Martin Keown is explaining how he ensured that his club’s attacking talents never became complacent.
“I used to kick our strikers’ arses in training,” he tells
FourFourTwo
with a smile. “I wanted to let them know about the demands that were coming. Better they find out from me in training than in the game a few days later. I used to really love pissing them off. If I felt they were having themselves, I would just man-mark them. They hated that. But they learned. They probably found relief on the Saturday.”
Keown was called many things on the top-flight pitches of English football, but one particularly common nickname was ‘The Rash’, alluding to the enjoyment he took in man-marking. He could stick to the greatest talents in the game. But he could also stick to his principles, and in his new book,
On The Edge,
the former Arsenal and England defender has underlined with fascinating honesty how there is much more to him than that barnacle-like ability as a centre-back.