Bruce supported him, encouraged him to play his game and taught him much about British football. ‘Good things happened for me in that first year and he was part of it. He was my coach and he helped me to get used to England and the English game and English life . . . If you were to ask me was he the best coach I ever had, well I think Bruce would say as well that’s not really important. He was there at the time. In the end everyone moved on and I’ve only got good memories of him.
‘For me, Bruce was a good guy, very positive, nice. So for me it came as a total surprise he was sacked after pre-season in the second year. But it was also strange for me. It’s very difficult to explain. You come from a different country and you have a good year and you want to build on that. I was really ready to go [on] and suddenly the manager gets sacked without any warning! Without any reason that I could see. At that time it probably was the right decision [for the club], but only a few people will know why it happened like that. Especially after getting European football, it was really a shock and I was angry as well because I thought: “This is Italy all over again.” The club makes promises and then they go the other way . . . ‘
David Dein didn’t reassure you?
‘He did. I think he said: “Stay calm, just stay with us, good things will happen, changes will be made . . . and somehow that was enough for me to stay. At the time I said it [leaving Arsenal] crossed my mind because I was really angry. But after two years at Inter I’d had only one year in England which I really loved, and leaving Arsenal would have meant going to a different club in England and that’s not me. I needed some time to get settled and I didn’t want to take that gamble. And of course very soon we heard that Arsene would come. It was a little bit of a secret in those few weeks but there were rumours and I knew about him at Monaco playing attacking football with four-three-three like Ajax. So I did stay calm.’
Bruce was obviously very hurt at the time. How do you see it now?
‘I felt very sorry at the time. I didn’t know what was happening. I visited him afterwards with my wife, not for “closure” or anything but just like “what happened?” and “how do you feel?” That sort of stuff. I think coming to Arsenal was a good step for Bruce. A good learning time for him, but leaving after one year . . . I think if he he’d had two or three years it would have been a good step up in his career and he could have gone to a bigger club afterwards.’
Rioch himself says he has no regrets: ‘When I look back I enjoyed the opportunity of going to Arsenal. I enjoyed the opportunity to work with the players and to have someone of the calibre of Dennis on board was just fantastic. It was great.’
9
THE PLAN
‘SOMETHING I OFTEN wonder about is: what were Arsenal thinking? Before I came it was Boring, Boring Arsenal. Then they buy me and David Platt. What’s their idea? What did they have in mind for the future?’
Surely someone told you, Dennis?
‘No. David Dein and Bruce Rioch said things like “We have big plans” and “We want to move forward” and all that sort of stuff. But everybody says that, so I thought “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” I didn’t take it seriously. But it wasn’t like when Abramovich came to Chelsea and straightaway it was: “I want to win the Premier League and the Champions League, and these are the players I want . . . tack, tack, tack, tack . . . and here’s the money and if it doesn’t work that way we’ll get the youth players and do it another way . . .” I mean, there was a big picture from the start. When Sheikh Mansour went to Man City, I’m sure it was like: “Here’s the ten-year plan.” So what I’d like to know is: what was the bigger picture of Arsenal at that time? Was Rioch there just for one year? Was that already set up? Were Arsenal already thinking they wanted to get in foreign players and a foreign coach, change the playing style? What was the plan?’
Soon after Arsenal manager George Graham was sacked in February 1995 for accepting illegal payments from a Norwegian agent, Tony Adams received a phone call. ‘I’m driving in Wandsworth and I get this weird call [puts on an Old Etonian accent]: “Oh Tony! It’s the chairman speaking.” The guy has spoken to me three times before. “Fuck off!” I say. “Who is this?” “No, Tony, this is Peter! Peter Hill-Wood, Tony!” He’s calling from America. “I hear the shit’s hit the fan back there. Don’t worry! Good man on the way! The club is going in the right direction! Tally-ho! Goodbye for now! Speak to you later! Hold the fort!’”
He said, ‘hold the fort’?
‘“Hold the fort, Tony! Be back soon!” It was so bizarre I called back and arranged to go and see him.’
Adams, the club captain, was drinking secretly but heavily and amid the chaos of Graham’s sacking, was getting phone calls from Alex Ferguson who hoped to sign him for Manchester United. Midfielder Paul Merson had revealed his addictions to cocaine and alcohol the previous November, and David Hillier had been convicted of stealing luggage at Heathrow Airport. Since winning the championship in 1991, Arsenal had declined. Meanwhile, their playing style had become a sort of English catenaccio relying on solid, massed defence and the goal-poaching talents of Ian Wright. ‘We’d turned into a very good Cup team but we were nowhere near the League. It was a bloody mess!’ recalls Adams. ‘Dennis came into a bloody mess. He probably thought: “Jesus what have I done?” David Dein, who was in charge of the club at that point, probably kept telling him not to worry.’ Actually, after Italy, Dennis found Arsenal nice and stable. ‘Ha! Ha! Really? No, I can see that Dennis would have a different take on it. But the place I was in was pretty dark.’
Was there a plan? Adams sought assurances about the future of the club from Dein, Hill-Wood and Ken Friar. ‘I remember going in and saying: “I’ve had enough! It’s ridiculous us signing players for £325,000 like Glenn Helder. Where’s our ambition?” I didn’t know at the time about the money [director] Danny Fiszman had put into the club. They said: “Don’t worry, we have ambition and everything’s under control. We are going to get some good players at the club and we are going to go to the next level, and you’re going to get a new contract. We’re going to look after you. And we think we’ve identified a new coach . . .” That meant Arsene Wenger, who David Dein had got through Glenn Hoddle. I think Bruce Rioch was just a stopgap.’
Dein takes up the story: ‘Because I was representing England at UEFA and FIFA and I was moving in those circles, I saw a lot of what was going on around the world and I thought English football had to change, had to move in many respects. The players had to become more professional, more dedicated, more serious about their lifestyles. And the game itself had to change. It was fairly bland and basic. When we got Dennis we realised we had a footballing genius and he definitely changed football in England.’
But that wasn’t your plan?
‘I thought the club needed moving to the next level.’
What kind of next level?
‘That was one reason we chose Arsene because we realised he was going to transform the club, which he did, straightaway with his training methods.’
Was there a blueprint? Did you have the idea that you could make a great new Arsenal and they’d end up playing Total Football?
‘No. It evolved. Signing Dennis was a step in the right direction. In order to progress the club on the field of play, we needed better players, more technically gifted players. Dennis was one of those, but where it would lead to nobody quite knew at the time. I knew Arsene, I knew his style of playing and I think the combination of Arsene and Dennis definitely changed the culture of Arsenal Football Club.’
BRUCE RIOCH WAS sacked just before the start of the 1996-97 season and Arsene Wenger arrived to take up the job a few weeks later. Ken Friar recalls an early conversation with the new manager. ‘Arsene asked if it might be all right to have two foreigners in the team. I said: “The fans won’t care as long as the team is winning.” I think the public saw us signing Dennis as a positive move.’
But the board never stipulated or even envisaged what style of play might emerge?
‘I don’t think anyone woke up one morning and thought: “I want to change everything.” It just evolved because of the players we had. It was an evolution rather than a revolution. We just had the players and they started doing it.’
Tony Adams sees the emergence of the great Arsenal of the late nineties and early noughties as the result of a series of happy accidents.
Adams: ‘There was no blueprint. It wasn’t planned. No one said: “We want to be Total.” It was more a falling forwards. Bruce Rioch comes. He has his ideas but he’s unlucky. The old training ground burns down, so they build the new one. My alcoholism is in there somewhere. Then I stop drinking and I get all this new-found knowledge and health, so instead of running to the pub I’m enjoying playing with Dennis, and enjoying training and playing free and being around. All these things fell into place at the same time. And Danny Fiszman’s part in it has got to be acknowledged, because he got the finance into the club . . . You know, this game is about money. And it’s about players. And players go for money. I went from three hundred grand a year to a million. It was my first-ever decent contract. Under George Graham there wasn’t the level of financing. We were on no money at all compared to later. Without Danny Fiszman’s money there is no way we would have got Dennis, or David Platt, or Arsene. I wouldn’t have stayed at the club. David Seaman wouldn’t have stayed. Bouldy [Steve Bould] got his best contract. Nigel [Winterburn] got his best contract. Without Arsene we wouldn’t have got Patrick [Vieira], or [Nicolas] Anelka, or any of the French lads from that untapped market. None of that would have happened if you didn’t have the cash to support it. It’s not one isolated thing, or one person.’
Finally we turn to Arsene Wenger, the French coach now working in Japan whom David Dein had wanted when the board appointed Rioch. Dein recalls: ‘I’d met Arsene eight years before, when he was at Monaco. And we finally signed him in 1996. He didn’t know he was auditioning all that time, but he was! I used to go to Monaco a lot and he would invite me to the games, and I would see how he interacted with the players, with the press, with the fans, with the board. And he was just different class.’
Was there a plan? What was the process that makes the great Arsenal?
Wenger: ‘The process that makes the great Arsenal is that progressively I changed every player who played before into a more technical player. First in improving existing players. After, when they had to be replaced, by a player who could contribute more to offensive quality, to build up the game from the back, like Kolo Toure, Lauren, Ashley Cole, and bringing in Brazilian players like [Gilberto] Silva, Edu . . . and progressively to change the whole environment . . . to have in every single position a player who could really play both sides of the game. Attacking and defending.’
Which is very Total?
‘Which is very Total. Yes. That was the plan. That’s where in every position we could find the player who could absolutely absorb that.’
But you didn’t tell people or make speeches saying, ‘This is the new philosophy, this is what we do’?
‘Of course we spoke about it many times. But I believe that your philosophy goes with the training session, and what you do in training. So I made slow changes. You know, when you go abroad you have first to test how far you can go. Because I was not in a position where I could come in as the Master who had done it all before. I was an unknown figure. I was like an English guy who goes to Bordeaux and explains to them how to make the wine! A French guy who comes to this country to explain to English people how to play football? They’d say: “Who are you? What do you want?”’
So you have to go cautiously?
‘Yes, I go step by step.’
Was there resistance?
‘Not really, I must say. No. In every country you have a culture. And in every football club you have a culture. And the more successful this culture has been, the stronger the resistance to change will be. Because if you are not immediately successful, people will question what you want to do. That’s why I tell you, you have to slowly change. Today Arsenal is well-known to play a technically high-level game. But if you go twenty years back this was not the case. That shows you that the change, the trend, has worked. But it has been done slowly.’
So you had a plan, you just didn’t advertise it?
‘Of course. Of course I had a plan. But I did not shout from every rooftop that I had a plan!’
10
THE BODY MATTERS
IT’S SAID THAT before Arsene Wenger brought modern principles of physiology and nutrition to Arsenal, English footballers knew little about how best to look after their bodies. Tony Adams demurs: ‘People say massage only came to us when David Platt came back from Italy, but David O’Leary was doing self-massage almost twenty years earlier. That’s one of the reasons his career lasted as long as it did. I’m not saying Arsene didn’t teach me a lot about my body, about preparation and recovery. He was brilliant at that. He’s a physiologist and that’s his strength. He’s the best in the game. But I also remember a book by Dr Robert Haas. It was called Eat to Win and we had that in 1987, long before Arsene ever came to these shores. OK, we were drinking twenty pints of lager as well, but at least we were eating pasta!’
Gary Lewin, the hugely respected former Arsenal physiotherapist who is now the England physiotherapist, recalls plenty of unhealthy habits from the ‘good old bad old days’. ‘It’s been well documented that George Graham liked to take the team away for a week somewhere and that would involve drinking. We had trouble all over the world, but that was the culture then. Talk to any of the old Liverpool lads and they’ll tell you that when they won all their European Cups, drinking was part and parcel of it. It was part of team bonding. And before the match we used to have a bottle of brandy in the dressing room so players could take a swig before they went on the pitch – for courage! That wasn’t drinking as such, just old school. And one of the first things you’d put on the bus for after the game was a crate of beer.’
Players’ food was equally bizarre by today’s standards. ‘Even when Dennis arrived, players ate fish and chips after a game. And there’d be Mars bars and Jelly Babies in the dressing room. You’re led by science and in those days the science said: quick sugars give you energy. It’s changed dramatically now, of course, but in George Graham’s time we’d pick up the fish and chips on the way home. Arsenal were actually one of the first teams to move away from that and have stewards serving cooked meals on the bus. But teams like Liverpool and Man United stuck with fish and chips. When they came to Highbury, they’d put their kit out then give me or the kit man a list of fish and chips for after the game. We’d then run the order down to the chip shop on the corner of Avenell Road and Gillespie Road, and they’d pick up their dinner on the way out! That was still going on when Dennis arrived. Of course, he never got involved in the drinking and he was always very careful what he ate. And then, with Arsene, everything changed completely. The training, the diet, the drinking, everything.’
Dennis recalls being astonished. ‘Of course as soon as I joined the dressing room I realised there were a lot of things wrong. I remember in my first season the pre-match meal would be white beans in tomato sauce, bacon, scrambled eggs . . . I could not understand it! And on the coach the other players would be eating crisps and chocolate. That was England in those days. I didn’t get involved. I just thought: “You cannot do that” and brought my own food. For my first pre-season with Arsenal, we went to Sweden and trained twice a day. The first evening I went for a walk with my wife and saw eight or nine Arsenal players sitting outside a pub, drinking beer. I thought: “This is unbelievable! You’ve just had two hard sessions to prepare for the season, and now everything you did is going down with the alcohol! What’s the point of being there?”
‘The funny thing is you wouldn’t notice it in training because they were so strong. Sometimes you could smell the alcohol in the morning but you could never tell from the performance because they always gave one hundred per cent.
But I thought: “You can’t treat your body like that.” I’d come from the professional culture in Holland and Italy where it’s really serious – apart from some players smoking. So it took some time to adapt. But I felt it was also a question of me respecting a different culture. I wouldn’t be happy if players missed training because they were drinking, but if they trained in a professional way, giving one hundred per cent, who am I to say: “It’s not good for you”? I won’t criticise. They respected me for not doing that. Maybe they looked at me and realised the way I performed was connected to what I ate. Maybe they learned a bit from that. But the real change only came when Arsene forced the issue by putting different food on the table. All of a sudden, the minibars were empty in the hotels. And no room service! Not accepted any more. And it helped the players of course.
‘To me, professional sport is just that, a profession. The better your body is prepared, the better you can do your work. In every other kind of work, if your tools aren’t right you get fired. In football, if you’re overweight, if you’re not quick enough, if you don’t recover well enough after a game . . . well, to me that’s not good enough. There’s no research that says: “Don’t worry, junk food is good for you! Take another burger, have six pints!” So I thought they were out of their minds drinking so much or having that kind of food. And the club allowed it! Then Arsene went to the opposite extreme. He went totally overboard. At the start with him, the pre-match meals were so boring. Vegetables with no sauce, white chicken boiled . . . Oh, come on. I mean, I like a bit of flavour and, really, this was no fun. But slowly it got better, and it had to because there’s the mental aspect as well. Normally, you only eat what you like. If that’s bad for you then you have to find a balance, but you have to feel good about what you eat. So at the training ground, they started to use sugar in the desserts, for example. But not refined sugars. And the food started getting tastier and eventually it got much better. But those first few weeks were like ‘bang!’ It was a real shock even for me.’
Stillness and Speed: My Story Page 13