Online Reporter
“PEOPLE joke that I only did it because he didn’t do his homework,” says former English Premier League football referee Jon Moss about the time he sent-off James Milner.
Twenty-four years after making his debut, Milner (40), will equal the record for most Premier League appearances if he features for Brighton against Crystal Palace tomorrow.
A stellar career spanning more than two decades, six top-flight clubs, 652 Premier League appearances, 61 England caps, three Premier League titles, two FA Cups and one Champions League triumph has also delivered some unexpected moments.
Like the time Milner – known as “Millie” by those close to him – was sent off by Moss, his former teacher at Westbrook Lane Primary School in Horsforth, Leeds, while playing for Liverpool against Crystal Palace in 2019.
“He said I couldn’t wait to get my card out,” laughs Moss about dismissing his former pupil after switching careers.
“People say I’m the only teacher to send off one of his pupils in a Premier League game. We can both laugh about it now.”
Milner is set to go level with Gareth Barry, who played 653 times, at the top of the all-time Premier League appearance list some 8 491 days after making his debut for hometown club Leeds United soon after leaving school in 2002.
“I think that will be a special thing for him but he is focused on top of that on the ambitions from the club as well.
He wants to be always successful like he was his whole life,” said Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler.
“He is a driver of this winning mentality and I think it’s very important to have these kind of players in the squad.
“They know how to win, they know what it needs to win, how you need to prepare a game, how you react in bad phases like on bad runs we have at the moment.”
Alan Shearer, who played with Milner at Newcastle, describes him as a model professional and a “manager’s dream”.
“You would do well if you had him in your squad because you knew exactly what you were going to get,” adds former England captain Shearer.
This is the story about a young lad from Leeds who evolved to set standards for hard work, professionalism and longevity – and earn respect from fans all over the world. Milner was just 16 and earning £70 a week as a YTS player when he broke into the first team at Leeds, six months after taking his GCSE exams.
On November 10, 2002, his dad Peter was in the away end at Upton Park when boss Terry Venables sent the youngster on for Jason Wilcox, now director of football at Manchester United, in the final minutes of a 4-3 win against West Ham
. It was a dream come true for Milner, who had grown up supporting the club and wore shirts with the names of Tony Yeboah and Tony Dorigo on the back.
Six weeks after the West Ham game, Milner – aged 16 years and 356 days – became the youngest Premier League goalscorer at that time when he scored in a 2-1 win against Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. It was not enough to get the former Leeds season ticket-holder out of his post-match duties, however.
Back then YTS players were expected to clean the dressing room after first-team games. “Even when I was playing and scoring goals, after games I was helping the kit man pick dirty shirts off the dressing room floor,” Milner told the High Performance podcast in 2023.
“I carried on cleaning the Under-18 captain’s boots. I was playing in the first team but he was still older than me.”
It was not long, however, before Milner was sent on loan to the third tier of English football to continue his football education.
By the time he arrived at Swindon Town, Milner had made 18 Premier League appearances, scored a couple of goals and, despite his tender years, was already revered by Leeds fans. Some 17-year-olds might have sulked at the prospect of swapping the glamour of the Premier League for games against Grimsby and Peterborough.
Milner saw it as a chance to show what he was all about. – BBC Sport.
