To be honest, I was Mum's boy. Always was, always will be.

I was always pretty good at school, but a lot of it was memorising, maybe cheating off your mates, stuff that gets you through.

But to be fair, Arsenal are a quality side. They're not where they are by chance - they are not top of the league and unbeaten because they are a bad team.

In international football, you need pace and you need your players up top to create things out of nothing and run at people.

I'm a very private person, and you have a lot of people looking into your personal life, away from football. That's the one thing that I don't like, but I always remember how lucky we are that we're playing football.

I have a lot of good football talk with cabbies, but when you want to get somewhere in a hurry, it can be distracting. I always know they're going to want to talk football if 'Talksport' is on the radio.

I come from a football family which has really helped.