“you couldn’t give a team talk on the pitch today, like i did – but you have to think outside the box”

Who were your heroes, growing up? Being a footballer is the dream for many boys and girls – I was no different. My dad used to work near Loftus Road, so despite having Arsenal and Palace fans in the f

So, you made your professional debut for George Graham’s Arsenal in 1990... I went down there as a 16-year-old, having just scored for Scotland in the 1989 Youth World Cup Final in front of 50,000 peo

How did your move to Southampton come about in 1996? I was scoring loads of goals in Norway and I went to Southampton on trial for a few days. They liked what they saw. It was a dream come true: every

O wen Hargreaves is one of English football’s most curious cases. The son of a Welsh mother and an English father, he was born in Canada before moving to Bayern Munich as a teenager. There, he broke i

Matt James puts the MN readers’ questions to the queen of competition PR – and of so many other things besides

You recently retired aged 40 after playing over 900 games. Why now? I’d been thinking about it for close to two years and had become quite comfortable with calling it a day. But as soon as I actually