With regards to Kamil Grosicki
I never said he didn’t nicks was a model pro with us but the fact I made was he burned all his bridges
FACT
Barmby faces up to home truth
One of the game's great misfits is looking for fulfilment at his home-town club,says Jamie Jackson
Tottenham, Middlesborough, Everton, Liverpool, Leeds United, England... and Hull City. When Nick Barmby signed for his home-town team last month, the player Pele predicted would be a world star when he was just 21 and who played in England's famous 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich in 2001, said he was now at the club he had dreamed of turning out for as a boy.
But at just 30 years old and with 23 international caps and four goals, it may just seem a little early for the player, who was Leeds United's last cash signing in the summer of 2002, to be playing First Division football. 'I've always had a burning desire to play for Hull City,' Barmby said. But even though he spent two dismal years at Leeds, making just 17 Premiership starts, a move back home at an age when a player is in his prime hints at ambition prematurely blunted, especially when you consider his five Premier League clubs and the combined total of nearly £20 million paid for his services
But Barmby's is a contradictory story, on and off the pitch. The pattern of his professional life is one of highly impressive starts for club and country, before his form, for whatever reason, falls away. Away from football, he is an intensely private family man who values his wife and two sons above all. He has not spoken to his parents, though, since his marriage 11 years ago, despite living most of his career just a few miles away from them in Hull.
Barmby was just 18 when he made his debut for Spurs in a 2-0 defeat against Sheffield Wednesday on 27 September 1992, having joined as a trainee from the same Lilleshall class as Sol Campbell two years earlier. He was an instant success, scoring five times in his opening 15 games, and became an integral part of the 'famous five' attacking diamond, which also included Darren Anderton, Ilie Dumitrescu, Jürgen Klinsman and Teddy Sheringham, when Ossie Ardiles took over at White Hart Lane the following June.
Barmby had turned down Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United to play for Tottenham, citing the influence of then manager Terry Venables (who would give him his England debut and later take him to Leeds) and the chance to join his idol, Paul Gascoigne. 'Gazza was brilliant. After us kids had finished training, he would suddenly appear and we would play on for another hour,' Barmby said. 'He loved going in goal and I would practise my shooting against him. He was so enthusiastic and it just rubbed off on us.'
Barmby, who played rugby league at Kelvin Hall school, has been prone to injuries since he was a teenager. Calf cramps and the resulting corrective surgery cost him eight months while a schoolboy, shin splints sidelined him for six months when he first joined Spurs, and, among the many niggles as a professional, the Achilles injury he suffered while at Leeds, during a warm-up in November 2002, meant that by the time he had recovered his mentor, Venables, was on his way out of the club.
Barmby's footballing quality, though, has never been in question, with the awareness and vision that attracted so many clubs evident even when he was a trainee. 'He came to Tottenham as an outstanding schoolboy. Most clubs wanted to sign him,' says former England keeper Ray Clemence, who was then the Spurs reserve team manager and is now an FA coach. 'He was a great trainer, staying behind longer than anybody else. And with his movement off the striker and his ability to find holes, to receive the ball, create chances for other people, and score goals himself, his play was very intelligent.'
Barmby would eventually score 21 times in 89 league appearances for Spurs, a record that gained him his first international cap against Uruguay in 1995. But, by the time Gerry Francis had replaced Ardiles as Spurs manager, Barmby was unsettled. 'Nick went in to see Ossie a couple of times to discuss his situation and when I first came, he saw me about his situation,' Francis said in January 1995, anticipating that Barmby would request a transfer.
Instead, three weeks later, Barmby signed a five-year contract. But just six months passed before he changed his mind again, and he signed for Middlesbrough that August, complaining that he and his wife, Mandy, also from Hull, were homesick. His spell at Middlesbrough began well, with a goal on his debut against Arsenal and 10 games into the season he had scored three times and had a hand in all of Middlesbrough's other strikes.
Then something went awry. 'He had a fall-out with Bryan Robson [the then Middlesbrough manager], something personal between them, and he walked out on the club,' says former Middlesbrough team-mate John Hendrie. 'Nicky made his mind up that he didn't want to play for him and he said, "I'm getting out of here." The next thing we knew he was on his way to Everton.'
Barmby, says Hendrie, still trained hard but was difficult to get to know. 'He very much kept himself to himself, he was very, very private. He didn't have many friends at the club. I think it was because he was a non-drinker so he didn't socialise, but he was a nice enough lad. 'He was attached to home. When he was at Liverpool and Everton he was chauffeur-driven over from Hull, which is strange because [although] Hull is and always will be his home, he'd had the falling-out with his mum and dad.'
The family feud occurred when Barmby, then 19, married Mandy Telford, a divorcee seven years his senior, in a Hull register office in 1993, having met the former Blind Date contestant two years earlier in a local nightclub. On the wedding day, the rift made the front page of local newspaper the Hull Daily Mail , under the headline 'Offside!'.
'Nicky has made his decision - he has done it on his own. All I can say is that we do not approve,' his father, Jeffrey, a former Hull City reserve, was quoted as saying. Although he said he was unsure how the dispute would affect their relationship, he probably did not anticipate not speaking to the son, whom he had guided through junior football in Hull, for several years.
Barmby left Teesside to join Everton for £5.75m in October 1996 and, despite scoring on his debut in a 7-1 rout of Southampton, his time at Goodison was patchy. He lost his club and international place, having featured in Euro 96 under Venables, but recovered well enough to make more than 100 starts, his most at any club. Although those took four seasons, he still impressed Kevin Keegan enough to gain a late inclusion to the Euro 2000 squad, and become the first player to move directly across Stanley Park to Liverpool since 1959, when Gérard Houllier paid £6m for him.
His two years at Anfield yielded five trophies and a goal against Spain in Sven-Göran Eriksson's first match as England coach in February 2001 - as Barmby had also done against Moldova in 1996 for Glenn Hoddle - but just 23 Premiership starts was a disappointing return. In August 2002, Barmby was off again, Venables signing him for £2.7m on a four-year, £30,000-a-week deal.
But, despite the almost inevitable goal on debut, this time against Manchester City in the opening match of the 2002-03 Premiership season, Barmby experienced his worst two years as a professional. His return of two goals from a paltry 17 starts can be partly explained by the débcle that was Leeds United under Peter Ridsdale and company. He was viewed, somewhat unfairly, by the Leeds fans as a symbol of Venables and the club's general negligence and was booed constantly. But his refusal to play in the reserves under Peter Reid, who had replaced Venables, and then watching Hull from his own box on a Saturday while picking up his sizeable weekly wage from Leeds, cannot have helped.
When he was farmed out on loan to Nottingham Forest, earlier this year, it was a familiar story. Barmby began brightly, scoring in his third game. But then at Derby in March, he was substituted by the Forest manager, Joe Kinnear. The pair clashed at half-time and Barmby jumped into his car and drove off. He had lasted less than a month.
It must, then, have been a relief when the Hull manager, Peter Taylor, who picked Barmby for England in November 2001, signed him. 'He's come to Hull because he's very disappointed with his last two years at Leeds United,' says Taylor, 'and he wants to enjoy his football. He's very fortunate that financially he is sound. If he wasn't, he might have had to play somewhere that he didn't particularly want to, be it a Division One club or another Premiership club.'
Barmby accepted a £1m pay-off from Leeds and a £27,000-a-week reduction in wages to join Hull. But despite a source close to Leeds claiming there were no other offers for him, Taylor is not concerned. 'We are the ones who are very lucky. He wants to live in Hull, he has a lovely house near here and this is the club he supported. But he knows I am only interested in him because I know how well he will help the team.
'He is like a Teddy Sheringham, a centre-forward who can drop into midfield and make goals, so he's a tremendous link. And it's not like he cannot run anymore. He has had a very frustrating time. Last year at Leeds I think you'll find he wasn't injured, they just were not playing him. He just wants to get back to playing and enjoying his football.'
Barmby did just that a week yesterday, making his home debut for the Tigers in their centenary celebration match against his first club, Spurs. Last season, Hull gained their first promotion for 18 years, and Barmby will hope to help the club to another this season. Taylor has signed Barmby on a free transfer, initially for just one year. Even his beloved Hull seem cautious about expecting a long-term relationship with Barmby.
Very snide.
Did a great job for us.
