Free Gazza: My Story by Paul Gascoigne

done to Mirandinha’s Golf. When I heard that his two little kids were desperate for a dog, I bought them one, a springer spaniel. He was so delighted he called the dog Gazza. I responded by telling him I would call my goldfish Mirandinha.
    That season I was chosen again for the England Under-21s, and I was desperate to play, even though I’d picked up a knock. So I didn’t report for treatment, asI should have done, or tell Willie McFaul or Dave Sexton, the Under-21s manager, and succeeded in hiding the problem in training. But by the time of the Under-21 match it was really hurting. I ran around the field like a nutter, and was taken off before I did something stupid. The gaffer was less than pleased when I returned home injured and missed two matches, including one with Man United.
    I was dropped from the Under-21s, which woke me up. I got my head down, started working hard and regained my place in the team. At the end of October, I won the Barclays Young Eagle of the Month award and was back in favour with Dave Sexton. I worked my socks off in our 5–1 win against Yugoslavia, scoring twice. And then I went and got myself sent off playing for Newcastle against QPR in November. As always with me, things seem to be going well, moving forward, and then something happens to set me back and the depression sets in.
    In a game against West Ham, I got a bit frustrated and lashed out at Billy Bonds, the Hammers defender. He was clutching his leg.
    ‘All right, Billy?’ I asked him.
    ‘It’s my ankle,’ said Billy.
    ‘That’s all right, then,’ I said. ‘As long as it’s not your arthritis.’
    A bit cheeky, and also unwise, since Billy, despite being forty-one, was still one of England’s toughest defenders. He proceeded to mark me out of the game and we lost 2–1. Mirandinha got our consolation goal. That’ll larn me, I thought. But of course it didn’t.
    I was now in my third full season in the Newcastle first team and felt I was a fully-fledged regular. But I was beginning to suspect that the club itself wasn’t moving forward, which was worrying. Liverpool had signed John Barnes from Watford and then taken Beardsley from us. That just seemed to sum up our lack of ambition. For a club as big as Newcastle to have won bugger-all in thirty years was a disgrace, really.
    The game which was to change my life, though I didn’t know it at the time, was on 23 January 1988 against Spurs at home. We beat them 2–0 and I got both goals. Terry Venables, the Tottenham manager, and Irving Scholar, who had by now become their chairman, told me later that it was one of the best performances they’d ever seen from a player of my age. I gathered from Mel Stein, my recently acquired lawyer, that IrvingScholar had asked what it would take to bring me to London.
    I wasn’t bothered. I had never really fancied Spurs in particular or going south in general. There was also said to have been an approach from Manchester United, but I wasn’t much interested in that, either. If I was going anywhere, I wanted it to be Liverpool. I’d spoken to Kenny Dalglish a few times and he seemed really keen on me, so I couldn’t understand why nothing was happening there. I was told that Liverpool didn’t have the money. Kenny, apparently, was hoping I would stay on at Newcastle for another year, during which time he would be able to get the transfer fee together.
    Nothing continued to happen but I kept on playing well. I won the Barclays Eagle of the Month award again in January, and Newcastle crept into the top half of the table. Bobby Robson, the England manager, was quoted as saying that I was ‘a little gem’. I’ve been called a few names in my life, not all of them complimentary, or repeatable, but at the age of twenty, for the England manager to say that gave me the biggest lift in my footballing life so far.
    In February 1988 we were away to Wimbledon. They were known as a really tough team, because ofJohn Fashanu, Dennis Wise and