So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (12 page)

There’s a tendency to lump the class of ’91 in with Graham’s cup kings of 1993 or even the side that conquered Europe a year later. But while those later sides leant heavily on defensive resilience and relied on Ian Wright to nick a goal, the ’91 team had verve in abundance. This was a time when Graham still trusted the likes of Limpar and Rocastle and picked passers as well as destroyers in midfield. That tally of 74 goals in 38 league games speaks for itself.

So if the ’91 side was dazzling as well as doughty, why else does it get overlooked? Bould thinks the timing of Arsenal’s triumph and the perception of the club back then are partly responsible. “We were very good that year,” he says. “We played every week thinking we couldn’t lose, there was a confidence about everybody. But people didn’t love football so much back then, the Premier League hadn’t formed and the game had yet to explode. All the exposure now is above and beyond what it used to be and I’m sure that’s one of the reasons why that ’91 team didn’t get that much notice. Football had been in troubled times, it was just coming out of the doldrums and all the attendances were nowhere near what they are now. On top of that we were everybody’s hated team at that time. I think Liverpool were perceived as the club that could play football while we were perceived to be journeymen and cloggers and not too pretty.”

Arsenal were certainly not as lovable then as they would be under Wenger and, although new football supporters had been wooed by Paul Gascoigne’s tears and England’s exhilarating run to the 1990 World Cup semi-finals, the toxic reputation the sport had built up during the Eighties would need slightly longer to shift. The razzmatazz of the Premier League – launched a year after Arsenal’s title success – brought families as well as casual fans on board. But at the turn of the decade it was less acceptable to like the team they called ‘Boring, boring Arsenal’ – a mocking chant that was ironically adopted by Gooners once Wenger, Dennis Bergkamp and the rest, had deliciously made their mark.

After the excitement of Italia ’90 – at least from an England perspective – perhaps the new wave of football fans weren’t ready for a team as supposedly rugged and methodical as Graham’s, or at least a team so dominant that drama was in far shorter supply than it had been in Turin when Bobby Robson’s side took on West Germany. A penalty shoot-out, larger-than-life personalities, a famous old rivalry and a dash of jingoism can capture the imagination where a 38-match machine-like march to the title cannot. Let’s be honest: for better or worse, Graham’s Arsenal did not boast a personality or superstar like Gascoigne. The ’91 title side was put together on a relative shoestring, with only the fees for new signings Limpar, Seaman and Linighan creeping into seven figures. And although Arsenal had the flair of Limpar, Merson and Rocastle, the foundations of their success – organisation, efficiency and collective strength – were reflected in the end-of-season awards. Gordon Strachan of Leeds and Manchester United duo Mark Hughes and Lee Sharpe walked off with the individual gongs while Arsenal’s own success remained very much a team effort. If you want more evidence, pop in your ‘Champions’ video from the 1990/91 campaign (kids, ask your parents about this) and fast forward (ditto) to the 5-0 win over Aston Villa late in the season. After surging into a four-goal lead you might expect Arsenal to ease off slightly but their harrying and tackling is as committed as ever, even when the game is won. Teamwork, flair, a miserly defence and a potent strike-force – is that enough for the ’91 team to be mentioned in the same breath as the finest Arsenal sides? If you’re still not convinced then consider this: it’s likely that no other title team has overcome such adversity in their quest for the championship.

Graham’s squad endured two savage blows in 1990/91 that could easily have derailed their ambitions and may well have proved terminal for lesser sides. First of all, their inspirational captain spent eight weeks of the season in prison after being found guilty of drink-driving. Jailed on December 19, Adams missed eight games – that’s more than 20 per cent of the league programme – before making his top-flight return at Anfield of all places. Would the ‘Invincibles’ have been invincible had Patrick Vieira spent 58 days in Chelmsford nick? Would history have been made in 1971 if Frank McLintock had been locked up for that long? Given that football is a game of fine margins, given that both were totemic figures, there would be plenty in the ‘no’ camp for that debate.

The 1991 side just got on with it. Linighan is best known for his 1993 FA Cup final heroics but he came in from the cold to partner Bould and help keep Arsenal’s title challenge on track. “I have to say that the biggest praise you can ever give is to Andy Linighan,” says Bould. “He had just been bought from Norwich for what was then considered a fair bit of money and he didn’t get straight into the team and he found it tough. Then Tony went to jail and in came Andy and it looked like he’d been involved in the system we were so used to since he was a kid. In many ways Tony wasn’t missed and that’s high praise for Andy. As for myself, well, I have to say I enjoyed the extra responsibility. No team is ever a one-man team, I don’t care who it is. Barcelona are not just Lionel Messi. Everybody has a job and sometimes you have to pitch in and if our captain was missing then you have to have a go.” It’s worth pointing out that Adams’ incarceration coincided with Arsenal’s sole defeat of the league season – that 2-1 reverse at Chelsea. Would that have been avoided, and history made, if the captain had been around? Quite possibly.

Adams wasn’t the only one in trouble that season: the entire club found itself in the dock in the wake of the infamous Old Trafford brawl. It all kicked off during the first half of Arsenal’s 1-0 win in October – secured by an audacious strike from that man Limpar – with only Seaman keeping his distance while protagonists and peacemakers pushed and protested. The Football Association came down hard on both clubs but especially Arsenal, docking them two points. It was an unprecedented punishment and one at which Bould still bridles. “It was ridiculous,” he says. “It certainly wasn’t worth two points for misconduct, it was an absolute joke, it was a few handbags at dawn. It was ridiculous but again we weren’t a very well-liked club at the time, I think people thought Arsenal were a bit stuffy but I don’t know why. Two points off was scandalous.” Winterburn admits that the residual bad feeling between the sides probably stemmed from his run-in with Brian McClair during an FA Cup tie at Highbury in 1988. “I was involved in the tackle with Denis Irwin that started it all off but what went on after that wasn’t my fault,” he says. “I was lying on the ground and I got a couple of kicks in the back and fair play because it was competitive. It did seem harsh to have points taken away but maybe the FA wanted to set a precedent. We just felt ‘it’s happened, let’s get on with it’.”

And get on with it they did. Arsenal’s domination rendered the points deduction obsolete – they could have had another seven removed and still been crowned champions. Once again, one has to ask if other sides might have responded differently to such a sense of injustice. The Invincibles, for example, saw their title defence crumble after a handful of bad refereeing calls brought their record 49-game unbeaten run to an end at Old Trafford in October 2004. Would they have been shaken or stirred by a points deduction? We’ll never know, of course, but this is certain: the ’91 side had the character to turn a negative into a positive by using their punishment to foster a siege mentality within the squad. “George loved it to be fair,” recalls Bould. “Every day when we came in he’d remind us that people didn’t like us. ‘It’s us against the world,’ he used to say. We had that kind of siege mentality as a group.” Adams agrees. “What happened at Old Trafford spoke volumes about our character,” he wrote in Addicted. The captain demonstrated Arsenal’s ‘us versus them’ mentality in a less-than-subtle manner when he flicked V-signs at QPR’s fans after a late comeback at Loftus Road a matter of days after the points deduction had been handed down. And the fans soon joined in. One of the most boisterous chants at Highbury on the day Arsenal won the title? “Stick your two points up your arse!” Fittingly, Manchester United were the visitors.

Those incidents did nothing for Arsenal’s reputation of course and that’s one reason why the Invincibles will always win a popularity contest with the ’91 vintage. But they have more in common than you might think. For starters neither side fulfilled its potential. Thirteen years before Wenger’s team squandered a golden chance of Champions League glory by running out of steam against Chelsea, Graham’s men fluffed their lines in that FA Cup semi-final against a Gascoigne-powered Spurs. Having won their respective titles so convincingly, neither side could live up to their own high standards in the years that followed. “That was a big disappointment,” admits Bould. “The following year was a really poor year. We never got going in the league until it was too late and, although we had the cup successes in 1993 and 1994, the group should have done better than it did.”

All the same, the ‘91 team deserves to be held in the same high regard as that most revered of Arsenal sides. It was more secure in defence; more productive up front and so nearly cornered the market in invincibility long before Thierry Henry was cutting a swathe through defences. If Ruud van Nistelrooy had smashed his penalty six inches lower in September 2003, if Adams had been a free man in February 1991 … on such fine margins are legends built. Not that Bould is overly concerned. “It could have been us but I’m not sure I like the tag anyway!” he says. “Everybody gets carried away giving people and teams and clubs tags. We didn’t have the style of the Invincibles team – they raised the bar I think – but although we weren’t as exciting to watch as some of Arsene Wenger’s teams, we had good players, we were a really good unit and perhaps we never got the praise we should have done.”

So it’s time to put the record straight and finally give the ’91 side the credit it deserves. They weren’t just another title side; they were special. The stats and conditions of their triumph bear that out. If you don’t think great achievements are ever forgotten, remember this: when Arsenal fans were asked to pick their favourite centre backs of all time in an online poll in 2011, Frank McLintock – the inspirational Double-winning skipper of ’71 no less – could not even force his way into the top five. Old-school legends get edged out by modern-day heroes, and if the high-water mark of Graham’s reign is already hazy, those recollections will fade even further as the years roll on.

Anniversaries of Arsenal’s most significant moments keep those memories alive. In 2011 the club quite rightly marked 40 years since its first Double and a decade since the tragic death of David Rocastle. But strangely, there was no celebration of the team that broke records and made history in 1991. So please don’t forget Graham’s finest. They might not have been the most attractive Arsenal side of all time – but they might just have been the most effective.

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Chris Harris has worked for Arsenal since 2002. His Dad took him to his first game at Highbury in 1983 – it was Tony Adams’ debut – and he can never thank him enough.

11 – ARSENAL AND FAMILY - Sian Ranscombe

I am from an Arsenal family. I mean, I suppose we are all from an Arsenal family collectively, but I have the double whammy, like many of us, of having also grown up in a house full of Arsenal supporters. There are both pros and cons to this situation. The pros are, of course, that there is no ribbing from any annoying little Spud brothers post-defeat, nor any dinnertime debates as to whether Ferguson is better than Wenger. Also, following a big win, it’s like the button of loveliness has been pressed – everyone is happier, morning cereal tastes better, the house feels brighter, the sofa cushions feel fatter. The cons on the other hand, are that there is no escaping the misery when times are tough. None whatsoever.

My sister has actually been known to announce at the beginning of a family gathering: “There will be no football discussion tonight”. It’s not because she doesn’t like football – she loves it – it’s simply for the sake of our own sanity. Shepherd’s pie turns into a board meeting. Sausage hotpot becomes an argument over who is being deluded and who is being a doomer-gloomer. It is a fundamental part of life in the Ranscombe house, and has been for a long old time.

In spite of having Arsenal in the veins, my sister and I were never pushed into becoming Gooners. It might seem a bit sexist but maybe if we’d been boys we’d have been straight up to Highbury as soon as our little legs could toddle. I knew I was an Arsenal fan and that they played in red and white and that I was supposed to cheer for them, but that was about as far as it went. I even remember seeing interviews with Le Boss back in 1996 (I was seven), and seeing the words ‘Arsène Wenger, Arsenal Manager’ underneath, and truly believing ‘Arsène Wenger’ was French for ‘Arsenal Manager’. When I realised this was not the case – though in a way I still feel like it is – I simply assumed that Arsenal had been named after him. My first ever match at Highbury came in August 2000, against Charlton Athletic. We won 5-3. I went with my mum, my dad and my sister. I remember climbing the stairs to the West Stand and catching my first glimpse of the pitch. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, and I mean that to sound a lot more genuine than I’m sure it does. 

My mum Teresa, who is from Holloway Road, went to her first match on Boxing Day in 1966 with her Uncle Patsy and her brother Kevin. She and Kev were sent in through the schoolboys’ entrance with two shillings (10p, apparently). Once through, there was a gate to the North Bank manned by a steward. If the steward knew your dad or your uncle, he’d let you through. By comparison, for my first match we had the tickets in our hands days before kick off. No stewards recognised my dad and 10p would have got me no further than a tenth of a bag of sweets from the man who sells them outside the stadium.