Scholesy was a genius, absolute genius. He was a center-forward's dream, you could make a run and he'd put the ball perfectly in your path. Any footballer you ask will always tell you that Scholesy was one of the best players they've ever played with.

I think it's getting tougher and tougher, all the big teams are getting stronger and there's more of them.

An emotion that lives with me is a sense of what might have been had injuries not robbed me of my most lethal weapon - speed.

I was proper, proper fast at one point, and obviously I'm not now, so I've lost certain things, but when I was that fast I didn't need to do certain other things in a game. It was such a potent weapon.

I don't want to be modelling G-strings. It's not that good for my image – I'm a footballer not a tart

While the World Cup is great every four years, I think people struggle to get themselves excited about qualifiers against the smaller nations. It will take some good performances from the national team to get the feel-good factor back, as far as the England team goes at least.

For me there's nothing better than putting the white shirt on for England and playing for England. I'd get worried if it wasn't like that.