by Amy Lawrence
PAUL MERSON:
People say I was called Son of George. I mean he gave me a million chances. If it wasn’t for him I would have been thrown out of football years ago, especially at Arsenal. So I’m always thankful to him. We were fearful. If we were laughing and joking in the dressing room and he walked in – ‘Shhh’. That was it. There was no messing about. Training was serious. In this day and age the players half dictate it now with the money they get.
You had to work very hard. If you didn’t work hard you were out the team. I remember we used to do this squeezing game in training where you’d have five in one square, five in another square and then another five, and two had to go in and get the ball. You had to keep it in the square for five passes and flick it over to another group. But if you lost it you had to go as quick as you could across. I gave the ball away once and I jogged and he went ‘Hurry up’ and I literally laughed. I just giggled and I carried on. I never played for about two months. He didn’t say a word. Saturday the team goes up. Not in the team. And that’s what he was like. He would chop his nose off to spite his face. He was hard but I always say if it wasn’t for George Graham I don’t think we’d have won anything. I really don’t.
He took a big gamble. Top players – you’re talking Viv Anderson, Kenny Sansom, Charlie Nicholas. He come in and he went: bang. You go and play in the reserves. You’re completely out. Now he was the man, Charlie. I’d rather a good footballer than a hungry footballer if I’m being honest but George took that chance. He wanted to rule with an iron rod and he didn’t want people questioning him. So the younger the players he got in the more we were going to listen and it worked a treat for him.
TONY ADAMS:
It was fun and we had the naivety of youth. We were young, determined and ruthless and we stuck together. We went out together. Me and Martin Keown went to Ilford Palais and Martin was going through a phase of wearing the same colour socks as his T-shirt and it was brilliant. So if he had yellow socks he had a yellow T-shirt. We liked different music. Mickey was talking about the Lyceum, and Rocky was into lovers rock. I come from the East End. Martin Keown was in digs. Rocky was South London. We all came together and trained Monday and Thursday nights and it was great fun. We got lucky that we got a good teacher, a good coach, in Terry Burton and we developed at a very quick rate.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
At that time it was a great time to be around football, especially at Arsenal. Arsenal only picked the best. It wasn’t about quantity, it was about quality. So if you had three good youth players, they’d just pick three players and play them in a higher team. At that time we had quite a few of us who came through together and it was just like family really. I remember seeing Merse play before I came to Arsenal. I came to watch a schoolboy game down at London Colney with my Sunday football manager. Little Merse was so small, smallest on the pitch, with his big Arsenal shorts. He was just running the show. I met Tony Adams at a district game and I was in awe. This guy was so tall and he was commanding everybody around the pitch at a district game and it was like, who is this man? He played like he was a professional. Then finding out it was Tony Adams who plays for Arsenal. Wow. Tony was making ripples in the football world being so young. Everybody knew about him. I never knew that Rocky played for Arsenal as a schoolboy until the first day when I came in. I walked through the Marble Halls and the next minute in the dressing room Dave Rocastle was there. I said, ‘How come you didn’t tell me you were training at Arsenal?’ David was quite quiet then. We had belief in our own ability and belief in each other. Playing in the youth team we were playing free-flowing football and like a lot of the nation I loved watching Brazil play. That was my thing, watching Brazil. I was a full-back and I used to love to attack all the time. I had Rocky in front of me so when I’d attack he’d defend. Or we’d both attack together.
NIALL QUINN:
We were all trying to make the grade together. I know Man United and the class of 92 marketed themselves brilliantly and went on to do spectacular things, but in our own little way we had that special feeling amongst us. There was a lovely connection. It was probably more innocent when we came through compared to the class of 92 when things were already getting a lot more modern. Nobody had an agent. We found our own trouble to get into as normal teenagers or young adults do. We had some magical times together. After training we’d hop in the car and head to Sandown or Windsor races and throw away what few quid George was paying us. You almost live together. You learn to win together. You learn about losing together. When there is a crowd of you in that spell everybody blossoms. We propelled each other on.
I had two sets of friends: my football friends and my Irish lads. I used to go to the dogs with Donners, as we called him. Behind the scenes Tony Donnelly, our famous kit man, was from the same parish as me, Crumlin in Dublin, and his wife Ethel was our famous laundry lady, who ran all the big washing machines with a ton of stuff going in every day that we would bundle up for her. My first landlady across the road from Highbury was Irish. Pat Galligan, the groundsman, was a great character. I started to find out a bit too much about the pubs of Holloway Road. The fun we had. Not a great reference for a young professional footballer but I think I knew a barman in every pub on the Holloway Road.
PAUL MERSON:
You watch players when you’re in the youth team who get a lucky break and they’re in the first team and you’re so pleased for them and it gives you that faith. If I do well I’ve got a chance of playing for Arsenal here.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
As schoolboys you could see how good we were. We all complimented each other. It was like a race. Who’d be the first one in the first team? Obviously, Tony Adams was the main man. He was the first to get in the team. From then it was Martin Keown and after it was David Rocastle and next was Niall Quinn and Gus Caesar. Then I came and Merse come after me. It was a great feeling. I was chomping at the bit.
ALAN SMITH:
Mickey Thomas and Dave Rocastle were still quite young but were already quite important players in that group and you did feel, despite their youth, there was a character – a sort of inner city vibe – that came from them. There was that clutch of lads. Strong boys physically as much as anything. Big personalities. Funny lads. Rocky and Tony obviously, the cheeky Essex chappie, as he was then. But a leader even then, becoming captain aged 21. You could sense there was this kind of groundswell. There were these boys coming through that were hungry to do well and you always want there to be that core of home-grown players. Certainly fans do and even as a team-mate I think you like that. The fact that they’ve come up through the Arsenal ranks and they were part of the club. You know they feel part of it.
ALAN DAVIES:
It used to be important who you had who was kind of your own. It was a big thing in football. We had Brady. Tottenham had Hoddle. West Ham had Brooking. These were our players. The idea that you would go and buy everyone’s best players and assemble some super team, well, that was for Manchester United to be doing, which was ironic because they had their own history of producing players. But we had a whole raft of them and they were genuinely outstanding footballers. Particularly Rocastle, Merson and Paul Davis.
AMY LAWRENCE (SUPPORTER):
Not that we realised it at the time, but there was something more natural about the way you could connect with players then. If you arrived at Highbury early enough, or hung about afterwards, you could see them in the street and grab a quick chat about nothing special. If you were keen enough to attend youth or reserve games you would see the same old faces and get to know people who worked at the club or players who were coming through. In more recent times I noticed the crowd that wait around outside the Emirates surrounding one of the cars emerging from the bowels of the underground car park. A tinted window was lowered just enough for a hand to poke out to sign an autograph. Players don’t have that freedom to just wander about football grounds now as they did then, without being driven completely mad. It must be suffocat
ing, unhealthy even. Back then, as nothing more than a bog standard ordinary fan, you could have an almost normal connection with a player you idolised. The group of young players coming through were only a couple of years older than us so we were into the same fashion or music, cultural references or places to go.
GARY LEWIN:
I was appointed first team physio at the start of George Graham’s first season. It was a small staff. George was the manager, Theo Foley was assistant manager, Tony Donnelly the kit man, I was physio – we were the only full-time staff. We had part-time doctors, Dr Crane and Dr Sash, and a part-time goalkeeping coach, Bob Wilson. Steve Burtenshaw was chief scout. That was it. That was us. We would talk all the time, non-stop.
I was always an Arsenal fan and had signed associated schoolboy forms at 14. I was released in 1982. I didn’t know what I was going to do and Fred Street, the physio, asked if I was interested in going into physiotherapy. He arranged for me to spend a day at Guy’s Hospital. I got a feel for it. I worked at Guy’s Monday to Friday 9–5, covered training four nights a week, Saturdays I did the reserve team, Sundays the under-16s. I qualified in July 86 and got offered the first team job in September 1986, so I went straight from uni into the first team job. As someone who had come through the academy and had been working with these youngsters for three years in the reserves, for me it was really exciting. You had a passion driven into you for the club from a young age. You knew if they had a sniff of the first team the only thing that would stop them from staying there is talent. The commitment was second to none. We had so many home-grown players in the team alongside players with that hunger who had come through the lower leagues. Put that together with George’s discipline, tactical nous and will to win and you felt something special was going on.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
When I was at Millwall I had to do a lot of shrewd buying because a team like Millwall hadn’t much money in the transfer market. Going to Arsenal, I was still aware of the players I liked in the lower divisions and I thought to myself, I wonder if they could perform in the top division? It was desire as well as technical ability that I wanted from the players that I brought in.
PERRY GROVES:
He signed me from Colchester and he said, ‘You’re very raw. We’ve watched you.’ He watched me when he was manager of QPR’s youth team and I played for Colchester youth team and we got beat 7–0 at the old Loftus Road with the plastic pitch. He said he remembered me from then. I thought I must have played quite well and he went, ‘No, no, you just ran around moaning at everybody. But when your team was getting beat you didn’t stop. You kept going and going and going. It wasn’t as much your ability, it was the desire you had to keep playing even when your team was getting battered.’ With the youngsters and players from the lower leagues like myself, Lee Dixon, Nigel Winterburn, Steve Bould, Alan Smith, his whole thing was: now I can mould you. I can mould you into how I want my team to play. He knew we were so grateful to be at Arsenal that we would do anything. If he said, oh look there’s a field of thistles over there, we’d have run through a field of thistles.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
A couple of weeks before I signed for Arsenal I was at Chelsea for talks and they’d broken down. I was feeling pretty gutted anyway. But then I just got a call from my manager at Wimbledon, Dave Bassett, saying they’ve accepted an offer from Arsenal and did I want to go over and meet them? I mean when a club like Arsenal comes in for you you’re not going to say no. It was a massive step up for me and then going to Highbury to meet George Graham. I didn’t have an agent. I just went myself and you sat in that room and you realise what George is like. He’s very commanding. He’s very dominant. I think as soon as I sat down I was going to sign. I was that petrified of him.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
Each town and city around England had their own paper so I knew that there was a local journalist who would have a whole page to himself every weekend. I knew that that journalist or reporter would be well in with the manager of the local club and he would get all the good stories. So every Monday morning, my secretary would always bring in this pile of papers. In the Midlands it was the Pink Argus. In Sheffield it was the Green ’Un … I used to just read that one page and throw the rest of it away and it would enlighten me to the players that the manager rated. That’s how I got Lee Dixon and Stevie Bould because of getting good write-ups. I was going to watch Lee because he won player of the year at Stoke in two consecutive seasons. When I see a full-back winning player of the year two years on the trot I think he must be good, I’ll go and watch him. So I went to watch him and I saw Stevie Bould, centre-half. Liked him as well. Then Nigel Winterburn from Wimbledon. Kevin Richardson from Watford. I wanted these people with desire. They must think, my God! Arsenal! Arsenal want to buy me.
LEE DIXON:
Mick Mills, my manager at Stoke, says we’re going down to Watford Gap to meet George Graham. Do the deal. I’m a little bit nervous at this point. We get in the car. We drive down. So I say to Mick Mills, what sort of money do you think I’ll be likely to be offered down there? Because I was a little bit naive. I was on £350 a week at Stoke. So Mick says to me, oh, you’ve made it now. Everything’s sorted. You’ll definitely get at least £1,000 a week. I was blown away. £1,000 a week seemed an awful lot of money to me but it was Arsenal and it was the First Division. So we drive down to Watford Gap service station. We pull up. George Graham’s sitting in his Daimler next to us. Mick gets out the car and goes in for a coffee. Leaves me to get in the car with George, who is sitting there as smart as anything, club blazer on, looking a million dollars. I shake George’s hand. At this point I’m absolutely petrified and all I’ve got going on in my mind is £1,000 a week. £1,000 a week. Big move to Arsenal. George said to me, ‘Welcome on board.’ As if the deal was already done, which it was really as far as I was concerned. ‘I’m going to build a team. We’re going to get rid of the prima donnas. We’re going to introduce hungry players. We’re going to go and win the league.’
So he gets out the car and starts walking away and I thought, hang on a minute. We haven’t actually talked about money yet. So I said, ‘Mr Graham, can we just have a little chat about the wages?’ And he looked at me a little bit strange as if that’s a bit inappropriate to talk about your future like that. He offered me £500 a week. That threw me a little bit. I said, oh. He said, ‘Is that not enough?’ I had Mick Mills in my head and said I was kind of looking at £1,000 a week. He shut the door in my face and started walking off to the service station.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
I think he wanted petrol money!
LEE DIXON:
I start filling up thinking, what have I done? I’ve ruined the deal and it’s all over. I think I cried all the way back to Stoke.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
Lee was obviously asking for way too much. Way too much. And I thought, he’s got to be joking so I say, Lee, we’re not talking the same language. I’ve got to go, I’m busy. So I got up and left the car and he came chasing after me.
LEE DIXON:
The next day I said, I can’t leave it like that, so Mick phones George up and I speak to him on the phone and ask for a second chance. I went down to London on the train. As I’m walking up the marble steps at Highbury, Herbert Chapman is looking at me. As I open the doors I had that feeling right then of: I’m not leaving this place until I’ve signed a contract. I told George I would sign. George replied, ‘I tell you what, I’ll give you £700 a week.’ I signed on the spot.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
Eventually he saw common sense. I knew from when I was a player you always want to ask for something. You probably know you’re not going to get it but you’ve got to ask and you’ve got to negotiate. But no, I didn’t have any problems with the players. I’m sure they might think differently. Ha ha ha. Brian Clough had a wonderful saying, ‘We talk for 20 minutes and then we decide I was right.’
STEVE BOULD:
I travelled down there and just took
one look at the place. It’s just one of those clubs that once you join you’re there for ever. I felt it straight away. George is very classy, dressed smart, spoke well. He said I wasn’t gonna get paid as much! Which was par for the course. But he sold it to me. He said, ‘We’re very close to doing something good.’ And he was absolutely correct.
ALAN SMITH:
When I signed I was shown round the ground by Steve Burtenshaw, the chief scout. George was away in Portugal with the team. He showed me round the pitch and he went, ‘Alan, a lot of number 9s have played here but not many have done well.’ I thought, oh my God. You smelled the history. The expectation. The added scrutiny. It was much different to Leicester and you could understand then why some good players can’t make the step up. It must have been the first day of pre-season that I saw him. I obviously heard he was quite a strict manager. I’m one of his big new signings and I’m on board with him. He was a tracksuit manager, always there every day of the week. He loved that side of things. Loved his team shape. His tactics. He always pushed us hard.
PERRY GROVES: