by Simon Hughes
‘It was a very different regime to what I had seen or experienced before,’ Mellor recalls. ‘Let’s just say I wasn’t enjoying it. It was the harsh reality of where I ended up.’
However, Mellor also describes Preston as his ‘happiest time’, when Alan Irvine was in charge and the spirit amongst the squad reminded him of the early days at Liverpool’s academy.
‘Loved Alan – loved him,’ Mellor says, admitting that most players will speak well of the managers they thrived under. ‘On that basis, what would I say about Gérard Houllier?’ he asks, pausing. ‘Nice enough man, never really made me feel wanted.’ And Rafael Benítez? ‘Very straightforward, maybe too straightforward for some. I knew where I stood.’
Mellor scored goals in a League Cup semi-final, a last-minute winner against the Premier League champions, Arsenal, and then tipped a crucial Champions League tie in Liverpool’s favour when all hope had previously seemed lost. He delivered on big occasions. When he closes his eyes and thinks about it, he can still hear the noise of the Kop when his shot raced past Arsenal’s Jens Lehmann from thirty yards; he can see the blur of colour in the celebrations seconds later as he stood with his arms wide open as if he belonged there, with masses of joyous people jumping around and cheering in front of him.
And yet he became a player known for moments rather than matches, featuring in just twenty-two games for Liverpool, many of them in a period when he tried to ignore agonizing knee pain in an attempt to prove himself to Benítez because, aged twenty-two, he felt it was his last chance to become a regular feature in Liverpool’s team.
Mellor does not want to make what happened thereafter sound like a hard-luck story. Yet misfortune is at the core of his journey. There is also a prevailing sense that his emergence came at the wrong time: when Liverpool were flush with strikers, when more and more money was being spent on young foreign talent, when the lines of communication between Melwood and the club’s academy were not as open as they had been in the past.
‘I was a goalscorer and some would say I was little else,’ he reasons. ‘Fair enough – there were some days where I’d be quiet, where I wouldn’t be involved in the game at all. Of course there were areas that needed improving. Goalscoring, though, you can’t teach it. You either have that killer instinct or you don’t. I was a bit old-fashioned like that. I sometimes wonder whether I was the right player, at the right club, in the wrong decade. Managers at the top level wanted more than goalscoring from their strikers. Thierry Henry transformed the way football was viewed and played.’
If the Mellor family had a business, it was football. Father Ian’s professional career was almost at an end when Neil was born in 1982.
‘I never got to see him play but my dad was a huge influence. He’d experienced professional football. He kept my feet on the ground. Throughout my youth, I was the standout player, playing two years above my age group and always scoring goals, hitting great figures. His message to me was consistent: “Listen, until you play a hundred games for the first team, wherever that may be, you’re not a footballer.” Fair enough, I was doing well, but until that happened there was a lot to do. It made me more determined and kept me hungry. I was desperate to reach that figure of one hundred games and hear my dad say, “You’ve made it, son.”’
Ian Mellor scored for Sheffield Wednesday in a 4–0 thrashing of city rivals, United.
‘I grew up being reminded of that most days in my childhood by Wednesday supporters: “Your dad – what he did in the Boxing Day Massacre . . .” as the game became known. “Can I just shake your hand?”
‘That happened in 1979 and people still talk about it now. I suppose there are similarities between me and my dad in that we are remembered for particular moments: mine came against Arsenal and his in the Sheffield derby. When I spent a season on loan at Wednesday, people still wanted to talk about it. The fans have never forgotten.’
There are other parallels between the careers of father and son.
‘Perhaps neither of us really fulfilled our potential,’ Neil admits. ‘We were both let go by Manchester City when we didn’t want to leave. He got moved on against the wishes of the manager, Malcolm Allison, who resigned off the back of the decision by the board, so my dad says. Allison was a big manager for City. He was in hospital and when he came out my dad had been sold. Allison was furious.
‘My dad scored goals for City. He tells me about one at Highbury against Arsenal which flew into the top corner. He made his debut in ’69 and played with some of the greats: Franny Lee, Colin Bell and Rodney Marsh. City were a good side then. He scored for City against Valencia in Europe too.’
Ian Mellor moved around all the leagues, from City to Norwich to Brighton, Chester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Bradford. Financially, a career in football did not set him up for life.
‘When he finished playing, he had to sign on. He stood in the dole queue in Sheffield, where we lived in the early days, and someone goes, “Why are you here?”
‘“Cos I’ve got no money!”
‘Fans couldn’t believe this was the reality for a professional footballer. There was no money back then. It was a struggle bringing up four kids. Holidays? I didn’t go abroad until I was nine or ten. It was tough for my mum and dad. He eventually got a job with Puma and kept himself ticking over that way. My parents would take turns: my dad would come back from work and then my mum would go out and do part-time stuff wherever she could find it.
‘I have an older brother, Simon, and I think being around older kids made me develop as a footballer a lot quicker,’ Mellor continues. ‘Simon is eight years my senior. I was best man for his wedding and he was best man for mine. We’re best mates now but back at the beginning he must have seen me as a pest – asking to play footy with his mates all of the time. Even though I was so much younger, I was scoring goals, putting them in the top bin on the park. Being in that environment toughened me up.
‘I think my dad learned some lessons raising Simon before me too. Simon will admit that he didn’t have the football talent I had but my dad pushed him. Later, he laid off on me, took a back seat. The other dads, they’d go mad at their kids if they played badly. I think mine learned to be quiet and let me make my own mistakes.
‘I loved football so much from a young age. I got an indescribable buzz whether it was scoring goals for my local team, Priory, or my school. I just loved sticking the ball in the back of the net. I used to say that I didn’t care where I played, as long as I became a professional footballer. If it wasn’t as a forward, full-back or midfield would do. I feel fortunate that I was good enough to always play in the position I enjoyed the most.’
The Mellors moved to the Cheshire town of Sale near Manchester when Neil was five years old.
‘Around the house, we had lots of photographs from my dad’s playing career. I had the bug of wanting to be a professional footballer. I was desperate to follow in his footsteps. People would say, “What happens if you don’t become a footballer?” I couldn’t tell them. It was the only passion I had. Academically, I was bright. I never finished bottom of the class. I had a reasonable focus. But I only wanted to be a footballer.’
Manchester City became Neil’s club.
‘Simon supports Sheffield Wednesday because he saw my dad play there. But it was always about City for me, even though they were awful. It was around the period in the mid to late 1990s when they dropped into the Third Division – utterly depressing times.
‘Shaun Goater was my hero because of how he scored goals. Technically, he wasn’t a great player. But he was always in the right place. That was a gift. I admired Alan Shearer from a distance. Going to watch City, though, I expected to see Goater score. I loved the feeling of me potentially being that player, imagining someone else coming to a game and expecting me to score. Everyone would walk away and go, “Goater – he didn’t play well but he scored.” I was similar.
‘I was a ball boy at Maine Road for a couple of seasons. I was there the d
ay City got relegated from the Premier League, believing a draw with Liverpool was enough to stay up. It was bizarre because the rumour went round we were safe. It was my job to go and get one of the corner flags by the away end and run into the tunnel. The despair was terrible. How could City get relegated? There were lots of tears, not just me – from players as well. It was a surreal day.’
Mellor was integrated into City’s youth system aged ten.
‘The training centre was at Platt Lane in Moss Side and the standard was really high,’ Mellor remembers. ‘Phil Jagielka [who became Everton’s captain] was there. So was Joey Barton, who was on a month-to-month contract. If I’m being honest, I didn’t think Joey would have a long career in football. He wasn’t very good compared to the others. But he had a desire to make it, which pushed him further. He’s had a really good career towards the high end of the game.’
Mellor was the top scorer for six successive seasons in his age group at City. He explains his release at sixteen as a consequence of internal politics.
‘I was never given a proper explanation by the two fellas in charge, Alex Gibson and Jim Cassell. I was devastated; my entire life felt over. Six new lads had started training with us: three from Everton and another three from Ireland. I got the impression their presence had to be justified in some way. Why would any club reject their leading scorer? I still can’t work it out. I went through the gates for the last time at Platt Lane crying my eyes out. I thought my dream was over.’
Five goals in a game for England schoolboys against an academy side from Bolton Wanderers alerted Liverpool scout John Rock.
‘In my first trial game at the academy in Kirkby, I scored the winner for the under-16s against United and that helped a lot. Rick Parry was Liverpool’s chief executive and I came on as a sub for his son, Jamie. Then in my second game, I got a hat-trick against Newcastle.’
Steve Heighway, Liverpool’s academy director, invited Mellor into his office.
‘He said to me, “Neil, you’re raw, but we’ll give you a three-year contract.” Over the next week, United, Blackburn and City – bizarrely – got back in touch, all of them offering me deals. I think City realized it would look bad for them if they released their leading scorer and he went on to score goals at Liverpool – a bigger club. As far as I was concerned, Liverpool were the first to have some faith in me when I was down. I wanted to show a bit of loyalty because of that, so even though I still loved City, I went to Liverpool.
‘I was put in digs on Anfield Road behind the away end. Eight of us were in there, Irish lads like Richie Partridge, Michael Foley, Paul O’Mara, Kevin Doherty. We had a great laugh. All of us were on one side of the house and Stephen Wright’s parents lived on the other side. Stevie was a player at Liverpool too and he played a few times for the first team as well. Sandra, his mum, was great and looked after us all, making sure we always had our food prepared, clothes cleaned and the house maintained.’
Mellor considers himself fortunate that his emergence came at a time when young footballers could breathe socially.
‘Now, it’s impossible,’ he says. ‘If you do something a bit daft, there’s always someone waiting with a camera phone. We were lucky. At the beginning, I had a girlfriend and I’d spend a lot of my weekends in Manchester with her, travelling back after matches. It wasn’t until the under-19s that the proper nights out started: playing Youth Cup games, winning and going out afterwards, buzzing with our £50 bonus, which was almost as much as our weekly wage. They were good nights but I wouldn’t say they were wild. Just a group of average teenagers having a laugh. It’d usually involve a pint in the Merton Pub in Bootle, which was the biggest pub in the area. One of the lads was Steve McNulty – a tank of a defender who plays for Tranmere now. His dad worked the doors at the Merton, so he let us all in and took care of us. Then we’d head over the road to a nightclub called Sullivans, known locally as Sullys.’
Mellor spearheaded the attack of Liverpool’s youth teams with Brian McIlroy. It proved to be a prolific partnership despite the lack of a relationship off the pitch. While Mellor progressed into Liverpool’s first team, McIlroy ended up playing for the Holy Ghost Sunday team in the Crosby and District League.
‘Yeah, we both scored lots of goals but he didn’t beat me once. I think Brian was an Evertonian. Maybe he disliked the fact I wasn’t a local lad. He was a talented player, quick. But he was the one person in the team I wasn’t close with. We complemented each other well yet the friendship just wasn’t there. My closest mates were Neil Prince, Michael Foley and Matty Parry, the goalie, and Steve McNulty.’
The coaches at Liverpool would turn a blind eye to partying. The club’s strength had grown from the 1960s until the 1980s through the fast and powerful teams that bonded on Sunday afternoons in the public houses of West Derby, where drinking sessions lasted until the next morning. At the start of the new millennium, it wasn’t quite the same, as the weight of expectations on footballers grew, but Heighway was wise enough to realize that young players needed to live normal lives in order to ensure egos remained level.
‘I remember getting beaten 3–0 by Barnsley. Heighway was fuming. He had a proper go at everyone. Quite a few of the lads had signed long-term contracts the week before, going from £75 a week to £400 a week. Heighway told us that none of us deserved it. He singled me out and called me a coward because I didn’t win many headers.
‘On the bus on the way home, the lads were down but we all agreed that we needed to sort it out by going out and having a few drinks. So that’s what we did. We had a big old discussion, things got said and then we agreed to move on from it all. That’s the way it should be in football: being able to air your opinion and then get on with things. If socializing helps that process, then so be it.
‘Hughie McAuley ran the bollocks out of us the next day in training, where I spoke to Heighway. I said to him, “I’m not having you call me a coward in front of my teammates, no way.” He told me to prove him wrong. So I worked harder on my heading and I did. We went the rest of the season undefeated.’
Heighway is described like a godfather, the all-seeing eye of Liverpool’s academy. He had studied economics and politics at Warwick University before being signed by Liverpool from amateur club Skelmersdale United. He played more than four hundred games for Liverpool, then emigrated to America, playing in Minnesota and Philadelphia, before returning to Merseyside in early 1989, helping progress the careers of Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler, Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen.
‘One of the first things Steve told me was, “If you want to succeed at this football club, you have to support it.” That stuck with me and I educated myself. I went to countless cup finals and huge games at Anfield, seeing the passion of the supporters. Former clubs will always mean a lot to players but Liverpool completely changed me and I haven’t looked back once at Manchester City – the club that rejected me as a boy, my dad’s team. Now I’m a man and a dad myself, I’m a Liverpool fan. That won’t change.’
The mere mention of the name ‘Heighway’ commanded respect.
‘Some players were scared of Steve. Everyone had ultimate respect for him because he was a great player for Liverpool and a great coach as well. Liverpool had standards and Steve set them. He’d join us in training sessions and be one of the best players. He never asked us to do anything that he couldn’t do.
‘From the training pitches in Kirkby, you could see cars arriving and leaving. When Steve’s Mercedes rolled up, everyone would go, “Fuck, here he comes”, and suddenly the level of training rose considerably. Players would start passing with a bit more authority rather than trying to look cool about it; they’d run more – close the opponent down. You had to be on your toes with Steve around. You’d think you’d been doing well and suddenly he’d stop sessions and tell you where you were going wrong. Some young players would drop a level because of his criticism but I was the opposite. He would drive me on. It was like, Right, the main man’s here
now – let’s have a bit of this.
‘You look at some of the coaches today who have all the badges but they haven’t played at the top level. As a player, the ones you admire most are those who’ve been there and got the T-shirt. Steve Heighway had won everything there was to win at Liverpool. The parents idolized him. The players responded to that. I trusted him 100 per cent. There are some great coaches currently in the game who have never played at the highest level but for me it helped to have at least one who had.’
Dave Shannon and Hughie McAuley were also vital: people that had been involved at Liverpool since the 1980s.
‘Brilliant coaches,’ Mellor says. ‘They were just as important as Steve in terms of drilling the message home about what it meant to represent Liverpool. They didn’t allow you to become blasé about it and take Liverpool for granted. They made you feel like you were doing the most important job in the world and that we were privileged to be where we were in life. Dave and Hughie worked tirelessly to improve us as players, setting such high standards to maintain.’
In Mellor’s eyes, the Liverpool way – an undefined set of rules by which every club employee should work and live – was actually Heighway’s way, or at least he was the messenger, the person who linked the past to the present.
‘Steve developed players and people,’ Mellor says. ‘He reminded us regularly that only one thing was certain in our football careers: that eventually we’d leave the football club. Nobody got to stay for ever. So we should enjoy – cherish, even – every day we had.
‘Heighway was always on the job. He never stopped. Everything he did was geared towards the development of players. He’d grab me in the canteen at lunchtime and say, “Mells, I need you sharper – let’s play table tennis.” He’d pull a pristine bat from the drawer in his office and give me the one that had been used for years. We had some great battles. I was the top table-tennis player at the academy and the pair of us would be sweating our tits off by the end but that’s what he wanted: a competitive environment.’