6 days ago
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Former Manchester City centre-back Joleon Lescott speaks to the Manchester Evening News about his time at the club, an iconic Premier League title and a disappointing farewell.
It's the noise that Joleon Lescott remembers. A noise the like of which he had never heard before. The goal is a bit of a blur. In fact, it was only a few years later when Lescott realised just how late in the game it really was. But the noise, he can still hear that now.
We are talking about Sunday, May 13, 2012, and a day nobody connected with Manchester City will ever forget. Sergio Aguero has just scored, the clock reads 93:20, and it is pandemonium inside the Etihad.
Lescott remembers just running towards the bench. He was on that side of the pitch, so he made a beeline for the dugouts, embracing a member of the medical staff who had helped him during his recovery. There were players and staff running in every direction.
"I don't remember the goal," Lescott tells the Manchester Evening News. "I remember the noise. That has stuck with me. I've never heard a noise like that since or before.
"It was everyone at the highest pitch they had, top of their lungs, like that was a mad, crazy noise. It was a different sound to a goal. I played in big moments, we'd been part of the FA Cup win and that was loud, the play-off final with Wolves, that was loud, but because those games had gone how we expected them to go, I think you're still in control of your emotions.
"With that moment there, I think everyone was like literally so low and then to go so high to now it's done, it was crazy."
Lescott didn't quite realise how high the stakes had got on that day against Queens Park Rangers. He made a mistake for QPR's first goal, which allowed them to equalise and then saw the 10-man Hoops take the lead. Belief was ebbing away. But Edin Dzeko scored in the second minute of injury time and then Aguero got one of the most iconic goals in Premier League history.
Now a virtual spectator at the back, Lescott was lost in the moment and thought there was still plenty of time to play when Dzeko got his equaliser. He was blissfully unaware how close the cause was to being lost.
City had gone into that season under Roberto Mancini with a sense that they could at least challenge for the title. They had won the FA Cup the year before, ending the club's 35-year trophy drought, and beating Manchester United in the semi-final at Wembley was a statement of intent.
They lost the Community Shield 3-2 to Sir Alex Ferguson's United, having been 2-0 up at half-time, but Lescott felt that was a blessing in disguise after a pre-season that had been flawless until that point.
The league season started superbly, however, and it was still August when City delivered the performance that made Lescott believe they had what it takes.
"The Spurs game was a big one [a 5-1 win at White Hart Lane]. I think Edin got four goals that game, and it was just a real, like, 'oh, this is comfortable, we are competing'.
"That was a big performance and a big result. The year before, Spurs had just nipped us to the Champions League, so then to just go, okay, now we're a different team, we have a different feel. We can just go and beat you comfortably.
"So that was one, and obviously the 6-1 [at Old Trafford] is huge and was more important than we all realised at the time. Even though we didn't celebrate or get carried away, it was kind of just like, yeah, now they are taking us seriously."
That win was crucial in the final outcome of the title race, with City taking it from United on goal difference. They held their nerve to win the final six league games, including an Etihad success against Ferguson's side, but Lescott remembers the win at Wolves a week earlier, when United had dropped points to Everton to hand the initiative to their cross-city rivals. It was also a result that confirmed relegation for the club where Lescott began his career.
"That was an emotional game for me," he said. "The caretaker manager at the time, Terry O’Connor, was someone I had huge admiration for. He was a massive influence on my career.
"So to be part of the team that knocked him down, sent the club down, was emotional. But we were going there to do a job and then, having spoken to him after the game, he just said, ‘Make sure you go on and win it now’."
Lescott started 30 of 38 Premier League games that season, coming on as a substitute in another, but it wasn't always the case that he was at the heart of the Blues' defence.
His 2009 move from Everton had been acrimonious, with the Toffees determined to extract maximum value and convey their side of the story through the briefing wars. Lescott was booed at Goodison Park when still an Everton player at the start of the season.
He finally got his wish to join a club clearly going places under their Abu Dhabi owners. He started 17 games in a row under Mark Hughes before picking up an injury just before the controversial decision to axe Hughes and replace him with Mancini. City beat Sunderland 4-3 on the day when Hughes was fired and he took charge of the game despite knowing his time was up.
The City squad cancelled their Christmas party that night in a bid to impress Mancini, but Lescott found it difficult to get back in the team and when he did, injuries were never far away. His time at the Etihad could have ended after one season.
"I was aware that he (Mancini) was trying to sell me," said Lescott. "He wanted to replace me that summer. But due to me only being there a year, and obviously the fee that the club had paid for me, they weren’t going to recoup that after a year with me being injured for most of the season, so I ended up staying. I was going to stay anyway. I wasn't interested in moving."
Lescott's fortunes changed when Kolo Toure was handed a six-month ban for failing a drug test in 2011. That opened the door to his longest run as a regular, which coincided with that FA Cup and Premier League triumph.
There would be another title in Lescott's final season at the club in 2013/14, but he reveals he nearly left in the middle of that season and but for duff advice from Gary Neville, might well have sought an exit route.
"Up until then, I was in the England team," he said. "So that was more my focus now. I'd achieved everything I believed we were going to achieve at City. I didn't think we were ready to win the Champions League and I wasn't going to be staying on past the end of the season.
"I remember speaking to Gary Neville at the time, he was assistant [to Roy Hodgson with England] and saying to him, 'What does this need to look like? Do I need to stay here and be part of this squad? Or do I need to move and play regularly in order to keep my place in the team?'
"He said to stay and play and being around Champions League games and competing for that is more important than just playing every week in the Premier League. I took that into consideration.
"I did have strong options. I was close to joining West Ham, and obviously, we had an opportunity to win stuff. We were in the League Cup final, so there’s an opportunity to be part of that, and I was in that team at the time, even though I was in and out of the Premier League team.
"But looking back now, I don't know if I would have stayed because I didn't play for England again after that. If I was aware my England place was going to be in jeopardy because I wasn't playing every week, I probably would have made it a bit more obvious that I could still compete. So, I probably would have left, but then I would have missed out on the title and the League Cup. It all happened for a reason."
Lescott started just eight Premier League games that season and his two substitute appearances took him to enough games for a medal, but as the title party started with victory against West Ham, he felt he didn't get the goodbye he wanted under Manuel Pellegrini.
"No, probably not, honestly," he said. "There was an opportunity to go on the last game and the way that played out, that was frustrating. I thought there was an opportunity to get me on.
"We were leading the game and he had consistently made this change throughout the season where Demichelis would go into midfield and he would change it. And then he literally didn't do it. He did it in reverse.
"That was frustrating because I think, well, we don't normally do that. We normally change it the other way around. It would have given me a chance to just play the last game and say goodbye to the fans and stuff like that, but it wasn't to be."
It might not have been the end Lescott wanted, but his City career is mostly one full of medals and memories.
Now 43, he is still lacing up the boots. Lescott has played for Wythenshawe Vets this season, with the Sunday League side attracting former pros in the North West. Lescott was roped into a game by Stephen Ireland and scored a hat-trick in his first game and got one more in his second. But his days at the back are long gone.
"No way, no chance. I wouldn't do that," Lescott said when asked if he still plays in defence. "I'm not interested in playing at the back. Because I know if I played at the back, I'd be taking it more seriously and I don't want it to be more serious than it needs to be.
"I enjoy running around and doing all of that. I said I like to play up front and that is my role. I'll play if I'm up front, I won't play at the back, no chance."
Does he still get the buzz from football, even in the Cheshire Vets League Premier Division? "Unreal. The first time I played, I remember getting there, really buzzing and getting in the dressing room and smelling the changing rooms. Just putting the kit on, it was still damp because the kit manager or the manager who ever washed it had forgotten to take it out of the dryer.
"I love it because I know there's a day when I won't be able to do it and I'm trying to prolong that."
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