by Amy Lawrence
LEE DIXON:
Our second away game in 89 was White Hart Lane. I wasn’t ready for what happened. I was just minding my own business putting my shin pads on and getting ready to go out and I looked up and a couple of the players are looking at me across the dressing room. I’d been there a while now so we’re mates. Tony Adams was staring at me. Paul Davis was too from the other side of the room. I was looking down at my kit thinking, have I put my shorts on back to front or something, because it was a bit of a weird look and then we all kind of stood up. Mickey Thomas had a little glance and Dave Rocastle is looking down at me. I just thought, I’ll ask what’s going on. But I didn’t have to ask them because then they had me up against a wall before we went out saying: ‘It’s the North London derby. You’re a northerner. You don’t really know what this is all about and we just want you to know that you’ve got to play well today and if you don’t you’ll be in trouble.’ Tottenham away seemed to be the one that everybody wanted to play in.
ALAN SMITH:
The boys that had already played in some derbies would talk about some of the previous matches. They would always bring up that famous 1987 League Cup semi-final at White Hart Lane, when they were advertising for Wembley tickets at half-time and how the boys were fired up in the dressing room because they could hear the announcement. We couldn’t have wished for anything better at the start of the season than winning there. I remember Gazza losing his boot and then kicking the hoardings.
TONY ADAMS:
We wanted to win – sometimes more against Tottenham than the other clubs. It was normal I think. We were driven. We were passionate. We were strong and we liked the feeling of winning better than losing and I think it becomes a drug.
The new boys slipped into the culture of the club quite well, being northerners and all that. They were naturals. Lee, Bouldy, Kevin Richardson. Hard-working lads. Working-class boys. Very similar to what we were in the East End of London. We had good pre-seasons. We had good end of seasons. We had good weekends. We had a good Tuesday club. On the pitch and off the pitch we worked hard and they fitted in very nicely. But if they didn’t have the talent to back it up I think we would have quite easily knocked them sideways and put them into touch. Dicko and Nigel were flying up and down the flanks and Bouldy was so solid, a classical Jack Charlton central defender. They had the talent.
ALAN DAVIES:
We’d go to places and batter teams, which is nice if you’re in the away end because if you’re three up with 20 minutes to go it’s a proper party. It’s noisy. It’s funny. There’s a lot of songs. There’s a lot of abuse. The home end is emptying – the more it empties the better it gets. It is really exuberant. There is nothing quite to compare. Everyone’s together. It’s loud. I remember winning 4–1 at Forest and Tony Adams crashed in a corner, ended up in the net. Adams was a big part of it. There was just that drive from the back. He was a phenomenon. He was not going to give up on any ball at any time and there was a real feeling of something happening.
TONY ADAMS:
I loved it away. There was something special about the away supporters of Arsenal for that period as well. Towards the end of one season we went up to Man City and got beat 3–0 and they were doing the conga round the stadium. Well, there were a lot of other bad things in football: gangs, fights and this type of thing. But there was a camaraderie with the away supporters of most clubs in those days. It was really enjoyable when you go into the lion’s den, someone else’s home, and turn them over. You’d go to your fans at the end of the game and it felt so brilliant. I always relished those encounters and those challenges. We rolled up our sleeves and won most of the time. The feeling with the supporters was reciprocated. We drunk with them. We went out with them. We socialised with them as well as playing for them. It was very much one family at that period.
JOHN LUKIC:
Going away was more intimidating then because football stadiums now are pretty generic. You could be anywhere. If you didn’t have the colours you could be in any stadium and you wouldn’t have a clue. In those days, everything was close. On top of you. Right next to the pitch. I was a lot closer to the fans than most people were, so you got everything that was coming your way in terms of verbal abuse and all the other bits and bobs. You certainly couldn’t be a shrinking violet. But football grounds have characters and as a player if you are going to Millwall or Old Trafford or Anfield you have to be big enough as a group of players to not succumb.
For any championship-winning team away form has got to be spot on because your home form takes care of itself. Away form is what wins you things. We were pretty formidable. Everywhere we went the opposition knew that they were going to be in for a game. We went to Nottingham Forest and it was live on TV and we scored four goals against a top team managed by Brian Clough.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
When you produce that sort of performance it don’t half make you feel good after. In a way you’re putting down a statement. Not only to the team that you’ve beaten but to the rest of the league.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
The boys developed fantastic camaraderie. That was important. I learned that from Arsenal when we did the Double in 70–71. You had to have a team spirit. You had to have it all-for-one.
LEE DIXON:
We got to the stage where we were looking at the league a little bit more carefully. We felt in the dressing room there was a bit of a change. George emphasised the importance of the festive period, with a series of games in such a short period of time. You can tip one way or the other very quickly and we were conscious of that. We won 3–2 at Charlton on Boxing Day and 3–0 at Villa Park on New Year’s Eve and suddenly we went above Norwich, who had been the pace-setters and we were top.
STEVE BOULD:
They had the old tradition at the club that every week in the Marble Halls they used to pin up the league table within the inner circle. Very old-fashioned. We used to go there on a Tuesday and you’d see it up on the wall. It was the first time I’d ever seen my club top of the league and it was surreal. Completely mad. George promised it would happen, and it did.
PAUL MERSON:
To go top of the league is a big thing. Especially as Liverpool hadn’t started too well and were quite out of the equation at that point. They were fifth in the table, nine points behind us when we went top for New Year. They weren’t the team who were chasing us down so you start thinking, we’ve got a chance here. They’re nowhere near us so who’s the team that’s going to be a threat to us?
LEE DIXON:
Make no mistake I told everybody. Top of the league. I was Lee Dixon of Stoke, Burnley, Chester, Bury. Now all of a sudden I was top of the First Division. It was a relatively new experience for all of us. That was my first full season in the First Division. Nigel had come from Wimbledon the year before. Bouldy was at Stoke with me. It didn’t last long, though, because as soon as you go into training George is like, ‘I don’t want anyone looking at the tables.’ You don’t want to say too much as you don’t want to jinx it.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
I always looked in the papers. It’s a great position to be in in the league. We had some sensational results away from home. We won 3–1 at Goodison Park in January. Kevin Richardson scored at his old club. He was my best pal when he came. Because he lived 150 yards away we travelled into training a lot together. Mr Moaner. There was always something wrong. Never anything right for Kev but he just did his job very simply and intercepted all the tackles. You find out much more about a player when he’s playing away from home at a big ground. When you’ve got 40,000 people and a large majority hate you, probably 2–2,500 supporting you, you get to find out about individual players and a team’s character. It sums up our characters within the team and the collective character as a group of players that we didn’t fear anyone anywhere. When you have big wins away from home you’re making the rest of the league look at you.
ALAN SMITH:
Everton away stands out.
I just remember the end of the game the Goodison faithful clapping us off and as a player that sticks with you. We’d not only won, we’d played some really good football and for them to appreciate what they’d just seen gave us even more confidence. We all said in the dressing room, ooh, did you hear that?
TONY ADAMS:
Then we went to the Den. We didn’t know the referee was miked up for a documentary. I had a goal disallowed but it was over the line. Looking back, I loved the way he told me off. Typical. Bless him. ‘Mr Adams, stand up.’ But he’s not a cheat. He just made a mistake and we’re all human. But in those days unjustified anger was a biggy. It was over the line. I was fuming.
ALAN SMITH:
The ref, David Elleray, was a schoolmaster and he refereed like that. ‘Don’t talk back to me, young man.’ He was very strict.
LEE DIXON:
I remember seeing the television programme afterwards. It was just hilarious. But we didn’t know. They should’ve told us but there was a breakdown of communication somewhere. To this day I don’t know whose fault that was. Nobody’s owning up to that one. But it was quite obvious when you see the footage of Tony Adams when the goal was disallowed and hear his language that he didn’t know. But I think it epitomised the spirit of the team. The fact that we had goals disallowed and we came back into that game and won the game.
TONY ADAMS:
What I really remember about this game was when I was in the bath with Dave O’Leary after the match in the old Den. We both looked at each other and David went, ‘I think we’ll win the league. When you can come to places like this and grind out results, it might have just won us the league.’ We had lots of games to go but I’ll always remember that. In the bath that day he was convinced we had a hell of a chance. It is interesting I’m still holding on to that memory, to reflect on that 30 years later. It’s a powerful moment. He had never won a league and he was getting feelings – maybe this is it. But I was so young and naive to think, well why can’t we win it? What’s stopping us? Why can’t we win every game that we ever play in?
LEE DIXON:
There always seemed to be controversy attached to the team somewhere regardless of the football. George would have a crisis meeting saying, right, everyone’s waiting for us to get beat. I remember at London Colney we used to come out and there was a big wall with some benches where you put your boots on. We were almost lined up against this wall ready to be shot from George and he used to come out and have his little piece of paper with his set-pieces on and he’d start banging it on his hand saying, everyone’s waiting for us to fall again. But we’re not going to. This is The Arsenal. This is where we link arms and be strong. He always seemed to be able to rally the troops. We took that mentality on to the pitch.
ALAN SMITH:
George would give you a hard time. He’d bollock the lads in training, half-time, full-time, on a match day. So once he’s gone you’d all have a little laugh and joke about it and as a group you do need that. We had a great team spirit at the time. We were really together. There was never a dull moment in the dressing room.
LEE DIXON:
I remember thinking at one point, we’re going to win this and I think that was probably the day where we started having a wobble. We lost at Coventry and then at Highbury we lost against Nottingham Forest and dropped points against Charlton. George tried to get us to keep our focus but it’s not easy. It was like, oh, what’s going on? It was all unravelling and we hadn’t got the experience to deal with it. We weren’t Alan Hansen.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
We got annihilated by Nottingham Forest at home. George decided to try something different. No one was going to question it. But I suppose it takes some belief as a manager to change tactics – not only am I making the right decision but also I need to convince the players. I’m going to change my back four and convince them that our style of play is going to be the way forward.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
We were always famed for having the famous 4–4–2 but with a very important couple of away games coming up towards the end of the season I decided to try a new system, which didn’t really go down well with the players at the time. But I knew how important it was. I’d done a lot of work with my staff on how we were going to beat Liverpool because they were the major threat. I fancied playing a back three. I was very impressed with John Barnes on the left, who was sensational, one of the best players in the country. Ray Houghton was on the right, who I was a big fan of; in fact, I tried to get him to join Arsenal.
I thought about it and thought about it. We’ll push Lee Dixon tight because you don’t want to let John Barnes get the ball. You have got to be on top of him all the time. It was the same on the left with Nigel pushing in on Ray Houghton. We wanted to eliminate these two because the centre-forwards, Ian Rush and John Aldridge, were great goal-scorers. We had to stop where the danger was coming from by trying to nullify it from the wing positions. Then our three at the back would look after their two strikers. It was as simple as that. When we’ve got the ball we have three defenders and the two wide boys push on and become midfield players. When we lose the ball then they retreat and make it into a five if need be.
That was the plan but I don’t think the boys were very keen on it because we were doing well in the league with a back four and they think, why are we changing? I could feel it in the response that I got but still, that’s the way I decided to go and Old Trafford gave us the perfect game to try it out. I don’t think they were very keen when I introduced it. But the idea was to tackle two away games which were really, really important for us.
At the training ground I could hear the mumblings. I think it was Tony Adams who spoke up about it. He said, ‘Boss, we’re doing well. Everything’s working well. The back four is really successful. Why do you want to change it?’ I said, ‘Because we’ve got to think bigger than that. We’ve got an opportunity to win the league. If we just tweak here and tweak there to improve the team we have to do it.’
LEE DIXON:
I always had 100 per cent belief in George knowing what he was doing. I was in. It’s like looking up at your dad when you come home from school and he says, right, we’re doing this tonight, and you go, OK, because it must be right. George earned the respect from the players. We’d jump through walls for him. We’d certainly play a different way. OK, I’m wing-back. I’ll just run up and down all day long.
DAVID O’LEARY:
Top managers make the right calls at the right time. George threw the gauntlet down and the players relished it in that way. I don’t think it was a system that was going to stay for ever but he felt that time of the season he could change things up a little bit to freshen the team up or give it some sort of a different focus. It was a big call to make at a big stadium. I thought to myself, as a back five we’d be able to handle this fine at Old Trafford. Let’s see what the rest can do further up but don’t worry about us.
STEVE BOULD:
It was revolutionary from George’s point of view because every day’s training was back four, back four, back four, back four, back four, and then he threw this back three in and we all thought, wow, that’s a move. But I think it suited us. Dave O’Leary was great as a sweeper and Tony and I could get tight and tackle and close down.
JOHN LUKIC:
The change came out the blue. It shows the manager had huge belief in his players to be able to do that. Because had he not had any faith in the defensive unit it would have been suicidal. He certainly paid respect to the players by doing that.
ALAN DAVIES:
I remember Brian Glanville writing about it in a very disparaging way. This greatly respected football writer was a lover of Italian football and the idea that you could play with two hard-nosed defenders and one elegant sweeper. But this wasn’t what Arsenal were doing. They were just playing three centre-backs. O’Leary came in and Brian Glanville thought it was misguided and catastrophic and it was going to be the end of the title. It was a big
mistake. You’ve got a team that works. Why are you changing it now? It’s a terrible error. But it turned out not to be an error because it freed up Dixon and Winterburn to go and play in midfield and really what we had then was a 3–4–3 when we had the ball. It just worked. It was smart and it was about getting the best people on the pitch and utilising O’Leary’s experience. O’Leary was calm and it was a good thing to have at the back. He brought that. It was an interesting way to use him. I thought it was very clever.