by Unknown
It goes without saying that the great Arsenal sides of the time never did win the Champions League, nor did they manage back-to-back league titles, but it is true that we would regularly be treated to moments that we could simply not conceive. It was as if we were at the finest of restaurants where the boundaries were continually being pushed. At the heart of it was Thierry Henry, an extraordinary innovator. I sat in a pub in Camden Town watching our home game with Charlton in Autumn 2004 on mute, when Henry scored that back-heeled goal. It was the goal that was actually too clever for the camera. Viewers were treated to a close up of the man with his back to goal but no goal in shot. The vision mixer presumably, like the rest of us, simply couldn’t imagine a goal could be scored from that position. It did become, I think, a little bit about having your breath taken away. Of course there were football matches to win. I’ve acknowledged we never came close to matching Manchester United’s consistency over many seasons. All the same, it is true that once a game was won or ever appeared likely to be won, it was no longer enough to simply score normal goals; at least certainly not in Henry’s mind. They had to be beautifully crafted. If need be, the easy option had to be passed up if the more difficult one was visually better. Sod the goal difference. Part of going to Arsenal became about those moments you got a few times a game, moments that would stir something inside you in a way not a lot else could.
Even when The Invincibles broke up, Henry was still around for a while longer; Cesc was there, RVP was there and Arshavin and then Nasri signed too. But, as we knew while having that drink before the Leeds game in 2004, it could never be as good as it was forever. Technically, the players who now constitute the bulk of the current squad are not bad players. In fact, they are by and large very good players, but it is not uncommon to go through a game now and not once experience a moment of breathtaking beauty or execution when compared to what used to be on offer. That is not to say there aren’t any. The ingenuity of Robin Van Persie’s equaliser against Barcelona at the Emirates in February 2011 or indeed the slick passing that led to Andrei Arshavin’s winner were two such occasions.
Arshavin had an open goal to aim at when scoring against Swansea in September 2011, but the way he nonchalantly swept the ball first time with his left foot at a tiny angle evoked memories of the arrogant strut that characterised Arsene Wenger’s greatest sides.
There is a simple truth; when football teams are not successful, fewer people follow them or come to watch them play. That is unarguable and is it fair to say that perhaps it is the case that a very great number of football fans are glory hunters. Maybe I am just one of them, hooked by Anfield, retained by a continual diet of trophies and now they’re no longer assured my passion is somewhat diminished. Of course, the kind of football obsessiveness where one thinks of little else other than football is not confined to younger fans; my original assumption was probably very naive. That one’s degree of obsessiveness should stay constant forever, not buffeted by the rest of life’s events, was never likely. I now realise that there is, in all likelihood, an alternative; one where football is still really, really important but doesn’t quite evoke the rawness of emotion it once did.
Having put to paper my thoughts, I now suspect my experience is very common. Maybe it is only because of my previous level of obsessiveness that I am so aware of something that others probably take in their stride. Why it is happening now rather than why it is happening at all is perhaps the question. This is where the factors I’ve outlined above come in. That my life is changing undoubtedly has played a part, but it is also true that at times the Arsenal of late have made it easier not to obsess over them. Finally, Arsenal are no longer The Invincibles and the fact is The Invincibles cast one almighty shadow. One really, really, really didn’t want to miss an opportunity to see them. Comparatively, any team looks less attractive.
Maybe that is glory hunting. But it is at least honest.
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Jake Morris started following Arsenal four games before Anfield 1989. Over 20 years of obsession later, he wonders why Arsenal now doesn’t matter quite as much as he did. He has written www.goodplaya.com since September 2004.
22 – FROM CHAMP TO CHAMPIGNON - Jonathan Swan
In the 1985/86 season, Niall Quinn loped into Sunday Mass at a local church in Enfield, North London. This caused a mini riot, as he was with a certain ‘Champagne’ Charlie Nicholas. Whether Chas was wearing his black leather suit, history neglects to tell, but eyewitnesses on the day remember that although the young girls there had eyes only for Bonny Prince Charlie and his regal mullet, the older ladies of the parish were drawn to the gangling Niall; because the largely Irish congregation knew that big Quinny was one of the last of his kind; the authentic Irish Arsenal player. And how. Hilariously, while an apprentice at Arsenal, Quinn claimed to have lodged with a couple of lads called Pat and Mick. Could his emerald bona get any more fide?
What Niall represented was a tail end of an era that had, at one point, seen Highbury resembling the arrivals hall of the Fishguard ferry. Throughout the 1970’s Arsenal’s ranks had been swollen with Irishmen from North and South. What drew them? As Kevin Costner observed in Field of Dreams, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ but in this case it appeared less of a deliberate policy and more of a happy accident, akin to realising you’ve somehow accumulated five ornamental eggcups, so you might as well start collecting them properly.
Arsenal had always had a smattering of Irish players, like Dr Kevin O’ Flanagan (the flying Doctor, perhaps?) who played on the wing for the club post WWII; Joe Haverty, Paddy Sloan and Jimmy Dunne, who played in the title winning side of the 1930’s. In fact, most English clubs had the odd Scot, Irish or Welshman knocking about, and that was about as exotic as it got. If you had predicted back then that an Arsenal team containing Africans, Frenchmen and South Americans would one day win the league, you would, frankly, have been regarded as a madman. Arsenal were no different to other clubs; until the Irish invasion proper began in the 1960’s with Terry Neill and Arsene’s faithful consigliore, Pat Rice in the vanguard. Nowadays, you can imagine Pat at the team BBQ, flipping the steaks and sucking on a beer while Arsene holds court from a shaded wicker chair with a glass of Bordeaux.
Soon came the others. In no particular order: Sammy Nelson, a left back with the most famous underpants in first division football after he dropped his shorts to the North Bank; David O’Leary, still the record appearance holder for the club; Frank Stapleton, a classy striker whose departure to Manchester United left a bitter taste; Liam Brady, a genius of a player who was genuinely world class; St Patrick of Jennings who, despite joining from Spurs, found his way into Arsenal fan’s affections; and John Devine, who filled in for Rice and had a few runs in the first team.
By the mid 1970s Arsenal could (and did) field a line up which contained six or seven Irish lads, from North and South. London in the 1970s could be no fun for your average Irishman abroad. The troubles were in full swing and anyone with an Irish accent could find themselves the focus of unwelcome attention if anything went wrong (and often if it didn’t). But none of this really impinged on the Arsenal. We just got on with being a not relegated, but not really troubling the upper half of the table sort of team, while northerners took the league every year. There wasn’t a particularly Irish vibe about the place either. Oddly enough, quite a lot of kids with Irish parents were Spurs fans, which may have had more to do with the quasi-religious attraction of Pat Jennings than anything else. Has any man carried off a halo and sideburns so well?
None of the Arsenal players were particularly in the public eye, either. Charlie George, our baddest boy (put your hand down at the back, Mr Storey), had gone by 1975, and few, if any, of the Irish players were especially wild. Liam Brady’s biggest vice was chips, and if you had invited any of them to a roasting they would have assumed you meant chicken or lamb. The avaricious (the North Bank faithful gave it another name: rearrange these letters to find the phrase: ‘creedy gunt’) Frank S
tapleton probably stayed in counting his money, if Tony Cascarino’s autobiography is to be believed. Incidentally, what was Cascarino doing playing for Ireland with a name like that: surely the ‘o’ should have been at the other end?
Under Terry Neill, the club wasn’t really doing much – we just drifted along. It wasn’t even a deliberate ploy to have a team loaded with Irish players; it was just the way it had happened, which sort of summed us up. Some of the players we had were pretty good. Brady, obviously, was the real gem. Stapleton was a good player, and O’Leary was a cultured centre half who these days would probably command a vast fee. If Arsenal today had as many Irish players as we did back then, no doubt some marketing genius would ensure that we were maximising our revenue streams by Oirsihing us up; Guinness on tap, shamrocks on the cannon, Gunnersuarus taken out to the car park, shot and replaced by half time leprechauns, not to mention the full New York St Paddy’s Day experience to draw in the punters. Perhaps a Pat Rice shebeen under the stadium selling poteen too? But really, no great fuss was made.
Even if we didn’t make a big deal about our Irishness, one effect it did have was to make the Arsenal much more popular in Ireland. The dominance of Manchester United, with their glamour rep and George Best, and perennial 70’s winners Liverpool just a ferry ride away, made it pretty hard for any English club to compete in attracting supporters. But Brady, especially, drew in young kids and Arsenal built up a healthy support, helped too by the fact that most of our Irish players played internationally for the Republic or Northern Ireland.
Eventually Arsenal’s Irish base pretty much dispersed, over the course of our three consecutive FA Cup finals. By the 1980 final (over which a veil shall be drawn), we managed to field four Irish players (five if you include sub Sammy Nelson), but the writing was on the wall. Liam Brady was about to go to Juventus. Pat Rice was to leave for Watford only a couple of weeks later. Sammy Nelson was in the twilight of his career, and a year later Frank Stapleton would depart the marble halls, not with a fanfare of trumpets but to the jingle of the cash register. O’Leary was the only regular first teamer left. Pat Jennings, the man with the most 70’s hairstyle in football, was confronted with the horrific idea that a new decade might necessitate a different look. Recognising that he had a tremendous run of hair form, from looking futuristically ahead of his time in the 1960’s to being bang on trend from ’71 to ’79, he decided phase out of the game, although he didn’t officially stop until 1985. Terry Neill was sacked in 1983, as we languished near the foot of the table. The Irish days were well over by then, but a new era was beginning to emerge of young London boys who would come together to form the best teams of George Graham’s era. Just a few weeks before he got the boot, Neill gave a debut to a lanky 17 year centre half who would become the bedrock of Arsenal for the next two decades: Tony Adams.
Fast forward to 1996. When Arsene Wenger joined the club there wasn’t any Irish culture anymore. Steve Morrow, the only Irishman at the club within a sniff of the first team, was swiftly shipped out. If there was a culture at Highbury, it was a drinking one. However, with his modern regime that espoused the benefits of moderation, stretching and broccoli, Wenger set about instilling a culture at the club that reflected his own experiences and ideas from French football. This was accompanied by a steady stream of French imports. Already reeling from the signing of Dennis Bergkamp by Bruce Rioch, the fans didn’t know what to make of the appearance on the scene of Remi Garde and Patrick Vieira. Next came Nicolas Anelka, Emmanuel Petit and Gilles Grimandi and, er, David Grondin. Later still rolled up Thierry Henry, Sylvain Wiltord and Robert Pires. And most of these players were destined for the first team. While Arsene did buy players from other countries with some success (Freddie Ljungberg, for example), his dabbling in the homegrown market was less assured. Take a bow, Franny Jeffers. We became less English, and it’s fair to say that at this time Arsene Wenger used his knowledge of French football to put his ideas into place.
With so many Frenchmen around the place, there was a decidedly Gallic air to Highbury, helped of course by France’s success at the World Cup in 1998. Arsenal supplied the world champion’s midfield, after all. ‘Allez les rouges” urged the Jumbotron on match days. “He’s quick, he’s blonde, he’s won the Coupe du Monde”, went an adaptation of the Petit chant. There were even rumours of soupe du jour being served in the North Bank. It was all much more overtly French than when similar numbers of Irishmen had been at the club: back then you wouldn’t have been able to get a pint of the black stuff to go with a bowl of champ.
The balance hung between being all out continental and retaining some British-ness. Arsenal had become less ‘English’ in the eyes of the media, who welcomed Arsene when he arrived with the tolerance and openness for which the British press is famous. They ran a smear story about him. Even other managers stuck the boot in: “What does he know about English football?” sneered Alex Ferguson, who was then forced to eat his words as Arsenal won the double. But while Arsenal retained their famous all British back five, it was still possible to see the shift in culture. We were becoming just a bit different to other clubs, although they, too, were opening the doors to more foreign players, if not yet coaches. But Arsenal were changing the fastest, and it was visible not just in the names on the teamsheet; results went our way too. Fitter, more skilful and pacy, the French revolution was plain to see when we took the field.
Not that this was all plain sailing. There was often a background crackle of xenophobia. When Patrick Vieira went on a formidable run of red cards, it wasn’t long before the fact that he was French was levered into the equation, as if this provided an insightful explanation for his dismissals. “I could smell the garlic on his breath”, squealed Neil Ruddock, after Patrick gobbed on him on his way off for an early bath. In later years, Thierry Henry would be accused of having Gallic arrogance, although, in truth, he did suffer from a nasty bout of taking himself too seriously. One of the more risible ideas was that the new, French, Arsenal wouldn’t like it up them. The spirit of Corporal Jones was alive and well (and still is, these days it divides its time between the homes of Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis). Yet the duo of Vieira and Petit soon scotched this idea as they put together one of the most effective midfield partnerships ever seen. When one of them was out, there was always Gilles Grimandi, the duffle-coat wearing assassin who saw red at the Nou Camp for elbowing Pep Guardiola and got himself banned at Lazio for drawing blood from Diego Simeone. Even in retirement he showed he still had it, scything down Edgar Davids in Dennis Bergkamp’s testimonial, then giving an insouciant shrug. Check it out on YouTube – it’s well worth it.
The Frenchness of Arsenal probably reached a peak somewhere in the end of the 1990s, when the players we had were on the way to their peaks, the World Cup was under their belts and Bergkamp had just finished the best season many people have ever seen from an Arsenal player. Throw into the mix our poetry and jazz-loving captain, the erudite manager, and Highbury was beginning to feel like a left bank collective. Would we get rid of the match day programme and have an artistic manifesto instead? Would the team run out one day wearing polo necks, puffing on Gauloises Disque Bleu, indulging in a bit street theatre? Not quite; but we were unmistakeably changed from the Arsenal of the preceding years. Even after Petit left, the Pires/Henry axis ensured our French flavour persisted. Great players both, they particularly seemed to aggravate the spiteful hackers like Wise and Bowyer, who ran around in a state of frothing aggravation whenever we played them. Having been lauded as some of the finest English talent, it must have been particularly rage-making for them to realise that, actually, they weren’t that good. To have your face rubbed in it by a Frenchman, of all things, and one with elaborate facial hair, was simply too much to bear.
Since those invincible days, the French empire has declined a bit, but it hasn’t fallen completely. It’s not for nothing that Arsenal are sometimes called the biggest club in France. We’ve still got a French manager and French player
s, even though with Clichy going this summer Diaby is now our longest serving one – although it feels like he’s only played about five times. But, as the spending and youth policy has developed, we’ve become less French and more global, if that’s the right word. We don’t have the singular feel we once did. These days we have players from all over. Where before Arsene relied on players he knew from French football, now he relies of youthful potential, no matter where it comes from. Still, it’s not hard to see that a group of players from one nationality could come to dominate places in the first team. It could even be British; Walcott, Ramsey, Wilshire, Gibbs, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, could all form the core of the first team in the next few years. Who knows? One thing that is clear is that the shared French culture at Arsenal helped, for a few years, to make us the best team around. Let’s hope that a similar thing can happen again, wherever the next group come from. Hell, even if they’re all from Iceland I’d gladly eat a rotted shark roll at Ashburton Grove if they win us the league.
Skál!
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Jonathan Swan is the red and white sheep of a Spurs supporting family – he had to share his room with his brother and a life-sized model of Glenn Hoddle. He now writes about Arsenal as a kind of therapy.
23 – ON THE ARSENAL BEAT - John Cross
For a club known as the Bank of England, it was a period of immense change. After George Graham’s departure, Stewart Houston, Bruce Rioch and Pat Rice all took charge for brief spells at a club known for being stable, traditional and loyal. Arsenal were not used to the kind of scandal that went with Graham’s exit after he admitted taking a bung. His book’s title, ‘The Glory and The Grief’ said everything about the two sides to his memorable reign. But next was to come an even bigger change for Arsenal – the club’s first foreign manager in the guise of Frenchman Arsene Wenger.