by Unknown
Even if only to find out what sort of man could have that effect on Wrighty.
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Paolo Bandini writes for the Guardian, plus one or two others. He once made Ian Wright cry with laughter by bringing a ‘Keown for England’ sign to an away game against Wimbledon
5 – HIGHBURY V EMIRATES - Jim Haryott
You’d think there would be no comparison. An elderly, compact and – whisper it quietly – rather dog-eared stadium pits itself head-to-head against a state-of-the-art, squidgy-seated, curvaceous megabowl of an arena. The latter, a docked spacecraft bristling with steel and concrete; boasting 22,000 more seats than its predecessor and generally speaking, infinitely more suitable to football in the modern era, should win the contest hands down.
And yet, and yet... my own memories of Highbury grow fonder over time.
It’s not that I don’t like The Emirates – or if you’d prefer, because it probably won’t be a middle-eastern airline forever – Ashburton Grove. For the most part, I love it. I watched it grow, via a webcam, like an expectant father. From the very first moment I set foot inside it (a 1-1 home draw against Villa, its first competitive match) I was taken aback by its scale. Sure, repeated visits have dampened the novelty somewhat, but even now, during a mid-game lull or when we find ourselves 1-0 down after 15 minutes, I crane my neck and admire the beauty of its wavy lines and mammoth roof struts (are they struts? I have no idea – but let’s call them struts for the sake of argument). It’s a stunning football stadium. The pitch is vast and in a permanent state of perfection. The seats are wide enough for all girths and soft enough for the boniest of behinds. There are urinals and toilets aplenty, into which the club pipes in an incredibly realistic waft of tobacco smoke every half time to remind us all of the olden days (at least I think that’s what’s going on). You can hear actual words coming out of the tannoy. It’s the best-looking club-ground in England, though I might, of course, be blinkered. It holds over 60,000 fans, which is more than Highbury had held for a very long time indeed, and rather amazingly, it’s almost always full, or at least sold out.
But perhaps best of all, it’s a mere Delap throw from the old place. For many people, perhaps most people, the routines and tics picked up through years of trudging to Highbury remain. The same tube station, the same pub, the same burger stand. It’s a world away from Highbury and yet it’s strangely familiar. Even now, I shudder to think how things might have been had it not panned out the way it did. The club found enough inner-city land practically next door. How unlikely is that? It secured an absurd amount of money at favourable rates – how many clubs could do that now? Look at the desperation of other clubs in London to secure new premises, and marvel at what our club did, and how they did it, ten years before others started fretting about their own futures. Sharing Wembley? It would have ripped the heart out of the club. No: the move to the Emirates was the best possible outcome to an intractable problem. How do you let more fans in, and how do you make more match-day money, at a ground hemmed in by Victorian terraces?
And yet you only have to look at some of the work that’s gone on at the Emirates since it opened to realise that there are some things the march of progress has trampled on. Some of it unintentional, and some of it unavoidable, true; but all the same, it’s happened. Since 2006, there have been repeated, mostly admirable attempts to ‘Arsenalise’ the Emirates. It’s a word I hate but it implies the new place doesn’t yet really feel like ‘home’, and there’s a definite element of truth in that. Gone are the concrete facades of the tiers, replaced by a chronology of trophy-winning years – still resolutely blank after 2005, but you can hardly blame that on the stadium, can you? In have come murals, and pictures, and other memorabilia to make the new place feel a bit more, well, like the old place. The ends have been renamed North Bank, Clock End, East Stand and West Stand (as they should have been from the word go). The famous clock – or at least, a replica of it – once again hangs above the Clock End. It feels more like home than it ever has, but there’s only so much that can be done to speed up its assimilation into the hearts of those of us who knew and loved Highbury. In reality, the only things that will make that happen are memorable matches and trophies. But mostly I suspect it’s the passage of time that will do the best job.
There are of course downsides, not all of which can be attributed solely to Arsenal moving ground. The Emirates is as much about making money as it is about providing an arena for football – it’s a hundred times brasher than Highbury was. The seats are now among the most expensive in the country, and indeed in Europe. Whole swathes of the ground are given over to corporate entertainment. The food and drink – outsourced – is overpriced. Gone are the “Peeeeannnnuts!” at 20p a bag. Now we have ‘meal-deals’ costing the best part of a tenner. Rolling up at the Highbury turnstiles in the 1980s cost about £5. Now you’ll get no change out of about £40, and football ticketing these days dictates that there’s very little room to spontaneously roll up to a game anymore, without a ticket, and expect to get in.
At Highbury, the Gunners Shop by the Clock End on Avenell Road was so small it operated a one-in, one-out policy on match-days. There were scarves and rattles and ashtrays and Charlie Is My Darling scarves, but it all squeezed into a room about the size of a corner shop. The Emirates now oozes merchandising outlets – there are now even retail kiosks in the concourse areas, just in case you want to tip-toe out of the game eight minutes before half-time rather than a mere three minutes before half-time, which is the current norm. Football now and football then – everywhere, probably, but at Arsenal, certainly – are worlds apart.
An additional 22,000 fans, rather than creating a better atmosphere, have diluted it. It seems impossible, but it’s true. Again, that’s not all down to the move. It’s been happening at Arsenal since the terraces were replaced by seats, but the move to the new ground did seem to accelerate it. Now we have singing areas (a fantastic idea) and piped crowd noise, flags, balloons and so on (you can’t blame them for trying) – all to generate something that used to come naturally at Highbury. People arrive increasingly late and leave early, or they don’t turn up at all, despite having bought a ticket. It seems odd to me to travel long distances only to miss ten or twenty percent of what you came to see, but there you go. It happened at Highbury, for sure, but it didn’t happen so much.
But maybe we tend to look back at the ‘good old days’ when really, perhaps they weren’t that good after all. In the 70’s and 80’s, the football at Highbury was often functional at best; hooliganism was more prevalent – though Arsenal to their credit always refused to fence fans in – and to get 20,000 for a league game was not abnormal. The facilities at Highbury, compared to those you get now, were lacking, though they were nothing unusual then and an awful lot better than some grounds. Since the Taylor Report, and the Premier League, football changed irrevocably and in the end, it signalled the death knell for Highbury and its old-world comforts. A capacity that used to be about 57,000 (if everyone got a bit cosy) shrank to 38,000 in about seven years. Rather ironically, the huge reduction in capacity began to happen at a time of re-emergence on the pitch. George Graham’s young, vibrant side of the late 1980’s threw Arsenal’s lethargy off, winning two titles and four cups, before the baton was picked up by Wenger. Suddenly, thousands more people wanted to come, but couldn’t.
Some things though have not been redefined in my mind over the passage of time. They are plain fact. Highbury was definitely more affordable and the atmosphere there was definitely better. Turning up an hour early to a big game in the 80’s not only guaranteed several throaty renditions of the best songs, but if you didn’t get there in good time you’d either not get in at all, or you’d be squeezed out of the action on the sides of the terraces. My first season ticket, in 1994, cost around £200. Now, the equivalent seat costs £1,000.
I think back to the kinds of atmospheres generated on big nights at Highbury and compare them with those we have had to dat
e at the Emirates; there is no comparison. The 2-1 defeat of Barcelona in February 2011 comes nearest: the place was a crackling cauldron and had all the ingredients for a bubbling atmosphere: a quick-fire comeback against arguably the best club side of this generation. But I can think of many better memories at Highbury. I’ll never forget the opening day of the season in 1987, against Liverpool, when over 54,000 squeezed into Highbury. Gates closed an hour before the game. People ended up sitting on the roof of the North Bank. The terrace was one vast, bubbling, ebbing and flowing mass of humanity. The noise was relentless and we sang ourselves hoarse. I’m not sure we will ever see the likes of that again at the Emirates.
And then there are the titles and the title run-ins. It’s hard to define exactly why, but the ‘We’re going to win the league’ moments are hard to beat; those specific points in a season when the whole stadium – as one – realises the title is within grasp, and starts to sing. The surge of expectancy, of excitement, coupled with an underlying, gnawing fear of failure; it grabs the pit of your stomach. It’s magical. We’ve not had that at the Emirates. As for the titles themselves: Adams dancing through Everton’s defence to pick up Bould’s through pass will take some beating. Gathering below the home dressing room, serenading players in 1991, 1998, 2002, 2004. Those are the kinds of things that add to the aura of a ground, to its history. You can’t pluck them from a marketing manual.
With regard to Highbury itself, well it might have been long in the tooth in its latter years, but it was still one of the most elegant grounds in the country. Archibald Leitch’s listed Art Deco stands, the bust of Herbert Chapman, the Marble Halls, the commissionaire stationed outside the entrance to the East Stand; it stank of history, and class seeped from its every pore. The first time I went there, one Saturday at 3 o’clock in December 1985 (back then it was of course almost always Saturday at 3 o’clock) is partly vivid and partly completely forgotten. As, if I am honest, is my memory of most games since. Above all else I remember emerging into the sun of West Stand Upper tier, peering down at this impossibly high, impossibly large and impossibly noisy cathedral of football. I was awestruck. I have a vague memory of Niall Quinn scoring on his debut, and of Charlie Nicholas getting one too, but details of the goals themselves, and most other memories of the day, have retreated into the recesses of my mind. For years, I could recall the exact attendance, but at some point in the intervening decades I have forgotten the last three digits. It was 35 thousand and something. That’s age for you.
Oddly, but this could again be an age thing, I have fewer crystal clear memories of my first trip to the Emirates than I do of my first visit to Highbury. I have a feeling I spent most of my time craning my neck at its architectural glory. I do remember we equalised to ensure its debut didn’t go too flat… but that’s about it. I could only guess at the line-up now (Justin Hoyte started – who knew?). In fact, I have had to look back at my blog entry for more prompting. Turns out it was Walcott’s debut, we were ‘guilty of over-elaboration’ and the queues for beer were frustratingly long. Glad all that’s been fixed these last five years, eh…?
Thinking back to Highbury though, some of my own little favourite bits make no real sense at all: The ‘JVC and Arsenal: A Perfect Match’ signs on the side of the East and West stands. The precipitous walk up to the North Bank from Gillespie Road, manned turnstiles, complete with piles of match-day stubs; the programme seller’s cupboard under the stairs. If pushed, I would say my favourite thing about the Emirates is the view as you walk up to it on a dark weekday evening, lit up, buzzing, grand and magnificent.
I was weaned on Highbury for twenty-years, and the Emirates has only been with us for five, so it’s perhaps no great surprise that I look back at the old place more fondly than I do the new. My first visit, those seminal early years in any fan’s life, all took place at Highbury. Will the latest generation of fans – those who have been coming to the Arsenal only since 2006, or who have been watching Arsenal somewhere across the globe only since then – have similar rose-tinted specs in 15 years? My son, whose first game came last season, a 2-1 home defeat by Aston Villa, already wants to go back, and back again, to the Emirates. So inevitably, they will. It’s a wonderful stadium and it’s the only place they have ever known.
Me? Well I’m afraid I’ll be – if I’m not already – one of those old buggers who waxes on about the good old days at every opportunity. My love for Arsenal was forged at Highbury. The players I grew up on, whose careers I saw start and end, graced it; Seaman, Big Tone, Bouldy, Keown, Dicko, Nige, Paul Davis, Rocky, Steve Williams, The Merse, Michael Thomas, Alan Smith, Wrighty, Perry Groves, Petit, Vieira, Overmars, Henry, Le Bob, Dennis Bergkamp, Kaba Diawara and dozens besides. All those memories are Highbury memories.
I love the Emirates, and I doff my acrylic Kenny Sansom flat cap to its size, facilities and above all to its ambition, but in terms of memories it’s just not there yet. How can it be? These things take time.
It’s over to you, Emirates, to make up the deficit.
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Jim Haryott started his blog, East Lower after Arsenal won the FA Cup in 2003 and has since enjoyed one glorious, unbeaten season, one jammy FA Cup, one oh-so-close European Cup final and, last but not least, six trophyless seasons. He’s supported Arsenal since 1980, and to this day holds a grudge against Graham Rix for missing that penalty and making him cry
6 – CONTINUED EVOLUTION - Tom Clark
It’s strange to me now, but being an Arsenal fan isn’t something that always came naturally. When I was a small boy, I played football at school in both classes, and in the playground, but I wasn’t that much of a fan of the game itself. I enjoyed it, sure, but I didn’t play it with the same enthusiasm that I did rugby, or cricket, and I didn’t really watch anything on the TV except the big games – FA Cup finals and the like – nor did I go to games. I didn’t come from a footballing family. My parents didn’t even have teams that they even nominally supported – and I can only remember one of my close friends specifically being a fan of a particular club: my best friend, in fact.
Robin, as we shall call him (for that was his name), did come from a footballing family. He had posters on his wall of his favourite players; both his father and his grandfather, who lived with them, were both season ticket holders. Robin and his older brother, Matt (also his name), went to games with their dad, and Matt played football in the school team. I even remember his mother wearing ribbons in her hair for a game. It may well even have been the 1987 cup final. In which Coventry City beat – yes, that’s right – Tottenham Hotspur. My best friend Robin came from a family of die hard Spurs fans. The posters on his bedroom wall were of Hoddle, Waddle, and Ardiles.
I’m not a psychologist, and, it’s been a quite a long while since I was a small boy, but I think it speaks volumes for the nature of small boy relationships that I ended up becoming a fan of my best friend’s team’s biggest rivals. That or I’m some kind of sociopath. I mean… what kind of kid does that? But, at that time, it simply didn’t register as being possibly the most annoying and provocative thing I have ever done. Like many small boys, Robin and I were competitive. We competed over who had the best dad, whether the Atari or the Amiga was better than a BBC Micro (it totally wasn’t), who was better friends with our mutual friend Greg; I clearly wanted another thing to compete over. Either way, I’m glad my friend Robin’s family were Spurs fans. Things could well have turned out quite horribly had they been Arsenal fans.
As entertaining as that was, becoming an Arsenal fan wasn’t only about diametrically opposing myself to the extended family of my so-called best friend. In truth, I was jealous. The sense of belonging; of being part of a tribe, at one with culture, history, and identity are powerful ideas for a small boy. I mean, obviously I wasn’t jealous enough to be part of Robin’s particular poxy tribe, but the concept of belonging was appealing. I didn’t rationalise and explain it to myself in quite the same way when I was ten, but there was definitely something
that drew me in. So unlike many people, becoming an Arsenal fan was, for me, an active choice, and I chose it for that most healthy, positive, and constructive of reasons – the deep-rooted male need to compete with another male. To his credit, Robin took my massive insult to him and his family surprisingly well – it didn’t really change anything between us and we remained friends.
I made friends with other Arsenal supporting kids, and it wasn’t long before one of their families adopted me and I got to go to my first game at Highbury. The relationship was firmly established, and I was doing the things boys did: collecting Panini stickers, completing World Cup wall charts – pretending to be Arsenal players when we played football at school. I had posters on my bedroom wall. By the time 1989 and 1991 brought forth all their wonderful glories, I was thoroughly consumed. And then something rather unfortunate happened. My father was informed by his job that he had to relocate and was given the choice of either Singapore or Aberdeen. For one reason and another, he chose Aberdeen, which meant that we were moving from just outside London to the North-East of Scotland: it might as well have been a million miles away. Aside from this being the end of my burgeoning social life, how would I keep up with Arsenal? There was no Internet, no blogs, no wall-to-wall coverage. And I could forget about actually going to games!
So, both unfortunately and somewhat inevitably, supporting Arsenal turned into a long distance relationship – and anyone who’s ever been in one of those will tell you how they can work out, particularly for teenagers. What’s more, by this time, I’d gone full teenager, and although Sky and the Premier League had turned up and were doing their best to turn football into what they thought was a cool product, I was drifting away from the game to find my own definition of cool by doing incredibly cool things like smoking cigarettes, drinking cider, and hanging around. I followed results less keenly, and given that most of my friends at school who actually had an interest in football were Aberdeen fans, I began to lose interest. I still vaguely kept up with results, but it was only for the biggest of games that I showed any real interest, and even then, it was very much a personal thing; I didn’t know any other Arsenal fans in the wild north, so I generally confined my relationship to reading occasional match reports in the paper.