So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (3 page)

I hope it’s one that you can read, the same way Paddy sang, over and over and over again.

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Andrew Mangan writes Arseblog.com, the award-winning Arsenal blog founded in 2002. Quite happily married to Mrs Blogs, he is firmly convinced Robert Pires is the dreamiest man on earth.

2 – ONE GEORGIE GRAHAM  - Amy Lawrence

It was just after lunch on the 21st of February 1994 when the news broke. At the time the Arsenal Stadium was being set up for an evening match. As the stock at the Gunners Shop was being filled, the match programmes delivered, the turnstiles unlocked, the kit laid out in the dressing room, the flowers in the colours of the visitors displayed in the marble halls, a whacking great red and white bombshell dropped onto Highbury. George Graham’s time at Arsenal was up. Unceremoniously, brutally, up.

With a little bit of distance and perspective it shouldn’t really have been such a seismic shock. Results wise, the team was in free-fall and stood a mere four points above the relegation zone (the last 12 games produced dismal statistics: W1 D5 L6). Performance wise, the players appeared to be trudging through treacle. Spirit wise, Arsenal had been trapped in a limbo of uncertainty for months as the bung scandal, in which Graham stood accused of dipping his hands in the till by accepting irregular payments from a Norwegian agent by the name of Rune Hauge, was under investigation. So when George was finally ushered towards the exit, we should not have felt so stunned. So bewildered. Yet as the crowds descended upon Highbury for a league game against Nottingham Forest, and opened up their match programmes to see George’s face and read George’s words of wisdom (it was obviously too late to change anything) the overwhelming feeling was one of loss.

For all of George’s imperfections – and apart from the obvious brown envelope episode he had undeniably allowed a decline to take hold – he had been in many ways the perfect Arsenal manager. As an ex-player, and part of the 1971 double winning team, his emotional ties to the club were strongly bound. As an Arsenal historian (his study at home was dedicated to the club’s past), he was proud to uphold the traditions set by Herbert Chapman, Bertie Mee et al. As a manager, he was motivated, shrewd and strategic enough to build a team capable of producing extraordinary winning moments. With his suave repartee and smart cannoned blazer, he represented Arsenal magnificently. On that day when he was dismissed, with the bookies taking bets on his replacement naming the likes of Steve Coppell, David Pleat and Walter Smith as frontrunners, alongside some club stalwarts without the big time coaching experience, the predominant feeling amongst the fans was this: Never again could any manager at Highbury possibly be so “Arsenal”.

Across London, in the office of a football magazine, a cub reporter, enjoying a debut season in the job of watching football for a living, assessed the news. The editor took one look at the cub reporter, who was clearly struggling to concentrate on anything.

“Go home, Amy,” the editor said.

Okay, I’ll admit, it wasn’t my most professional moment, but to fans of a certain age, who grew up with George’s team, who experienced the profound effects of White Hart Lane 87, Anfield 89, Highbury 91, Wembley 93 and Copenhagen 94 whilst they were still learning about life, the universe and everything, the sacking of the mastermind was an enormous deal. Everyone around the place was shaken. Record goalscorer Ian Wright confessed to being “deeply disappointed”. Goalkeeping coach Bob Wilson called it “terribly sad”. And frustrating too, adding, “He’s going to be labelled for the rest of his career when everyone else in football knows that label could be alongside 20 or 30 other people.” That George was the fall guy when the culture of “unsolicited gifts”, as he called it, was prevalent, must have cut him even deeper.

Ironically, the act of cutting clever transfer deals – one of his undeniable strengths in creating successful teams – ultimately proved his downfall. John Jensen and Pal Lydersen, two players delivered to Arsenal by Hauge, did not turn out to be the Scot’s most ingenious pieces of business. The fact George paid back the £425,000 Hauge had given him was not, in the end, enough of a defence. It was over. Arsenal beat Forest 1-0 that night. Chris Kiwomya scored the only goal. The crowd went home to take it all in and wonder where on earth Arsenal would go from here.

Such are the cycles in the life of a football club. One man’s demise is another’s opportunity, and, after a couple of caretakers and a season of Bruce Rioch, a certain Arsene Wenger walked into the Marble Halls, full of his own ideas and expectations. That was the very journey taken by George in 1986. Arsenal had been drifting. After Don Howe’s spell in charge came to a sorry end, Steve Burtenshaw stepped in to look after the team for a couple of months. The Arsenal board were on the hunt for a new leader. George, a young coach with a reputation for having a tough edge, was on a shortlist of four. As an Arsenal man he was the first to be interviewed. The board never bothered to meet the other three candidates. 

The George Graham who strode back into Highbury was a very different animal to the Stroller, as he was nicknamed in his playing days. Gorgeous George, the player, had a luxury style on the pitch and an eye for the good life off it. Mister Graham the manager was ready to crack down on exactly the kind of player he had been. He liked stars, but only ‘performing’ stars. He expected dedication, desire, and discipline. On arriving at London Colney he noted that a couple of the more flamboyant players, Charlie Nicholas and Graham Rix, had pierced ears. “If you want to wear an earring it’s compulsory to wear a dress,” he quipped. Point made.

George printed out one of his favourite quotes, from the legendary American Football coach Vince Lombardi, about the three essential components to winning: technique, discipline, and team spirit. He quickly noticed that some of the senior pros in the team were not so strong on the discipline side. Drinking clubs and gambling groups came with the territory in 1980’s football in England. If the slightest reluctance to knuckle down and break a few bad habits was evident, George had no qualms about letting a player go, regardless of status. Renowned internationals like Nicholas, Rix and Kenny Sansom moved on. George began to build his team around a group of hungry young players (Adams, Rocastle, Thomas, Merson) and bargain buys (Dixon, Bould, Winterburn, Smith) with everything to prove.

A new resilience was born; a never-say-die mentality was fostered. It all began with the legendary back four, formed by relentless drilling on the training field. George used to deliberately outnumber his defence, playing 4 v 6 to push them and test them until they could recite the mantra “clean sheets” in their sleep. As George once joked, “Even the bulbs in my garden were in formation.”

The manager’s insatiable appetite for winning rubbed off, and team spirit soared. In the words of the late, great, David Rocastle, they “fought for each other like blood brothers.”

It was never going to happen, but what marvels could have been achieved in recent seasons had George been summoned by Arsene to sort out that defence and inject a large dose of resilience.

Arsenal’s successes under George were so emotionally charged and dramatically delivered we sometimes wondered who was writing these scripts. The Littlewoods Cup in 1987 came after a humdinger of a semi-final, won at the death, in the lair of the old enemy at Tottenham. The first league championship in 18 years was the most improbable finish to a title race ever seen, with the underdogs so dismissed it seemed like a waste of time even boarding the coach to Anfield in 89, only for deliverance to come in stoppage time of the entire season. Two years later Arsenal were the nearly-invincibles, losing only one game en route to the finishing line, despite the blows of a two point deduction for a brawl at Old Trafford and losing their captain for two months when Tony Adams was imprisoned for drink driving. Then came the Cup collection, with a domestic double clinched in the final seconds of extra time in the 1993 FA Cup final, and the Cup Winners Cup won against all odds with a classic one nil to the Arsenal in 1994.

Six trophies in eight years; three of them won with late goals; four of them coming from losing or unfancied positions. All of them requiring the blend of technique, discipline and team-spirit. A banner was unfurled from the Clock End boxes as Arsenal were champions in 1991: “George Knows”.

His reign was not without criticism, however. The old ‘boring Arsenal’ tag was hooked on to his team. That was a particularly harsh assessment of many of the classy ball players he used – Limpar, Rocastle and Wright were anything but boring – but nobody could deny things were going stale towards the end. As Tony Adams put it, “Our league football was dreadful, I think we were in a bit of schtuck.”

George himself always thought his team deserved more respect. “Yes, winning is boring, isn’t it?” he pouted.

History has not been kind to George. The fact he was eventually followed by the doubles and delicious football devised by Wenger and televised with all the razzmatazz of Sky and the Premiership, together with the notion that he left in disgrace because of the bung scandal, means his achievements are sometimes glossed over. More’s the pity. They deserve to be cherished to the full.

When Sir Alex Ferguson was being lauded for Manchester United’s record 19th title, the quote about “knocking Liverpool off their perch” was referenced liberally. But it wasn’t Ferguson who initially defeated the dynasty at Anfield. It was George who delivered the first body blows. It was George who made the serial trophy collectors, the team that had dominated the 70’s and 80’s, wobble and lose their footing at the top of the English game. At the time of his departure George had lost his way. Whether he could have rebuilt his team time and again, as Ferguson did, is one for pure hypothesis. But he is entitled to wonder what might have been.

The comparison with Ferguson also works in the sense that George was the last Arsenal manager able to oversee absolutely every detail of the club and its workforce. No matter how small your contribution to the running of Arsenal, George wanted to know you, and keep you motivated for the cause.

As a teenager, I used to have a holiday job at Highbury working in the Gunners Shop. It was a homely little place plonked onto the side of the Clock End – you could probably fit about 30 of them into the footprint of the Armoury – and was famously run for years by ex-keeper, Jack Kelsey. It was common for fans to work part-time at Highbury then. You could get a season ticket in exchange for a few days painting the crash barriers on the North Bank or touching up the exit gates.

One summer’s day George caused quite a flutter in the Gunners Shop by swanning in quite unannounced, having a chat about the items on display and how much they cost, and asking each of us shop-girls about ourselves. As if we couldn’t get any giddier, an ice cream van pulled up outside on Avenell Road and George gave us a wink. “Come on girls, I’ll buy you all an ice cream.”

As we waited for our 99’s, somebody from the flats above took aim at George with an egg. They missed. Egg landed all over a passing lady with her shopping. “Must have been a Tottenham fan,” muttered George, before he went to empathise with the now eggy lady and find out if she needed some help.

On so many levels a similar scene is impossible to imagine today. Arsene Wenger could not possibly keep up with the cast of thousands that work in and around the club now. It would be most unusual to find him wandering around the different departments, trying to find out how people are doing and what they are up to in the good name of Arsenal. Significantly, George did it not only because he could, but because he wanted to.

The history of Arsenal Football Club should never dare to understate his era. There really was only one Georgie Graham.

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Amy Lawrence is a football writer for the Guardian and Observer and a daily reader of Arseblog for obvious reasons.

3 – THE ARSENAL: FROM OPEN SEWERS TO OPEN SANDWICHES  - Tim Stillman

In the summer of 2011, Arsenal F.C. undertook a lucrative pre-season tour to Malaysia and China. Whilst the primary reason for the tour was commercial, it did bring the club face-to-face with a branch of the club’s support that they could only have had a cerebral appreciation for previously. Arsene Wenger seemed to imply that the Premier League’s sparkly dime had informed this colonial phenomenon, “The Premier League has penetrated in Asia.” Arsene is not at all incorrect to make that connection, but it’s also a continuation of a theme that has persisted at the club throughout its 125-year history. Based, as the club have been, in their suburban garrison womb of Woolwich and the cosmopolitan borough of Islington, Arsenal have been something of a cultural beacon. Many different ethnic strands have identified with Arsenal and woven themselves into its fabric.

A typical match-day at the Emirates will reflect this milieu. But, unsurprisingly, the embryonic years of Woolwich Arsenal weren’t quite as diverse. At the club’s inception, the fan base was plucked from the same nest as the playing staff – the armoury workhouses of Dial Square and the Royal Arsenal East factory opposite Plumstead Station. Plumstead was very much a garrison town, so Squaddies and munitions workers largely comprised the Manor Ground terraces: hard men living hard lives. The Woolwich Arsenal support revelled in their status as pariahs. The Manor Ground was positioned next to the Southern Outfall Sewer; meaning effluent was frequently streamed under the spectators’ hobnailed boots. An industrial works provided a further dystopian backdrop, billowing out a putrid cocktail of yellowy chemicals. Opposition supporters would often refer to the club as coming “from the sinister factory,” due to its high walls, which aroused suspicion in outsiders.

The supporters brought their factory camaraderie into the ground with them. Contemporary journalists would often complain bitterly about the coarse language adopted by the Woolwich Arsenal fans – most unbecoming in Victorian England. In scenes far removed from today’s more genteel, middle-class environs, the 1892-93 season saw Woolwich Arsenal have one match abandoned and one severely interrupted as fans made their way onto the pitch to assault hapless referees. The lack of adequate facilities at the Manor Ground often meant men just urinated where they stood on the terracing. This hybrid of crudeness, together with the ground’s scarce accessibility by public transport, moved a journalist from the Liverpool Star to refer to matches at Woolwich Arsenal as “the annual trip to Hell.” Reports of heavy drinking amongst fans and players after home games became folklore in the Royal Oak – the hostelry in which the club was founded. In the club’s early years, with Association Football still a Northern-centric pursuit, Woolwich Arsenal and its fans were considered the unwanted stepchild of English football. In the eyes of the Victorian Sports press, they were a side of brutes playing physical unattractive football, to an uncouth mob of working class labourers.