Danny Guthrie has revealed his ‘stomach dropped’ on the way to his Newcastle United medical before Steven Gerrard told his team-mate he would be ‘mad’ to turn back.
Guthrie was driving up the A1 to complete a move to St James’ Park when the midfielder had second thoughts about leaving Liverpool, his boyhood club, in 2008. Guthrie called it a ‘wobble’ in another interview last month and the 37-year-old was not exaggerating.
“I just felt my stomach drop,” he told Inside Football. “I was like, ‘No, I can’t’. I was at my dream club. I was at the best place in the world as far as I was concerned in terms of the team and I was so proud to be a Liverpool player. It just hit me.
“I rang my agent and I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to do this.’ I’m halfway up and he said, ‘No, just have a look around the training ground and meet the manager’. I said, ‘I really don’t want to. I want to stay at Liverpool’. He said, ‘Hold on. I’ll call you back in a minute’.
“The phone started ringing and it wasn’t his number. It was Stevie G and he said, ‘What’s going on?’ I went, ‘I’m driving up to Newcastle. They have accepted a bid’. He said, ‘That’s amazing’. I was like, ‘I don’t know.’
“He said, ‘You’re mad. That is a proper football club up there. Go up there, establish yourself as your own man, your own player. Go and be the man in someone else’s team. Build that confidence. Establish yourself in the Premier League. You never know what the future holds, but don’t be somebody who fizzles out at a big club.’ That was it. As soon as he put the phone down, I went, ‘Yeah, you’re right’ and I signed.”
It is rather telling that Guthrie looks back on his time on Tyneside as the best spell of his career. The midfielder went on to make more than 100 appearances for the club and played his part in the Magpies winning the Championship in 2010.
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