“I was getting messages and phone calls from friends saying they’d heard I’d had a stroke or a heart attack,” the former Manchester City defender says. “I thought to myself, ‘I need to post something on social media to let people know this is where I’m at’.”
Speaking to The Athletic, the 55-year-old said: “My speech was horrendous”, adding he was taking over 30 tablets a day and was either spaced out or sleeping. His post came on the fifth of March, nine days after a Ramsay Hunt syndrome diagnosis paralysed the right side of his face.
Two and a half months on, he reports slight movement above his right eye and talking is less exhausting. Specialists have told him to expect gradual progress over 12 months. “But there’s an acceptance that I’m not going to get back to symmetrically how I was before, my eye and my mouth,” he says.
Manchester City supporters now sing his name in the fifth minute. “It was special,” he says. “It’s humbling.”
“I had a lot of demons in me,” he says, recalling how a binge in Inverness left him at rock bottom before Joe Royle urged him to seek help. He attended Alcoholics Anonymous, was soon made City captain and helped secure 1999 promotion, turning 2-0 down against Gillingham into 2-2 then a shootout win.