The 'where are they now?' files

[Buzzo]

Luis Garcia trying to get a scratch legends XI for the Caraboa Cup. Crouchy and Agger up for it

[ame]https://twitter.com/luchogarcia14/status/1202582007093637120[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/petercrouch/status/1202608414976888833[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/luchogarcia14/status/1202611475417829376[/ame]

[ame]https://twitter.com/danielagger/status/1203287137333981185[/ame]

[baitman]

Agger is like a covert agent just waiting for the call, bet he'd look imperious next to Virgil

[Yozza]

Bloody hell...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-50745606

Premier League footballer Jordon Ibe accused over Bentley crash

A Premier League footballer accused of crashing his Bentley into a coffee shop and driving off is to face trial.

Jordon Ibe, 23, is alleged to have crashed into The Pantry on Plaistow Lane in Bromley, London, on 30 July.

Appearing at Bexley Magistrates' Court, Mr Ibe pleaded not guilty to a charge of failing to stop at the scene of an accident but did not enter a plea to a second charge of careless driving.

The AFC Bournemouth midfielder, from Poole, is due for trial on 10 February.

George Crivelli, prosecuting, said Mr Ibe's white Bentley Bentayga 4x4 was significantly damaged in the crash, at about 04:50 BST.

'Car part in rubble'

He said: "The defendant has been involved in a collision - his vehicle has left the road, collided with a parked car and crashed into a shop front.

"The vehicle remained for a short period before driving off."

Part of the car was left behind in the rubble, while the coffee shop's front had to be removed from its foundations to be made safe, the court heard.

Jonathan Morrissey, defending, said the player had waited at the scene for a reasonable length of time but no-one was available to exchange details with.

Mr Ibe was charged by postal requisition on 29 October.

He signed with the Dorset club from Liverpool in 2016 for a reported £15m fee.

[Fosterbloke]

He's desperate to make an impact.

[Angryred]

He's desperate to make an impact.

haha...Maybe he got the wrong idea of a Coffee drive-in?

[frank the tank]

Conor Coady on sky sports studio with carragher for the Palace v Brighton game. Talks well. I wonder could he ever return to LFC?? Perhaps if Degsy ****ed off??

[Fosterbloke]

Coady reads the game very well. I wouldn't be disappointed if he joined but he's a regular in a very good Wolves team that's going places. I'd stay if I were him.

[Irishnev]

From the Athletic

“Christmas meant nothing to me,” says David Thompson. “It was all about football. Dinner, presents; they didn’t matter. It was the best time of the year to be playing. Game after game. Big crowds. Pushing yourself. Battles to be won. Lots of points to play for.”

This will be his 13th Christmas since announcing his retirement at the age of 29. “Though I’d gone, really, at 25,” he adds sharply. An impossibly young age for a competitive footballer’s mind to be able to wander. Where does that lead?

“You internalise what happens, then you spontaneously combust,” he admits. “You don’t know where to go. You don’t know what to put energy towards. You spend a lot of time with thoughts rattling around your head, unable to make a decision. I wanted nothing to do with football for years. I felt embarrassed about my career. I’d always been a winner at Liverpool throughout my childhood but in my professional career, I ended up winning nothing. To feel like a winner and not win anything; I felt shame. I’d gone from a winning culture at Liverpool to other clubs where there wasn’t a winning culture. Then, I didn’t even have the platform to try and win because of my injury. All of that happens in five or six years…”

Thompson believes that he is wired differently. He was restless when the injury happened — desperate to prove himself and find a way back to Liverpool. He’s a person of immediate achievement. That is why he decided to leave Liverpool in the first place.

If there is one word that describes how he feels now about his football career, he can identify it almost straight away. “The word would be ‘unfulfilled’.”

There is a story about Paul Stewart that David Thompson thinks sums up the way he is.

Stewart was the Liverpool midfielder who disappointed at Anfield. He was better when he was at Tottenham Hotspur and before that, Manchester City. In 2016, it was revealed that Stewart was abused at City by a youth coach in the 1980s and this went a long way towards explaining the way he was always trying to establish his territory before anyone else did.

Thompson was a teenager when he was called up to Melwood for work experience for the first time. He was the smallest player there and wanted to prove himself. So, he jogged at the front of the pack in the warm-up. This was enough to provoke Stewart to up-end him, sending him sprawling on the grass. Thompson has sympathy with Stewart now but then, he had him down as a bully.

An opportunity for revenge came a few years later. Thompson had made his first team debut in a 2-0 victory over Arsenal in August 1996. A week later, he was introduced as a substitute at Roker Park, where Liverpool could only draw 0-0. Stewart was in Sunderland’s midfield.

“I spent the whole game watching him from the bench. I couldn’t take my eyes of him,” Thompson remembers. “I was thinking, ‘He one-nilled me a few years ago…’ If I was half the man, that incident could have sent me backwards. When the gaffer put me on for the last two minutes, I went straight on and nailed him straight away. A really bad tackle. Yellow card. I’d only been on the pitch about eight seconds.”

Thompson was born in 1977 and he grew up in the Ford Estate in Birkenhead, just across the Mersey from Liverpool’s city centre. The 1980s were bleak in Liverpool but they were arguably even bleaker in Ford, a place beset by a heroin epidemic. Criminologists in Liverpool believe the estate was used as a testing ground for a drug where few users appreciated the consequences. Thompson says he was fortunate because he had good parents but he was aware of what was going on around him. Life seemed to centre on the Buccaneer pub, where dealers met their clients.

“The social conditions meant everyone was trying to take whatever they could from anyone,” Thompson remembers. “You couldn’t afford to allow yourself to become a victim. I was fighting a lot. I never tolerated bullies. I always tried to stand up to them. I realise now that some of the time, I can come across as being defensive or very, very aggressive whenever I try to get my point across and I feel as though I’m being misunderstood. It’s only since hitting 40 that I’ve realised you can sometimes afford to wait and listen before saying or doing something to mark your own territory.”

He was an Evertonian but he joined Liverpool because he thought the standard of training was better. The coaches gave him a structure but there was freedom. Steve Heighway led the youth sector having played 444 times for Liverpool and “if he wanted us to do a Cruyff turn, his Cruyff turn was better than Johan Cruyff’s.”

Hughie McAuley was also an important figure in his development. “His team talks were dead aggressive. ‘First 15 minutes, we get stuck into these,’ he’d say. ‘Make sure you rattle his bones…’ I could relate to this and the other lads could as well. We had a lad called Lee Prior and he seemed to get sent off every other week but we’d still find a way to win.”

This was the 1996 FA Youth Cup-winning team that included Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen. Thompson was a diminutive driving force from the centre of midfield. The player that had the greatest impression on him, however, would be John Barnes, who was 34 by then but “didn’t just have the best pass but the best touch and the best finish I’ve ever seen.”

Thompson finds it ridiculous that Barnes is not involved in football at either club or institutional level today, passing on his knowledge as he did to him. “Barnesy understood the game is all about space. I’d charge around, trying to affect the game and he’d tell me to slow down and let the ball do the work. The man was a genius as a player. Maybe his intellect was beyond the people who make all of the decisions. He knows how to express his opinion while cutting through all of the bull****. He’s very assertive and very to the point. That’s what we need more of. It’s a failing from the FA that players with so much experience and knowledge have been allowed to drift away from the front line.”

Thompson wonders whether his own game and maturity would have developed quicker had Barnes still been around after 1997. Instead, Liverpool bought Paul Ince. He realises this might sound like he’s making excuses for himself but with Barnes gone, and Jan Molby before him, nobody was around to pull a young enthusiast like himself to one side and whisper in his ear. Temporarily, it felt as though Melwood had lost its institutional memory. The legendary Ronnie Moran left in the summer of 1998 and a few months later, Roy Evans resigned as manager. Gerard Houllier brought Phil Thompson in as his assistant and with that, there was a connection with the past. Yet the former Liverpool captain’s namesake felt unfamiliar in a structure he had previously flourished in.

“When Houllier saw me train for the first time, I can remember a sort of look on his face that said, ‘Who’s this lad?’ He seemed to be impressed. I don’t think he had a problem with my ability. But he didn’t like my petulance. I was a bit cheeky. Alright, I could have done more to help myself. I’m not taking the responsibility away from me and placing it on someone else but I think he could have done more to get the best out of me as well. All along, I kept thinking, ‘I wish Roy was still in charge…’”

Houllier selected him 31 times during the 1999-00 season. Yet Thompson was frustrated by his performances and felt like he was being shackled on the right side of midfield.

“I hated that position because I never felt like I was quick enough to perform well there. Playing against pace scared me because I didn’t have enough of it, even though I was never particularly slow. I remember being one of the best players on the pitch at Anfield against Spurs (in April 2000). I was thinking to myself that I had a chance of being man of the match. Then, on 70 minutes, my number went up. I was fuming. I wasn’t used to getting taken off. It was towards the end of the era when getting substituted meant you weren’t doing well.

“I didn’t have the awareness to realise things were changing. On reflection, Houllier was probably trying to protect me. He was probably thinking, ‘He’s done well, he’s young — let’s save him for the next game.’ Instead, I was thinking, ‘He thinks I’m ****.’ It was rattling around it my head, ‘Why’s he not taken Carra off instead?’ I didn’t realise then that he tended to take the wide midfielders off first. Stevie (Gerrard) and Danny Murphy later had the same problem but they got on with it better than me.”

“There was a bit of an ego thing as well,” Thompson continues. “You’re the main man in the middle but you feel like the help when you’re suddenly asked to play a role that isn’t central to the team. My game was about going left, right, forwards and backwards. On the right, I felt like I had nowhere to go other than infield and backwards. I had too much energy for that. I felt like I needed to prove myself by trying to win the game, especially if it wasn’t going well. I was used to getting on the ball and taking it by the scruff of the neck. Now, I felt like I was watching the game unfold around me. I was told I was doing a job for the team but I was always the first one to get hauled off. It drove me crazy.”

Discipline became a problem. Thompson was sent off three times in the space of seven weeks, twice for the reserves and once for the first team against Leicester. He was banished to train at the club’s academy.

“I should have got a red card for a tackle on Gerry Taggart before I eventually went for a clumsy tackle on Robbie Savage in the second half. We ended up losing the game. After that, I think Houllier formed the opinion that he couldn’t depend on me; my temperament wasn’t what it should have been. I think my temperament would have been fine if I knew how to harness it. Inwardly, I was just trying to show how desperately I wanted to be a first-team player. Whatever was in my way, I always thought that I needed to fight to get past it rather than trusting myself to get there naturally.”


Thompson (left) celebrates with Michael Owen and Danny Murphy (Photo: Michael Steele/Allsport)
“Carra had the same burning desire but he was able to control it better,” Thompson adds. “If I was having a quiet game, I’d think I’d have to go and smash someone to get my blood flowing. I must have looked like I was always looking for a fight. Stevie was the same as well at the very beginning of his career but he learned how to bring himself in line as well. I don’t think I ever managed that, if I’m being honest.”

Houllier told Thompson in his office that he needed to lose weight. Footballers were becoming more athletic and he was small and sturdy. Houllier recognised the change and wanted to heave Liverpool into the 21st century by making the team bigger and more physical. He is remembered for the way he finished at Liverpool, probably two years too late following a serious illness. At the beginning of his time at Anfield, he was presidential in stature and would conduct presentations at the start of every pre-season where he’d map campaigns out in an attempt to bring players with him. Thompson ultimately proved not to be one of those.

He says he was offered less money to extend his contract than Carragher was in the summer of 2000 and that decision hinted to him that the manager did not value him as much. He desperately wanted to feel valued. It did not help that Houllier had signed Dietmar Hamann for the position he wanted to play in. Gerrard had since made his mark on the first team while it was rumoured that Nick Barmby was signing from Everton — competition for the right-sided midfield berth.

Houllier told Thompson he could stay at Liverpool but Coventry City were keen to sign him and this would give him, in theory, the opportunity to become the influential figure he wanted to be. Footballers tend not to speak about regrets but Thompson is one of those who will.

“I regret leaving Liverpool,” he concedes. “It’s the best club in the world with the best people and the most qualified people. The football was at the highest level. I felt like I was on a similar wavelength with the players around me. At Coventry, it wasn’t the same. We had players who were triers but they weren’t at the same standard. We’d have the ball 30 per cent of the time whereas at Liverpool, it’d be 70. This created a problem for me because I felt as though I had to work miracles when I did get it.”

He wishes he could turn the clock back and restrain himself. A fight with Leeds United midfielder David Hopkin in another a reserve game resulted in another red card. Houllier was watching in the stands at the old St Helens rugby league ground Knowsley Road that night.

“It confirmed an impression Gerard already had that I was a thug,” Thompson says. “I was having a great game. I can understand why Hopkin clattered into me because he was a senior pro and I was running rings around him. He was miles late with a tackle and I felt the red mist descend. I wish I was able to take a deep breath. Showing some control would have got me more marks than having a scrap with him.”

“I was insolent. Liverpool were big on respect and that increased when Gerard came in. There were all sorts of new rules. Dress codes. I’d wear the wrong tracksuit sometimes. At first it was because I’d forget what I actually had to wear because there were so many orders. I was getting fined a lot.

“Sometimes I’d laugh during meetings. Carra was good at holding it in but I couldn’t. If someone said something daft, I’d laugh my head off. Maybe it looked like disrespect. One of the new rules related to farting. The staff called it bombing. ‘No bombs please,’ they’d say. In Austria during pre-season, Patrice (Bergues — the first team coach) was leading the warm-up. I bent over and let one off. Sammy (Lee) was furious. This resulted in another lap of the pitch. I couldn’t help myself. If someone told me not to do something, I’d rail against it. So, I farted again.

“Then, there was a bottle incident when I got sent off at Blackburn. Phil Thompson’s been on my case all game. I told him to **** off. I felt like he was stopping me from playing my game. This was in the first half. I could hear Houllier ranting in French among his colleagues in the shower area. So, I’ve kicked this Lucozade bottle. It’s travelled a fair distance and hit him right in the middle of the chest. If I tried it a hundred times again… I’d never have been so accurate. Houllier’s looked at me and gone, ‘You… finished…’”

Though Coventry were relegated, he earned the club’s Player of the Year award and this led to a move to Blackburn, where he was managed by Graeme Souness and played with Tugay — “the best player I’ve played with outside of Liverpool.” Souness saw something of himself in Thompson. As a teenager, Souness had arrived at Tottenham sure of his place only to be cut down to size by the club’s senior players as well as the management. He was desperate to leave by the time he was sold to Middlesbrough, where he became the influence he promised to be.

When Thompson started a fight in the dressing room with the experienced Craig Short at half-time of a game where Blackburn recovered in the second half to claim a draw, Souness called him into his office a few days later and thanked him. “He bought me a bottle of wine,” Thompson remembers. “Graeme said, ‘That’s exactly what we needed.’ He made me feel a million feet tall.’”

Liverpool won five trophies the season after Thompson moved to Coventry. The sight of that happening did not make him feel jealous, but a bit envious. “Whenever I wasn’t at Liverpool, I felt like I was on loan anyway,” he says. “[At] Coventry and Blackburn, I was constantly thinking, ‘I’ve just got to get back there one way or another.’”

In 2003, he was called up for England by Sven-Goran Eriksson and that is when the direction of his career really changed. “I was walking backwards in training and felt a pop in the knee.” He thought the operation that followed was a routine one but even after 10 months spent recovering, he still did not feel right when he returned to action. “My knee was swelling up. It was killing me. I saw the doctor again. I was hoping he might be able to take some fluid out of the knee, or something that wasn’t invasive. Instead, he told me there wasn’t much more he could do for me. I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ Then, he told me that I should think about hanging my boots up. I collapsed in the doctor’s arms, crying my eyes out. Within a couple of weeks, my hair started falling out, I was under that much stress. I was terrified.”

He paid out of his own pocket to see Dr Richard Steadman in Colorado, USA, the famous surgeon with a track record of helping save the careers of stricken football players.

“He told me there was nothing he could do with the knee but there was a possibility he could do enough around it to make sure I was able to play games to a reasonable standard. But he warned me that I should make arrangements for my retirement. And that was the way it played out. I had another three and a half years where I struggled. It became an average career, a massive anti-climax.”

During short spells at Wigan, Portsmouth and Bolton, Thompson began to deteriorate emotionally. “You retreat into yourself and over-analyse everything. You start to become very fearful. It felt like I was shrinking. I ended up retiring while sitting on the sofa in my house. I sent a text to my agent and told him I was finished. And that was me, gone. I didn’t want anyone to make a fuss. I just wanted to sneak out of the back door. I felt ashamed. I carried that shame and sense of underachievement for years. I wanted to cut everything out of my life that I’d known and start again. I felt like a sinking ship on fire and I didn’t want to drag anyone else down with me.”

Thompson is conscious that this might all sound a bit “woe is me.”

He hopes it does not because he certainly does not feel sorry for himself. He is layered character who is seriously entertaining, with an abundance of hilarious stories, most of which might not be appropriate for publication because of the other parties involved. He remains friends with Carragher and was one of only a collection of footballers invited to the Anfield hero’s 40th birthday celebrations in Liverpool’s Titanic Hotel last year. He is well-liked by lots of former team-mates, especially those at Liverpool. He can be the life and soul of the party.

“I missed playing but I missed the noise of the dressing room the most,” he says. “Suddenly, you’re sitting there in your living room, day after day, in silence. Whereas you used to be able to laugh at yourself, when someone takes the piss, you take it as a dig. Everything drains away. You feel powerless. You feel like you’re no use to anyone. Before, I’d felt like I was a mentally strong person.”

He did not seek help initially and threw himself into new business. Retiring from football at 29 meant he missed out on two, maybe three new contracts. This led to him taking risks at the height of the recession between 2008 and 2009. That was when he also realised some investments from earlier on in his career were bad ones. A team-mate had convinced him to invest £1 million in a coffee company which crashed. The team-mate, it turned out, had not invested any of his own money and only stood to earn commission. This led to internal strife and trust issues. “You make a couple of bad decisions and you fail at them. It feels like you’ve failed at everything,” Thompson says.

For a long time, he could not face going into coaching because it reminded of him of the career he felt like he’d missed out on. Whereas some footballers are able to juggle separate interests, he feels he needs to devote everything to one thing to make it successful. Thompson has realised his status as a former footballer means very little in terms of possibilities. “You define yourself by your prospects,” he says. “If I down tools, nothing’s going to happen for the rest of my life. I’ve got to go out there and make it happen.”

He’s done some media work but thinks he’s ready now to be able to coach, though he’ll need to enrol on a refresher course having originally achieved his badges a decade ago.

“I’ll be sound,” he says. “I’m 41 now and it’s taken me a long time to reach this point but I finally feel mature enough to deal with everything life has to throw at me. I miss football now, but from a safe distance. I’ve realised that one of the reasons I love the game is because every day is different. And since retiring, it’s felt like the longest day ever. I want that to change.

[Shaggy]

Great read that. Surprisingly thoughtful lad isn't he.

[Shaggy]

Also, the stuff about farting

[Daniel 7]

Also, the stuff about farting

Which isn't even one of your edits!

[peterbread]

Robbie Fowlers coaching career isn’t going to last very long, he’s rubbish. Bottom of the table now as they are losing to the bottom team. No first half’s goals in 10 games this season and don’t look like they could score at all.

He plays with 5 at the back and the wingbacks aren’t attacking players. Most of the time it’s more defender than attacker in the role.

I was so looking forward to him coaching here in Brisbane but I think he needs to go. Always willing to give people time but sometimes you know straight away it’s not going to work. I don’t think he has a clue how to do the job really. For him to have made this team worse than last season is ridiculous and I don’t know how he’s managed that.

I said to my dad he reminds me of Hodgson, he looks so lost on the sidelines and doesn’t seem to know what to do.

[Shaggy]

Robbie Fowlers coaching carter isn’t going to last very long, he’s rubbish. Bottom of the table now as they are losing to the bottom team. No first half’s goals in 10 games this season and don’t look like they could score at all.

He plays with 5 at the back and the wingbacks aren’t attacking players. Most of the time it’s more defender than attacker in the role.

I was so looking forward to him coaching here in Brisbane but I think he needs to go. Always willing to give people time but sometimes you know straight away it’s not going to work. I don’t think he has a clue how to do the job really. For him to have made this team worse than last season is ridiculous and I don’t know how he’s managed that.

I said to my dad he reminds me of Hodgson, he looks so lost on the sidelines and doesn’t seem to know what to do.

Oh dear. It's no fun to say it cos I adored him but he's pretty dense and based on his woeful punditry it always looked unlikely he'd ever become a good or inspiring manager.

[SB]

Marcus Babel is plying his trade in the A League too.

[Harv]

Marcus Babel is plying his trade in the A League too.

Love a good ol fashioned manager tirade on the touchline and dropping the 'F-Bomb' too.