Gabby Interview in the ST

[Mister E]

Great interview with Gabby in the Sunday Times today - not going to link it 'cos I don't subscribe.
Basically, he is very happy playing for his home team and he does not envy the likes of AY, GB and JM in their big-money clubs 'cos he enjoys playing every week.

That was the nub of it, anyway.,

[Ad@m]

Fair play.  I'm sure they'd say they enjoy being paid 3 times what he's on for half the work.

Gabby's been the best thing about this season so far and long may it continue.

[Shrek]

Gabby has Flourished because of Ash moving on.

I just hope he stays at Villa his whole career and becomes an all time Villa great.

[berneboy]

Gabriel Agbonlahor comes to the media room at Aston Villa’s training ground wearing jeans, casual top and expressing wariness. Interviews aren’t his cup of tea and when the club’s head of media, Brian Doogan, tells him how good it will be for him to be written about in The Sunday Times, Agbonlahor casts his eyes towards the heavens.

When the selling continues, the player cuts in with a smile: “Hey, Brian,” he says, “just leave us, right? Just leave us.” Mischievously but seriously he plays his media man, like Joe Pesci to Ray Liotta in Goodfellas: “I’m funny how?” Soon, there are only two in the room and one of them feels like the presenter of a television quiz needing to start with easy questions.

Agbonlahor is 25, the club’s longest serving player, and will soon be Villa’s all-time leading scorer in the Premier League. “I don’t think about that,” he says, disapprovingly. “I can’t be looking at things like that. You do the best you can, score as many goals as you can for the team and can’t be thinking about some personal stuff.” The last bit isn’t so much an observation as a warning: don’t give me flattery. So the quizmaster reaches for the cards with the more difficult questions.

“What happened with Joey Barton and you in 2008? It was reported as something racist that you didn’t pursue.” Challenged, he engages: “With him it is a different situation. Everybody’s got their opinion of him, he’s just a different character. When the thing happened, I could have had something done about it, through the FA or whatever, but I decided to let it go. I wouldn’t say it was racist.

“From his point of view maybe it was a joke, I didn’t take it personally. It was just him as a person. He has calmed down a lot since joining QPR. He’s concentrating on his football and when he does that he’s a good player.”

Agbonlahor is a young black man from working-class Birmingham playing a game that has an issue with racism. “For something racist to come out of your mouth on a pitch, for me that means you are racist,” he says. “If you’re angry at somebody winding you up, there’s other things you could call them, names that everybody in football uses.

“I’ve been angry at people in games, I’ve used the c-word, call them a b******, the bad words people use, but for something racist to come out of your mouth, almost without you realising what you’re saying, that relates to who you are as a person. That cannot be left on the field; it has to be dealt with afterwards.”

He was born in Erdington, not far from Villa Park, the fourth child of Samson and Tina. Samson is Nigerian, Tina is Scottish; their union didn’t last. Tina left when Gabriel was two. You broach the subject tentatively, suggesting it must have been tough.

“No, it wasn’t,” he says. “If I was a different age, say five or six, it would have been, but when you’re an infant, you’re not going to remember that. My mum left when I was two and I’ve not seen her since. Dad remarried when I was four or five to the woman I call “Mum”. Her name is Mary and she’s always been my mum, we’re a close family.” He speaks deliberately and with certainty about the mother he never knew.

“I am really glad that I did make it as a footballer. I showed it was her loss sort of thing. Me making it, [if you’re her] you probably think to yourself, ‘If I had been a proper mum and stayed around, I would be having the benefits of my son being a professional footballer’, like my family has. It has obviously been her loss.”

“It’s been written that you have reconciled.”

“No, that’s bull****. Somebody leaves when you’re two years old, you’re not going to want to speak to them and I never would, to be honest.” He had enough problems with Samson and Mary over his schoolwork. “Dad is a clever man, a PhD in science. I was quite smart in primary school but my heart wasn’t in it. Charisma, my brother, got into grammar school and played rugby, even though I always thought he was the best footballer of the three of us. Luckily for me, I didn’t pass the exams for grammar school and ended up going to a school where they played football. Everything happens for a reason. I used to get in trouble with my parents over bad grades but I wasn’t interested in school, wasn’t interested in getting a job, wasn’t interested in anything but football.

“My dad was good about it. With him, if you didn’t want to do your homework you had to be practising football in the back garden or the local fields. I think that I proved to him that I was serious.”

He was a kid when Villa took a stake in his life. An invitation to a six-week trial; play a few games for the 13s, they said, see how you like it; a trip to Crewe Alexandra, the game a dream, the three goals his passport to a new life. It surprised him that when it mattered, he was able to play his best. Hardly had they travelled back down the M6 than Villa had signed him.

One season has followed another, a good striker/winger at a mid-range Premier League club, but not yet an England regular. He is contracted to remain at Villa until 2015. There’s been a lot of good players at the club in his time — Gary Cahill, Gareth Barry, Stiliyan Petrov and Ashley Young are the four to whom he has been closest.

“How tough is it when the train leaves taking your friends [Barry and Young] to Champions League clubs?”

“I don’t see it like that. I am enjoying my football at Aston Villa. Last season was tough, but I got through it. This season’s been better. If I’m enjoying my football why would I leave and risk not playing regularly at some other club? Villa is my local club, close to my family and friends, and if you asked a lot of players would they like to play at the club in the city they were born, many of them would take that rather than go to a bigger club.” Being the local boy confers privilege. As part of the Premier League players’ scheme to promote participation in football, Agbonlahor got to present local club Continental Star with £25,000 worth of kit to be dispersed among 25 local teams — all paid for by Villa’s first-team squad. He wants you to understand that in this, the most mercenary football age of all, he is connected to his home club.

“Last season I wasn’t playing well and I got a bit of stick from our fans, but it was probably deserved. They can see when you’re not playing well and they’re straight onto you. That is fair enough, given the wages we get and the fact they are paying for expensive tickets.

“With its history and its fan base, this is a good club. When things weren’t going well last season, I signed my contract taking me to 2015 because this is where I want to play

[olaftab]

Gabby in the Sunday Times... I bet the newsagent on Nechells Park road has his one copy fingred by the entire community!

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Thanks for posting, Berneboy.

Reading that, I have to say Gabby is both a credit to the club and himself. His head is firmly planted on his shoulders and he deserves all the success he gets. I really hope he carries on developing as a player and gets another opportunity with the England squad, if that's what he wants. He's been bloody brilliant this season and it's great that the fans recognise it, he deserves all the praise he gets for working so hard at his game.

[Legion]

Thanks, Bernard. Good read.

[olaftab]

“With its history and its fan base, this is a good club. When things weren’t going well last season, I signed my contract taking me to 2015 because this is where I want to play

Thank You Gabby.

[steffo]

I was speaking to someone today who 'lodges' for one or two of the kids. He said Gabby always looks out for them as he was once one of them.

[The Left Side]

Thanks for posting!

[Villanation]

Great post....

Said it before, at the moment he is Villa, have to be honest when I'm at a game, team out the tunnel i start to applaud, see Gabby appear and I applaud even more, that's how it is.

[Handsworth Wood Villa]

Love Gabby.

[The Man With A Stick]

He's a good lad, innee?

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

I have a feeling when Gabby hangs his boots up he will need to be included in that select group of ex players we think of as especially claret and blue. Names like Houghton, Aitken, Cowans, Taylor.

[Chipsticks]

<3 Gabby