David James

“Footballers rely on a healthy banking industry. Our careers are short and what we put away during our playing days is relied upon for our future.”

“Appearance records are pretty special. Mine means a lot to me, not only because I love stats, but because it shows that I am fulfilling my contract.”

“I can honestly say that relegation is the single most traumatic experience you can have in a football career.”

“I had a horse at Liverpool. A big grey thing called Bob. Lovely he was. We used to gallop up and down in the farmer's field next door and Bob would chuck me off all the time. I didn't tell the club about him, I didn't even consider horse riding to be a dangerous sport. It's only in retrospect that you realise these things.”

“When I was 11 I never thought about a career in football, I just loved playing.”

“As a kid I spent hours poring over football annuals, obsessing over clean-sheets records, attendances and county-league statistics. But data is a complicated business. Statistics are meant to be absolute, but once you start asking how they have been collated, or what they mean, you find yourself needing not just one stat but several.”

“Football shouldn't feel like a job to an eight-year-old.”

“For a goalkeeper football is very black and white. Whereas an outfield player can risk a bad pass and expect to be covered, a goalkeeper has no margin for error. It makes us pretty pedantic and intense at times.”

“As a stadium, Fratton Park has to be unique in the top flight of just about every league in Europe. It is a proper, and I mean proper, throwback.”

“When I was a kid I read Bob Wilson's autobiography. After every match, Bob's dad used to ask him: 'Did you enjoy the game?' regardless of the result. That's what we should be teaching our kids, not career advice on how to become the next Wayne Rooney.”

“I remember Chris Kirkland driving a really small car at Coventry when he made the first team, because the insurance premium for a young goalkeeper on anything more than a 1.1-litre engine was prohibitive. He got plenty of stick then and I don't think it did his back any good. I understand his motivations, though.”

“Penalties are paradoxical things. If you give away a penalty and don't save it, it's your own terrible mistake, but at least it's you that everyone is blaming rather than someone else. If a defender concedes one and you don't save it, you feel even worse.”

“If you want to go on a coaching course to become a manager then give yourself a chance. If you don't want to go, an moan about not getting jobs, well, probably because you haven't been on the course is the reason why you haven't got a job.”

“Managers should not be immune to the sack, they are spending the money of supporters and shareholders, if your manager is making fundamentally bad decisions, then the club has to be there to step in and take action. Leave it too long and you could end up relegated. It's enough to make anyone jittery.”

“There aren't many players who have won both the FA Youth Cup and the senior trophy - Ryan Giggs is one, which just goes to show what a special achievement it is. It has been a lifetime goal and now I've done it.”

“Is it morally right to be pushing football careers to 11-year-olds? I still wince every time a parent comes up to me and says their kid, aged seven, is enrolled in an academy. That's just plain wrong.”

“I don't have a lot of positive memories of Merseyside derbies - we didn't win too many - but my first was a triumph.”

“My own coaching experience has been a real eye opener. One of the first things that hit me was my entrenched goalkeeper's perspective.”

“When I am on the field, what matters to me is winning.”

“Footballers' consumerism or emphasis on luxury brands is hardly the root of all environmental problems.”