[Albion] Glen Murray article in today’s Times

Mr Banana said:

Glenn Glenn Glenn Glenn. Two bloody ns. Oy vey, gimme strength. Anyway...

It is late-morning on Saturday. Matchday. Brighton and Hove Albion’s home game against Tottenham Hotspur kicks off in six hours and Glenn Murray is sauntering across Withdean Park as his beloved whippet Mabel hurtles off into the distance once more.

Some of his fellow dog-walkers, drawn to Mabel, stop and chat. One, a friend, talks about school matters and parties; one congratulates him on keeping his nerve to equalise with a stoppage-time penalty against Southampton five days earlier; one warns him not to fall down any rabbit holes, which seems to be about avoiding injury, though we cannot be certain; the other has no idea that Mabel’s owner is the highest scoring Englishman in the Premier League this season.

It all feels remarkably, refreshingly laid-back. Aren’t Premier League footballers usually holed away in a hotel the night before a match? “Away games, yes, and some managers like to do it for home games too, but I much prefer it the way our manager [Chris Hughton] does it,” he says. “It’s nice to wake up in my own bed, be with my family, do my own thing and not be thinking about the game from the moment you get up.”

Aren’t you thinking of Tottenham as we walk through the park, though — visualising tussles with Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen? “To be honest, no,” he says. “That might work for some people, but I think too much focus can be put on the game sometimes. If you’re in a hotel room, with nothing else to do, that’s when you can end up overthinking. When I was younger, I used to get overexcited, running it through in my mind all day. By the time I stepped on the field, I’d feel worn out by the pent-up anticipation. These days I try to keep it as low-key as possible.”

Murray has agreed to allow The Times to follow him in the build-up to and aftermath of Brighton’s Premier League match at home to Tottenham. Spoiler: he didn’t go to a nightclub or casino. He didn’t go to his local Lamborghini showroom or even to a department store for a bit of retail therapy. He didn’t even play golf. He did treat himself to a haircut on the Friday afternoon. It cost £14. He spent Friday and Saturday evenings at home with his wife Stacey, catching up with Bodyguard on the iPlayer before bed. My man-marking job did not go quite as far as that.
He had been unsure about all this, warning that “I’m not going to be doing anything amazing”. That is precisely the point, though. This is a Premier League footballer going about his daily business, away from what he calls “the show”.

Friday September 21, 9.15am. Brighton’s players are gathering in the canteen at the magnificent Amex Elite Performance Centre, but Murray leaves them to it. “Do you know why?” he says. “Because the breakfast is so good here, I have to ban myself. If I go in there, I’ll start chatting, have a cup of tea, have some toast, bit of cereal . . . No way can I do that. I had breakfast at home.”

He has already been for his daily “monitoring” session. “Urine tests, sit-and-reach tests, groin squeeze,” Murray says. “If you’re usually reaching 24cm and the next day you only reach 19cm, then it highlights a problem. Your muscles might have tightened up without you realising it. You might be sent for more tests. Then there’s the daily questionnaire: how well we slept, how many hours, fatigue, muscle soreness, how you feel health-wise and general well-being. Everything we do is monitored.”

Four days short of his 35th birthday, Murray would be forgiven for feeling weary, but the opposite is true. He feels he is in his prime. He has scored four goals in his first five Premier League appearances of the season and is hungry for more against Tottenham.

A televised game away to Southampton on the Monday night has eaten into Brighton’s preparation time. Tuesday brought a recovery session (cycling in the gym, cryotherapy and yoga) and Wednesday a day off. Preparations on the training field intensified on Thursday. Hughton has not named his line-up for Tottenham yet, but Thursday’s session, which included specific tactical exercises as well as video analysis, gave the players a good idea. Friday is about building up intensity — “small-sided games, set-pieces, short, sharp, intense, the way we like it,” Murray says, as he heads to the training pitch.

Friday 12.30pm. Murray returns a little later than scheduled. “Sorry,” he says. “I got a knock.”

Oh no. Serious? “Just a knock,” he says. “I went in for a challenge and hurt my ankle a bit. Your first thought is ‘Oh no. The game tomorrow’; we tend to panic as footballers. It will be fine, though. I just came off, went for treatment, went in the pool, had some food, a bit more treatment. Now for the cryochamber.”

It is not so long since ice baths were considered the height of innovation in Premier League circles. Over the past few years cryochambers have taken over. “Minus 125C in there,” he says, pointing towards what looks like a huge freezer. It looks terrifying. “It repairs your muscle tissue and protects you from joint pain,” he says. “Apparently it also has a hormonal change that helps you sleep better.”

He goes in — wearing only shorts, plus thermal gloves, slippers and a protective mask — and emerges precisely 140 seconds later looking invigorated. “I would much rather sit in there for two minutes than sit in an ice bath for ten,” he says. “I do it most days after training. Yoga, too. It loosens you up, helps you relax.”

Friday 2.30pm, Hove. Murray is having his hair cut. “It’s not something I do before every game or anything like that,” he says. “It’s just because I need one.” Do the vanity levels increase in the lead-up to a televised game? “Every game in the Premier League is watched by millions of people around the world anyway,” he says. “But I suppose if you’re on the world stage, you don’t want to look like a bag of rags if you can help it.”
We walk around the corner for a coffee. He opts for a cortado, regarding my grande cappuccino with bemusement rather than envy. “This is probably the strictest I’ve ever been with my diet,” he says. “I’m not one to cut everything out — everything in moderation — but at my age you can’t get away with what you did when you were younger.

“Snapping my anterior cruciate ligament when I was 29 was actually a positive for my career. It made me change my ways professionally and lifestyle-wise. Stepping up into the Premier League [with Crystal Palace] at that time also opened my eyes. The higher up you go, the more meticulous the players are with their training and health regimes.”

Cryotherapy, nutrionists, daily monitoring . . . It is all a far cry from Murray’s release by Carlisle at the age of 16 (“a relief, to be honest, because I hated that year”) or his days working in a factory or as a plasterer’s labourer, moving to North Carolina to play for Wilmington Hammerheads before returning to Cumbria and climbing his way back up the ladder — Barrow, then Carlisle, Stockport County (on loan), Rochdale, Brighton, Crystal Palace, Reading (on loan), Bournemouth and Brighton again.

“It has been a slog,” he says. “At one stage I was falling into a life I didn’t really want to lead. I was working in a factory with fellers who had been there 30 years. Nothing wrong with that at all, but I didn’t want that to be me. I didn’t have any money. Thankfully I was living with my parents, so they were able to put food on the table for me. I don’t even think I was the best player when I went back to Carlisle at 20, but I was probably the keenest. I was just desperate to be a footballer.

Friday 4pm. It is time to pick up Harley, 12, from school. They talk about school, but Harley prefers to turn the conversation to football. He and his sister Alba, 6, as well as Stacey, will go to the match against Tottenham the next day. Before then, Murray has to get Harley to a footgolf party. Tempted to join in? “Definitely not.”

A quiet evening is in store. “Have some food — chicken, baked sweet potato and veg — get the little ones to bed and just relax,” he says. “Probably watch Bodyguard. Get an early night ahead of tomorrow.”

Saturday 10.30am. All is quiet at Chez Murray. Harley is at a school open day and Stacey has taken Alba to ballet. It is time for Murray to take Mabel for a walk, get some fresh air and keep everything as normal as possible until he is due at the Amex Stadium at 2pm. The ankle is fine — better for the dog walk.

At midday, with Mabel exhausted, we go to another café, this time in Westdene. He has tomato and avocado on chewy sourdough and another coffee. One striking thing is that, as in Hove the previous day, his presence goes unheralded. Nobody stops him for an autograph or a selfie. “That’s Brighton and Hove for you,” he laughs. “It’s laid-back, a nice place to live. I don’t know if people notice me or not. I don’t think I’m a big enough player to get hounded. When I’m in London, I get the Tube. I might just have the sort of face that people don’t notice.”

Having become a regular goalscorer in the Premier League, though, Murray has a level of fame — and indeed wealth — that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. “It’s not about money or fame, though,” he says. “Even if I was made for life, I would still want to work. I think we all have that dream sometimes about playing golf every day and sitting in the sun, but personally I would get bored very quickly. I would always want to be working. Stacey is the same. She runs an events company. She was working when we met. She doesn’t want to stop just because she’s married to a footballer.”

He suspects it can be hard having a footballer in the house because of the mood swings the game inevitably causes. “It’s such a rollercoaster life,” he says. “The highs are great. Then there are the lows — defeats, injuries, goal droughts, not playing. That’s hard for you, but hard for your family too. I used to sit and stew when things weren’t going well on the pitch. I wasn’t depressed or locking myself away, but I wasn’t as engrossed or involved as normal. I was somewhere else, almost. That’s not fair on your family. A sports psychologist has helped me with that. I’ve learned to stay as level-headed as I can.”

Social media, he believes, can make the lows lower. “It has opened footballers up to be a lot more famous, but there’s a downside to that,” he says. “In the past you could have a bad game and be shouted at on the terraces, and then you could go home, close your door and no one could get to you. Nowadays, with social media, you’re attracted to picking up your phone and seeing what the world is saying. There’s no hiding from it.
“Mostly it makes me laugh, but it can bother you sometimes. And that’s me talking as a thick-skinned 34-year-old. It must be hard for a younger player at a big club who has a bad game and gets peppered from all angles.”

He heads home before leaving for the Amex. The heavens open. “A proper football day,” he says. “Wet, not too cold, a nice slick to the pitch. Floodlights on. Perfect.”

Saturday, 6.12pm, the Amex Stadium. Forty-two minutes have elapsed in the driving rain. Brighton 0 Tottenham 0. Tottenham are dominating possession. Murray has touched the ball 17 times — mostly battling for the ball with Alderweireld and Vertonghen from throw-ins or clearances. A flick-on here, a lay-off there, but no glimpse of goal. As Tottenham win a disputed free kick, Murray races back to join the defensive wall. As Murray jumps to try to block Kieran Trippier’s shot, he raises his arm to cover his face. He blocks the ball – but with his arm. Penalty. Harry Kane scores. One-nil for Tottenham. Murray looks annoyed as he heads to the dressing-room three minutes later.

Tottenham run out 2-1 winners, Brighton’s goal coming from Anthony Knockaert in stoppage time. So often Brighton’s hero, Murray is the fall guy this time. We meet up half an hour after the final whistle. “Pissed off,” he says — not just about the handball or the result but because nothing dropped for him all evening.

He has agreed to visit the BT Sport studio as part of their match coverage. He is whisked into the studio, straight into a four-way interview, and re-emerges 20 minutes later a little perkier, buoyed by reassuring words from Harry Redknapp and Owen Hargreaves.

It has cost him the opportunity to see his family before they head home. His wife has left messages to see if he is ok. Leaving the ground, we walk through a large group of Tottenham supporters, staying on for a post-match drink and singsong. A few Brighton fans stop him for selfies — “Well played, Glenn”, “Top man, Muzza”, not a mention of the handball. He obliges, but he is eager to get home to Stacey, the kids and of course Bodyguard. Our post-match debrief can wait until the next day.

Win or lose, Brighton’s players are in early the next day — another recovery session, another blast on the bike — “get a sweat on, get the rubbish out of your body” — more cryotherapy, more yoga. Murray has lunch at the canteen, then gets home and flops onto the sofa. There is football on the television, but Peter Rabbit takes precedence.

Brighton’s analysts will give him his performance data the next day — “total distance, sprint distance, high-intensity, how many accelerations, how many decelerations”. He usually covers between 10.5 and 11.5 km per game, but he expects it was more against Tottenham, which only adds to his sense of having nothing to show for his effort. “It’s often like that for a centre forward against the bigger teams,” he says. But if I don’t give a penalty away, we would have been 0-0 at half-time and looking at a different game in the second half. It’s one of those things. I clearly didn’t intend to do it. My arm was attracted to the ball, if you like.”

How does an incident like that affect your focus, particularly in a game of that nature? “I just had to put it out of my mind and try to get back into the game,” he says. “As a younger man, I would have gone over it and it would have affected my game. I don’t think it did last night. It was just one of those games.”

What about the following day? The Mail on Sunday called it “inexplicable”. Three other papers called it “stupid”. He has not checked his Twitter mentions yet, but when he does, he will find that an Arsenal fan, seemingly angry at seeing Tottenham given a helping hand, has got in touch to call him “so f***ing stupid” and, for good measure, “a f***ing t***”.

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty more out there that haven’t tagged me,” he says. “This is one of the reasons why I try to keep my feet on the ground: never get too high, never get too low when you lose. You’re lauded when you score, no matter how you play. You’re vilified if you make a mistake, no matter what effort you put in. It’s all a bit much for my liking. The way fans and media make you feel, you can feel like you’re in a pantomime sometimes.

“The Premier League is a show, really, isn’t it? I don’t mean that negatively, because there are great teams, great players, great competition every week, but everything that’s around it, it’s a show. If you’re not careful, you can get sucked into believing everything people say about you. You can get defined by the result at the weekend or by what people saying about you — good or bad. I don’t think that’s healthy. You have to try to keep things normal, keep it level. Having a family helps with that. It gives you another focus.

“So yes, it’s a show, but it’s a show I love. I’ll continue to love it when I don’t play. I look forward to going to games as a fan, like I did at Carlisle, a big group of us, the first time me and my mates had ever got out of Maryport. We used to stand on the Warwick Road End. A few years later I scored at that end against Aldershot, one of the best moments of my life. I wouldn’t have imagined then that I would be scoring goals in the Premier League now. It’s amazing.

“How do I feel, turning 35? A lot happier than when I turned 30 [after the ACL injury]. Thirty felt like the end. Now I just feel a lot of determination to keep doing what I’m doing for as long as I can and, yes, a bit of pride at where I’ve got to, from where I started out. But you can’t dwell on that too long. You’ve just got to think to the next game.”

Next stop: the Etihad Stadium to face Manchester City. The show goes on.

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tonyt said:

Whoops ... sorry about that!

The pics are nice as well!

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Mr Banana said:

. And that’s me talking as a thick-skinned 34-year-old. It must be hard for a younger player at a big club who has a bad game and gets peppered from all angles.”

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Mr Banana said:

You have no idea what it does to a nerd's blood pressure

They're good, aren't they? I need to resize them for here. Love the one of him in a gimp mask looking like the third member of Altern8.

Wonder if this PR blitz is to make people forget about the tax murkiness.

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Dick Swiveller said:

Not without a subscription, it's not.

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Mr Banana said:

Glenn Glenn Glenn Glenn. Two bloody ns. Oy vey, gimme strength. Anyway...

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Mr Banana said:

Wonder [why] this PR blitz.

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portlock seagull said:

Did Paul Barber write that?

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chaileyjem said:

Oliver Kay from The Times.
Its a positive profile of a footballer because well, Glenn is clearly a likeable, family bloke.
He's had similar coverage on 5 Live, MOTD/Prem League show, other broadsheets etc.

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carlzeiss said:

And also a Northerner with a Whippet .

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Not Andy Naylor said:

Shocking revelations. You can get tomato and avocado on sourdough in a cafe in Westdene? What a time to be alive.

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carlzeiss said:

And also a Northerner with a Whippet .

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chaileyjem said:

... and its true he spends c£14 on haircuts.

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