So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (28 page)

Seventeen years with nothing perhaps puts the current run into perspective. But it leads me to ask you whether there have ever been any particularly dark periods in the years here – times when you thought the outlook was bleak.

There have certainly been times where you think the light’s been switched off, yes. But, honestly, it’s always been a great place to work and it’s the sort of job you wouldn’t be able to do unless you absolutely loved it. It’s more than a nine-to-five – the demands can be huge. I remember we’d be working over eighty hours a week regularly, for nearly six years, when we were working on the new stadium. I remember Danny once asking: “Do you feel tired?”

I said, “I do, a little bit,” and he then told me we’d worked eighty-seven hours that week. So that, in particular, was a very challenging time.

We were starting meetings at lawyers’ offices at 8am and I’d sometimes put my key in my lock back home at six-o’clock the following morning. My son was living with us at the time as his house was being decorated – one morning I gingerly put the key in the door so as not to wake anybody. He came down the stairs and asked “What time do you call this?!”

It was exactly what I’d been saying to him all his life.

That’s astonishing…

Well, for me it’s been a privilege. I’ve been so lucky to be involved with a club like this. We’ve worked as a team, we’ve had a great unit off the pitch and it’s always been ‘we’ rather than ‘me’.

The ‘we’ includes countless memorable characters from down the years, of course – does anyone in particular spring to mind?

I remember an old guy that worked in the ticket office when I first started – somebody came in and said they’d like to buy two seats for the weekend and asked if there would be a post in front of the seats. The chap said sternly: “Sir, I would remind you that our stand is supported by voluntary contribution only!” There were so many characters like that that maybe you wouldn’t get today. Then there were people like Denis Hill-Wood, Peter’s father – he was a great personality and loved by everyone, a real part of the Club’s fabric. And there are the ex-players, too, those who keep coming back and being a part of that we do. We still see the 1970/71 guys on a regular basis for example, and others from down the years too. Arthur Shaw is now 84 and he still comes in regularly. That affinity, that love, really counts for something.

And then, of course, there was Danny…

A phenomenon. What he did was phenomenal. He gave up so much, and probably lost a lot of money personally, in devoting the same eighty-odd hours a week – bearing in mind he had quite a big business to run too. He was utterly devoted to the Club, loved it – he’d wear the same red socks to every match through superstition, and we went to every game together home and away. He was a great, great character and a lovely, lovely man.

What makes Arsenal, the club of which you are such an enduring symbol, differ from others?

It’s the people that make the Club. The fans make it, the manager makes it and all the people that work for it make it. We have a set of values that I think are treasured, and we should never lose sight of those values – they were laid in place some eighty or ninety years ago by the Hill-Wood family and have been perpetuated ever since. I suppose if I’m to take credit for anything it’s for playing a part in continuing those traditions. Tradition doesn’t pay the wages but it’s a very important part of the structure, the fabric, of the Club.

Here’s an example. In 1939, players going off to the war were granted bonuses of £500 – a big thing back then. These bonuses were to be loaned back to the club at two-percent, so actually they never got the money. That came to light in the early 1980’s – the chairman found out and I was told to go back and find as many of these ex-players as we could. We then compounded that money and paid them some forty years on. That’s one real-life instance of the values we seek to live by.

The number of managers you’ve worked with here is in double figures, but you and Arsène have been particularly close…

It’s been a great time. He’s good at everything, one of those people you wish you hated! We were once in a meeting with people of four or five nationalities and he just kept changing languages effortlessly. Once or twice he’s shaken me – we might have a relatively obscure player recommended and he’d reel off the chap’s full professional and personal details off the top of his head. We were in Spain recently and he knew twenty of the players on the teamsheet, everything about them. He has a phenomenal football brain and can discuss any other subject you like with remarkable aplomb. I’ve travelled all over the place with him and he’s never lost his temper with anyone! It goes without saying that we’ve been so lucky to have him, and the day he decides to leave us will certainly be one of the saddest days.

On the other side of this corridor, it’s possible to look out onto the bridge that was named after you last year. Could you ever have imagined it?

It’s a bit embarrassing; I’ll have to catch the people responsible! We’d planned what we’d do to commemorate Danny, then the meeting was stopped and an addendum announced that a decision had been made to name the second bridge after me. I don’t even remember what I said at the opening ceremony – but I think it was along the lines of “when I started I thought the only thing they’d ever name after me was a coat-hanger.” Needless to say, someone gave me one of my very own with my name on it the other day! But it’s incredibly flattering to have a bridge named after me – now I just need planning permission for a toll at either end of it!

And as you cross that bridge daily, walking between Highbury House and the stadium, do you feel that you have as much energy as ever?

Well I’ve cut back now; it’s just sixty hours a week! No, I’m still here every morning before 8 – I try not to stay into the evening as the pressure isn’t there to do so. But look, I work because I love the place and the people. I still get a great kick out of it, and am probably the luckiest guy alive to still be doing what I’ve always loved to do.

***

The interview reaches its natural conclusion, we say our goodbyes and instantly, after shutting the office door on my way out, I hear Mr Friar returning one of the calls he’s evidently missed during our conversation. Six hours of the working day still remain; not a second will be wasted, because not one ever has been. The landscape upon which his labour of love sits may have changed forever, but a man whose term of service extends well beyond the combined ages of Theo Walcott, Jack Wilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is not planning to wind down any time soon.

***

Nick Ames is a journalist for Arsenal Football Club

26 – WE’RE ON OUR WAY - Andrew Allen

“
We can be proud ... we can be so proud.”

Thierry Henry, 17 May 2006, Paris.

In the 24 years that I’ve been watching Arsenal, I have come to realise that there is no uniformity in the way one deals with defeat. There have been results that have left me fuming with anger and frustration, beatings that have moistened the eyes, setbacks met with casual shoulder shrugs and losses confronted with gallows humour.

Defeat to Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League Final, however, stands alone. Perhaps it was the romantic Parisian setting, or maybe a hangover from the sentimental farewell to Highbury just days before; but where pain should have pulsed through my veins in the aftermath of Juliano Belletti’s winner, there was instead pride and an unadulterated sense of belonging.

Yes, Arsenal had fallen at the final hurdle, but the manner in which the race had been run up to that point was nothing short of heroic. Deliciously dynamic, nail-bitingly ugly, robust, exhilarating and so often gut-wrenching; the twelve games on the road to the Stade de France had come in all shapes and sizes and seen minnows and giants banished alike.

The Final Farewell

From the moment a date was set for the move to the Emirates Stadium, the countdown to an emotional Highbury send-off became an unavoidable reality. After 93-years making a home betwixt its glorious Art Deco facades, few expected to walk away from their favoured turnstile without a tear or two. Acknowledging the importance of tipping collective caps at the achievements of days gone by, and recognising the merchandising potential of paying respect to Highbury’s history, Arsene Wenger’s men were kitted out in a commemorative redcurrant home shirt which echoed the strip sported by their antecedents of 1913.

As reigning FA Cup champions and with the record-breaking 49 game unbeaten run still fresh in the memory, expectations were high that domestic success would add an extra gloss to proceedings come May. Regrettably, it was not to be so. While Highbury remained a fortress in the league until mid-December, a poor run of away results proved to be the club’s downfall. By the New Year thoughts of winning a 14th title had been supplanted by worries that neighbours Tottenham Hotspur might pip the club to fourth place in the table.   

Continental Salvation

It was therefore to the continent Arsenal looked for salvation. Awaiting them in the group stage, Swiss side, FC Thun; Dutch giants, Ajax; and Czech outfit, Sparta Prague.

While qualifying for the Champions League had posed little problem during the Arsene Wenger era, progressing past the quarter-final stage had proved nigh on impossible. Valencia and Chelsea took turns to dash hopes of European glory when momentum seemed to be building in 2001 and 2004 and making that even more painful for Arsenal fans was the fact that both Manchester United and an unbelievably gutsy Liverpool side had both claimed the big-eared trophy either side of two Premier League coronations in North London. While a sense of entitlement grew year-on-year, so too did the pain of inevitable let-downs. It almost felt like the club had developed a kryptonite aversion to success in Europe’s premiere knockout competition.

There was little sign of an end to the malaise as the Clock End timepiece struck 9.37pm on 14th September 2005. Down to ten men in the first group game against Swiss minnows, FC Thun, and with the scores locked at 1-1, the Gunners looked nothing like potential competition frontrunners. That was until substitute Dennis Bergkamp tenaciously wriggled free in the penalty box, lost the ball, retrieved it and calmly slotted home to seal three morale-boosting points in the third minute of injury time.

Having sold the talismanic Patrick Vieira to Juventus during pre-season, Thierry Henry and Gilberto Silva struggling with injuries and Jens Lehmann and Robin van Persie suspended, there was a makeshift look to the spine of Arsenal’s side by the time they visited the Amsterdam Arena for the second group game versus Ajax. Luckily, the depth of Wenger’s squad saw him able to call on ‘Invincible’ stalwarts Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg; both of whom netted on the way to a creditable 2-1 win. We didn’t know it at the time but Markus Rosenburg’s reply for Ajax in the 71st minute was to be the last goal conceded for 995 minutes.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man

Struggling with a groin injury for the majority of the first two months of the season, Thierry Henry had been treated with kid-gloves by the Arsenal medical team. However, eager to ensure progression to the knockout stage by securing the magic nine-point marker as quickly as possible, the striker was a surprise inclusion on the Gunners’ bench when Wenger’s patched-up side travelled to the Czech Republic to face Sparta Prague. Having scored a brace against Fulham in late August, Henry spent a full six-weeks frustratingly sitting one short of Ian Wright’s 185 goal scoring record. As expectations mounted in the press and on the terraces, there was great hope that like Wright before him, the landmark would be reached in front of a packed Highbury.

It wasn’t to be quite so poetic, but that isn’t to say that reaching and surpassing the milestone in Prague was devoid of a quixotic edge. Unsheathed from the blankets of the bench to replace the injured Jose Antonio Reyes in the 15th minute, Henry put in one of those individual performances that to this day makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Socks rolled above his knees, the gloved musketeer reclaimed the captain’s armband from Gilberto and set about his business with gusto.

Inside four minutes he made his mark. Superbly controlling a long ball by Kolo Toure, he swivelled on the edge of the Sparta box and in one balletic movement curled an unstoppable shot into the back of the net with the outside of his right foot. The pitch-level camera angle did the goal particular justice, capturing the swerved path the ball followed around a defender, as it veered outside the left-hand post and dipped with pace past the keeper. It was a superb effort and indicative of the quality Henry had demonstrated since arriving from Juventus in the summer of 1999. He thumped his chest with pride and glared with his trademark Gallic haughtiness; it was goal number 185.

In the second half, his scowls turned to beaming smiles. Even ‘Titi’, ever the coolest of cats, wasn’t able to mask his joy at becoming Arsenal’s greatest ever goal-scorer. Receiving a delightful through ball from his partner in va-va voom, Robert Pires, he bore down on goal with two defenders to his rear and the Sparta keeper racing off his line. Having scored from similar scenarios countless times before, he was never going to miss and calmly slotted the ball home with the aid of a slight deflection. Well aware of what he’d just done, but also conscious that the moment may have slipped the attention of others, he beckoned his teammates to celebrate with him. They were all too happy to pass on their congratulations.