by Tony Adams
‘I see big things for you,’ he said. ‘You are a great coach and you will be the next manager of Arsenal.’
‘Arsène, Arsène, Arsène,’ I said, proud of myself that I did not raise my voice or lose my temper. ‘I have too much respect for you to fall out. It would have been better if you had just told me you didn’t want me.’
‘No, it is not like that,’ he replied. ‘You have got the wrong end of it.’
‘Arsène, let’s forget it,’ I said. ‘Have a wonderful season and good luck for it.’
And that was that. I saw him a few months later at a League Cup tie at Reading, which Arsenal crazily won 7-4 after extra time, and he was pleasant but cool.
It was only when I discovered that my phone was being hacked by the Daily Mirror, a long time after settling with the News of the World after being hacked by them, did it occur to me that Arsène may have indeed left me a voicemail that I never received, just as happened that time with Peter Taylor all those years ago when he told me he had left a message to say he would not be including me in his England squad. I remembered that when a message is hacked, it can be lost.
The next instalment of the saga came around 18 months later. I was still advising Tale Heydarov and Gabala, but by now was getting twitchy about wanting to coach again and so rang Terry Burton. I asked him if he would be interested in me coming to work with the academy players a couple of days a week, just for expenses, though I wasn’t even bothered about getting any money at all.
Terry was great, thanked me profusely and offered Monday and Wednesday afternoons and Thursday all day working with the 11 living in the academy. I knew they had a couple of decent defenders I could help. He said he would just clear it with Arsène, Liam and Ivan.
When Terry phoned me back a couple of days later, he was very embarrassed. It had not gone down well at all, he said. Liam was retiring at the end of the year and didn’t want to take it to Ivan so Terry had done so himself. Ivan had said that if Liam didn’t want to make a decision then he didn’t either.
‘Then I was told that a message had come down from the boss,’ said Terry. ‘I don’t know what it was but it looks like you can’t come in.’
I told Terry not to worry. It wasn’t his fault. It was just internal politics and had been handled badly. I mentioned it sometime later to Ivan when I saw him. ‘Well, you know Arsène better than me . . .’ he said.
So that was four attempts to come back to Arsenal – one to get on to the board, one to become Arsène’s assistant, one to do the reserves, then the offer of a freebie. But I wasn’t done yet. My next action was partly tongue-in-cheek, partly to make a point.
By now, Arsenal had an HR department and they were advertising for a youth coach to take the under-14s. I thought: ‘Fuck it. I’m going for it,’ and I stuck in my CV. I remember being at a football conference at Canary Wharf with Damien Comolli, who had been at Arsenal as a European scout in the nineties and then director of football at Tottenham and Liverpool, when I got a call from the Arsenal HR.
They wanted to know if I was serious, pointing out the modest salary of £15,000 a year and that it involved five nights a week in north London and a Sunday game. I said that on reflection it wasn’t for me, though had I lived nearer I would certainly have thought about it. It was the Arsenal, after all.
It was actually the way Arsène dealt with it all, rather than not getting a job, that saddened and annoyed me. I wasn’t really hurt as such, as it wasn’t as if I wasn’t good enough for the various jobs, though I might have been more upset had someone other than Terry Burton got the positions. Looking back, I believe there were a couple of major reasons why Arsène didn’t want me back at the club at the time.
First, the club had put up the statue of me, made by the London art and design company MDM, outside the Emirates in December 2011. It was a fantastic honour. I had known about it for a while prior to that as I had received an email from dear, loyal Ken Friar, now a director, while I was in Azerbaijan, saying they wanted to do it and needed all my measurements. I put Ken on to a guy called Geoffrey Klass, a tailor with Pal Zileri in New Bond St, who had done Arsenal cup final suits in the past, my first for the Littlewoods Cup final in 1987. The statue was to be three times life size, so they needed them tripled.
Because I had loose ends to tie up in Gabala, I was unable to make it over for the official unveiling, but Arsène and Ken said some kind words about me and I got to see it for myself a couple of weeks later at a game against Queens Park Rangers when I was home from Azerbaijan for Christmas. I was really proud taking my kids to see it before the game and having my picture taken. First, though, we had to wait for three Chinese kids who were having their own picture taken on it.
I noticed that my playing dates were inscribed on the base and said to the current club secretary David Miles that it was like I had died. I asked him what they would do if I came back and managed the club successfully. He replied they would put another one up of me in a suit – and that they would take it down if I was a failure.
Given all that, and with the career I’d had, it might have been difficult for Arsène to bring me in around that time. He was coming under pressure, then not having won a major trophy since 2005, and to have me around as a successful old captain who had lifted a host of trophies might have been to highlight the underachievement, and my presence could have been something he didn’t need. There may, too, have been an element of what Patrick Vieira once suggested to me: that Arsène does not like big characters and personalities, especially ones from Arsenal’s history, around him.
If Arsène had been up front and given me reasons like that, I would have understood and respected his decision, even taken it as a compliment. Instead, I was not told anything, except by Terry Burton, and I didn’t know what Arsène was thinking or what I was supposed to make of it.
Perhaps Arsène thought I might be too challenging for him. He seemed to like an assistant such as Pat or Steve, both great club men but who were not going to ruffle feathers. Arsène is so dominant that he was probably not going to like it if I said: ‘Look Arsène, we are conceding bad goals. I’m going to take the back four today and organise them.’
Because Arsène is essentially not a coach – and in that was the second reason why for so many seasons I believe he didn’t want me.
Back in the day, I gave an interview to British Midland Airways magazine Voyager and said that I sometimes got upset that George Graham wasn’t given the same credit as Arsène Wenger for what he also achieved with Arsenal, and that George was better at working with players. Arsène’s strengths were in physiology and psychology, I said.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at Arsène Wenger,’ I added. ‘One of the gifts he’s got is that he’s a lovely human being and I respect him a great deal. But I’ve got to get it real, coaching isn’t his strong point.’
Actually, in the original draft I had said that he couldn’t coach his way out of a paper bag but I had copy approval and, when I realised I had gone over the top, I asked the writer to modify it for print.
‘I love him dearly,’ I continued. ‘He’s a fantastic physiologist but he’s not a great motivator. I’d just laugh at his attempts to gee us up, but I come from a different place, time and culture. But he got me in the best condition I could possibly get in to do my job, and for that I love him and have so much respect for him.’
Despite it being what I thought was a rounded piece, it didn’t go down well. The journalist John Cross, in his biography Arsène Wenger: The Inside Story of Arsenal Under Wenger, wrote that Arsène was spotted reading it on a plane and was apparently not happy.
The piece, it seems, came over as just another ex-player having a dig, as they seem to do a lot at Liverpool and Manchester United, when it was supposed to be an honest and balanced appraisal. I am always going to be truthful if I am asked an opinion. George taught us to defend in ways I didn’t see Arsène doing – such as, for example, one defender running the line
of the post to the byline to stop the cut-back while the other drops off if the cross does come in. They were just basic things that Arsenal don’t routinely do because they are technical points that they haven’t learned.
It all left me feeling for a long time that I would never get a chance in any capacity at Arsenal while Arsène was at the club. Much as I admired and respected him for his long and successful tenure, my reputation and my occasional willingness to pass comment on him and the team when asked probably counted against me.
But I have always wanted to be fair when it comes to Arsenal and Arsène; like a critical best friend. One who will love you no matter what but also tell you the truth.
Arsène was absolutely the best man for Arsenal when he had his English defence and more exotic overseas attacking talents, as the trophies testify. He was also the perfect manager to keep Arsenal competitive with the big-money clubs of Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City during the transition from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium, with all the costs and disruption that involved. As well as being a great sports scientist, he had a sound grasp of football’s economics too.
I do believe, though, after 2006 and the departures of Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell – with whom Lauren and I formed a pretty good back four in my last season – a lot was lost that has never been recaptured. The replacements and other defenders recruited have simply, by and large, not been up to the standard of what came before. It is because they have not been taught the art of defending properly, and while they may be individually decent players, they have not blended as a back four with all the discipline necessary in that.
Now, that old back four of Dixon, Bould, Adams and Winterburn is revered, to the point even of being immortalised in the film The Full Monty which used us as an example of what a proper formation should look like. Individually, though, I played with better – Viv Anderson at right back, David O’Leary alongside me, Kenny Sansom on the left. Put Lee, Steve, me and Nigel together, however, and we gelled and complemented each other.
A lot of that was down to hard work and self-improvement, facilitated by George Graham, even if we did curse him sometimes. The old training trick of binding us together with a long rope so that we moved up, down and across the pitch together in harmony worked wonders.
Sadly, I saw defenders coming into Arsenal and not improving, players like Gael Clichy and Hector Bellerin. Kieran Gibbs was a good young English left back who has not progressed as he might have. And while Laurent Koscielny is a good marker, Per Mertesacker is a zonal defender who unfortunately gets exposed because of a lack of protection in front of him.
I have watched Arsène’s training and it is fantastic – pace, combination play, tight passing play around mannequins. You come away thinking what a great team they are. And in many ways they are. It is just, in my view, that the balance between defence and attack has not been right for a good while now. It will open up opponents and win you games at home, even ones away against lesser opposition. But it is not going to win you often enough the big games against the bigger clubs, with their top attacking talent which exposes undercooked defenders.
The emphasis on attack is understandable in some ways. I am being picky here but then such are the fine margins at the elite level. And, I have to say, the lack of work on defence is often a trait of coaches who have not played the game at the top, Jose Mourinho being the exception. We all use our strengths and Arsène’s is in attacking play. You can’t argue with the trophies, the building of the club and the stadium and his part in how well run financially the club is. It is simply that – judging by the highest standards – the Premier League titles have been receding into the distance and, while the constant qualification for the Champions League is admirable, it does also mean by the same token a lot of opportunities not taken to win it.
Amid all the debate that went on, some of it very disrespectful, what I would say is that Arsène, having passed his own 20-year milestone, certainly earned the right to say when he would go, just as Sir Alex Ferguson did at Manchester United.
Now, in this summer of 2016, all my views and constructive criticism seemed no longer to count against me and, after my heart trouble and my subsequent contact with Arsène, I had the chance to come back to the club and see, in this one-month trial, whether they liked me and I liked them.
Returning to London Colney felt like going home to my first love, the Arsenal – except the home had gained a few extensions now, after 14 years away. They were needed to house all the new staff. When I left in 2002, there were 77 people working there. Now there were 157 off-the-field support staff, working in education and welfare, sports science and conditioning, catering and administration. And that was just at the training ground. In all, Arsenal now employed around 550 people.
There were also new little touches, such as the door handles being treated with antibacterial gel. These days players and coaches, particularly the French, like to shake hands before and after training, as well as around the facility all the time. It can lead to the spread of colds and infections. The antibacterial gel was supposed to minimise the risks.
Working with the 16-and 17-year-olds was hard, but great fun. I would drive up on the Monday morning from Gloucestershire, work with them during the day, then stay at the Premier Inn at South Mimms services for the week. Glamorous life, football. I would then go home after the Saturday morning game. There were no expenses, for petrol or accommodation, so it was costing me, but I was happy enough for now.
It was summer in England and I was enjoying being back home, though, like the rest of the country, I was enjoying less watching our national team’s latest attempt, 20 years on from Euro 96, to impress at a European Championships finals.
18
Our England
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over
again and expecting a different result.
ANON
The quotation above is often attributed to Albert Einstein, though he once stated he could never remember saying it. It is certainly well used in Alcoholics Anonymous as an example of how addicts behave before they get sober, and it went through my head a lot as I watched Euro 2016 in France and contemplated how we had squandered the promising position our football was in 20 years earlier. You don’t have to be Einstein to see that England were products of years of problems with the national team and of another similar pearl of wisdom: if you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
The shortcomings of selection and formations were of course part of it. So too defensive standards not being what they were. But it went much deeper than that, to the structure of the English game and the quality of coaching.
Before the tournament, I was asked many times for interviews to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Euro 96, when we reached the semi-finals; and then during it for my opinions on the England team’s performances, which reached one of the lowest points in our modern, post-1966 footballing history with the 2-1 defeat by Iceland in the last 16.
One of the reasons we were still harking back to events 20 years ago was because we have done very little to impress in European or World Cup tournaments since. That is because we have never learned the lessons. Over and over, they are thrown in our face and always we fail to act, seeking solace in our entertaining Premier League.
I remain convinced that if the FA had just given Terry Venables the extended contract he was seeking ahead of Euro 96 we could have won the 1998 World Cup. Instead, after Kevin Keegan replaced Glenn Hoddle, we had that mess at Euro 2000 similar to the one that unfolded in 2016. So what did we do back in 2000? We hired expensive foreign coaches to be followed by Englishmen who have also floundered in a failing coaching and development system.
Roy Hodgson departed after Euro 2016, to be replaced by Sam Allardyce, who was chosen by a panel of three men – Martin Glenn, the chief executive of the FA, who admitted he was not a football expert, Dan Ashworth, the technical director, who was fairly new to international level, and David Gill, w
ho was fortunate at Manchester United because he never had to appoint a manager as he had a brilliant one there for his 10 years as chief executive.
Then came that sad, manufactured affair with Sam – who I never really thought was a progressive appointment anyway – when he lost the England job he so wanted after 67 days and just one match, with the FA saying that his taped meeting with an agent, in which he apparently claimed the rules on third-party ownership of players could be circumvented, was worthy of dismissal. It was soul-destroying for our game, another episode that drove our standing down and illustrated the paucity of our coaching and management structure.
That brought Gareth Southgate, my team-mate from Euro 96, into the spotlight and I texted him to wish him well. I do know from conversations with him that he went into the job with his eyes wide open, knowing how seductive the role can be but also its potential for draining and damaging reputations. In discussions at Burton when I was renewing my Pro Licence and he was there with the under-21s, it was clear that we shared similar views on the state of the English team and the English game.
His statement at an early press conference was certainly telling and accords with my view in many ways: ‘I have to say I’m involved in a sport that I love and an industry that at times I don’t like,’ he said.
I could only hope that he did not become another victim of a failing system. That would be a shame, as Gareth is one of the good guys. While it may have been structurally convenient for the FA to give him the job, I hoped he was not being set up to fail and that finally we had someone who would also take note of what was going on beneath the full national team. Given his background with the under-21s – a job I considered applying for before deciding it was not for me – and his success in winning the Toulon Tournament in 2016 with them, I am sure that would have been his inclination.