So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (24 page)

In the beginning the idea appears almost so fanciful that you are prepared to believe it is one’s own ignorance of the game that is to blame for gaining such an impression. However, when you see the games like the one at Wigan, alarm bells ring. When former players, who know what they’re talking about, start saying what you’re thinking about the effort or lack of it, those bells ring louder. That day at Wigan, they didn’t give 100%. The truth is there had been games before and there have been games since when the same has been true. The commitment of Arsene Wenger is unarguable but whether his charges are still prepared to fight for him is less apparent. It is their fault but in a sense his problem. That would be the easy explanation.

Another explanation is growing up and getting married, although I struggle to buy this completely. I was probably in the top 1% of football obsessives. I planned my life around Arsenal. I watched (in person, television or the internet) every single game. I’ve blogged about the club for seven years, spending many hundreds, if not thousands of hours, doing so. I can even date most family holidays and birthdays by cross referencing who we played that day, who scored the goals and therefore what the year must be. So how, put crudely, could women be to blame? I don’t think the fact that I am missing more games per se is of too great an importance. I’m missing games for the same reasons that I always missed games. The difference is that nowadays there are more such incidents. So, for example the Jewish New Year (which always seems to coincide with Arsenal matches) forced me to miss the Olympiakos match this year, just as I had missed the first leg of OB Odense v Arsenal for the same reason 18 years previously. Only when the crunch game with United in spring 2003 clashed with Passover was it considered appropriate to leave the festival dinner table.

Work makes me miss games too, but none of that explains why I’m not checking the score as avidly as I did before, or why I am not churning the result over in mind time and time again. Then there is a third, more frightening scenario: am I simply less interested because we’re just no longer as good as we once were? For all my obsessiveness over the years, am I no better than the proverbial glory hunter? On Friday 16th April 2004, I had a pre-match drink with a friend in a pub near Highbury before the Leeds game. That friend never, ever drank before a game, but so confident was he that nothing could stop our march to the title, he allowed himself a pint. As he drank it, he said: “Enjoy this, because we’ll never have it so good again.” They were serious words from a 21 year-old but he had a point. Thierry Henry scored four goals that night and in the stands people turned and looked at each other in wonderment as every dance through the Leeds defence became more outrageous.  We became The Invincibles and for nine games the following season we were even better. When Villa came to Highbury for game number 49; the absence of Freddie Ljungberg and Gilberto Silva forced Wenger into picking what, at that brief time in Autumn 2004, was not his first team but was his very best team. Against mid-rate opposition at Highbury, the creativity of a very young Fabregas was of more use alongside Patrick Vieira than Gilberto’s defensive wall. Jose Reyes was in the (very brief) peak of his Arsenal career, terrorising defences and knocking in goals with his left foot, right foot and head. Villa, despite enjoying an early lead, were destroyed.

The Clock End enquired whether our opponents had “ever seen football played like this” and there is, I think, a part of me that did become spoilt. Football in the late ’90’s and early ’00’s at Arsenal became something a little bit different to most football. Yes, like football fans at any level of the game, we were thrilled by the odd seesaw encounter or controversial moment. Yes, it goes without saying, the reason the Premier League is so popular is – relatively speaking – the football is superior to many other leagues.

It goes without saying that the great Arsenal sides of the time never did win the Champions League, nor did they manage back-to-back league titles, but it is true that we would regularly be treated to moments that we could simply not conceive. It was as if we were at the finest of restaurants where the boundaries were continually being pushed. At the heart of it was Thierry Henry, an extraordinary innovator. I sat in a pub in Camden Town watching our home game with Charlton in Autumn 2004 on mute, when Henry scored that back-heeled goal. It was the goal that was actually too clever for the camera. Viewers were treated to a close up of the man with his back to goal but no goal in shot. The vision mixer presumably, like the rest of us, simply couldn’t imagine a goal could be scored from that position. It did become, I think, a little bit about having your breath taken away. Of course there were football matches to win. I’ve acknowledged we never came close to matching Manchester United’s consistency over many seasons. All the same, it is true that once a game was won or ever appeared likely to be won, it was no longer enough to simply score normal goals; at least certainly not in Henry’s mind. They had to be beautifully crafted. If need be, the easy option had to be passed up if the more difficult one was visually better. Sod the goal difference. Part of going to Arsenal became about those moments you got a few times a game, moments that would stir something inside you in a way not a lot else could.

Even when The Invincibles broke up, Henry was still around for a while longer; Cesc was there, RVP was there and Arshavin and then Nasri signed too. But, as we knew while having that drink before the Leeds game in 2004, it could never be as good as it was forever. Technically, the players who now constitute the bulk of the current squad are not bad players. In fact, they are by and large very good players, but it is not uncommon to go through a game now and not once experience a moment of breathtaking beauty or execution when compared to what used to be on offer. That is not to say there aren’t any. The ingenuity of Robin Van Persie’s equaliser against Barcelona at the Emirates in February 2011 or indeed the slick passing that led to Andrei Arshavin’s winner were two such occasions.

Arshavin had an open goal to aim at when scoring against Swansea in September 2011, but the way he nonchalantly swept the ball first time with his left foot at a tiny angle evoked memories of the arrogant strut that characterised Arsene Wenger’s greatest sides.

There is a simple truth; when football teams are not successful, fewer people follow them or come to watch them play. That is unarguable and is it fair to say that perhaps it is the case that a very great number of football fans are glory hunters. Maybe I am just one of them, hooked by Anfield, retained by a continual diet of trophies and now they’re no longer assured my passion is somewhat diminished. Of course, the kind of football obsessiveness where one thinks of little else other than football is not confined to younger fans; my original assumption was probably very naive. That one’s degree of obsessiveness should stay constant forever, not buffeted by the rest of life’s events, was never likely. I now realise that there is, in all likelihood, an alternative; one where football is still really, really important but doesn’t quite evoke the rawness of emotion it once did.

Having put to paper my thoughts, I now suspect my experience is very common. Maybe it is only because of my previous level of obsessiveness that I am so aware of something that others probably take in their stride. Why it is happening now rather than why it is happening at all is perhaps the question. This is where the factors I’ve outlined above come in. That my life is changing undoubtedly has played a part, but it is also true that at times the Arsenal of late have made it easier not to obsess over them. Finally, Arsenal are no longer The Invincibles and the fact is The Invincibles cast one almighty shadow. One really, really, really didn’t want to miss an opportunity to see them. Comparatively, any team looks less attractive.

Maybe that is glory hunting. But it is at least honest.

***

Jake Morris started following Arsenal four games before Anfield 1989. Over 20 years of obsession later, he wonders why Arsenal now doesn’t matter quite as much as he did. He has written www.goodplaya.com since September 2004.

22 – FROM CHAMP TO CHAMPIGNON - Jonathan Swan

In the 1985/86 season, Niall Quinn loped into Sunday Mass at a local church in Enfield, North London. This caused a mini riot, as he was with a certain ‘Champagne’ Charlie Nicholas.  Whether Chas was wearing his black leather suit, history neglects to tell, but eyewitnesses on the day remember that although the young girls there had eyes only for Bonny Prince Charlie and his regal mullet, the older ladies of the parish were drawn to the gangling Niall; because the largely Irish congregation knew that big Quinny was one of the last of his kind; the authentic Irish Arsenal player. And how. Hilariously, while an apprentice at Arsenal, Quinn claimed to have lodged with a couple of lads called Pat and Mick. Could his emerald bona get any more fide?

What Niall represented was a tail end of an era that had, at one point, seen Highbury resembling the arrivals hall of the Fishguard ferry.  Throughout the 1970’s Arsenal’s ranks had been swollen with Irishmen from North and South. What drew them? As Kevin Costner observed in Field of Dreams, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ but in this case it appeared less of a deliberate policy and more of a happy accident, akin to realising you’ve somehow accumulated five ornamental eggcups, so you might as well start collecting them properly.

Arsenal had always had a smattering of Irish players, like Dr Kevin O’ Flanagan (the flying Doctor, perhaps?) who played on the wing for the club post WWII; Joe Haverty, Paddy Sloan and Jimmy Dunne, who played in the title winning side of the 1930’s. In fact, most English clubs had the odd Scot, Irish or Welshman knocking about, and that was about as exotic as it got. If you had predicted back then that an Arsenal team containing Africans, Frenchmen and South Americans would one day win the league, you would, frankly, have been regarded as a madman. Arsenal were no different to other clubs; until the Irish invasion proper began in the 1960’s with Terry Neill and Arsene’s faithful consigliore, Pat Rice in the vanguard. Nowadays, you can imagine Pat at the team BBQ, flipping the steaks and sucking on a beer while Arsene holds court from a shaded wicker chair with a glass of Bordeaux.

Soon came the others. In no particular order: Sammy Nelson, a left back with the most famous underpants in first division football after he dropped his shorts to the North Bank; David O’Leary, still the record appearance holder for the club; Frank Stapleton, a classy striker whose departure to Manchester United left a bitter taste; Liam Brady, a genius of a player who was genuinely world class; St Patrick of Jennings who, despite joining from Spurs, found his way into Arsenal fan’s affections; and John Devine, who filled in for Rice and had a few runs in the first team.

By the mid 1970s Arsenal could (and did) field a line up which contained six or seven Irish lads, from North and South. London in the 1970s could be no fun for your average Irishman abroad. The troubles were in full swing and anyone with an Irish accent could find themselves the focus of unwelcome attention if anything went wrong (and often if it didn’t). But none of this really impinged on the Arsenal. We just got on with being a not relegated, but not really troubling the upper half of the table sort of team, while northerners took the league every year. There wasn’t a particularly Irish vibe about the place either. Oddly enough, quite a lot of kids with Irish parents were Spurs fans, which may have had more to do with the quasi-religious attraction of Pat Jennings than anything else. Has any man carried off a halo and sideburns so well?

None of the Arsenal players were particularly in the public eye, either. Charlie George, our baddest boy (put your hand down at the back, Mr Storey), had gone by 1975, and few, if any, of the Irish players were especially wild. Liam Brady’s biggest vice was chips, and if you had invited any of them to a roasting they would have assumed you meant chicken or lamb. The avaricious (the North Bank faithful gave it another name: rearrange these letters to find the phrase: ‘creedy gunt’) Frank Stapleton probably stayed in counting his money, if Tony Cascarino’s autobiography is to be believed. Incidentally, what was Cascarino doing playing for Ireland with a name like that: surely the ‘o’ should have been at the other end? 

Under Terry Neill, the club wasn’t really doing much – we just drifted along. It wasn’t even a deliberate ploy to have a team loaded with Irish players; it was just the way it had happened, which sort of summed us up. Some of the players we had were pretty good. Brady, obviously, was the real gem. Stapleton was a good player, and O’Leary was a cultured centre half who these days would probably command a vast fee.  If Arsenal today had as many Irish players as we did back then, no doubt some marketing genius would ensure that we were maximising our revenue streams by Oirsihing us up; Guinness on tap, shamrocks on the cannon, Gunnersuarus taken out to the car park, shot and replaced by half time leprechauns, not to mention the full New York St Paddy’s Day experience to draw in the punters. Perhaps a Pat Rice shebeen under the stadium selling poteen too? But really, no great fuss was made.

Even if we didn’t make a big deal about our Irishness, one effect it did have was to make the Arsenal much more popular in Ireland. The dominance of Manchester United, with their glamour rep and George Best, and perennial 70’s winners Liverpool just a ferry ride away, made it pretty hard for any English club to compete in attracting supporters. But Brady, especially, drew in young kids and Arsenal built up a healthy support, helped too by the fact that most of our Irish players played internationally for the Republic or Northern Ireland.

Eventually Arsenal’s Irish base pretty much dispersed, over the course of our three consecutive FA Cup finals. By the 1980 final (over which a veil shall be drawn), we managed to field four Irish players (five if you include sub Sammy Nelson), but the writing was on the wall. Liam Brady was about to go to Juventus. Pat Rice was to leave for Watford only a couple of weeks later. Sammy Nelson was in the twilight of his career, and a year later Frank Stapleton would depart the marble halls, not with a fanfare of trumpets but to the jingle of the cash register. O’Leary was the only regular first teamer left. Pat Jennings, the man with the most 70’s hairstyle in football, was confronted with the horrific idea that a new decade might necessitate a different look. Recognising that he had a tremendous run of hair form, from looking futuristically ahead of his time in the 1960’s to being bang on trend from ’71 to ’79, he decided phase out of the game, although he didn’t officially stop until 1985. Terry Neill was sacked in 1983, as we languished near the foot of the table. The Irish days were well over by then, but a new era was beginning to emerge of young London boys who would come together to form the best teams of George Graham’s era. Just a few weeks before he got the boot, Neill gave a debut to a lanky 17 year centre half who would become the bedrock of Arsenal for the next two decades: Tony Adams.