Ring of Fire

by Simon Hughes

  Five miles separated the Kirkby academy from Melwood, the first team’s training base in West Derby. The separation was not only measured geographically. Though Houllier had used graduates like Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard at the beginning of his reign, the pressure to maintain success saw him use the transfer market for new players as the years progressed. Later, when Rafael Benítez took over, he did the same thing. Initially, opportunities were given to midfielders like Darren Potter but soon his approach shifted, causing an impasse between himself and Heighway, who chose to retire in 2007 because of his frustrations. It is damning that since the academy became active in 1999, no youth player who made his debut for the first team after that year has made more than seventy appearances for the club.

  When asked to describe his impression of the relationship between the two sites by 2002, Mellor uses one word.

  ‘Distant,’ he says. ‘Very distant indeed. I think Houllier changed the mood. Before that, Steve’s relationship with Roy Evans was close. Roy went and, although Houllier initially gave some players an opportunity, something soon changed. Maybe it was the pressures of the job, I don’t know. I’m not sure what it was. It was very rare that any of us got the opportunity to train at Melwood. And when we were invited there, it wasn’t really to train; it was a case of getting chucked into a game for the reserves. I played with players like Jamie Redknapp and Gary McAllister before I’d even trained with them or knew anything about them as people. It was hardly ideal, because any team needs a bit of trust to be successful.

  ‘For a period, it was like two clubs existed within Liverpool: the first team and the reserves, then the under-19s and everything below that. I was scoring a ton of goals for the under-19s but players like John Miles, Ian Armstrong and Chris Thompson were getting in ahead of me at reserve level. I couldn’t figure out the selection policy. It was very frustrating because I felt I was better than them.’

  If a teenager plundered the number of goals Mellor scored for Liverpool’s youth teams now, there would be a clamour for first-team selection.

  The other young academy players to get chances under Houllier were John Welsh and Jon Otsemobor. Welsh was widely known in the city as the best player of his age and compared to Steven Gerrard. At the age of twenty, Otsemobor made headlines when, as a bystander, he was shot in the buttocks by an armed gang-member in a Liverpool nightclub called the Wonderbar.

  ‘What held some of us back was that Liverpool were starting to go down the Continental route with Houllier. At the very beginning, he promoted the English boys but by the time I was ready for the first team, the foreign lads were getting more of a chance. He bought Daniel Sjölund in my position. Then later he went and signed Florent Sinama Pongolle and Anthony Le Tallec. None of them were hitting the same figures as me but I never got the opportunities like they did. That’s the way it was – the politics of football.

  ‘I think Houllier saw what was happening at other clubs like Arsenal, who were recruiting the best young French and Spanish players. Houllier didn’t want to appear out of touch – not doing what the other leading clubs were doing – so he followed the trend.

  ‘I liked Pongolle – he was a good lad, I got on with him. But was he really that much better than me? Was he worth all that money? The same can be said for Le Tallec, although he didn’t mix as much. He was a bit different to Pongolle. Whether it’s right or not, you always felt a French lad under Houllier would get a better chance.’

  Liverpool signed El Hadji Diouf in the summer of 2002 from Lens for the second highest fee in the club’s history. The Senegalese international played in Mellor’s position. His arrival meant more competition.

  In a later interview, Jamie Carragher recalled his state of despair when he quickly realized Diouf was not up to the standard required.

  ‘Do you remember being at school and picking teams for a game of five-a-side?’ Carragher asked me. ‘We did this at Liverpool and Diouf was “last pick” within a few weeks.’ Carragher said he never met a player ‘who seemed to care less about winning or losing’, while Mellor recalled his early tangles with a teammate who ‘only wanted the glory for himself’.

  ‘When we signed him, I was excited. I thought, Wow, this guy’s going to be amazing. He was a star of the World Cup and had a bit of edge about him; he was a bit spiky. In the first week of training, there was a sense of disappointment, an Is that it? sort of thing. He was nothing special. It hit me then that a club can spend a huge amount of money and it doesn’t always work out. Michael Owen and Emile Heskey were miles better than him.

  ‘My first game for Liverpool was against Ipswich Town in the League Cup. In the changing room beforehand, Gérard Houllier asked who wanted to take the penalties. I put my hand up straight away because I saw it as an opportunity to make a mark. I wasn’t great at pens but I viewed it as a free shot at the goal. If you score on your debut, it gets remembered. Houllier looked me in the eye and agreed.

  ‘In the first half, I wasn’t great – a bit nervy. In the second half, I got better. I won a pen – the old trick of waiting for the defender to clatter into me from behind. By the time I got up, Diouf had the ball under his arm in front of the Kop. We were 1–0 down. I looked at him and said, “Give me the ball, Dioufy.” But he was a senior player who hadn’t hit the heights, especially in terms of goals. I realized if I kicked up a fuss – especially in front of the Kop – the fans would have been thinking, Who’s this mouthy young kid? They didn’t know who Houllier had said was on pens.’

  Mellor looked towards Steven Gerrard, who was Liverpool’s captain for only the second time that night. He looked towards the bench. ‘I realized I was on my own. Inwardly I said to myself, Fine, let him take it.’

  Diouf equalized and Mellor was substituted by the time the penalty shoot-out came around, which Liverpool won. ‘OK, the team got through and Liverpool ended up winning the cup that year but it was a bit of a sliding-doors moment for me. Imagine scoring an important penalty in front of the Kop on your debut. The opportunity was taken away from me. Diouf was a selfish man. I realize players have to be single-minded. Selfishness is different.’

  Mellor’s next start came a month later at Maine Road against Manchester City in an FA Cup match. Again, Diouf was involved in the narrative of his afternoon.

  ‘I would have scored had Diouf squared it to me when I had an open goal. Instead he tried to beat Peter Schmeichel at the near post from a daft angle. I was thinking, What are you doing, mate . . . what are you doing?’

  Three days later, Mellor scored his first Liverpool goal during a 2–1 defeat at Sheffield United in the League Cup semi-final first leg, the first moment that suggested he could deliver in important games and, soon after, he was offered a new contract. Mellor, though, only played another six minutes of first-team football that season and, under pressure because of bad results, he believes Houllier lost the courage to persist with young players.

  ‘At the end of the day, Houllier gave me my debut for Liverpool, so I have to be grateful and respectful,’ he says. ‘When we won the League Cup final by beating Manchester United, he included me in the match-day squad of seventeen but only sixteen needed to get changed. I travelled with the squad and trained the night before, when he told me I’d only be needed on the bench if someone else got ill. Nobody gets ill in the hours before a final, do they? Fair play to Houllier, though. He recognized my contribution in the semi and made sure I received a winners’ medal. It was a kind gesture.

  ‘But there’s always that thing nagging at the back of my mind – did I get given the best platform to show what I could do? I’ll always remember going to Thailand in the pre-season with the first-team squad the following summer. I was flying – doing really well. Then he turns around and asks me whether I want to go to West Ham or Sunderland on loan. I knew I wasn’t at the level of Owen or Heskey; I didn’t expect to start games. But I always believed that if I felt out of my depth then I’d know. And in no way did I feel out of my depth.’


  At West Ham, pertinent lessons were learned.

  ‘I grew up a lot. I had to ring up the Sunderland manager Mick McCarthy and explain to him why I didn’t want to go on loan to him because I’d chosen West Ham instead. How many players do that? Do they get their agents to do it? My dad, being an ex-player, told me to pick up the phone and tell him straight. I was shitting it because Mick is a very strong character. I wrote everything down on a piece of paper and read it out. It was tough but he accepted my reasoning. I wanted to play for Glenn Roeder because he had a clear plan of how he wanted to develop me as a player.’

  Roeder was sacked before August was over, however.

  ‘The club had big players: David James in goal, Tomáš Repka, the mad Czech full-back, Stevie Lomas, [Don] Hutchison, Michael Carrick and Jermain Defoe. I remember getting picked up by the team bus for the first game of the season at the service station after signing from Liverpool the day before and Defoe scribbled out the name West Ham United on his headrest and replaced it with Manchester United because he wanted to go there. The mood wasn’t great at the beginning.’

  Mellor was placed in lodgings in Chigwell with Matt Kilgallon and then David Noble.

  ‘I didn’t score the goals that I hoped I might. It was tough. I was away from my family and my friends for the first time at a place where I hoped I’d be able to show that I was capable of playing for Liverpool. But I wasn’t showing I was capable of playing for Liverpool.’

  The demand for promotion meant frustration was lurking on the terraces at the Boleyn Ground.

  ‘I began to realize what three points meant to people, that’s for certain. I remember playing Bradford City and getting booed off at half-time because it was only 1–0. I was thinking, ’Kin ’ell, we’ve played well there – we just haven’t scored enough. Experienced players like Christian Dailly stepped forward offering encouragement. He said that if we won – even if it was 1–0 – everyone would go home happy. That was an eye-opener about the demands of senior football. You can play well but it’s not enough. You have to win. And we won 1–0.’

  Roeder was replaced by Trevor Brooking, a West Ham legend and former England international.

  ‘I loved it under Brooking; I played more or less every game. Three up front: me, Defoe and David Connolly. Life was great for a brief period. But Trevor reminded everyone that he wasn’t there for the long term, just temporarily. And then Alan Pardew came in . . .’

  Mellor did not start again.

  ‘Pardew told me that he’d inherited me and that he wanted to sign other players because he knew I wasn’t there for the long term. That was perfectly understandable, because he’d come from Reading and was guaranteed that he’d be given the time to rebuild. I ended up in the reserves at West Ham. There was no point in me being there, so I asked to go back to Liverpool.’

  Things were changing at Anfield as well.

  ‘Gérard Houllier left as manager and when I heard Rafa Benítez was coming in as his replacement I thought, Great, the new guy might give me an opportunity. I felt as though Houllier had given me games but not the trust. The rumour went round that Benítez had watched videos of all the reserve games from the end of the season before. He liked the look of Stephen Warnock, the left-back. I hoped he might have seen something in me too, because after coming back from West Ham I’d scored ten goals in four games for the reserves. Surely he’d want to get me involved?’

  In the first week of pre-season training, Mellor broke down with a knee injury.

  ‘Rafa sat everyone down. “I’ve got twenty-five players here and you are my squad, you’ll all be needed.” For the first time, I felt part of the group as opposed to filling in like before. But suddenly the chance to really impress the new manager was gone almost straight away.’

  Mellor says he made shortcuts in his return to fitness. He appreciated that his twenty-second birthday was looming and time was slipping away to prove himself.

  ‘I wasn’t fit and I played at Millwall in the League Cup. Rafa dragged me off after an hour and he was right to do so because I was rubbish. I was sitting in the dressing room afterwards thinking, Oh my god – how bad am I? My dad told me, “Son, that’s not good enough if you want to play for Liverpool.”’

  Mellor made the decision to carry on despite the discomfort in his right knee, using painkillers and injections instead of an operation that would have ruled him out for the season.

  ‘There were a few injuries in the team. The club had broken its transfer record again to sign Djibril Cissé and he was out. I saw that as an opportunity for me. I was managing the injury and taking risks to stay in the manager’s plans, to get ahead.’

  Mellor began to think back to the nine-month period as a teenager when a back injury curtailed his progression at a vital time and he had to watch other young players filling the vacuum he’d left behind.

  ‘They were horrible times,’ he says. ‘Getting the bus at half seven in the morning, walking through Stanley Park in the pissing rain because I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have enough money for a taxi either because the wage was low. I’d get on the bus and think, Fuck, there are some weirdos on here at this time. So I’d sit alone.

  ‘Nothing was laid on a plate for me to get back to fitness. I was injured and it was a case of the club asking a serious question: Do you want to be a footballer or not? The physios told me I had to be there for nine. So I’d get there for twenty to nine. Timekeeping was a big issue at Liverpool. It was disrespectful to be late. They didn’t make it easy. You had to do whatever was necessary to be there at nine o’clock. It was character building.

  ‘When you’re out at that age, it eats away at you. You think about the other players getting in ahead of you, making more progress. You wake up in the morning and fall asleep late at night thinking about it.’

  Physical concerns were parked to one side and two late goals against Middlesbrough in the next round of the League Cup saw Mellor’s confidence soar.

  ‘Emlyn Hughes had passed away a few days before and it was quite an emotional occasion at Anfield. When I scored, the noise was deafening. I thought to myself, You know what, I can do this. At the same time, I couldn’t manage to get in and out of my car without my knee aching. I couldn’t even walk up and down the stairs.’

  For his perseverance, Mellor earned a run in the side. For two months, his routine followed the pattern of training, tablets, injections and games. ‘It was agony,’ he says.

  And yet, if he thinks hard, Mellor can still see the ball from his shot swelling the net against Arsenal, who arrived at Anfield as the Premier League champions: a side that had not long lost its record of forty-nine games undefeated. After Xabi Alonso’s opening goal, Patrick Vieira had equalized.

  ‘I went up to Sol Campbell in injury time and asked if he’d swap his shirt with mine. “All right,” he said. A few seconds later, Kaiser [Didi Hamann] got fouled and from the free kick I challenged Vieira somewhere near the halfway line, I don’t know why I dropped that deep. There was another collision between Harry Kewell and one of the Arsenal defenders and suddenly it dropped nicely for me . . .’

  The half volley followed a strange trajectory, rising initially before sinking, taking a low path towards the Kop.

  ‘And then it went in,’ Mellor says, smiling. ‘It was my instinct. People say I was shattered, deciding to have a go from so far out. But I could sense the chance of a goal.’

  Mellor calls it a ‘Roy of the Rovers moment’.

  ‘To score the winner against the best side in the country in the last minute in front of the Kop – how many people dream of that? It was amazing. I wanted to stand there for ever, to capture the feeling in a bottle. I’ve never taken drugs but I think it was the closest thing to a natural high.’

  That Sunday, Liverpool’s players went to the Living Room nightclub in the city centre. Mellor was too tired.

  ‘I was emotionally shattered. I went home with my mum and dad and watched Match of the Day 2 o
n TV. Gordon Strachan was complimentary about my performance. I was made up. Then I went to bed.’

  Had Liverpool not beaten Arsenal in the last minute, maybe they would not have had the faith to rescue themselves from an impossible position two weeks later when Olympiacos visited in the Champions League group stages. Liverpool were behind at half-time and needed to score three without reply to have a chance of progressing. Mellor recalls a flat mood in the dressing room before Jamie Carragher stepped forward.

  ‘There was no doubt in his mind we could turn it around. He jumped up and goes, “Right, lads, we can fucking do this.” Benítez went through his tactics but Carra was the one instilling belief. “We can fucking do this.”

  ‘Rafa needed goals. I was only a substitute. Surely he’d bring me on. Then he turned to Pongolle and gave him the nod. I was fuming inside. We need goals here and I’m kicking my heels.’

  Pongolle took two minutes to equalize for Liverpool. For half an hour, little happened. Then Mellor was introduced for Milan Baroš and two minutes later he prodded Liverpool into a lead and within touching distance of progression.

  ‘I didn’t celebrate. I grabbed the ball and took it back to the halfway line as quickly as possible.’

  Wave after wave of attack followed.

  ‘It was like a kids’ game,’ Mellor continues. ‘For all Rafa’s tactics – which were important – some of his best results were achieved in chaos.’

  When Steven Gerrard thumped a shot past Greek goalkeeper Antonios Nikopolidis with injury time approaching, the roar seemed to rise from Anfield’s bowels like thunder. Liverpool were through. Mellor was riding with the story. He was becoming an important part of Liverpool’s short-term history and he hoped that, soon enough, he would be regarded an important player. Yet within a month, he’d played his last game for the club.