James Milner will make his 653rd Premier League appearance if he features for Brighton & Hove Albion against Crystal Palace on Sunday, drawing level with Gareth Barry, the present record holder. Milner, 40, has played for six different clubs across a top-flight career spanning more than two decades — here, Times Sport speaks to those who saw the 16-year-old boy wonder develop into the “versatile beast” who is on the brink of setting a milestone that may never be broken.
We’d had a relatively good track record of bringing youngsters through such as Harry Kewell, Jonathan Woodgate, Paul Robinson, Alan Smith. Then everyone started talking about the next best thing, which was James. They were raving about him.
He may not have done something in a game where you thought, “Look at that!” But at the end of the match, you looked at his overall contribution and thought, “He’s been immense.”
It was really exciting when Terry Venables said he was going to involve him in the first team. He came off the bench for his debut [against West Ham United] but then I remember him scoring against Sunderland and Chelsea and it was like, “Wow.”
He just behaved as if “this is what I do”. There was no edge to him, no look at me, look how good I am. It was the opposite. Hard-working, focused, committed, a team player.
Milner celebrates his 17th birthday with Venables. The midfielder played 54 times in all competitions for Leeds United
ANDREW VARLEY
I did his first professional deal in 2003 just before I left the club. As a kid, he was represented by the PFA. His agent was a guy called Mick Maguire. It was an easy deal to do because they weren’t trying to impress James.
I see it now, a young kid who has done nothing yet, but his agent is still asking for crazy money.
James and his parents were so down to earth and grounded. They understood. We said, “We will look after you but you also have to demonstrate you deserve it by performing on the field.” That has gone out of the game. People want it before they have earned it.
Milner became Leeds’ youngest ever player, and remains the second youngest goalscorer in the history of the Premier League, opening his account at the age of 16 years, 11 months and 22 days in a 2-1 away win over Sunderland on Boxing Day 2002
VARLEY PICTURE AGENCY
He scored again at home against Chelsea two days later
MICHAEL STEELE/GETTY IMAGES
James and his family were totally understanding [that] this was the start of a journey and he would get his rewards depending on how well he carried on along that path. That is what has happened to him. He wasn’t one of these lads who was getting carried away by potential stardom.
After I left Leeds, I helped Barnsley out of administration. I was at a game there once and James was playing against them. Leeds had sent him on loan to Swindon. I said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
He said, “They don’t really fancy me.” He was a bit disillusioned that he had been put out on loan. People said it was for experience but he had already played a lot in the Premier League. My eyebrows were raised, but he quickly got over that.
I speak to people at clubs he has played for since and the fact he has never been in an ounce of trouble is one of the reasons why he has played so many games. He is just a really nice human being who happens to be a bloody good footballer.
Newcastle United, 2004-08
Nigel Pearson, assistant coach at Newcastle from 2006 to 2008
Newcastle was quite a complex club, but a brilliant one too. The expectations are high, there is a lot of external and internal pressure for players to perform. Even though James would have been about 20 then, he dealt with that very, very well. His ability to handle that sort of pressure was never in doubt. That is not something that has ever fazed him.
He has not always got the recognition he deserved. Even in his Newcastle days there was criticism that he was not the type of player who would bring success. But he has enjoyed a lot of success in his career. I always felt he was very much a player that coaches and managers respected and his team-mates understood and appreciated the quality he brought.
Sir Bobby Robson signed Milner, left, alongside Nicky Butt in summer 2004
IAN HODGSON/REUTERS
He was ahead of others in terms of his thirst to try to become an even better player. I joined as first-team coach after the start of the season, I went in there with Glenn Roeder, and James constantly wanted to work on his game. There were lots of times when James, Damien Duff and myself would be on the training pitch and we would set up sessions to work on crossing or other technical aspects of their game. Sometimes you’d have to say, “That’s enough now!”
Milner scored a wonderful goal against United on New Year’s Day 2006, cutting in from the left and firing a shot past Gary Neville and Edwin van der Sar
IAN HORROCKS/NEWCASTLE UNITED VIA GETTY IMAGES
That is one of the things that struck me about James. He always wanted to improve and I would imagine he is still very much the same now. His longevity comes from having a thirst to be as good as he can be and finding a new way of getting the best out of himself. I don’t think he will have changed much in that regard.
It is incredible really that he has managed to keep that because it is something which, as a player, can leave you.
He’s 40 now and Jamie Vardy, who I managed at Leicester, is 39. Both from totally different backgrounds, both very different. Jamie Vardy came in late to football, for instance. But what they both have is an appetite to still play. I don’t know if “love of the game” is the right phrase, but they both have a desire to play and you need that. It sounds obvious, but you have to want to train every day, understand how to manage yourself and then fit into a team’s framework. If you spoke to both of them you would sense that desire.
That is some gift and it illustrates the mental strength players like that have. Don’t underestimate how important that is in any profession, let alone sport, where scrutiny at the top level is incredible.
Aston Villa, loan spell 2005-06 and then 2008-10
Stephen Warnock, Aston Villa team-mate
I had been in England squads with Milly so I knew him before I joined, but when you get to see someone on a day-to-day basis it is different. I remember thinking, “So this is what the next level looks like.”
Sometimes the first thing you hear about Milly is “great lad”, “one of the fittest lads around”. That is true, but it is not the reason why he plays every week. That perception is something that probably annoys him, and certainly annoys the players who have played with him.
Milner and Warnock were opponents when the latter was at Blackburn, but united as team-mates during their time together at Aston Villa, below
SCOTT HEPPELL/AP
He plays because he is a very, very intelligent player, technically very good. He has played left wing, right wing, centre midfield, right back and left back and still always been one of the better players.
The year he got his move to Manchester City, he started as a right midfielder at Villa and then went into central midfield and his level just went up again. He was brilliant. Sometimes as players you will think, “How’s he got that move?” There was no surprise in the dressing room that he joined City.
People just thought he deserved it because he had been a huge influence. Sometimes on the right wing you are on the periphery of a game, but in the middle everything goes through you. He is one of these players who doesn’t hide, he wants the ball all the time and he is winning the ball back constantly because of his engine. He was powerful, dynamic and he had a good range of passing.
The other thing you have to talk about is his game management on the pitch. His knowledge and leadership. He’ll pull people left, right and centre, getting the best out of them. He’d talk you through a game so you were comfortable.
Milner and Warnock in action for Villa against West Ham’s Scott Parker in August 2010
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He was sponsored by Nike when I was at Villa and all he ever used to wear was Nike trackies every day. Everyone was like, “What’s up with you, you tight arse! Wear something different.” He wasn’t bothered. He never bowed to peer pressure, he was always his own man and that’s his personality.
He has that Yorkshire monotone accent and people think he is boring but he is not. Because he doesn’t drink people think he can’t be fun, but he has a brilliant sense of humour. He would often start all the banter in the dressing room.
Manchester City, 2010-2015
Paul Banks, City team manager from 2010 to 2016
I was in and around the training ground every day, in and out the dressing room, so I have a holistic view of things. It is not for me to comment on his ability, but he was the most consummate professional out of everybody.
I knew him from the old days at the Carrington training ground under Roberto Mancini and then Manuel Pellegrini as they moved into the new training facility. He was a big character in the dressing room and he was the hardest-working professional out of the lot.
Mancini signed Milner late in the summer transfer window in 2010
PAUL ELLIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
He could be combative but always respectful of the club’s requirements, so he would never shirk a signing session or a player appearance request. Everyone respected his opinion.
Initially, he didn’t like the whole “Boring Milner” tag. The rumour was he thought someone in the backroom staff was behind it on social media. I don’t know if he ever found out who it was, but it came from the fact he never did anything wrong. He wasn’t [Mario] Balotelli! He was never in the press for anything other than a match report.
It was tongue-in-cheek and designed to bait him, so he turned it on its head and he embraced it. It was simple psychology. Someone told him to have a laugh about it and it will disappear, which it did. It went away because he wasn’t getting annoyed with it.
Milner’s personality was in sharp contrast to the more ostentatious Balotelli, but the midfielder has a sharp wit
MICHAEL REGAN/GETTY IMAGES
It wasn’t true anyway, to be honest. He had a playful way about him.
He was very quick to pull you when anything went wrong. We used to travel to games by train sometimes and you could book them to stop at stations they don’t normally stop at. If we were playing Watford, or someone like that, that is what we used to do.
One time we were on a platform and we had booked for the train to stop. When it arrived, it just carried on and didn’t stop. Immediately it was my fault, according to James. I told the platform manager what had happened so the train stopped, reversed and picked us up, but it was still my fault.
Later in his career, Milner started a Twitter account, poking fun at his “boring” reputation
There was a lot of ribbing if something went wrong. He would be on you like you wouldn’t believe. Very sarcastic. But, to be honest, he had every right to have a go because he made sure he did everything correctly in his career.
It was all a bit of fun which flies in the face of the “Boring Milner” stuff.
Liverpool 2015-2023
Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool manager between 2015 and 2024
In my mind, without knowing too much about him, I saw him as a winger when I arrived at Liverpool. I had come across him with Borussia Dortmund and he had been at Man City. Pretty quickly I saw he was a special character. A serious player, serious professional, and someone who I thought could be my “partner” at the club. Whatever the future held, we would do it together.
Klopp and Milner forged a strong relationship on Merseyside. The Yorkshireman was the club’s vice-captain for the entirety of his Liverpool career
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER BRADLEY ORMESHER
My first full season there, I asked him to be left back. It was the summer before Robbo [Andrew Robertson] came in and James had played there already from time to time. He didn’t really enjoy it but during pre-season in the USA, I had a meeting with him and said: “Look, we don’t have the money to buy another left back, you will probably play there again.”
He was like, “Gaffer, really? It’s not my position.”
“Maybe not but you are best suited to it.”
And he played it extremely, extremely well. This kind of player in the squad is so important.
Milner made an excellent goalline clearance against Bournemouth to keep Liverpool’s 2-1 lead intact in March 2020. They only needed to play two more games to clinch the Premier League title, the third of Milner’s career
CARL RECINE/REUTERS
It is ridiculous how skilled he is. People always talk about his attitude, but his skill level is off the chart.
He may not be really fast like Sadio [Mané] or Mo [Salah] and I am not 100 per cent sure about his offensive heading, but the rest is top, top, top, top, if not world class. He’s two-footed, but sometimes the way he wants to contribute to the game, helping others, means that doesn’t let him show the rest.
Nothing — absolutely nothing — would have happened at Liverpool without him. That is 100 per cent true. Nothing.
For example, he educated Curtis Jones. Curtis was the classic super talent: give me the ball, I’ll do something. He didn’t pass the ball a lot in the youth teams because he knew he could do it better than the others.
Milner mentored Jones as the latter broke into Liverpool’s first team during the title-winning season of 2019-20
DARREN STAPLES/EMPICS SPORT
Then you arrive in the first team and you have to consider all these different things and James made sure he saw that. Not in a harsh way. He didn’t want to change his personality, he just wanted to shape it.
After James left, I used to have people coming into my office and say: “So and so was late, how much is the fine?” I was like, “I have no clue! No one has ever come to me with this before, why are you asking this now?”
Milner received a guard of honour after the final game of his Liverpool career in 2023
JOHN POWELL/LIVERPOOL FC VIA GETTY IMAGES
Until he left, Milly always sorted it out. Kept on top of everything like that. Then after seven years together, it was my problem!
When you are in a football club every day, you do not appreciate some people enough. Now I am on the outside, I see it. I texted him only recently to say, “It was an honour that I covered a few yards with you on the journey.” I mean it. The honour was mine. I don’t think this record will happen again. He is the last dinosaur to do that!
Brighton & Hove Albion, 2023 to present
Adam Lallana, team-mate at Liverpool and Brighton
I played quite a big part in getting him down there. I’d not played with him for three years at this point, but when he turned up and trained, it was like the same James Milner. I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t lost a yard, his physicality was the same, he was stronger, if anything. I was struggling fitness wise, yet he was older than me and was the exact same person I remembered. That took me back a little bit.
Lallana and Milner won four trophies together at Liverpool and reunited at Brighton in 2023, below
ANDREW POWELL/LIVERPOOL FC VIA GETTY IMAGES
To be honest, he would have improved any team in the Premier League after leaving Liverpool. Tottenham, Arsenal, Newcastle United: any single team in the Premier League would have benefited from him because of the wealth of experience he possesses.
Brighton were obviously lucky to get his services and then off the back of that you get a 32-year-old manager who walks into the club in Fabian Hürzeler, and I bet James has helped him enormously as well.
Some players at Brighton will still think, “He’s not going on again is he!” But it is not until your time has gone in your career and you have worked with players like James that you realise, “I took a lot from him.”
I learnt from him myself. I had played against him and he was very, very strong in the tackle, but not in a horrible way. He wouldn’t try and “do” you. He was just extremely tough, firm but always respectful.
He also has one of the best 15-20 yard passes that I have ever seen in the game and that probably goes hand in hand with how true he hits a penalty. That is not just luck. That is repetition — how he drives the ball through the grass. It is his craft and what he has worked on, spending hours after training practising, practising, practising.
When he came to Liverpool, the British lads were thick as thieves. Myself, Hendo [Jordan Henderson] and James would try and lay down the culture, especially when Jürgen came in. James was a cultural architect as well as being this versatile beast and that is what has helped his longevity.
Milner and the Liverpool captain Henderson on the club’s open-top bus parade after winning their sixth Champions League
OLI SCARFF/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
He enjoyed the Champions League win in 2019 as much as anyone. He was on the front, right-hand corner of the bus for the parade round the city the day after we beat Tottenham. He knew exactly where the best place to be was. It wasn’t at the front of the show, always to the side, and I couldn’t believe how many chants he was starting off. He made sure everyone celebrated, that no one was on their phones, just living in the moment.
He might not want to have 12 drinks on a night out — he’d prefer to fit three rounds of golf in on one day — but he is a livewire.