WAR AND PEACE
Kenny lifts the lid on weird relationship with boss Neil
PADDY KENNY used to have regular blazing rows with mentor Neil Warnock – despite the manager signing him five times.
The former Sheffield United and Leeds keeper spent most of his 21- year career with Warnock, starting as a 20- year- old when he signed him at Bury in 1998.
But their relationship was not always a bed of roses, with the pair often going at it hammer and tongs after a poor performance or training ground disagreement.
Now 42 and retired, Kenny has written his autobiography, The Gloves Are Off, in which he recalls with ease the fireworks that frequently ignited between the pair.
He said: “Neil is a tough character. We used to go at it like cats and dogs until we were blue in the face. Of course he always came out on top because he was the gaffer, but I wasn’t one to back down.
“Players didn’t last very long if they got on the wrong side of him. Danny Cullip clashed with the boss and was only at Sheffield United a few months.
“When I went to Leeds and he signed me for a fourth time, people asked, ‘ Why does he keep on signing you?’
“Well, he knows I could be a bit of trouble off the pitch but he also knew what he was going to get on the pitch.
“Neil is misunderstood. He’s seen as a bit of a dinosaur but he’s been a success wherever he has gone. He’s Marmite.”
Now 71 and in charge at Middlesbrough, Warnock first spotted Kenny while he was playing for non- League Bradford Park Avenue.
He was soon snapped up and the manager would go on to sign him for Sheffield United, QPR, Leeds and Rotherham.
On being told Warnock called him “chubby” when he first laid eyes on him, Kenny joked: “I like to think of myself as big- boned and cuddly.
“He helped me achieve what I achieved. When Neil first signed me I would never have imagined we would have gone all the way to the Premier League together.
“I needed a lot of work done and Neil was the guy who always got the best out of me. He saw I was a rough diamond.”
Kenny, who won seven Republic of Ireland caps, enjoyed the most successful period of his career at Sheffield United.
He played for them for eight years, including that ill- fated campaign in the Premier League when the Blades were relegated in controversial circumstances in the season finale in 2007.
The club complained West Ham should have gone down in their place thanks to the impact of Carlos Tevez, with United claiming the striker’s thirdparty registration meant the Yorkshire club should be reprieved instead.
Kenny thinks the Tevez saga played a role in his bitter exit from Bramall Lane after he was handed a nine- month drug ban in 2009.
He tested positive for ephedrine, a banned substance contained in over- thecounter cough medicine Chesteze.
The shot- stopper thinks his ban was harsh on
him and the club, saying: “Nine months was a very long time. It’s not like I was trying to enhance my performance – it was accepted it was negligence.
“My lawyer told me I would likely get three months and it would be backdated to when the club had suspended me. My own view is I was punished because the club sued over Carlos Tevez.
“To this day people ask if I was “off my t** s” but that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t a drug cheat.”