Hot Press meets John Barnes and Jason McAteer

Never mind ‘Ceremony’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, ‘Regret’ or ‘Blue Monday’. The finest day’s work Peter Hook has ever done is recording ‘World In Motion’ with Peter Beardsley, Paul Gascoigne, Chris Waddle and rapper extraordinaire John Barnes.

“It’s not often you get to make something that captures a whole country’s imagination,” Hooky told Hot Press recently. “Schoolkids, miners, lawyers, brain surgeons, 80-year-old grannies from Macclesfield… everyone fucking loved it!”
The aforementioned Mr. Barnes concurs.
“It’s one of those things that just clicked,” enthuses the Liverpool and (more palatably for this writer) England legend whose very large mantlepiece has a League Cup, a Charity Shield, two First Division and two FA Cup medals, three Player of the Year Awards, an OBE and 79 international caps on it.
“We didn’t actually know it was going to be with New Order,” he resumes. “Because these songs are normally crap, only six of us bothered to turn up at the studio. We saw Keith Allen and thought, ‘What’s he doing here? And those blokes look like New Order…’”
As Hooky points out, the 49-year-old is no mere one-hit wonder.
“Yeah, but ‘The Anfield Rap’ only got to number three,” he rues. “It’s another one for the Greatest Hits album though I suppose!”
We wait with bated breath. Barnesy is in Dublin today with his old Liverpool – and briefly Tranmere management – mucker Jason McAteer for a Sky Sports and Carlsberg ‘meet the fans’ day in Bar 37 on Dawson Street. Before dispensing pints of the official new beer of the Premier League to thirsty punters we got him to cast an expert eye over the league season to come starting with the thorny issue of Luis Suarez. Take it away John…
“You can’t keep an unhappy player. Luis has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want to be at Liverpool, so they should sell him now and let Brendan Rogers have the £50 or £60 million they’d probably get to bring in a couple of players who don’t think they’re too good for the club. He’s not going to perform if you force him to stay, and you also run the risk of him effecting squad morale.
“Luis isn’t a 16 or 17-year-old kid who character-wise you can try and mold. He’s a grown-up with a fiery temper who’s going to get booked and red carded and miss six or seven games a season. Do the 30 or so goals he’s likely to get you when he does play compensate for that? Brendan Rogers and Arsene Wenger obviously think it does!
“I’m afraid that the days of a top professional like Steven Gerard spending his whole career at the one club are over. Luis Suarez isn’t a local lad; he doesn’t have a bred in allegiance to Liverpool. I don’t think it’s a money thing; he’s 26 and desperate to play Champions League football.
“I suspect that if he does go it will be to a Spanish club rather than Arsenal who’ve been a bit sluggish in their summer transfer dealings. More than a creative player, they need somebody like Suarez who’s an out and out goalscorer. Higuain who’ll get on the left and get on the right would’ve been ideal, but he decided to go to Naples instead. With PSG, Monaco and to a lesser extent some of the Russian teams having so much money now, the Premier League has slipped slightly in terms of attracting the top, top players.
“I’m thrilled Mourinho has returned to Chelsea. Not just for the entertainment value, but also for the fact that he’ll turn them into serious title contenders again. Jose will be relieved to be back at a club where he commands the respect of both the supporters and the players. Great man manager that he is, he couldn’t control all those strong characters in the Real dressing-room. The politics at Madrid are mind-boggling. Chelsea have looked good in pre-season and have players like Hazard, Lukaku and Mata who are hungry for success. With Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and John Terry coming to the end of their careers, there’s a need to usher in the new guard. Wayne Rooney would be a brilliant addition. He hasn’t really kicked on at Old Trafford, and needs someone like Mourinho to get him fired up again. If he feels loved, he’ll deliver.
“I like the quiet way in which Pellegrini has been going about his business at Manchester City. The players no longer have Roberto Mancini to blame for their underachievement, particularly in the Champions League, which they made a complete hash of last season. This time round I’m confident they’ll deliver.
“While fully deserving of the Man U job, I can’t see David Moyes winning the title at the first time of asking. If you’re playing a game of football and Sir Alex Ferguson is your manager and you lose, the fans are going to boo the players. This season it’ll be David Moyes who gets the boos if the results don’t go right. I think subconcisiously they’ll take their foot off the pedal because Sir Alex isn’t there to keep everybody pumped up. It’s the old school thing of relaxing when the new teacher comes in.
“Gareth Bale to Real Madrid may or may not happen, but even without him I’m expecting Spurs to be snapping hard at Arsenal’s heels in terms of North London supremacy. Solado and Paulinho are quality additions and it’s obvious that the Villas-Boas commands the respect of the players.
“Sadly, I don’t see any English side winning the Champions League. Internationally too, if we do qualify I can’t see England getting beyond the quarterfinal stages at the World Cup. The German Football Federation realised ten years ago that the national side wasn’t as strong as it had been, so they went to the clubs and said, ‘Instead of bringing in foreigners, we need you to play German youngsters.’ 99% of Bundesliga clubs being German-owned, they had an allegiance to the national side that you’re not going to get from Chelsea, Liverpool, Villa or Manchester City. The FA can’t go to their American or Arab owners and say, ‘We need you to ensure there’s a steady flow of English lads coming through.’ Ireland has the same problem of too many players either not getting their game regularly in the Premier League or operating at the lower Championship level. I don’t want to be a pessimist, but you’ll have a tough time qualifying.”