Top 55 Lads Quotes

When I left EastEnders, I could have earned an absolute fortune from sexy calendars, shoots for lads’ mags, fitness videos and reality shows. But I always turned them down.

Every big moment has stresses and lessons that you take into your managerial career. You can pass it down to the lads who work under you. And everybody knows you handled it.

It’s not nice getting up at 6 am, when it’s pitch black and you have to get in a van with 10 other lads, to go and work in a muddy building site in the winter, and not get home until 5.30 or 6.

For good reasons, there are no ties during the Stanley Cup season. Somebody needs to win so the lads can get out to their cottages on the lakes, where all hockey players spend their summers, or so I have been told.

For a lot of lads, they grow up going to matches with fathers or mates. Those Saturday or Sundays where you head over to the stadium probably with a scarf on – knowing every word, every clap and every pause to the supporters’ chants.

I think because I did a lot of modelling and appeared in lads mags a lot of women didn’t necessarily warm to me. But now I have been through childbirth, post-natal depression and struggled with my weight, women seem to relate to me a lot more.

When friends started smoking at 16 or drinking at 18, I made myself not follow. No lads’ holidays, all that stuff.

It was two different worlds: my world – cricket, the dressing room and the lads. And then family. Even when they travelled with me, it wasn’t always easy to bridge the gap.

There were no Asian lads boxing when I started.

At first, I was overwhelmed at moving up to international level, but the England lads are top class at making you feel welcome.

What you don’t realise when you get injured for a long period of time is that it’s so hard to get back. You see the lads out on the training ground and you’re in every day – 8 to 5 – and it’s horrendous. So when you actually come back it’s a proud moment.

There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn’t fall, I started to consider retiring.

Because society places a value on masculinity, gay men aspire to it. If you go to a gay club and the doorman says, ‘You do realise this is a gay club, don’t you lads?’ you get all excited because you think, ‘Wow, he thought I was straight!’

Ben Davies and all the lads that haven’t played many minutes, we have to manage their minutes. You can’t expect those players to go straight into playing France for 90 minutes without having repercussions. It’s common sense.

I used to play football with a load of lads, and I would be like a secret agent going out with a hat on so they wouldn’t see my hair in a bun.

I’m only 24, which is still young, but I don’t think of myself as one of the young lads anymore. I suppose that’s how people have always seen me. But there comes a time when you have to take extra responsibility.

I want to be the kind of footballer who is willing to help out the young lads, even if it is only in a small way.

I would have been about seven years old when the formative years of my competitive football education began. I was playing in the local leagues around Manchester, playing against lads from tough areas who had been taught they had to fight for everything.

Really racing is about the horses, not me. You can’t do it without the horses, and they are the big players as are the lads who look after them, and they rarely get a mention.

When the lads see that the coach loves football and believes in what he says – he’d really prefer to be playing with the team – that creates a sense of enthusiasm among the players and trust in the coach. They notice that you’re one of them.

I used to always employ South Africans and Aussies and Kiwis – I can’t admit this, well I can now, but I couldn’t admit it at the time – but I didn’t want wet English lads who didn’t want to work in the catering trade anyway.

I really like lads and grew up with two brothers and all of their mates. I’m also close to several actors that I’ve played opposite.

When you’re told you’re going to miss out, initially, that first hour after the manager’s named the team, you’re really disappointed. You can’t imagine anything worse. But you can’t show that. You’ve got to go out there and support the lads.

It is always good to be away with a few of the older lads because you pick up so much from them every day. You see how they prepare for games, how they rest, and how they train.

A young sailor boy came to see me today. It pleases me to have these lads seek me on their return from their first voyage, and tell me how much they have learned about navigation.

All of us… anyone that’s been in Fleetwood Mac, as far as I’ve been aware, has been seemingly pretty well brought up by their parents: not goody two-shoes – God knows we weren’t – but there was a level of civility that the lads in the band were aware of, what is over the brink of decency.

I had a good time at Liverpool. They were great lads. The manager had his reasons to keep me on the bench, and at the same time, they were on a good run.

I’m one who will go and have a beer with my pals on a Sunday afternoon. I’ll go on a Friday night and have an hour with my pals, lads that I’ve knocked about with for 20-25 years.

Footballers do get a hard time, and there is a lot of generalization going on. When you get to meet players and know them as lads, it’s always a bit different.

I enjoyed every second at West Ham with the lads and the staff.

My music, it’s hitting the real people. It’s hitting the mums, it’s hitting the blokes and the lads, it’s also hitting the kids and the people my age.

Organising the defence is something that is very important and I try to do my best every single day in training to make sure the lads get the information they need.

Of course, becoming champions is something we all want, but I think that the best ‘championship’ for a manager is to see players like Koke, Lucas Hernandez, Angel Correa – lads who have come up from all the way down in the lower divisions – become professionals of a high standard.

Like a lot of young lads who dreamt about being a singer, I was a massive fan of Robbie Williams and couldn’t believe my luck when, not only did I get to meet my idol, but sing with him, too.

Michael Owen isn’t the tallest of lads, but his height more than makes up for that.

I think as an older player, there’s a kind of natural responsibility or natural role to go around the lads and say a few things. I had it when I came into the team; when you look to the older boys in certain situations to see what they say, see how they act, and see what they expect.

For me the important thing is I have four honest lads in front of me who give their everything.

Cricket was deemed too posh where I came from, and I’d never have risked walking home through the estates in my whites. My club played some of the posh schools. I’d have the cheapest kit, but I loved those games. As soon as the posh lads opened their mouths and you heard their accents, the stakes were raised.

The national team can do so much for Italian football, as can even lads who no-one knows or who play in the lower Leagues.

I didn’t come from a council estate like a lot of the lads do.

Sometimes I am the ‘philosophical professor, or I can do the voice like thunder if necessary… or if I want to keep the lads on their toes I might sit back and give them a thousand-yard stare.

Yeah, I’m big into Drake as a lot of lads are. I’ve been to a few of his concerts and I usually have him playing on the way to games.

For Secret Santa a few years ago, I bought one of the lads I used to play with a block of cheese.

One thing the Scottish boys want in the changing room is the bragging rights over the English lads.

There were times when I blundered and got the dreaded look from the lads. But that was a good sign. It showed I’d attempted something I’d not tried before.

When you step up as a young talent, you need to challenge the old lads.

I am still feeling my calf strain, so I have been unable to train this week. I will again have to sit out the weekend action, but the lads are climbing ever higher to safety.

Now listen lads, I’m not happy with our tackling. We’re hurting them but they keep getting up.

I’ve really enjoyed my time at Palace. The lads were brilliant; the gaffer and training were great.

The biggest thing I will miss is 4 July when Everton are due back for pre-season training. I loved that day. I lived for it, getting back with the lads.

Just playing with the lads in school, really, and having a kick around, and I ended up at a Sunday club just for girls, and there was only about 15- 20 girls there, and I just moved on to a club from there.

I used to love going out and celebrating with the lads. But we can do that in the hotel and I don’t miss it. I don’t feel that urge any more. Once you make the transition to not doing it then you don’t miss it.

I’m not a ‘Twilight’ boy; I’ll never be as good looking as those lads, and that’s fair enough.