I had never been on a plane before.
I know how that sounds. Twenty-eight years old, a Premier League manager, and I had never once set foot on an aircraft. Never had a reason to. Never had the money. I grew up in Moss Side.
My world was a grid of terraced houses, the grey Mancunian sky, the buzz of the Curry Mile, and the roar of the crowd from Maine Road, and later, the Etihad.
The furthest I had ever been from home was the coach journey down to London when I took the Palace U18 job. That had felt like moving to a different planet. This? This was a different galaxy.
So when the wheels of the British Airways 777 lifted off the tarmac at Gatwick, and the ground just… fell away, and England became a patchwork quilt of green and grey and then nothing at all, I gripped the armrest of my business class seat with a force that probably left a permanent impression in the leather.
