When you watch your team these days do you have moments (while they're losing, or otherwise performing substandardly) when you count on your hands those players on the park whom you consider Fit to Wear The Shirt? I've had that feeling a fair bit with NUFC over the last 10 years, barring a couple of Bobby Robson seasons where nearly all of the first-choice XI were either canny-gifted or triers at the very least. But part of the reason I cheered when Kevin Keegan returned to SJP back in February ('Third, actually, I came as a player...') was because here in the midst of a bit of a shower was a man who was Worthy and Proud to Wear the Shirt, even if he'd only be doing so figuratively, kicking every ball from the touchline.James Milner hasn't got the greatest pair of shooting boots and his delivery from wide can be erratic, but at 22 he's hardly the finished article, and still he's absolutely the sort of player I want to see in black-and-white. But it looks like he's on his way to Martin O'Neill's Villa, so epitomising the very vexatious one-step-up two-steps-back culture of the Barrack Road.
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