on a Tuesday, all out on a Saturday night and sometimes “all-dayers” on a Sunday as well. Because they’re all at it you could get away with things if you wanted. You could think, “I feel tired today,” but then there were ten others feeling the same!

      ‘If you did that sort of thing at Manchester United you were one on your own and you stood out like a sore thumb. You wouldn’t be playing for a month and pretty soon you’d be on the scrapheap, or off somewhere else to a lower-league team. So the change in dynamics was huge.

      ‘Partying and socialising were a big part of my life at West Ham when I was a kid, even when I got into the first team, but when I was at Man United that all changed. If anyone had seen my day-to-day existence when I was at Old Trafford they would have thought it was really boring. I’d finish training in the mornings, go home, go to sleep for an hour or two, wake up, get the kids from school, then go back and sit in the house watching TV or whatever. People think you’re always out – that you’d go to the opening of an envelope or you’re at a party. They think you have an extravagant lifestyle, but believe me, if I had done those things I wouldn’t have been at Man United for long.

      ‘I know a player who was the first in my year group to break into the first team. He had terrific ability, but his lifestyle probably didn’t change from when he was sixteen years old to the day he retired. He was always out drinking, and that never left him. He had the talent, but other players who weren’t as good as him went on to have better careers.

      ‘The environment you’re in can play a part. At Leeds there was a drinking culture when I was there. We had lots of young lads in the team and the city was based around Leeds United Football Club. We were the form team and it was an exciting time to be there. I was in that drinking culture, but I was still being more professional than I’d been at West Ham. I was maybe only going out twice a week instead of four times. My performances were going well – and at that age you can get away with it – but when I went to Manchester United it was a much more mature squad. I remember looking at people there and thinking, “I’d better start doing what they’re doing.” The number of games we were involved in demanded that you had to do things right. We were playing top games three times a week sometimes, so you just had to knock all the socialising on the head or you weren’t going to be able to perform and compete at that level.

      ‘If you look at a typical week when you’re involved in the Champions League, there’s no way you could perform if you didn’t do things right. You might be at Newcastle on the Saturday, so you’d have to travel up there on the Friday. After the game you’d travel home and then be in at the training ground on the Sunday for a warm-down. Monday would be a normal training session and then on the Tuesday, let’s say, you’d fly off for a match in Turin. You’d play the game on the Wednesday, and if you were playing away again on the following Saturday you might stay an extra night in Turin and come back on the Thursday. Then on the Friday it would be travelling to wherever you were going to be playing on the Saturday, so there’d be another overnight stay in a hotel before the match the next day. When you play for a top club there’s no time for messing around.

      ‘Mentally and physically you have to get yourself in tune for a match. The great thing about it is that there’s such a quick turnaround of games, so if you’re down emotionally it doesn’t last long. The thing at United was that you didn’t lose two on the bounce. That was what we always said. So if you lost once you had to get back up and make sure you didn’t lose another one. I always liked playing games and it makes the season go quicker.

      ‘It took me years, probably until I was twenty-six or twenty-seven, for me to really understand what I was doing, how I needed to get myself up for games. I used to visualise things before matches, visualise what I wanted to do and then play the game. I also tried to make sure I didn’t beat myself up if we were losing – and I never got too high when we were winning. I think that was the thing about Manchester United, that’s why we were able to maintain that level of consistency for all those years.

      ‘One of the other things we did was never celebrate too hard when we won. When we lost – things like European Cup Finals or FA Cup Finals – they were probably the best nights we had drink-wise. The attitude was, “Let’s just forget that, the match is gone.” When we won things it was all about saying, “Right, next year we’ll be back again and we’ve got to win it again.”