me special pleasure when I was with Liverpool and we beat Arsenal, when Wrighty was in the side. We beat them at Highbury and at Anfield. Of course, when I saw him socially he was always dripping with sentimentality. ‘I’ve got so much love for you, baby,’ he says. All that kind of false shit. I always knew with him. I always remembered what he said that day in Gijon. When I was nothing, he tried to push me further down. When I was someone, he wanted to be my friend.
So when I scored a decisive goal for Liverpool at Highbury in my second season on Merseyside, it was nice to look over at him and know that I had made it in my own right, despite what he had said. I’ve got no problem with him, really. I never really wanted to prove him wrong because I’d always rather prove myself right. Maybe it was just the way he said he didn’t think I’d make it. The spite of it. I don’t know, but it stuck with me long enough to make a bit of a difference. It’s people in the football industry who can wind you up the most, not the press.
Wrighty had gone to Arsenal at the start of my second season at Palace. I already knew I wasn’t going to get bumped up to the first team in his place. Coppell signed Marco Gabbiadini from Sunderland in October 1991 for £1.8 million. He was on big money and I remember being in the canteen with him and listening to him reading out his Mastercard statement and telling everyone how much he’d just spent at Harvey Nichols. That went down like a lead balloon, as you can imagine.
Gabbiadini didn’t do well at Palace. In fact, he had a fucking disaster. The crowd didn’t like him. He wasn’t Ian Wright. Wasn’t like Ian Wright in any way. They played him and played him and played him. And it affected Brighty badly as well. I thought I must get a chance. But then Coppell bought Chris Armstrong from Wrexham. And he did well. And when he was injured, the gaffer stuck Chris Coleman in rather than me, even though Cookie was a centre half. He tried Jamie Moralee but he never gave me a run of games. I had 20 appearances for Palace and only four of them were starts. The rest, I was coming off the bench.
I broke into the first team in January 1991 against QPR at Selhurst Park. I was playing as a winger because that’s how Alan Smith, the reserve-team manager, who went on to be the first-team boss later, saw me producing my best football. My first goal was against QPR in the league at the beginning of the next season. I ended my first season by playing 30 minutes at Anfield in the same match that Gareth Southgate made his league debut.
Gareth had been there since he was an apprentice but we were both the same age, both trying to make our way in the game. I know he comes across as a sweet-tempered, affable, wonderful middle-class guy but I never really felt comfortable with him. He was very adept at saying one thing to one person and another to somebody else. Alan Smith sucked up to him, and he had a good ally in Andy Woodman who was a chirpy chappie that everyone liked.
Gareth and I were just like oil and water. I never felt he was sincere. He can sit in front of a camera and he comes across as a nice bloke. That is not the impression I had of him. I played with him for two seasons at Palace and two at Villa. That is just the vibe I got from him. Smile in your face and then once you have left the room he would be saying ‘what a fucking prick’ behind your back. I knew he worked his bollocks off with the limited ability he had and he saw me coasting through training sessions and he resented it.
There was definitely something festering there about me in his mind. When he was playing for Villa and I was in the Liverpool side, we met in the 1996 FA Cup semi-final. He tried to do me and I tried to do him. All through the game. I told him I was going to break his fucking jaw. I swept the ball past him at one point and he just went for me with one of those tackles that made it obvious he had no intention of getting the ball. He was just going for me. And I was glad. I was glad all that seething enmity we felt for each other was out in the open at last. I just wanted to get it on. It was the best place to do it.
Even though Gareth and I never got our dislike for each other out into the open at Palace, I did have a few proper rucks with people while I was there. It wasn’t the sort of club where people hid their light under a bushel. It was in your face. It was put up or shut up. Most of the players and the coaches there didn’t take any shit from anybody. Most of them had worked bloody hard to get to this level from the lower leagues and they weren’t about to let anyone push them aside without a fight.
Someone like Geoff Thomas, though, was an accident waiting to happen. The better he did, the cockier he got, and when I was at Palace he was being picked for the England squad. So he was at the high end of his cockiness. I helped by serving myself up on a plate. The club went on an end-of-season trip to Gibraltar. I was just a kid and I’d bought an England shell suit to take on the trip. I got on the plane wearing it.
As soon as they saw me, Geoff and Wrighty started laughing at me. They were pretending to wince at the sight of the shell suit. Geoff said: ‘Fucking hell, we’ve got a real one of those.’ I felt really embarrassed. I was just proud to be English but in their mind you only wore an England tracksuit if you played for England. That stayed with me, too. One day at training, Geoff was moaning about something so I got up and chinned him. Same with Brighty. There were always loads of rumours about his sexuality, so one day we had an argument about something on the training pitch and I called him a faggot. He came over and clocked me.
And then there was Wally Downes, nicknamed ‘Wals’, one of the founder members of the Crazy Gang at Wimbledon, who had been brought in as the reserve-team coach under Alan Smith. If he could pick on you, he would. He got to me after a game at Swindon. I’d played a back pass from the halfway line right into the path of their centre forward who had taken it round our goalkeeper and scored. Wals had a bit of a go at me in the dressing room afterwards. I thought he went over the top so I got up and smacked him.
There was never any question about disciplinary action being taken about any of these incidents. The culture was different then. Physical retribution was seen as part of normal interaction. After I chinned Wals he said he was actually glad that I had reared up and smacked him. He had been worried I was too quiet. Because my middle name was Victor, for some reason he would call me Verne. He’d always be saying ‘all right Verne’ in this really mocking manner. But he knew a player. The ones that weren’t talented, he didn’t give a fuck about.
Alan Smith was all right, I suppose. He was always very dapper. Immaculately dressed. All-year-round tan. He would come in at half-time of a reserve-team game and say, ‘You lot are a fucking disgrace. See my fucking Rolex. See my fucking Jag outside. See my fucking Savile Row suit. Do you think my Jag drove itself into the car park here on its own? No, I had to fucking work for it.’ He had his favourites, mainly Gareth and Jamie Moralee.
But the best coach at Palace and probably the best coach I ever worked with in terms of technical input and knowledge was Steve Harrison. He was beginning his rehabilitation. He had been sacked by the FA when he was a coach under Graham Taylor for sitting on a banister and shitting into a cup ten feet below. It was his party piece, but on one particular occasion it had been witnessed by the wife of an FA committee member. She was not quite as impressed with the trick as most footballers appeared to be, and that was the end of Harry’s England experience.
He was a funny guy. His dad had been a comedian, a vaudeville act in Blackpool, and Harry was never short of a routine or two. At Mitcham there was always a lot of surface water on the pitches, and for no reason and fully clothed he would just run and throw himself headlong into these puddles. Another time, we were on our way to a reserve-team game at Crawley Town. He pulled up at some traffic lights. The lights were on red and he just got out and walked off. He came back about ten minutes later, got back in and drove off as if nothing had happened.
I linked up with him again at Villa but the relationship didn’t feel quite the same there. Nothing to do with Harry, really, just that he was part of the John Gregory regime that soon became anathema to me and which seemed hell-bent on destroying me. But I didn’t blame Harry for that. The last time I saw him, I walked into my mate’s porno shop in Birmingham and he was standing there lost in the pages of Escort. He seemed a bit startled when he saw me. ‘All right big fella,’ he stammered. And then he scarpered.
I look back on those days at