“I’d been geeing myself up, in a calm way. The last thing I wanted was Gary (Neville) in my earhole, going: “They’ve been shouting at me in the tunnel.”

“My attitude was fuckin’ deal with it. You’re not eleven.”

“But he planted a seed in my head, warning me.

“I’d forgotten my captain’s armband - simple as that. So I turned to go back to the dressing room. And I went back, past our own players, Albert, the kit man, had the armband and he was putting it on me.

“As I walked to the front, I heard something going on at the top of the tunnel. All I could see was a few fingers pointing at Gary. I lost it.

“Five seconds earlier, I’d been perfectly calm, in the zone, ready for the match. But because of what Gary had said, I just went - “The fuckers - they are waiting for him.”

“They were trying to bully him, They were a big team and in the tunnel, they were even bigger. So I said to myself “alright, let’s go”

“I went down there. I’d lost it but I wasn’t zoning out; I wasn’t forgetting about the game.

“I said “we’ll see you out there.”

“I never went looking for a full-back who’d never done anything for me. I’d look for people who were in my position or were physically important for their team.

“I’d read something in the mach programme about the charity work Patrick (Vieira) supported in Senegal, where he’d been born. I said “If you love Senegal so much, why don’t you fuckin’ play for them?

"I think he said something smart to me about Ireland and the World Cup. It was grown men, bitching.

"The referee Graham Poll was good - "Just leave it out, just leave it".

“’I fuckin’ am. Just let us out.’

“I was defending one of my teammates. I know what’s right and what’s wrong and their (Arsenal) behaviour that night wrong.

“If it had come to an actual fight, Patrick could probably have killed me.”