CONOR’S GOT NO REGRETS AT TURNING BACK ON KOP
HAVING quit Liverpool because he was homesick, spending a gap year playing in India was an odd move for Conor Thomas. The irony is not lost on the likeable midfielder who is enjoying a League Two promotion push at Cheltenham – a far cry from years of chaos with Coventry and Swindon.
Thomas does not regret bailing on Anfield after being signed aged 17 – just two days after making his full debut for the Sky Blues in an FA Cup defeat at Birmingham in January 2011.
He hoped he had done enough to make a full Championship debut when his agent called late on deadline day.
‘He said, “Pack your bags you are going to Liverpool, you’ve got a couple of hours to get up there”. I wasn’t happy or excited, I was shocked. I was settled at Coventry,’ recalls Thomas.
The next day he was training with Liverpool’s first team. ‘I was looking around at all these superstars – Suarez, Reina, Carragher, Gerrard. It was a bit surreal,’ he adds.
‘I called my family and was on top of the world. I was starstruck at first but slowly you feel you are forgotten about and one of many put into the system.
‘After training I’d be back in the hotel by 1pm and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt really isolated.
‘The glitz and glamour wears off pretty quickly. I wanted to get back to my comfort zone.’
Despite his loan to Liverpool having been with a view to a permanent move, he begged to go back to Coventry and when this got the green light, he says his reaction ‘was how it should have been when I got the call to go to Liverpool’. ‘I was so happy and excited,’ says Thomas. ‘It felt like such a weight off my shoulders.’
His spell at Coventry coincided with a chaotic time featuring relegation from the Championship and playing home games in Northampton.
‘We went into administration twice,’ says Thomas. Of their tenpoint deduction in 2013-14 season, he adds: ‘We started so well – then looked at the table and we were on one point. Everyone was so deflated.’
He cut his Coventry ties in 2016, attracted by League One rivals’ Swindon’s reputation for purists’ football, but that was little better as they were relegated from League One.
‘I left Coventry with all its off-field issues but found Swindon had so many of their own,’ says Thomas, who was signed by then Robins boss Luke Williams, only for Tim Sherwood to arrive as football director in the November.
‘Luke Williams wasn’t really the manager. It was very messy,’ Thomas says. ‘Sherwood signed six or seven players but they were all just random. There wasn’t a training ground, the organisation wasn’t great. Sometimes Sherwood would come in the day before a game, some times he wouldn’t. Same with half-time and after the game.
‘Luke had to face the press, do the interviews and take the brunt of it but it wasn’t his team. It’s not rocket science how that affects the players.’
Little wonder he took up an offer to play for Teddy Sheringham in India and his move to Atletico de Kolkata in West Bengal proved a real eye-opener.
‘The facilities, training grounds and stadiums are top drawer. In our opening game there were 49,000 there. It was my job to keep (Dimitar) Berbatov quiet,’ he recalls.
‘It was a great experience but the poverty I saw there will stick with me forever. I did so much charity work out there with children and schools.’
They included the Hope Foundation supporting hundreds of parentless, homeless children living in cramped conditions. ‘ They were so happy, all smiling,’ he says. ‘I was thinking these conditions aren’t great but they are so content they even have this. It does hit you when you are out there.’
Cheltenham, who he joined in 2018, is rather sedate but the League Two leaders are looking to put last season’s play-off semi-final defeat to Northampton behind them.
‘That was an absolute nightmare,’ says Thomas. ‘I didn’t sleep for about a week after that. ‘We are trying to use it as fuel to improve. It’s been an upward journey and a good one to be on.’
100LEAGUE
APPEARANCES THOMAS MADE FOR HOMETOWN CLUB COVENTRY DURING SIX YEARS AS A PROFESSIONAL WITH THE CLUB 18GOALS
6FT 1IN MIDFIELDER THOMAS HAS SCORED IN 110 LEAGUE AND CUP GAMES SINCE SIGNING FOR CHELTENHAM ON A FREE TRANSFER IN JULY 2018