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Paddy Kenny will ask for Seaman's shirt. Trouble is, will it fit?

Steve Tongue
Sunday 13 April 2003 00:00 BST
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The mighty metro-politan sophisticats of Arsenal to lose an FA Cup semi-final to some lower-division oiks from oop north – couldn't happen, could it? It did 30 years ago this month, when Sunderland's goalkeeper Jim Montgomery defied them at Hillsborough, then did the same to Leeds United in the final.

For the urbane Arsenal manager Bertie Mee, read Arsène Wenger; for Sunderland's Bob Stokoe, the garrulous Neil Warnock (albeit without the pork-pie hat); and for Montgomery, the unlikely figure of Paddy Kenny.

Unlikely, that is, if your idea of a top-class goalkeeper is someone sculpted like a David James or as conscious of his image and appearance as David "Safe Hands" Seaman. Kenny, 24, is shaven-headed and, well, sturdily built, a man who looks as though his Sunday-afternoon football should be played on the local rec rather than in a Cup semi-final at Old Trafford. Today, hoping his 200th senior appearance coincides with the England goalkeeper's 1,000th, he will ask for Seaman's jersey; the only question is whether it will fit.

And this is the slimmed-down version. "I took him from Bradford Park Avenue to Bury and he looked like the Michelin Man," said Warnock. "We cut the hamburgers, chips, meat pies and apple pies out of his diet. That was just one day's eating. He does get a bit of stick about his weight. I call him names too. But I tell you what, I wouldn't swap him for Tony [sic] James, Shay Given, or Paul Robinson.

"Because of the shape he is, he won't get the acclaim. But it's not gone unnoticed that he's been a major part of our run. People like Michael Brown get the media attention for the goals he scores, but as a manager it's players like Paddy Kenny that are always first on your team sheet."

In his first season since following Warnock from Bury to Bramall Lane, Kenny has already been on that list 50 times, missing only one game of a campaign encompassing two semi-finals and an almost guaranteed place in the First Division play-offs. "Our aim at the start of the season was just trying to get promoted," Kenny said. "But the way things have gone, you have to pinch yourself sometimes. We've caused a few shocks and beaten some Premiership clubs, so if Arsenal are not 100 per cent and we're on top of our game, you never know."

Despite dispatching Leeds from both domestic cup competitionsand pushing Liverpool close over two legs, he admits that Arsenal are something else: "I've faced Owen, Viduka, Smith, all that lot, but I think they are the best team in the country. It's a dream really, I've only seen them on telly. Henry is one of the best in the world – I don't think it matters if they rest one or two, they've got players to fill in."

Five years ago, the fuller-figure, teenaged Kenny was playing in the Unibond League for less than £100 a week and working as an engineer. Warnock took him on trial at Bury, put him in the first team after Dean Kiely's move to Charlton and then stole him for United, paying only £42,000, a sum cheap enough to arouse further controversy for a manager who has regularly been embroiled in it.

Earlier in the season he upset Liverpool's Phil Thompson and Gérard Houllier. Last year it was West Bromwich Albion, after an extraordinary game in which United had three players sent off, two more taken off injured and ran out of substitutes, forcing the match to be abandoned. Even the thick-skinned Warnock was affected by the brouhaha: "It made me take stock of my whole life, not just football. What people said was totally out of order. But it put things in perspective for me."

As with every football man, that perspective is still easily lost come match day. At Selhurst Park last Monday, as a much-changed United lost 1-0 to Wimbledon in front of barely 1,300 people Warnock was an agitated, irritable figure: crossing the touchline to remonstrate with home players after a bad tackle on his full-back Ben Doane; later berating the referee and bemoaning the injustice of defeat. "Poxy match. If it was boxing, they'd have stopped it, on goal chances." Asked a sympathetic question about how his injured player was, he responded bitterly: "How do you think he is?"

Yet four days later he could not have been more charming or receptive to the apparently endless demands of a media morning, with a quip and a quote for everyone: yes, United were outsiders, but Monty's Pass was 16-1 and still won the Grand National; beating Arsenal would be the greatest upset in 100 years; "On our day we can beat anyone in the country, but on their day they can beat anyone in the world."

And back in the manager's office, with his two tiny children kicking footballs about, there was even a poem, proudly declaimed in return for a donation to amultiple sclerosis charity.

What Warnock admits, in prose rather than verse, is that reaching the Premier League has to remain this season's priority, if only because he does not want to be chasing that particular dream for much longer before retiring to his tractor in the West Country: "I don't want to become Sir Bobby [Robson], I've got other things to do. The biggest achievement would be to take Sheffield United up and keep them up. Then I can go and retire. Now what else can I give you for Sunday? Oh, me poem, yes...

"So, Arsenal you are favourites and odds on to win,

"Your balloon flies so high, but beware, we have a pin."

Urbane and sophisticated or not, M Wenger will not easily deflate the bard of Bramall Lane and his heavyweight goalkeeper this afternoon.

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