I've looked at some tackles and thought: 'You stupid idiot!'... but I won't change my desire and will to win, admits Brown - Mail 16/2/13
Michael Brown cannot be sure Leeds will add to this season’s catalogue of FA Cup shocks at the Etihad on Sunday, but he has a shrewd idea Neil Warnock will find a way of making them believe they can.
He is just as certain it will be anything but orthodox.
Warnock has form for springing cup upsets, and Brown has a vivid memory of the inimitable way he made it work in their days together at Sheffield United.
'We were playing Liverpool, a very strong Liverpool at that, and no-one gave us much chance,’ said the Leeds midfielder, ahead of the fifth- round tie at his first club, Manchester City. ‘We were in the dressing room shortly before kick-off, and Neil pinned up a team sheet and pointed to it.
‘He said, “Right, lads. This is the Liverpool line-up. I’ve just gone through the names, and you know what? I’d swap every single one of them for you lot!”
‘I don’t know whether it was reverse psychology or what, but we all fell about laughing. It relaxed us, and we went out thinking whatever will be, will be. It worked, too, because we won. He comes out with lines like that all the time. He loves it and will have something up his sleeve for Sunday, no doubt.
‘Against Tottenham, in the last round of the Cup, he went through their team, then said, “Jeez, good luck against that lot”. Then he turned to our full backs, Sam Byram and Aidy White, and said, “I’d go and get some sleep if I were you, lads. You’re going to need it against Lennon and Bale”.
Dressing-room time is when he comes into his own. There is no-one like him for getting the best out of players.’ Brown has forged a reputation as one of the game’s most combative midfielders, with a straight red card 10 minutes into his City debut as a 17-year-old the first of many. Yet youth-team coach Neil McNab’s only reservation at the outset was that he didn’t tackle enough.
‘I went to City straight from school, and I hadn’t even played for the reserves when Alan Ball gave me my debut,’ he said. ‘Initially, I was just going down to QPR for the experience, then he slept on it and said he was putting me on the bench. We were losing 2-0, so he sent me on. That was an unbelievable feeling, after supposedly not being involved at all.
‘I got pulled up for tugging Andy Impey’s shirt, and, even though Alan Kernaghan was covering, the referee said he was through on goal, and it was a straight red. I’ve had a few since, but in those days, I was only interested in getting forward and scoring.
‘Neil McNab always used to tell me to get stuck in more, be first to the ball and win it. That was his style, and I guess some of it rubbed off on me.’
So much so that during his spell at Fulham two challenges in 2006 brought Brown into the public eye. He was only booked for a two-footed lunge at Old Trafford on Ryan Giggs, but the inevitable sanction of a three-match ban followed a red card for a crunching tackle on former Spurs team-mate Sean Davis, then of Portsmouth.
There is a reluctance to delve into individual instances but an acceptance that self-control has not always been his strong suit.
‘I have had a full mixed bag when it comes to tackling,’ he said. ‘Some I have gone for and been a bit unlucky, others I have been just plain wrong. I have looked at some and thought, “You stupid idiot. Why did you do that?” All I can say is I am a wholehearted player with a real desire to win. I can’t change that, and I won’t.’
The days of terrorising opposing defences, rather than midfielders, reached a peak during the season that included Liverpool as one of several Premier League scalps for Sheffield United.
‘I scored 22 goals from midfield, and there were some real screamers in among them,’ he recalled. ‘We reached both cup semi-finals, and it was a magical season for me. I had Stuart McCall alongside me, and he used to say, “Go on, on you go”. He always encouraged me to get forward, and I just felt I was going to score every time I took aim. I don’t know why I don’t try it more often now — I think I’ve forgotten how to do it after so long.'
Sunday could be Brown’s last chance of a big scalp. Then again, at 36, there could be four more.
‘I want to play until I’m 40,’ he said. ‘That is the target, and I’m confident I can do it. I like the treats in life as much as anyone. I enjoy a beer or two at the right time, and I love my food. Anything with ketchup on, and I’m happy. But I have always looked after myself. I have always done extra training, though, these days, I have to be careful not to overdo it.
‘It gets tougher all the time, and a little of your sharpness goes, but I’m hanging in there. I relish the big occasions as much as ever, the challenge. On Sunday, it will be David Silva or Carlos Tevez running at us flat out. Fantastic. Nothing I haven’t seen over the past 20 years, so I’m looking forward to it.’