Blue is the colour

THEN we meet up, Jason McAteer might be wearing the red tie of his former club but he’s singing the blues when it comes to picking the likely winners of the 2012/13 Premier League.

“Chelsea are the real contenders for me – because of Jose Mourinho,” says the one-time Ireland and Liverpool midfielder on a visit to Dublin. “He’s got this real love affair with Chelsea and I’m a big fan of him. The Premier League needs characters and Mourinho is one. As is Ian Holloway at the other end of the table. People like them bring life to the Premier League. So it’s great that Mourinho is back. And, mainly because of him, Chelsea are my favourites for the title.”

The west Londoners’ main challenge, reckons McAteer, will come from Manchester – but not from the champions

“At Man City, I think [Manuel] Pellegrini has a brilliant squad but it’s about how he manages them, because there are some egos in that dressing room,” he says. “I think he can do it, but I don’t know if he can do it in his first season. I think he’ll need a little bit of a bedding-in period. That could cost them the title this time but, especially with the financial power they have, they’ll continue be a real threat over the coming years.”

As for Man United – McAteer reckons they’ll struggle to adapt to life after Fergie.

“I think David Moyes is beginning to realise what that job is all about,” he suggests. “If Alex Ferguson lost the first three or four games of the season he wouldn’t be under pressure. But if David Moyes loses three or four, all of a sudden the knives would be out and there’d be talk of him being sacked. Plus dealing with [Wayne] Rooney, that love-hate relationship doesn’t seem to be going away either. And they haven’t made a glamour signing yet. Moyes wasn’t really given the money to spend at Everton so people were wondering could he spend 40 or 50 million to bring in players at United – and he hasn’t done that yet. So he’s under a tremendous amount of pressure.

“The aura that comes with Manchester United, I think we’ve seen that go a little bit now that Ferguson’s gone. And I think they are vulnerable. It wasn’t a great side last year but the fact that he was a great manager got the best out of them and they went on and won what was a poor Premier League. I think this year will be a different story.”

Transfer movement – or rather the lack of it – is also the critical issue at Arsenal, he feels.

“Well they’ve got 40 million and a pound to spend, haven’t they,” he laughs, “but they haven’t spent the pound yet. So it’ll be interesting to see where they spend that because they won’t be spending it on Luis Suarez.”

Which brings us to the big talking point at his old club Liverpool, for whom McAteer continues to work as an analyst on the club’s TV station.

“I always felt it would end up with Suarez being a Liverpool player come the window shutting because the club hold all the cards so they’re the ones with the power,” he says. “I think where he’d have more credibility in the dressing room is if it was Real Madrid he wanted to move to. The likes of Steven Gerrard and other players would think, ‘OK, he’s got a point here, it’s Real Madrid, they’re real contenders to win the Champions League’. The language would help too. But when it’s Arsenal – and it was only Arsenal – then you can imagine the lads thinking, ‘C’mon, it’s only Arsenal, you need to sort yourself out here because we’re moving in the right direction, we’re all trying to get that Champions’ League place and we want you to stay’.”

McAteer believes that the instability likely to ensue as a result of the managerial changes at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and the Etihad could work to the benefit of clubs looking to gatecrash the top four.

“It’s great for the likes of Liverpool and Tottenham because it blows it wide open,” he opines. “I think Champions League football is a real opportunity now for Liverpool. And once that door opens, you then attract a different kind of player.”

Of course, they’re all ‘a different kind of player’ these days compared to when Jason McAteer – now 42 — was in his prime for Ireland and Liverpool, not least in the sense that, back in the day, his every off the field moment [and he had a few] wouldn’t have been captured and catalogued and critiqued on Twitter and YouTube.

“I was around Liverpool’s backroom staff for the trip to Dublin [for the recent game against Celtic] and I had really good conversations with the club’s media people about social media and how things have changed over the last 20 years and how much more difficult their jobs are now,” he says. “One of them was saying to me that she’s up at half-past five in the morning scanning the websites and newspapers. At Liverpool 20 years ago they had two or three people working with the media, now they’ve got 20 or 25 staff dealing with stuff like that.

“Social media wasn’t really around when I was playing, mobile phones were just coming in. And all that is such a massive part of the game now. As one of the media guys in Liverpool said to me, there are no deadlines any more, it’s instant stuff and comes in by the minute. A picture can be out there straight away. So the players have to learn very, very quickly.

“The danger is that players do have this bravado. They’re in a world where they think they’re invincible and they think they can do anything. But they need to listen to the guys behind the scenes and be put in their place some times. Players have to be very careful now.”

Does he think, then, that the footballers of his generation got away with it?

“I wouldn’t say we never got up to no good,” he smiles, “but the difference is that we did it at right time. Like going out on the drink – there’s a time and place for that. I was involved in football from the early 90s to 2005 and my generation was the one that saw the big change, with all the money coming into the game from TV and so on. And suddenly loads of footballers were in the pop star and film star bracket.

“But we also saw the changes in coaching methods — like Liverpool wanting to move into the 21st century by bringing Gerard Houllier in. I was part of the generation that saw that change and we had to change with it. The footballer now is a different animal to the one in the 90s when it was acceptable to go out for a drink. It was part of the culture, part of what we did, like going into the players’ lounge for a pint.

“And I saw the change actually happening. I remember walking into the players’ lounge at Anfield for a beer one time – and Gerard Houllier had stopped all the drinking. We couldn’t get a drink and it was like, ‘What?!? When did that happen?!?’ It was like a light-switch – it all changed.

“It was the same with fitness methods and coaching – it was all change, change, change. Everyone was looking for that golden ticket that would bring success. The Americans are doing it, so let’s wear these things on our nose. Although I think Robbie Fowler just wore it for the effect, it was more like a cult thing with him in the end [laughs].”

Not that Jason McAteer would have wanted it any other way – apart, he notes with a grin, from the one hundred grand a week payslips that are up for grabs in the modern game.

“I had such a great time and I wouldn’t change any of it,” he reflects. “I went through a generation with Paul McGrath and John Aldridge and Ronnie Whelan and it was great. And then I went through a generation with Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen and that was great as well. And it was fantastic to be around for that whole spectrum because no-one will ever again get what my generation had.”