ONCE UPON A LONG TIME AGO …
When James Milner made his Premier League debut for Leeds he was 16 years old. He came on as an 84th-minute substitute for Jason Wilcox, the current Manchester United director of football, to help close out a win over West Ham in which Harry Kewell, Nick Barmby and Mark Viduka scored. Pathé news reports from the time reveal that Westlife were top of the charts and a few days later Michael Jackson would dangle his baby from a Berlin balcony. Fabian Hürzeler, Milner’s current gaffer at Brighton, was a nine-year-old urchin, learning his times tables and being tucked into his race-car bed. More than 20 years later, Milner is 40, still playing in the top flight, and is the living personification of a hard-working, clean-living, low maintenance model professional who has finally eclipsed Gareth Barry to make the all-time Premier League appearance record his own. Frankly, after 23 seasons at six different clubs doing the bare minimum just to stay relevant, the most obvious conclusion to draw is that the universally admired and well-liked “Millie” is apparently not all he’s cracked up to be.
Let’s crunch those numbers, eh? While Milner’s start for Brighton against Brentford on Saturday may have taken him to 654 appearances, finally overtaking Barry’s longstanding record of 653, in terms of “minutes spent on the pitch”, Milner isn’t even in the top flight’s top 10 toilers. For every minute Barry spent out there with his sleeves rolled up while he got things done and took care of business, Milner could be found spending several more kicking his heels on the substitutes’ bench while his more industrious and reliable teammates got on with the hard graft. While Barry may have lost his Premier League record, he played 13,874 more minutes than the man who just took it – the equivalent of 154 full matches. Put in perspective it could be argued the only accolade Milner ought to crow about is his record number of more than 200 top-flight appearances off the bench. While Barry was developing industrial-grade calf muscles and the thousand-yard stare of a man who has tracked back for two decades, Milner was ostensibly enjoying a series of very well-paid 15-minute jogs to keep his heart rate slightly above resting.
Not that he is or ever has been one to crow. By his own (infamous parody Social Media Disgrace) account, the 40-year-old’s longevity can largely be attributed to hard work and a strict diet of chicken with no sauce, vegetables and Ribena. “It will be nice to stop talking about it,” said Milner, after securing the record by helping Brighton to a much-needed win over a Brentford side who are 475 appearances behind him on the Premier League appearance front. “To pass the mark, it’s obviously a big number but it’s not something I’ve really concentrated on. Anyone who knows me knows I’m all about the team. I’m just pleased in the last two games to play more minutes and have the opportunity to help the team.” And with that the famously teetotal midfielder from Wortley went off to mark the occasion by finally living life on the edge: adding a second bag to the pot and staying up past 10.30pm to watch Match of the Day highlights of his own 89th-minute substitution.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It probably looks a lot cooler on other people but I think today is about respecting ‘Founding Day’ [a national Saudi holiday to mark the creation of the first Saudi State in 1727] here. I will always respectfully wear it. Saudi has a real rich heritage and a really exciting future ahead” – Envelopes enthusiast Brendan Rodgers is a man famously good at reading a room and just two months into his new gig at Al-Qadsiah, the former Celtic, Leicester and Liverpool manager has really thrown himself headfirst into that rich heritage at the first opportunity, grinning and holding a gun in a video released by the Saudi state-owned club.
In the film The Thursday Murder Club, Pierce Brosnan’s character is an ardent West Ham fan, which got me thinking. Relegation would be A Long Way Down. Is there No Escape for the Hammers? They may not be The Greatest, but they’ve got the mentality of a Survivor. The Final Score on the weekend didn’t do them any favours but I don’t see it as The World’s End because there are plenty of matches left to play” – Peter Oh (and no other Pierce Brosnan superfans).
I’m sure that Barry Glendenning would be able to look after himself and have a quiet word with your correspondent who took him to task about using the term ‘centred around’ (Friday’s letters). But if he’s otherwise engaged, I’ll weigh in and point out that it’s a perfectly legitimate phrase, and, if Professor Google Ngrams is to be believed, has been on the rise since around 2010. It still only manages to account currently for 0.000037% of all two-word combinations in English, but since the figure for the rival ‘centred on’ is the only slightly more impressive 0.00013, I think honour is satisfied” – Charles Antaki.
Maybe this is just the myopic view of an unmarried bachelor, but on the topic of how to make VAR better (Friday’s letters), officials must be tying themselves in knots working out whether something is both ‘clear’ and ‘obvious’ – maybe if they just concentrated on meeting one of these criteria, they would feel less pressure and take less time” – Nick Livesey.
Lads, it’s Spurs” – Marc Meldrum.
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