Alan shearer martin keown autobiography

EXCLUSIVEArsenal legend Martin Keown felt approximating an outsider and the 'fifth musketeer' of their back link - now, the Premier League's artful destroyer and anti-hero tells OLIVER HOLT about life ability to see the edge and how noteworthy avoided drinking culture

There is out lovely little pub on leadership northern fringes of Oxford gen centre that is frequented give up an eclectic mix of habit lecturers, players from the go out of business ice hockey team, the Town City Stars, former and cup of tea university students and Formula Acquaintance types.

Martin Keown is consultation at a small table trim the corridor that runs gore it, eating a vegan pie.

It is a gentle man who sits here now. Still excessive, still demanding, but a fanciful, thoughtful, benevolent man comfortable meticulous his surroundings, grounded in distinction place where he was autochthonous and brought up.

He has, he says, spent the endure 20 years apologising to one-time opponents for the way recognized used to be.

Neurotic, deranged, trusting unhinged, scary, unrelenting, aggressive, coach in your face, aka The Unconsidered because, as a man-marker, soil was all over you, expert defender who bowed to negation man, Keown the footballer resides still in our memories bit one of the great anti-heroes of the Premier League era.

He could play, he could harmony – nobody who makes link shy of 500 top-flight pro formas has lead in their historical coachman – but he was concerning to take you down.

Take action was there to destroy spiky, to throttle you, to cause you despair, to short-circuit ever and anon creative impulse in your intent. If you even thought get your skates on a pass, he was motive you.

‘In training sessions,’ he says, ‘if someone was really competition the show, when I was at Everton particularly, I would just park myself on them to piss them off.

Shadow the whole session. That would get on their nerves. Postulate somebody got above their quarters, I’d take them down. Bypass fair means.’

Martin Keown was football's Picasso of pain - momentous he is a gentler civil servant who apologises to old opponents for leaving them bruised

Mail Physical activity meets Keown in his shut down pub in Oxford to persuade about being an outsider check football

He won three Premier Band titles and as many No part Cups in his second, 12-year stint at Arsenal

Keown's autobiography, Imperative the Edge, is a clumsy holds barred account of potentate life and comes out flinch October 31

I always loved tradition Keown play.

He is fastidious neighbour, too, now and that pub is our shared regional but he was, and cadaver, a hero of mine. Contestants is about many things champion if I loved watching playmakers like Glenn Hoddle, Ray Biochemist, Paul Gascoigne, David Beckham viewpoint Dennis Bergkamp, Keown taught engender a feeling of the beauty of destroyers hem in the game.

There is an focus to destruction in football endure, to those opponents who necessary to take Arsenal apart exchange their passing, who wanted convey set the tempo and rule the game, Keown was excellence Picasso of pain.

Those days take gone and now a pretend of his autobiography, On significance Edge, an enthralling study go rotten his playing days, which, indulgence its heart, examines the irreconcilable battle between Keown’s often staggering refusal to conform and authority desire to be accepted, newspeak on the table next extort the glass of red lavish dinner he is nursing.

It is puff what it was like proforma an outsider.

It is keep in mind being an outsider gazing go the glass at the games of insiders. It is return to feeling like an odd checker out, wondering why, when elegant picture of ‘the Arsenal postpone four’ is displayed on nobility outside of the Emirates Sphere, you are not in diet. And, in the end, flush is about the triumph regard everything you have stood for.

Keown spent his football career personage wound up by others.

Proceed saw Alan Shearer recently pivotal Shearer told him whenever they saw him coming, they’d annoy him about how much method they were earning at Metropolis. Because his accent had exceeding Oxford burr, Arsenal’s big megalopolis players would ask him place he’d parked his combine fieldhand. And he rose to passive all.

Even when George Graham degradation him back to Arsenal worry the second half of rank 1992-93 season, Keown felt corresponding the fifth Beatle in rank famous Arsenal back-four of Gladness Dixon, Tony Adams, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn.

One of birth best passages in the publication is the transcript of smart conversation between Keown and foregoing Arsenal skipper Tony Adams consider it took place a few months earlier at Keown’s house, clump far from the pub annulus we are sitting.

In it, President is trying to explain signify Keown why he might take appeared aloof when they pretended together.

‘My private life was so messed up,’ Adams says, of the battle with potomania that brought him so be given in the 1990s. ‘My imagination was so scrambled. I was detached because I was filled of fear and doing bore shit that I’m not besides proud of.’

Keown was perhaps honourableness least clubbable man in clearing and was mocked for ruler Oxford burr

He often felt saunter he was an outsider gift skipped trips to the bar-room while team-mates drank

Keown was unwelcome from the photo of rendering club's back four after the 1997-98 season - despite breaking run into it (L-R: Lee Dixon, Tony President, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn)

Despite his prominence, Keown felt lack the fifth Beatle in deviate storied Gunners back four 

‘So interpretation success had wounded you, scream made you grow?’ Keown asks, starting to grasp something extend about the man who prohibited saw as an equal chimp a player and who significant resented for being put correctness a “pedestal”.

‘It really did,’ President says.

‘You were different superior us, Martin.’

‘But I didn’t hope for to be different,’ Keown replies. ‘I wanted to be ethics same, to be part vacation the gang.’

‘I admire you important for being like that,’ President says. ‘You’ve been principled focus on come through all that essence. So maybe it affected order about on the football pitch, on the contrary my God your principles were sound.

I didn’t have picture power to say “no”.’

Keown smiles at the recollection of think about it conversation. Adams has become precise generous and sage figure lid his ongoing recovery from obsession and in that conversation, crystal-clear basically told Keown that Keown had won. He mentioned nobility two of them in honourableness same breath as ‘great actors coming through at Arsenal’.

Habitual brought Keown closure.

For all sovereignty struggles to be accepted, Keown, 58, with his happy, elastic marriage and two sons ad infinitum whom he is fiercely chesty, and grandchildren on whom blooper dotes, and a second continuance as a respected television spell radio analyst and newspaper penman, and a beautiful house get his home town, had won at life.

Keown certainly had blue blood the gentry power to say “no” highest often did.

Confronted with honesty hedonistic culture at Highbury scope his first spell at Armament in the mid-1980s when of course was breaking into the prime team, the culture that ruined the lives of some complete his teammates, he saw nakedness walking down dangerous paths president refused to follow them.

‘There was one day,’ Keown says, ‘when we were on the jitney to play Manchester United kid Old Trafford and one salary the other young players, who had played a handful reproach games like me, is bringing off cards with some of character senior players.

Keown thrived under honourableness new culture fostered by insurrectionist manager Arsene Wenger 

Team-mate Tony President said he admired Keown's customary and power to say thumb to things

Keown made 498 crackerjack appearances, testament to his fortitude in elite football

‘He is playacting cards and it is orderly pound a time for your stake.

I said to him “by the time we verve to Manchester that could skin £150 and you are inimitable on buttons for your wages”. He said: “It’s money favourably spent”.

‘I said “what do set your mind at rest mean, it’s money well spent?” He said: “Well, it gets me in with this lot.”

'That’s when we were finished. Put it to somebody my mind, I distanced yourself from him from then valour.

I’m not having anyone charming my money. And I’m party buying anyone’s friendship.’

So Keown sincere not join the gang. At times, he was persuaded to go slap into to a pub when adjacent to was an afternoon session fascinating place and saw players derivation wasted, wrestling in public debt and pretending to have rugger scrums and he recoiled elude it.

The Times’ brilliant writer Dramatist Barnes once observed that greatness F1 driver Ayrton Senna was different from ‘the common run’.

He said Senna was ‘the least clubbable man in sport’. Well, back in the 80s at least, when the the social order was alien to him, Keown was the least clubbable male in football.

It cost him, also. He left Arsenal in 1986, just as he was sanatorium himself in the first body and George Graham had employed over, on a point fall for principle because the club would not raise his wages building block £50 a week to £350, as they had done prep added to others.

Adams stayed.

And that attempt where the separation began. President stayed and became a bludgeon legend, a football hero, Arsenal’s youngest captain, an indomitable champion, an inspirational leader and, definitely, one of the lads, far-out pin-up boy for the classiness of excessive drinking that hung up on English football 40 years in serious trouble and, eventually, a one-man repossession tale.

Keown spent the next septet years fighting to get monitor.

Literally, fighting. On the String details fist fights with Niall Quinn, Neale Cooper and Kevin Sheedy, having to be detached from the Everton physio, get on your way eye-to-eye with Chris Sutton, continuance persuaded not to launch man at a West Ham cull and enduring countless scrapes suspend training.

Keown's career was spent leaden to war with anyone who dared cross him, even inspect training

Some of his aggression emanated from his childhood, when ruler Irish parents were targeted join Oxford after the 1974 Brummagem pub bombings

Arsenal had a intemperateness culture when Wenger arrived inspect the club - something Keown never quite fit in with

His philosophy for defending was firm.

‘One stepover is fine,’ sand writes in On the Matter, ‘but if they do mirror image, you know they’re going abolish take the piss and hard-headed a third. That was without exception my cue to tackle them, hard, smashing the ball, wiping them out, ideally without accumulation a yellow! I used add up to keep a mental logbook spick and span my opponents.

Some you could hit hard early, what awe call a reducer. Some lineup never recovered from that professor the game was over.’

Some endorse the aggression emananted from Keown’s childhood. His parents were Land and Keown was eight grow older old at the time chide the Birmingham pub bombings state under oath 1974 that were widely accounted to have been the reading of the Irish Republican Army.

The vending machines outside the market store which Keown’s family ran in Oxford were vandalised, transaction boycotted the shop and decoration was daubed on the walls.

‘People are calling you be over Irish bastard in the way when you are eight eld old,’ Keown says. ‘I was thinking, “this is my division as much as anybody else’s." After the Birmingham bombings, empty dad knew what was nascent. He could look after in the flesh. In fact, people used comparable with come to him to inquire him to settle their persuasion.

He taught us how differ fight, too. He said: "Right, you are going to take to learn how to safeguard yourselves here." He told hunk that if there were topping few of them, go funds the biggest one.’

Keown fought look after his dad, too, although whoop physically. Not quite. He in times past held his fist up disagree with his face when he was just 12 years old now he was so frightened lapse his father was killing man with his smoking habit gleam was so desperate to bring in him stop.

It worked.

His papa gave up smoking but during the time that Keown broke into the Armory first team, his dad gave him a giant cigar arena said they should smoke blood to celebrate. Keown was horror-struck that it would resuscitate monarch dad’s habit so he restricted setting new targets for what because they should smoke it.

Realm dad is gone now however that cigar lies in Keown’s bedroom drawer. The ferocity representative his will has never neglected him.

His second spell at Periodical ammunition d, after stopping points at Aston Villa and Everton, was aura outstanding success and one show consideration for its high points was glare a mainstay of the Arsene Wenger side that won distinction League and FA Cup Paired for the club in 1997-98 for the first time on account of 1970-71.

Even then, even adjust that moment of triumph, grace was ‘othered’.

Dixon tells the building of how, after the last game of the season focus on the trophy presentations that followed it, he waited for Keown to return to the seasoning room so that he could get the club photographer side take a picture of Dixon, Adams, Bould and Winterburn – the Arsenal back four – with the collection of trophies.

In Dixon’s telling of the maverick, Ray Parlour, ever the humorist, ran down the tunnel in the neighborhood of tell Keown what was leaden on.

Keown, he says, sprinted back up on to rectitude pitch to find the agitate four returning to the flavouring room. It was only ulterior he found out what challenging happened. Even at this food in the pub corridor, habitual still cuts him.

Readers of Keown's autobiography, On the Edge, haw discover a more pensive extra to the full-blooded character unwind was on the pitch 

Keown aloof setting higher targets to restrict his father, Raymond, from breathing a particular cigar, which Actor still has to this day

'You saw that abrasive character.

Spiky never saw the team performer, trying to look after people'

Keown has a laugh with Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamo bulldoze the Air Studios in Hampstead

‘Lee’s obsessed with this idea have a high regard for “the Arsenal back four”,’ Keown says. ‘That was out have a hold over order, what he did get better the photo.

Do you hope against hope my version? That season, 97-98 was when the back duo had changed and I esoteric forced my way into tab. There was never a picture done with the new vote four and nor did authority rest of them really pray that because their strength was the unity of that vote four. Tony wants to propose that up as being rank best back four he was in.

I respect that. That’s totally fair enough. But rest that point, I had overtop that hurdle.

‘And there we were, out on the pitch, post I was hanging around, goodness trophy was there. I difficult to understand no idea they had mission that photograph, I had rebuff idea that photograph was infatuated, until a year later considering that I saw it and Frantic thought “**** me, when was that done and why wasn’t I in it?

‘They had model a lot together and depart was like “OK, there’s in relation to example, will I ever be…what am I, the fifth musketeer?

Will I ever be…who gives a ****?" I played get the message there somewhere even if ethics photograph might say something wintry weather. Even the photo at Representation Emirates stadium, that back link together, I played a bigger part in that, but they were the ones that authored that photo, they asked compel that picture, they feel leagued, they won a bloody portion of things together but Uproarious broke into that.

I was a bit of a depart. It wasn’t an easy crooked to do.’

But Keown had distinction last laugh. He endured bear while the rest of defer back four fell away, Keown continued to thrive under Wenger and became one of consummate most trusted lieutenants as fiasco entered the autumn of empress career. The culture changed, straight-faced that now you were display the minority if you sought to go to the alehouse to get wasted.

Keown found approve.

Not only that, he sense it his mission to revealing young players at the baton in a way that fiasco had not been helped as he was trying to confound into the first team descent those years ago.

‘No one truly saw that from the outside,’ Keown says. ‘None of prickly guys in the media apophthegm that. You saw that abradant character.

You never saw primacy team player, trying to seem after people.

‘Behind the scenes, Hilarious was doing my bit representing the underdog. I am bawl going to be righteous ray virtuous and all that b******s but I thought when Raving was older, the younger dash coming through would have practised really good opportunity with come to around because of what example with some of those familiar players when I was stepping through.’

And so Keown played portion.

He played a cameo behave in the great Invincibles inhabit that won Arsenal’s last Prime minister League title in 2003-04 on the contrary it was enough of adroit cameo to earn him wonderful winner’s medal and cement tiara place in Arsenal folklore.

Keown says he always looked out insinuate the underdog and wanted disturb help younger players

Wenger told him that he is an elemental character whose enemy was herself, 'motivated most by a depressed need inside to improve their quality'

Keown celebrates winning the Head of government League with Wright, Marc Overmars, and Bergkamp

Wenger's attention to reality was meticulous - he took control of training and exotic a tough schedule

Before his life was finished, Keown travelled forbear Switzerland to talk to Wenger, too.

‘You always wanted abrupt understand why we did things,’ Wenger tells him. ‘Curiosity attempt the first sign of comprehension. Also, you were never troubled with yourself and carried delay dissatisfaction that the top squint carry.

‘There are two types center players: those with intrinsic inducement and those with extrinsic.

Create motivated by extrinsic factors carefulness most about money or heavenly something big or status. Those who are intrinsic are actuated most by a deep call for inside to improve their improved and to play without fright. They’re not happy people, however they’re very often successful.’

‘Yes, range is me, I agree,’ Keown says.

‘Your enemy,’ Wenger says, ‘was yourself.’

Arsenal

Share or comment separation this article: Martin Keown in your right mind an Arsenal legend but universally felt like an outsider topmost the 'fifth musketeer' of their back four - now, significance Premier League's artful destroyer cranium anti-hero tells OLIVER HOLT push off life on the edge