In his fascinating new autobiography, ‘Robbed’, ex-Liverpool defender Rob Jones relives the highs and lows of his rollercoaster eight-year spell playing for his boyhood heroes.
In this exclusive extract for Read Liverpool, he discusses the Roy Evans era and that infamous ‘Spice Boys’ tag.
….You’ve all heard the stories.
Crazy, drunken nights on the town, celebrity parties and the more ludicrous suggestion of rampant sex orgies.
These were the alleged off-the-field activities that prevented Liverpool from winning the Premiership title.
Most was tabloid hyperbole, but mud as they say, tends to stick.
I can’t quite put my finger on when the infamous ‘Spice Boys’ tag first raised its ugly head, but the two words still make me wince to this day.
It may well have been prior to the run-in to the 1995-96 season but when I think back that is the time period that stands out. It was blown out of all proportion.
We’d emerged as a team that many pundits were now recognising as a serious threat to Manchester United but our inconsistency led to murmurs that we didn’t take our football seriously.
I don’t know if it was envy, sheer malice or an agenda to sell more newspapers but anything our lads took an interest in away from the pitch received a negative write-up.
We had McAteer doing a shampoo advert, David James modelling for Armani, players being snapped at big celebrity parties and Redders going out with the pop star, Louise.
These were seen as distractions that were costing us victories on the pitch.
The fact that the game’s other top names were enjoying a similar lifestyle in their spare time seemed to conveniently go unnoticed. I remember Barnesy suggesting that the boss should have put a stop to all of it right away.
He reckoned it was just giving the media ammunition to twist the off-the-field dalliances into the explanation for our inconsistency on the pitch. He was right of course, but you can’t keep players on a leash 24/7.
Roy started to get a lot of stick for being too lenient but I can assure you he wasn’t.
He’s a nice guy but he knew when he needed to shout or get his point across. He’d have a pint with us every now and then but a lot of managers did that in those days. It’s changed a lot but in my opinion he didn’t do anything to cause us to question his authority.
You’ve all probably heard the stories about pranks some players allegedly played upon him.
The likes of Stan Collymore and Razor Ruddock will tell tales about how Roy didn’t command respect and was too easy on the players, but what can you do with characters like them? We all know what type of lads they are and they attracted that kind of attention wherever they played – not just at Liverpool.
I was never witness to anything that undermined Roy and to be honest, it doesn’t fit with the man I dealt with in the dressing room. He was a good guy but he was strong.
He came down really hard on the likes of Ruddock and Molby over their respective weight problems. You have to remember that it is never as simple as treating everyone the same. A good manager knows that he has to be hard on some players and more encouraging with others. You need to work out how to get the best out of specific members of your squad. I thought Roy was great at that sort of thing, despite what Stan and others might say.
Stan was a big, powerful forward with pace, skill and a superb eye for goal. He had the lot and I was buzzing when we signed him from Nottingham Forest. He quickly forged a deadly partnership with Robbie and appeared destined for greatness.
But something was never right upstairs and I think the issues that plagued him throughout his career proved that it didn’t matter who his manager was; he was always a disruptive influence.
He wouldn’t make the move to live in Liverpool and was determined to drive up from Cannock every day. He would miss training a lot and even Ronnie Moran, who is as strict as they come, gave up on him. I lost count of the number of times the management gave him the hair-dryer treatment, but it was in one ear and out the other.
It didn’t bother him but it showed a real lack of respect. If Ronnie or Roy shouted at me, I’d be instantly apologetic.
Overall, I think Roy did okay as Liverpool manager. Maybe that isn’t what is expected; Liverpool should be winning titles year in, year out. But that’s not really happened for 20-plus years now.
Roy got us to within striking distance of top spot on two or three occasions and with a bit more luck we may well have won one. If we’d managed to do that, I think we would have gone on to clinch a couple more. We certainly had the talent at our disposal and not many people would argue against the suggestion that we played the best football in the country when we were on song. Our problem was that we didn’t grind out enough results when we had an off day.
Man United were always just that little bit more consistent.
It was such a sad situation because in the summer of 1995 it was all looking so positive……..
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