Miller Time Got Me Going Again - Now I'm Eager To Crack Prem

IT WAS a stern word with himself when he was playing for Rotherham in League Two that was career-changing for Lewis Grabban.

- John Wragg

The answers he found halted the decline and set him up for a possible third crack at the Premier League with Aston Villa.

Grabban, 30, admits he was going downhill quicker than a four-man bobsleigh.

“It was a reality check for me. I’d taken football for granted but suddenly I was going downhill rather than up,” he says.

Grabban’s always scored goals, but here he was having gone from Crystal Palace (Championship), to Millwall (League One and Championship), to Brentford (League One) to sitting alone in his Sheffield home examining why he was now a mid-table League Two Rotherham player.

It was a free transfer that took him to Rotherham. So what was next?

“It saved my career,” says Grabban. “You can get too comfortable. When I say ‘taking it for granted’, that’s what I mean, thinking it will always be there and before you know it, it isn’t.

“I felt I had more ability than what I was showing. Going to Rotherham gave me the opportunity to play week in, week out and I enjoyed it.”

Grabban’s 20 goals, 17 in the league, got him noticed and a £300,000 move to Bournemouth.

The fees have escalated since. Norwich paid £3m then Bournemouth £7m to take him back. When Grabban’s career was derailed again and he wasn’t get ting games at Bournemouth, he was loaned out to Sunderland and, in what is generally accepted as an embarrassment of a side, scored 12 times in 19 games.

It was reported that Grabban asked for the loan to be terminated to go back to Bournemouth in January. Not so, he says.

“It was easier to blame me,” says Grabban. “I said ‘playing every week, scoring every week, why would I want to leave?’.

It was said I didn’t want to be in a relegation battle, but, being selfish, I was doing so well I would have stayed.”