It was interesting to see the huge amount of press coverage about Ashley Cole’s arrest. Personally, I think far too much was made out of the incident. A lot of the players were out and Ashley got involved in a debacle, but you can’t expect players to be saints all the time. I don’t have a big problem with footballers going out and enjoying themselves – it happened many times during my career without affecting the team’s performance. Cole was warned, he’s going to be fined and that should be the end of the story.

The drinking culture doesn’t really exist in the English game any more, and it’s certainly nowhere near the level of years gone by. Sometimes players over-step the mark when they go out during the season, but they actually get very few opportunities to socialise. During my time as a player, going out for a few drinks was part of the fabric of the game. However, it wasn’t noticed by the media so much; we’d go out on a Wednesday night and play the following Saturday, and it wasn’t that big a deal. In the modern game, they’re not allowed to move.
It’s not so much that there’s more media attention on football these days, but there is definitely more of a focus on what players do off the field. If players go out after a game and there’s a slight problem, it makes headlines the next day. It’s actually quite laughable at times. At Millwall, we went out and enjoyed ourselves, and yet we had a really good side and got promoted! And there were Liverpool sides who did the same thing. We weren’t as professional in our day, although I would argue that it was much more enjoyable to be a footballer then than it is now!
Many football fans are getting excited by the imminent release of the film The Damned United, about Brian Clough’s brief tenure in charge of Leeds United. Like a lot of people, I would have mixed views on Clough. There were times when he seemed to be a bit of an off-the-wall genius, and other times when he seemed to be slightly idiotic. Also, sometimes I thought he was funny, and other times I thought he was a pain in the backside; I’m not even sure if he knew what he was doing half the time.
He’d do mad things and occasionally they’d backfire on him. I remember Teddy Sheringham telling me once that he was in the sauna at Nottingham Forest, and Cloughie came in and started having a conversation with him. Teddy found it really funny because Cloughie was sitting in the sauna in his suit! There he was chatting tactics to Teddy with a deadpan face, whilst sweating buckets.
John Sheridan also told me that Clough once took the team to a big park for pre-season training. And he said, “Right you lot, the nearest tree and back.” All the players looked around, and there wasn’t a tree in sight. One of the players pointed this out to Clough, and he said, “Well, fucking find one then!” So all the players ran off in different directions.
He had some extraordinary achievements, particularly winning back-to-back European Cups with Forest. People talk about how much money is spent by clubs today, but you mustn’t forget that Clough spent £1m on Trevor Francis, which was a huge amount of money then. He had a very gifted side and he certainly got the best out of them. I’m not really sure if it was all just to do with him – he had a very good bunch of footballers and he let them play. He was a mad guy in many ways, but winning those European Cups was genuinely remarkable.