Layth Yousif
The Sky Sports reporter talks in admiration about A Perry Groves World, the late great David Rocastle, Paul Merson playing at Wormwood Scrubs, Soccer Saturday’s Xmas party and a lot more as he tells Layth Yousif of his appreciation for his favourite Gunner’s legends.
After ten years reporting for Sky Sports on the game he loves passionately, Johnny Phillips became an overnight sensation at the end of last season. Commentating on the last rites of the Watford-Leicester play-off game for Sky, ex-Gunner Manuel Almunia managed to save Anthony Knockaert’s 96th minute penalty. Despite being unable to walk properly, the man who once played for Arsenal in a Champions League final showed the watching football world what he was capable of at times, and hurled his tired body at the ball to successfully block the rebound.
Watford broke swiftly up the pitch and in the blink of an eye Troy Deeney had walloped home a winner that took Watford to Wembley. Caught up in the maelstrom of emotion, Johnny completely lost it. It should have made for car-crash TV but what it did – apart from go viral on the internet – was to confirm to the watching millions that Johnny Phillips first and foremost loves football as a fan.
“I know I’m lucky to do what I do for a living and I try never to forget that” he tells me modestly. The sense of incredulity is still apparent when he tells me about Jeff and the boys’ Soccer Saturday Christmas party last year. “They’re top lads. We all went to a nice restaurant in Liverpool. There were loads of couples there, but as we walked in all these big blokes stopped listening to their wives and stared at Jeff Stelling instead”, he tells me - not in a big-headed way, simply more in a chuckle about husbands getting it in the neck from their partners for their love of football.
For educational purposes, I have to ask who out of the gang is a nightmare on the dance floor. “Honestly mate”, comes the reply, “Dowie was so bad - he actually looked like David Brent dancing”.
With an Irish dad who lived in the staunch Arsenal territory of Hornsey in the 1950s before moving to Merseyside, Johnny, although not an Arsenal fan (he supports Wolves), has always had a soft spot for us.
Number Five is Perry Groves….
“Growing up as a kid in Liverpool in the 1980s my knowledge of Arsenal was flaky to say the least. But a friend of the family had moved up to the city to teach in a local school and when I wasn’t watching my first love, Wolves, or the city’s two successful clubs in Red or Blue, it was Arsenal I was taken to. And I was stood on the terraces at an away game in the north-west – Boundary Park, Oldham.
It was there that I first heard the song “We All Live in a Perry Groves World.” It was the first instance of a cult song that I’d come across. I had only ever known the ubiquitous soundtracks of popular terrace singing, where the tune stays the same but the name is changed. “Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool.” “And it’s Everton, Everton FC, We’re by far the greatest team…” and so on. ‘What’s a Perry Groves World?’ I wondered. And from then on, I followed the career of the enthusiastic winger. He was on the pitch when Michael Thomas scored the decisive goal in the greatest end to a season in history (forget Agüero and Man City, QPR knew they were safe when he scored that goal!) in my home city and everyone in that team has a special place in my affections.
Four is Marc Overmars
I love an out-and-out winger. Pace is the most frightening of weapons. You can have all the skill, positional sense and reading of the game in the world as a defender, but if your opponent is quicker than you then you are redundant. Overmars had the pace to destroy and the guile to outwit the game’s top defenders. His goal at Old Trafford helped crown a double-winning first season on these shores. Five million quid well spent.
Three is Paul Merson
It’s hard to know how much Paul Merson’s chaotic off-field lifestyle impaired his career at Highbury. Coming through the ranks as an apprentice in the mid-Eighties his style was hardly akin to the model of a George Graham player. Overly reliant on his wonderful right foot, to the point where he would run round the ball rather than use his left, he was sometimes a law unto himself. But he stayed with the club for over a decade and played a key part in returning Arsenal to the very top. When Arsène Wenger sold him for good money early on in his tenure, it brought to an end a very successful stay at Highbury.
Many, many seasons later I saw at first hand his love for the game when he rolled back the years and helped out a beleaguered bottom-of-the-table Welshpool side in the Spa Mid Wales League with a one-off appearance in 2012. He scored a fine header in a 4-1 defeat to Newbridge. Last season I was playing Sunday League football on the barren wasteland of Wormwood Scrubs and there he was on an adjacent pitch turning out for Whitton Albion. He may not always have channelled his love for the game in the right way, but he is a football man to the core.
Two is David Rocastle
The late great David Rocastle.
No apologies for harking back to the 1988/89 team for my second-favourite player too. This team held so many fond memories for me, principally because they finally broke the stranglehold of all the all-conquering, all-consuming Liverpool team that was thrust upon me by their crowing fans in the school playground throughout the Eighties.
Rocky, like Perry Groves, seemed to be held in particularly high esteem on the terraces. He played in every league game that season, as he had done the previous year. It always puzzled me how he never made more appearances for England. Had he been playing now he would have likely trebled his 14 caps, but he was unfortunate enough to be around when Bobby Robson had a settled side and games were harder to come by. His passing was a tragedy in the real sense of the word.
One is Dennis Bergkamp
Hardly an original selection, but he is the most wonderful player I have ever seen. Better writers than me can describe the effortless style and composure of one of the most gifted footballers to have graced these shores. His career in this country lasted far longer than the sceptics who thought he was here for a quick buck suggested. The hat-trick at Filbert Street, the stunning turn and curling top corner finish at Roker Park, examples of his brilliance on the older traditional grounds of English football. There were plenty more in the ensuing years at more modern Premier League venues.
