ONCE UPON A LONG TIME AGO …
When James Milner made his Premier League debut for Leeds he was 16 years previous. He got here on as an 84th-minute substitute for Jason Wilcox, the present Manchester United director of soccer, to assist shut out a win over West Ham by which Harry Kewell, Nick Barmby and Mark Viduka scored. Pathé information reviews from the time reveal that Westlife have been prime of the charts and a few days later Michael Jackson would dangle his child from a Berlin balcony. Fabian Hürzeler, Milner’s present gaffer at Brighton, was a nine-year-old urchin, studying his instances tables and being tucked into his race-car mattress. More than 20 years later, Milner is 40, nonetheless taking part in within the prime flight, and is the residing personification of a hard-working, clean-living, low upkeep mannequin skilled who has lastly eclipsed Gareth Barry to make the all-time Premier League look record his own. Frankly, after 23 seasons at six totally different golf equipment doing the naked minimal simply to remain related, the obvious conclusion to attract is that the universally admired and well-liked “Millie” is outwardly not all he’s cracked as much as be.
Let’s crunch these numbers, eh? While Milner’s begin for Brighton in opposition to Brentford on Saturday could have taken him to 654 appearances, lastly overtaking Barry’s longstanding record of 653, in phrases of “minutes spent on the pitch”, Milner isn’t even within the prime flight’s prime 10 toilers. For each minute Barry spent on the market with his sleeves rolled up whereas he received issues achieved and took care of enterprise, Milner may very well be discovered spending a number of extra kicking his heels on the substitutes’ bench whereas his extra industrious and dependable teammates received on with the exhausting graft. While Barry could have misplaced his Premier League record, he performed 13,874 extra minutes than the person who simply took it – the equal of 154 full matches. Put in perspective it may very well be argued the one accolade Milner must crow about is his record number of greater than 200 top-flight appearances off the bench. While Barry was creating industrial-grade calf muscle groups and the thousand-yard stare of a man who has tracked again for twenty years, Milner was ostensibly having fun with a collection of very well-paid 15-minute jogs to maintain his heart rate barely above resting.
Not that he’s or ever has been one to crow. By his personal (notorious parody Social Media Disgrace) account, the 40-year-old’s longevity can largely be attributed to exhausting work and a strict food regimen of hen with no sauce, greens and Ribena. “It will be nice to stop talking about it,” mentioned Milner, after securing the record by serving to Brighton to a much-needed win over a Brentford aspect who’re 475 appearances behind him on the Premier League look entrance. “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 event by lastly residing life on the sting: including a second bag to the pot and staying up previous 10.30pm to look at Match of the Day highlights of his personal 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 fanatic Brendan Rodgers is a man famously good at studying a room and simply two months into his new gig at Al-Qadsiah, the previous Celtic, Leicester and Liverpool supervisor has actually thrown himself headfirst into that wealthy heritage on the first alternative, grinning and holding a gun in a video launched by the Saudi state-owned membership.
In the movie The Thursday Murder Club, Pierce Brosnan’s character is an ardent West Ham fan, which received me pondering. Relegation could be A Long Way Down. Is there No Escape for the Hammers? They is probably not The Greatest, however they’ve received the mentality of a Survivor. The Final Score on the weekend didn’t do them any favours however I don’t see it as The World’s End as a result of there are lots of matches left to play” – Peter Oh (and no different Pierce Brosnan superfans).
I’m positive that Barry Glendenning would be capable to take care of himself and have a quiet phrase together with your correspondent who took him to activity about utilizing the time period ‘centred around’ (Friday’s letters). But if he’s in any other case engaged, I’ll weigh in and level out that it’s a completely reliable phrase, and, if Professor Google Ngrams is to be believed, has been on the rise since round 2010. It nonetheless solely manages to account at the moment for 0.000037% of all two-word combos in English, however because the determine for the rival ‘centred on’ is the one barely extra spectacular 0.00013, I believe honour is glad” – Charles Antaki.
Maybe that is simply the myopic view of an single bachelor, however on the subject of easy methods to make VAR higher (Friday’s letters), officers have to be tying themselves in knots figuring out whether or not one thing is each ‘clear’ and ‘obvious’ – perhaps if they only focused on assembly one of these standards, they’d really feel much less stress and take much less time” – Nick Livesey.
Lads, it’s Spurs” – Marc Meldrum.
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