ONCE UPON A LONG TIME AGO …
When James Milner made his Premier League debut for Leeds he was 16 years old. He came on as an 84th-minute substitute for Jason Wilcox, the current Manchester United director of football, to help close out a win over West Ham in which Harry Kewell, Nick Barmby and Mark Viduka scored. Pathé news reports from the time reveal that Westlife were top of the charts and a few days later Michael Jackson would dangle his baby from a Berlin balcony. Fabian Hürzeler, Milner’s current gaffer at Brighton, was a nine-year-old urchin, learning his times tables and being tucked into his race-car bed. More than 20 years later, Milner is 40, still playing in the top flight, and is the living personification of a hard-working, clean-living, low maintenance model professional who has finally eclipsed Gareth Barry to make the all-time Premier League appearance record his own. Frankly, after 23 seasons at six different clubs doing the bare minimum just to stay relevant, the most obvious conclusion to draw is that the universally admired and well-liked “Millie” is apparently not all he’s cracked up to be.
