Sheff’s football career a tasty tale!
COV KID GARY MCSHEFFREY LIFTS THE LID ON HIS CAREER
GARY Mcsheffrey spent 14 seasons in the top two divisions of English football.
In a professional career that spanned nearly two decades the attacker played for some of the most recognisable names in the game.
Born and bred in Coventry he had a couple of stints with the Sky Blues, reached the top flight with Birmingham City and also had loan moves with Leeds United and Nottingham Forest.
And those are just the transfers that did happen.
In an interview with the Coventry Telegraph the 37-year-old has given a brutally honest insight into his time in the professional game.
n Moving from the Sky Blues to Blues (2006)
“I remember being in America with Coventry on pre-season training. Micky Adams called me and said he’d had an offer, ‘Steve Bruce has offered a million quid for you, I told him where to go. What’s your thoughts, you don’t want to leave here do you?’
“I said, ‘no, not really.’ Maybe back then I was a bit naive to the moves in football, I had never done anything.
“I was 23 coming up to my 24th birthday and I had been at Coventry since I was about nine. It was never a case of wanting to leave, we were always in the Champ hoping to get into the play-offs and stuff so it was always a case of never chasing anything.
“The summer before Reading were really keen and I went and met Brian Mcdermott and Nick Hammond and they were in the same league as Coventry and I saw it as a sideways move at the time.
“Especially as Coventry were moving to the Ricoh and as a local lad I thought I needed to play in the new stadium so I turned that one down. It was the season they got 106 points!
“I thought nothing of it, had another good season and the next summer Birmingham showed interest. Even then I just got on with my training.
“A few bids went in over the course of a few weeks and, when push came to shove, it was like, ‘I don’t really want to leave Coventry,’ but I looked at the Birmingham squad and it was better than the squad from the summer before that wanted me.
“Every kid’s ambition is to play
Micky Adams
Premier League football and I thought, ‘this one isn’t a sideways move, they have just come down, Bruce had recruited really well’ and I thought it was a good move.
“It was a tough one to leave Coventry but ultimately I was going to a Birmingham squad that was top drawer for that level and it proved to be so.
“I had scored the winner on the first day of the season with Coventry, then I didn’t score for Blues for seven or eight games.
“I remember chipping in with a few assists and once I scored it was like the shackles were off, I got something like eight in eight and I had 15 for Blues just before the turn of the year. I was probably the most confident I have ever been.
“The goals were flowing, the
n Back in the Premier League (2007/08)
assists were flowing and I was playing with a freedom and was pleased with my performance level.’’
“We went up, started the season, then Bruce went to Wigan and Alex Mcleish came in about November. “We went up and there was a lot of hype about it. That summer I had the most interviews I’d had in my whole life.
“I remember doing most of the interviews and it was all about Premiership football, I’d had a taste of it with Coventry as a kid and it took me until 24 to get back in. “I was going into it confident and, looking back, if it was the modern day now, I had probably had a good summer, I was a little bit overweight. I was top heavy, was in the gym a lot, I am probably three or four kilos lighter now than I was then. I bulked up a little bit and it took me a couple of months to get going.
“There was a stage when I got in, was playing with confidence and doing all right but the goals dried up. I think I ended up with four goals, not a great return.
“But I compare it to some people nowadays and people are getting new deals having scored two goals in a season, strikers and wingers. When I compare some things to the modern day I was probably hard on myself.
“We were going from a tactic under Bruce in the Championship, ‘if we let in two we’ll score three, if we let in three we’ll score four.’ We always went out to win games.
“The Premier League taught me to be a lot more disciplined, we set out not to lose really because the opposition you are playing against if you go for it and are too open they will play through you and with their end product they will punish you. I found I learned a lot, I was a more educated player as a left midfielder, I think I did a decent enough job for the team, made 30 starts of the 38.
“I always look back and think I could probably have done a bit more.”
n Relationship with Mcleish
“Initially I was all right. You can tell they were totally different characters. The mentality of how he approached the game was different tactics, he was very cautious, didn’t want to get beat.
“But at the same time I was learning, especially out of possession, to be more compact for the team.
“But it had the opposite effect on me in terms of I was always judged on end product, goals and assists.
“He was good, it was different, but eventually I got the feeling he doesn’t really rate you and in the long run it affects your confidence if you are not really part of someone’s plans.
“Saying that, had I performed bet
We [Blues] went up [to the Prem] and there was a lot of hype about it. That summer I had the most interviews I’d had in my whole life.
Gary Mcsheffrey