So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (11 page)

I don’t mean this theory of the potential for nigh-instantaneous consensus should lead you to believe Arsenal fans are all one happy family, sitting around a figurative camp-fire holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” to the strum of imaginary ukuleles. The hive-mind is not without its divisions. A glance at the work of Arsenal’s voluntary chroniclers will show you a diverse range of opinions on the direction of the club, the board, and above all the manager. There are plenty of fascinating and genuinely worthwhile debates, and here we encounter another strength of the medium – the opportunity for interaction and response. For the most part, opposing views are expressed eloquently and respectfully. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. The bigger your stadium is the more pigeons will gather in the rafters to shit on you from the darkness, and as Arsenal’s online universe has grown, so has it begun to include some rather unsavoury elements. Conflict, history will tell you, is a necessary counterpart to expansion.

Take Twitter, which works as a microcosmic example of this trend. As an up-and-coming social network, it was once the preserve of erudite media folk – the landed gentry of the online world – who crafted their 140 character messages with elegance and wit, gaily skipping through the digital meadows and high-fiving each other as they swapped #FFs back and forth. In recent months, however, it seems someone has opened a portal from the online asylum that is YouTube comments. Into Twitter have poured the trolls and other creatures that surely belong only in Norse mythology, spouting bile and throwing insults and tantrums in equal measure. It is a pattern reflected across the web. Eventually, these Internet hooligans will find you.

I don’t, of course, mean you, dear reader. In purchasing this book alone you have demonstrated yourself to be a considered and excellent sort. I am certain you are reading this on some idyllic veranda, chugging peacefully on a pipe whilst planning a scheme to simultaneously end world hunger and the recession. There are, however, less discerning Arsenal fans out there; ones capable of mutating debate into division.  Tribal behaviour is common in both football and online communities, so we ought not be surprised by it, but it’s a shame when Arsenal fans turn on each other. A spectrum of opinion is reductively bludgeoned into a two-way scrap.

In the eyes of some, fans fall into one of two categories: either in thrall to the Gallic charms of Arsene Wenger, or one whose outlook is that of permanent doom. Inevitably, it is the negative shouts that are heard loudest. It’s a shame, because the animosity threatens to turn what ought to be an erudite assembly in to a mud fight.  The tribalism in football fans is most productive when directed outwards, not inwards.  It ought to be “Us vs Them”, not “Us vs Us”.  It’s also something of an abuse of the opportunity for collaboration and communication presented to us.

I opened up by talking about how the match-day experience has shifted for those inside the ground, but the most dramatic changes have been for those fans outside the borders of the stadium and, even more so; the country. Arsenal have millions of fans across the world, and only 60,000 of them can file through the Emirates’ electronic turnstiles. There are plenty outside of these confines who are equally as committed, and just as heartfelt in their support. They kick every ball in Beirut, and feel every tackle in Tokyo. The incredible response of the fans in Asia during our tour in the summer of 2011 seemed a surprise to players and staff alike, but won’t have been to webmasters who’ve witnessed a consistent flow of traffic to their sites from that part of the world. The game has gone global, and Arsenal have too. 

The online activity I’ve described acts as both the fuel and the evidence of that growth, feeding an ever-expanding frenzy. Gooners all around the globe are closer to the game than they’ve ever been before, able to follow Arsenal without missing a beat. Local fans benefit too. The emergence of Twitter is reversing the economics-driven alienating effect that threatened to destroy the bond between players and fans.  Now there are opportunities for genuine interaction with our heroes, which seemed unthinkable only a few years ago.

We’re all joined up; players, fans, and journalists, and more.  In the case of Arsenal, it is an incredible community, unmatched in English football, and I’m delighted to have spent almost a decade as part of it. Arsenal built the Emirates for 60,000; the web has built a stadium that can hold us all. But there are no stewards here: let’s not let the infighting spoil it for ourselves.

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James McNicholas began blogging about all things Arsenal at Gunnerblog.com in 2004.

10 – ALL HAIL THE ALMOST INVINCIBLES - Chris Harris

What makes some title teams more memorable than others?

Drama, for starters. What Arsenal fan will ever forget Anfield ’89, Mickey Thomas, ‘It’s up for grabs now!’ and all that? Then there’s the venue. Win the league at White Hart Lane or Old Trafford and you can brag about it forever. So that’s 1971, 2002 and 2004 covered, in case you needed reminding. A long wait for glory also lubricates the celebrations. Arsenal supporters were positively gagging for the title after the 18-year hiatus in 1971 and, coincidentally, the same delay before 1989; while a seven-year itch was scratched in 1998.

Of course there’s history too. Turn a title into a Double – as Arsenal did in ’71, ’98 and ’02 – and there’s less chance of it falling down the back of your memory bank. And if you go an entire season unbeaten … well, that pretty much guarantees immortality. So spare a thought for the class of 1991. It’s more than 20 years since George Graham’s squad cavorted around Highbury with the championship trophy – not to mention a rather uglier pot from the sponsors – but this particular title can slip the mind when Arsenal fans recall the highs of their supporting lives.

Why? Well, the ’91 success wasn’t laced with drama: Arsenal wrapped up the title with two games to spare. It wasn’t won at the home of a fierce rival; in fact, Graham’s side wasn’t even on the pitch when they became impossible to catch. The fans, though ever grateful for a title to celebrate, were hardly strangers to the experience after the magic of Anfield two years prior (the chance to Double-up was scuppered by an uncharacteristic cup blip). Without the special ingredients needed to extend its shelf life, the ’91 title can get overlooked when the conversation turns to Arsenal’s finest. But that’s unfair because the statistics and circumstances suggest that Graham’s second championship team was as potent as any post-war Gunners’ side – with the possible exception of the bar-raising, history-shredding Invincibles.

Ah, the Invincibles. We’ll never forget them, will we? And yet they might have been scrabbling around for another label had a depleted Arsenal side nicked another goal at Chelsea in February 1991 and avoided the solitary league defeat they suffered that year. Yes, Graham was that close to beating Arsene Wenger to the punch by 13 years. Either way, his team did suffer fewer defeats than any other top-flight side in the 20th century – a magnificent achievement.

Assuming some readers weren’t old enough – or even alive enough – to enjoy the 1990/91 campaign in all its majesty, it’s worth recapping how Arsenal won the league. They had, frankly, flopped the previous season following that incredible high at Anfield in ’89, but were re-energised by a clutch of new signings – David Seaman, Anders Limpar and Andy Linighan – not to mention the hunger of those who had missed out on the World Cup finals in Italy. Tony Adams, Alan Smith and David Rocastle all failed to make the cut when Bobby Robson named his England squad and the Arsenal captain felt he had a point to prove. “Being omitted from the squad that summer probably did me, and perhaps even Alan and David, a power of good in Arsenal terms. I was fresh and full of determination to prove people wrong,” Adams wrote in his autobiography, Addicted.

Having formed a strong pre-season bond in Scandinavia, Arsenal hit the ground running in August. Wimbledon were beaten 3-0 at Plough Lane on the opening day (a good omen: Graham’s side kicked off their 1988/89 campaign in the same manner at the same ground) and the Gunners eventually hauled in early pacesetters, Liverpool, inflicting the champions’ first league defeat of the season in December. They did so in style as Paul Merson’s cute back-heel set up Smith for a show-stealing strike to clinch a 3-0 win at Highbury.

Arsenal led the First Division by New Year’s Day and eventually stretched their club record unbeaten run from the start of the campaign to 23 games, before going down at Chelsea in February. But they atoned for that aberration at Anfield a few weeks later as Seaman kept John Barnes and company at bay before Merson’s cool finish earned a decisive 1-0 win. It represented a changing of the guard as Liverpool, for so long the dominant force in English football but unsettled by the resignation of manager Kenny Dalglish, ceded power to Graham’s men. That was no mean feat: for anyone growing up in the Eighties, Liverpool had been pretty much untouchable at home and in Europe.

Arsenal looked set for a Double and, although those dreams were extinguished by Tottenham in a horrible FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, the title duly arrived on May 6 in rather more humdrum circumstances than one might have expected. Liverpool’s defeat at Nottingham Forest meant that Graham’s team were champions when they took to the pitch to face Manchester United an hour later at Highbury. Smith scored a hat trick in a 3-1 win to edge himself closer to the Golden Boot, but, next to the drama of Anfield ’89, this had the air of an exhibition match. By the time the champagne corks had popped and the parade around Islington was in full flow, the bare facts were these: Played 38 Won 24 Drew 13 Lost 1 For 74 Against 18 Goal Difference +56 Points 83.

The stingiest defence in Arsenal history got the plaudits and rightly so – no other top-flight side has kept as many as 24 clean sheets nor conceded as few as 18 goals. The quartet of Lee Dixon, Tony Adams, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn had lined up together for the first time in 1988 and, after two years of Graham-flavoured intensity and repetition on the training pitch they were a fearsome unit, with a strong supporting cast in David O’Leary and Linighan.

Then there was Seaman. Arsenal fans had been up in arms about the proposed move for the Queen’s Park Rangers goalkeeper in 1990 – “We all agree, Lukic is better than Seaman” was a regular refrain on the Highbury terraces – but Graham knew what he was doing. “I still think John Lukic is one of the top five keepers in the country. I just think David Seaman’s the best,” he insisted. And he was right, of course, proving his players wrong as well as some supporters. “I had not realised David was as good as he was when he was at QPR,” wrote Adams in Addicted. “And the defence was so familiar, it was practically unbreachable at times. Steve Bould was simply outstanding. In footballing terms he was next to impassable.” Winterburn agrees: “Nothing will have the drama of the 1989 title but 1991 was special because in particular the back four was built-in,” he recalled. “At that time I felt it was impossible to go unbeaten but we gave it a good shot. Under George we were just a clinical team that had the right formation to win; we were almost a machine.”

Arsenal’s defensive meanness was legendary. But perhaps more surprisingly, the ’91 vintage scored more times than the revered, free-flowing Invincibles and boasts the best goal difference of any post-war Arsenal side. Another of Graham’s defensive kingpins, Bould, thinks that side’s attacking verve is too often overlooked. “Rocky [Rocastle] was still at the club, Mickey Thomas was there, Paul Davis too, we had some talented footballers, it wasn’t just about the defence and keeping clean sheets,” he says. “The style was rather rigid because that’s the way George wanted us to play – he wanted it tight, he wanted to win 1-0 and not 4-3. But as it happened we had good players and we scored a hell of a lot of goals that season – I think we scored a lot of fours and fives as well as a six against Coventry on the final day. It was a good side, we were tight at the back and we had some flair up front.”

As it happens, Rocastle, so influential two years earlier, spent much of the 1990/91 campaign nursing injuries, but Thomas and Davis offered energy and vision from the centre, while Merson’s pace and flair complemented the prolific Smith’s more prosaic qualities up front. As is often the case, one or two players emerged during the season to play a notable role: for Nicolas Anelka, Chris Wreh and Alex Manninger in 1998, read David Hillier and Kevin Campbell in 1991. The former added ballast to the midfield while the latter’s raw power and pace was a sight to behold when he broke into the Arsenal side during the run-in. It certainly might surprise those who saw Campbell labouring towards the end of his career.

And of course there was Limpar. Signed from Italian side Cremonese for £1million, the original ‘Super Swede’ was Graham’s trump card and, in the words of commentator Martin Tyler, “the man they are calling their new match winner”. Limpar sprinkled magic dust on Arsenal’s title charge, scoring and making goals, while bewildering defences up and down the country. In a time when overseas signings still had a novelty value, before the trickle of imports became a flood, Limpar’s flair and freshness turned heads. “We had Anders to give us that little bit of magic,” recalls Bould. “The first time we actually saw him in a game was in the pre-season Makita Tournament at Wembley in 1990. He scored against Aston Villa, he smashed this one into the top corner having beaten about 18 players and we thought, ‘Jesus Christ! Who’s this kid?’ Anders wouldn’t have really been George’s kind of player, or so we imagined, but he had that magic about him and it’s quite sad that he didn’t go on and have a seven or eight-year career at Arsenal. He looked like he was going to be a real top player year-in year-out for the club, he was like a little George Best when he first arrived and he was brilliant for 18 months to two years but then never really pushed on.” Winterburn was a big fan too. “We met up with Anders in Sweden and he had great ability, really quick feet. He was absolutely sensational at the start of his Arsenal career; defenders could not get near him for long periods of games with his movement. He had pace as well and was a terrific player to play alongside. We were very organised, we pressed, we were hard to beat, and we were introducing a little bit of flair with Anders.”