Lee Bowyer: I just don't go out because it scares me

It was a contemplative morning after a sorely disappointing night before, at least in Lee Bowyer's troubled mind. Something had been preoccupying the Leeds United midfielder overnight and, even before the "warm-down" which the new manager, Terry Venables, demands of his players the day after a match, he was knocking on El Tel's door at the club's Thorp Arch training ground.

His performance in the 1-0 defeat of the Ukrainian side Metalurg Zaporizhya in the first leg of their Uefa Cup first-round tie might have been described euphemistically as "quiet", though scarcely one for profound analysis, you might have thought.

"For the first time ever, I felt confused after a game," Bowyer explains. "I needed to know what had happened last night because I felt that I didn't play well. I watched the game again on TV, which I do only when I've played badly, to see what I could have done. I thought that I didn't really do that much wrong. A couple of passes went astray, but nothing major, but I could have done better. So, I came straight in this morning to see the manager to find his point of view."

And what was Venables' response? "He reassured me," says Bowyer. "He told me: 'You didn't do as much as you can do but that's just because of the way the game was played, but don't let it bother you.' But it was strange, the first time I've ever felt like that."

It is a rare admission of self-doubt from a man acknowledged for his mental robustness over the last three years, a player who continued to perform – and at times with apparently even greater purpose – in the prelude to and during his protracted, much-publicised trial on a serious assault charge.

As interviews with footballers go, there have been more straightforward ones than this, particularly as there were constraints on questions pertaining to the case because of possible further civil proceedings by the victim. But considering that one tabloid newspaper, after his acquittal, published a front page detailing his alleged failings, with the addendum ("Now try to sue us you little scumbag)"; that other, more sober, commentators condemned his presence in the last England squad and team; that he still receives hate mail at the club (it is all vetted before he reads it), it is inevitable that the conversation should deviate beyond his undoubted on-field prowess and his recent England debut.

I asked him if that venom from many quarters affected him. "It does and it doesn't," he says. "It does, because it creates an unfair image of you when people don't even know you. They've judged you and they haven't even met you. But because you don't know them it doesn't really bother me."

He adds: "I got found not guilty, but I was the one who got criticised the most [in the media]. It was unbelievable. Well, I couldn't believe it. My family and friends know the person I am and the way I am, and that's all that matters to me."

Bowyer, 25, the son of a brewery worker, was born and raised on an estate in Tower Hamlets in east London. It was, he admits in a softly delivered London accent, with just the hint of the odd Yorkshire vowel, a rough area. "It makes you streetwise about what's going on around you," he says. "You need that to get through things." He evidently lacks for nothing in family support, though. Both his parents attend every Leeds home match.

I asked whether he is a reformed man. Certainly his lifestyle has altered since that night in early 2000 when the Asian student Sarfraz Najeib was savagely beaten up in the city centre, which resulted in Bowyer and team-mate Jonathan Woodgate, together with others, appearing in court. After the first trial had been halted, he was acquitted after a second one, although he was denied the considerable costs involved because the judge declared that he had lied to the police. Woodgate was found guilty of affray, and was given a community service order.

These days, Bowyer volunteers, he takes no chances with his extra-curricular activities. "To be honest, I go to work and I go home. I don't really do much else, except I go fishing, which I really enjoy. I go down to the Norwich area for some pike fishing. You've got to watch their teeth, though [he issues a rare smile]. I don't grab them. My uncle does that. Apart from that, I walk my two Shar-pei dogs. You know, the Japanese ones with the wrinkled faces."

He adds: "That's how it's got to be in football now, especially me because of what's happened in the past. I can't afford to be caught up in anything that I shouldn't. I don't like going out because it just scares me. You know there's somebody just waiting there to hammer you in the newspapers. It's not me I'm concerned about. I can handle it. It's my mum; when she picks up the paper she's reading all about 'this scumbag'. That's not right."

Yet, I put it to him, she would not have had to do so if he hadn't confronted authority over the years. It must be recalled that, apart last year's court appearance, he also tested positive for marijuana when a teenager at Charlton and came close to a prison sentence after an incident in a McDonald's in 1996.

"Do I have any regrets, you mean?" Bowyer asks. "Oh yes, I've made mistakes. Everybody's made mistakes, but in our world everybody finds out about it. You have to take that, don't you? That's part of the job. I've learnt lessons. It's all made me a stronger person, and I think, a better person. But you can't change anything." The fact he continued to play for Leeds during the trial astonished many. He attributes much to the Leeds supporters. "They've been great to me, especially through the court case, and made it easier for me to perform the way I did."

Which makes you wonder just why he won't recommit himself to the club. On his way out of Venables' office earlier that morning, the manager had enquired about Bowyer's future at Elland Road.

The reasons for his indecision can presumably be traced back to the club's reaction after his acquittal, a period when he was asked to pay a fine of a month's wages. Initially, he refused and was placed on the transfer list before he relented. Since then, he has refused to sign an extension to his contract, which expires next summer.

Last summer, a proposed transfer to Liverpool fell through. A Liverpool statement declared that, in manager Gérard Houllier's view, Bowyer did not have the "desire" to play for his club.

"There's no question that if I'd have gone there [Liverpool] I wouldn't have given my all. That's the only way I know how to play," Bowyer insists. "What happened was that the manager and chairman here asked me to go and talk to Liverpool, because Leeds had accepted a bid. So, I told them: 'Look, I'll go and speak to them, but if it doesn't seem right then I'm not going'." In the event, that was the case. "It was no good going there if I felt iffy about it."

It was not because of the failure to agree terms, then? "I don't play football for money," he retorts dismissively.

So, why not rededicate himself to Leeds, under a manager he clearly respects highly? "I haven't ruled it out," he says. "It's been not just one thing, but a few things that have gone on behind closed doors, but I'm in a mad situation here. It's crazy. I don't want to leave here."

It was his aggression and no mean ability which first provoked Charlton's interest in 1994. When Howard Wilkinson invited him to join Leeds for £2.6m two years later, creating the country's most expensive teenager in the process, it appeared that a first senior England cap would be his within a couple of years. Off-field events and competition have conspired against him until two weeks ago against Portugal. He fashioned his team-mate Alan Smith's goal, and generally performed with promise.

"That's all I wanted; to be given the chance to play. For my first game I don't think I did too bad, but I think perhaps that I put myself under too much pressure before the game, knowing I had to produce, because so many people had stuck by me and told me I should do well."

His aspirations are clear-cut. "To score for England and to carry on playing for my country. And I want to win the League, or something, with Leeds. I think we've got a chance, but I've been saying that for the last three or four years."

That all depends on him staying, of course. And nothing has been predictable in the life of Lee Bowyer, except that he will continue to refine a prodigious talent. Now is the time, as well he knows, for the headlines to reflect that.