by Amy Lawrence
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
I think the good thing about it was, even if we were winning by two or three and it was near the end of a game, if we conceded a goal that used to eat me up all over the weekend. If we lost a game, you can ask my wife; I wouldn’t go out. I hated it. I felt as if it was failure and that’s what really hurt me. I look back now and think you’ve got to feel the hurt of the supporters who are working all week to pay to come and watch you play. You’ve got to feel the pain that they’re feeling. I hated losing. I’d say all the back four did.
LEE DIXON:
The back four was purely George’s idea. He wanted to build a side from a solid base. You had to do it every single day and at the time you don’t appreciate it because training was boring. Same thing. Same thing. But it put us at an advantage – not all the time, because obviously we conceded goals. You can’t stop goals sometimes because it is just brilliant play or a mistake – but in general the team knew what they were doing when we didn’t have the ball. There’s a lot of the game when you haven’t got the ball so let’s be good at that. We can be expansive when we’ve got it but when we haven’t we have to constrict the space and win it back early. So the high press that everyone’s talking about in modern day football, trying to win the ball back in the first few seconds? We did that in 1989. George wanted that: as soon as you lose the ball, the first player who’s closest to the ball goes to close down and then you drag everybody with you and everybody has to go. If you see a player go, it doesn’t matter what’s happening behind you; everyone goes together. It’s amazing how if you all go together, how easy it becomes to win the ball back. It is joked about with George having a piece of rope across the training ground tying us all together. That didn’t happen but in the training sessions he put on we did imagine there’s a piece of rope. So if Lee goes over there you know Tony has to come because I’m pulling him with me, and he’s pulling Steve Bould with him and Nigel’s having to come because he’s got hold of the other end of the rope. So there are no gaps.
STEVE BOULD:
Training was certainly different. At Stoke it was 11 v 11, no coaching. I came to Arsenal and it was all individual unit work, constant, every day.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
George used to come out with a ball. He would take the back four and we would be on a line on the edge of the box and he used to move around the pitch with the ball in his hand. Every position that he went into we would have to move individually and collectively to stay as a back four. We’d do it for half an hour, 45 minutes. The ball would not even be on the floor. You ask professional players to do that today. They would probably just laugh at him. The reason behind it was he wanted to keep the distances between each player exactly the same no matter where the ball went and he worked at it and he worked at it and then he would introduce the apprentices to play against us. He knew if he brought in the young kids they’d run everywhere. You were expected not to make a mistake. So you always got yourself into a good defensive position. If you show the winger inside, as we did a lot under George, you knew that the centre-half around the edge of the box was going to come out and take absolutely no prisoners whatsoever.
JOHN LUKIC:
It really was monotonous. Just going through it continually. It was long afternoons. We used to be up at London Colney, the five of us there. Everybody else had gone home to have a cup of tea and we were still out there. But it served us well I think from a defensive point of view.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
I absolutely loved it. The thing in the English game is that everybody thinks a defender just is a destroyer. Just loves the physical contact side of the game. No! Definitely no. You’ve got to think. You’ve got to make decisions on that pitch and that tests if you’re a good defender or a bad defender, not if you’re going to win a tackle. When are you going to win a tackle? When do you sit back? When do you play offside? There’s a lot of thought put into defending. Today’s game could do with a lot more of it. I have nothing but admiration for my defenders. There were millions of sessions. Sometimes I would have the youth team take on the back four – the whole team. They wouldn’t get a shot in.
We didn’t man-mark. We covered space. Those back four were always linked together. If we push one of the full-backs forward the other three spread the width of the pitch, so really instead of a back four it would be an outstanding back three.
ALAN SMITH:
George would say in the morning, ‘OK, lads, we’re going to work on the back four today’, and everyone would go, oh no, not again. We’d hardly get through. A shot would be an achievement. We were trying to break down this back four while the gaffer was organising them and they held such a good line and they were so in tune with each other after a bit that you had to make a perfect run and the ball had to be perfectly timed in order for you to get round the back of them. You’d say individually that’s not the best right-back in Europe or the best left-back in Europe … But as a unit, they were by far the best rearguard I’ve seen so that just goes to show what can be achieved with hard work.
TONY ADAMS:
We worked as a unit and the unit was bigger and better than the individuals. Boring Arsenal? I took that as a compliment.
PAUL MERSON:
It was very groundhog day. In November I could tell you what I was doing on a Tuesday in March in four months’ time. Every single day you knew what you were doing. But it worked a treat. We were Ashford & Simpson: we were ‘Solid’.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
We knew within our group that if we did our job the front players we had could excite the league. You could play it into Alan, he’d link up the play. Merse had individual ability. Brian Marwood was whipping sensational balls into the box. You’d got the driving runs of Mickey Thomas, who was as strong as an ox. Then we’d usually have Rocky out on the right-hand side with his ability to go past players. I always used to call it dancing.
LEE DIXON:
Up front we had magic Merse. He could do anything with a ball. Absolutely brilliant player, one of those enigmas. What’s he done? How’s he got past someone? He just used to run and balance and know where the gap was. And Smudge wasn’t underrated at the club but outside was an underrated player. He was just brilliant. He did everything. I remember my dad saying to me, is Alan Smith right-footed or left-footed? I want somebody to say that about me one day. He scored some great left-footed shots and was brilliant in the air and his hold-up play was second to none. He wasn’t particularly muscly but he was wiry and he had really sharp elbows. In training he was always catching you. You didn’t want to mark him in training because he was bony. He’d sort of hit you with his knee. He was horrible to play against and a gentleman on the pitch.
ALAN SMITH:
Merse was my favourite strike partner. He was an unselfish person to have alongside you and such a skilful player as well. If you made a move he knew where you were and would try and find you with one of those little dinks. Brian Marwood was really important for me. We built up a good understanding. He was one of those wingers that didn’t need to beat a man, a much different style to Rocky on the other side. He was very clever at shifting the ball and just curling it round the full-back into the box with that left foot of his. Back then you didn’t count assists but he would have had a lot of assists that year. He gave us great balance.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
I always remember one team meeting and I said, ‘Look, in an ideal situation in this club, I would like my back four to play until they’re 30 at the top level. I want my midfield players to play until they’re 28 and I want my front players to play until they’re 26.’ They all looked at me as if I was stupid. Why? Because my front boys are going to work harder than midfield and my midfield are going to work harder than my back four. They all looked at me as if I was crazy.
FOUR
The Team of the 80s
TONY ADAMS:
Liverpool were the Barcelona of the day. Winning everything, so renowned, they passed
the ball so well they kept it. At Anfield most teams were beaten before you even went up there. I remember going up with the England team when I was 20 for Alan Hansen’s testimonial. They absolutely destroyed us because the England team wasn’t a team. Liverpool would just destroy you, make you feel very lonely and Anfield was an enormous place.
LEE DIXON:
Liverpool were the epitome of a brilliant, brilliant team. Every department of their team was special, with iconic players. They had the history to go with it. They had this aura about them that you don’t get very often in football. I always felt that you were half a goal down against Liverpool before you even kicked off. Especially at Anfield. Alan Hansen was the one that stands out for me because I’m a defender. I used to look at him and think, his game is so easy. I want to play like that. I want to be him.
TONY ADAMS:
It was a conveyer belt of players in the Liverpool way. Central defenders. Goalkeepers. Right midfields. Right-backs. They went on and on producing players and recruiting brilliantly. John Toshack, Kevin Keegan, then Ian Rush.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
You just have to go back and look through the scrapbooks. Look at the history. Liverpool were the team to beat. They had already won the league six times in the 80s by the start of the 88–89 season. They won the European Cup four times by then. It’s the ultimate test, isn’t it? Playing against the team that’s so dominant. So powerful. Looking at the team-sheet. Looking at the players’ names. What they’ve achieved in the past and then you’re pitting yourself against them in real life. Real time. You want to try and make a statement. They’re saying to you: show us what you’ve got. That’s what we were trying to do. We were trying to beat the best. Liverpool were the best.
ALAN SMITH:
Going to Anfield was a big deal because hardly anybody got out of there alive. When I was with Leicester we were their bogey team. Once there was quite a lot of interest in me and the papers were going it’s Ian Rush versus Alan Smith, it’s a showdown. We lost 3–2, which isn’t a bad result. I got two, Rushy got a hat-trick and they went, ‘Rush wins the showdown.’ I thought, that’s a bit strong, I got two goals at Anfield.
ALAN DAVIES:
Liverpool always won the league and they always came to our ground and beat us and the thing about Liverpool was they played a different brand of football to anybody else. I remember them coming to our ground in the mid-80s and they won 2–0. Dalglish ran the game. I went to Anfield a couple of times. That really was an extraordinary experience. That was a heaving, packed ground and they were crammed in and the noise of the place shook. Whenever a Liverpool player had the ball Dalglish would appear and get it to his feet, and it was very unusual for a team to play into feet like that. They could because they had Dalglish. He was that good. He was the Messi of his day. He was better than anybody else and they were a formidable outfit. They were hard as nails. Jimmy Case was the most frightening footballer there ever was. Dalglish was nasty.
Liverpool won the league most of the time from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. Then they had a bit of a wobble and found themselves caught up by Everton, who had an outstanding team. So they went out and spent a fortune and they bought the two best players in the country, which was Peter Beardsley and John Barnes. In 87–88 they played the best football that anyone had ever seen in England. The best. No one played football like that at that time. The ball was on the floor all the time. It was fast. There was no one better than Beardsley. Barnes was fantastic. He was footballer of the year. He was unstoppable. They only lost two games. They should have won the Double but they somehow contrived to lose to Wimbledon in the FA Cup final. They couldn’t play in the European Cup for reasons that are well known but they would have won it. They were amazing. They were winning every week. They were scoring three, four, five goals. They were the best team that anyone had ever seen.
NICK HORNBY:
It’s a bit like that Gary Lineker line about the Germans. It was true of Liverpool. Football is a game where 22 men kick a ball around and then Liverpool win at the end. They won everything. A home defeat used to get on the news. Every now and again somebody would challenge them but the rest of the decade belonged to Liverpool and it felt like they were unbeatable. As a football fan it felt that you were in a parallel universe. How do you get to this place where teams like Liverpool win the league? It felt like Arsenal would never be able to cross the tracks. It wasn’t like you ever thought, oh, it will happen one day.
ALAN DAVIES:
Arsenal never got anywhere near the title. Nowhere near it. We were runners-up in 73. The highest position we ever had when I was going there as a kid was third in 1981, which was a freaky season when the title was duked out between Ipswich and Aston Villa. But there was something, there was a feeling that maybe we could do it in the 88–89 season. We really did have a side and we were top for quite a long time. We felt like we could do it. We had a League Cup tie against them at Anfield and we got a 1–1 draw and we felt like actually we’re as good as they are now. We’ve got to this level. So it was all a matter of can you get it over the line?
LEE DIXON:
We played Liverpool a few times in the first half of the 88–89 season. Those games not only validated us as a team to ourselves but also to Liverpool. I think they realised we were a top team to play against. It gave us that confidence that all young players need.
TONY ADAMS:
We had five games against them during a ten-week period before Christmas as we had a couple of replays in the League Cup and a tournament to celebrate the centenary of the Football League as well as the league game at Highbury. There was one that felt particularly important. We drew with Liverpool at Anfield in the Littlewoods Cup. Rocky scored a great goal. You know that you can compete with the big boys and actually play them off the pitch. It gives you enormous confidence. They’re not that terrifying all of a sudden. The psychological barrier has been broken.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
Liverpool were the greatest team we had ever seen but George gave us this feeling that if we played against them we could beat them. When we beat them in the Mercantile Trophy, which was for the centenary, we had no fear of them.
PAUL MERSON:
They did give us a real hiding, though, in the second replay in the League Cup at Villa Park. I scored early in that game and then we got ripped to shreds and I mean seriously ripped. I was embarrassed.
ALAN SMITH:
Then they came to Highbury in the league and we drew 1–1 and I scrambled in our goal. Everybody knew about Liverpool’s ball-playing skills but they could mix it as well if they wanted to. There was always a few things said in the tunnel beforehand. Them shouting. Steve McMahon would shout one or two things. He called us bottlers at one stage after a match and you’ll always remember that. Don’t forget what he said. Let’s show them this time. They were always great tussles. We were trying to reach their level so we were going to try and win the scrap. It was important to try and make a statement that we’re not going to roll over.
DAVID O’LEARY:
If you’re assembling a new team and you talk about going places, the teams you really want to test yourself against or get nearest to are the teams that you’re trying to emulate. Liverpool were the ones that we all respected. But our team were not afraid. I’d look at them in the dressing room before the game and think, these lads want to go out there and play on the big stage against this team and not be in awe of them and believe that yeah, we can take this team on. I think we always felt we were getting nearer to them all the time.
TONY ADAMS:
Winning feels so much better and every time we lost it was a reminder. We had won the Littlewoods Cup against Liverpool in 1987 but losing the final against Luton in 88? You can learn so much by those experiences. Feel the pain. We don’t want this next time.
FIVE
Sign of the Times
DAVID DEIN:
The 1980s was not a good time for football in England because t
here was hooliganism. There was trouble in the grounds, trouble outside and really television didn’t want to know about football. In fact, there was one period during the 1980s when television actually pulled the plug on football. When you consider how much football we have on TV today, it’s inconceivable to recall that for six months football was off the air.
NICK HORNBY:
All that stuff about football being for yobs is complicated. There was a huge percentage of people who went to football in the 80s who wanted a fight and you had to have your wits about you and if you went to away games you had to be extremely careful. The authorities believed that home fans would want to stand in the home end and away fans would want to stand in the away end and that was all you needed to do to keep them apart and, of course, it didn’t work out like that. Big teams would go in the home end and the mad lot were up the away end the other half of the time. So there was always a very febrile atmosphere. What happened after the Heysel disaster is the half that didn’t want to fight started to drift away from the game. People who just wanted to go and watch a game and have no hassle decided it wasn’t really worth it. The stadiums were old, not really safe.