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A Wenger Wonder It’s been a long time since I returned to this series. Mostly because they are the hardest to write as I have to try to pump a whole season into one column, and decide what to mention and what not. Also I have to try and remember how I felt at the time and it is surprising, I remember better my emotions when I was a kid. I think because nowadays you can get football 24/7 and I would have seen virtually every match and can’t really remember too much of it. Such is the joy of being a writer. Wenger gave us hope and big matches with a weaker side than any he had had before It was a big year though. Many momentous things happened. We also never really threatened the Premier League too much and we didn’t win any trophies, in fact we hadn’t won anything since the Invincibles year. Even the shiny new Emirates stadium was going to be 3 years old. By the way, it is heading closer to 20 years now, the time flies. The Emirates brought us up and brought us down The Emirates has been the colossus that defines us since it was built. The big trophies are in the past and paying for it was painful in these years. We were not good enough, it is as simple as that. And we couldn’t buy to make us at the top. We relied totally on Wenger’s genius to give us hope every year but that was all we had, and it is still all we have, today, hope. We needed it to stay competitive but we couldn't afford the right players We still had a pretty good season, one the Spuds would love, or Manchester United at the moment. I will go through the various trophies and see how we did. I know most of you lived through this season, although for the younger ones you probably saw things differently. I understood that we had to get a bigger stadium with a far bigger commercial footprint to stay competitive. The Kroenkes had appeared as minor shareholders the year before but I didn’t see them as likely to ever take over. It seemed to me that money was their only motive and top Premier League teams were cash cows. I got that wrong. American owners do not have a great track record in England and that is still mostly the case. But the Kroenkes have improved us. That cannot be denied. Do they have the ambition to get us to the top? We shall see. The ins and outs weren’t too bad But first the players in 2008. We got rid of some top guys, Jens Lehman, Mathieu Flamini, Alex Hleb, Gilberto Silva, along with Justin Hoyte, but the only good sale was Hleb for £11,900,000 to Barcelona. The rest were frees or for little. The most exciting for me was Andrey Arshavin, who I really loved as a player. I truly felt he was top, and was the type of player we needed. He cost big money at £15,000,000 and we also bought Samir Nasri, who I knew little about, for £12,000,000 and Aaron Ramsey for £4,800,000. Amaury Bischoff came but rarely played but the biggest niggle for me was hiring Mikael Silvestre from Man Utd. He was past his best and showed we had little ambition by taking Utd rejects. He never did too much at Arsenal. Aaron we loved but Nasri? Uh-uh In fairness to Nasri, he came and showed he was good, he played most games, scored a few goals. You all know how it finally ended for him so I won’t talk too much about him, other than to say he was good. Aaron Ramsey became a fan favourite, everyone loved him. He played at 100%, always gave his best but injuries were the bane of his life. I was sad when he left. At his best he was really impressive. We will always love Andrey Arshavin for this Arshavin came in January so was not an ever present but there was one thing he did in his first season that defined him for Arsenal supporters. He went to Anfield and scored four goals, the first and only time in his career he managed 4. Injuries probably stopped him becoming a true Gooner great but it was the same for so many players post Invincibles. Tomas Rosicky, Diaby, Walcott, Wilshere, Eduardo, Carlos Vela, Alex Song, Lord Bendtner and others who were on our books at this time all had bad or persistent injuries to contend with. It is a wonder Wenger kept us competitive. Fast out of the blocks And so to the pitch. We started well winning 4 out of our first five and were briefly top. Hope sprang in our hearts only to be plucked away with 4 defeats and 2 draws in our next nine. 4th place was the best we did after that. Aaron Ramsey became a fan favourite You will all remember the astonishing long unbeaten spell we then had in the league. From the 30th November 2008 when we beat Chelsea 2-1 at Stamford Bridge to May 10th 2009 when Chelsea beat us 4-1 at the Emirates, we never tasted defeat. Defeats by Stoke, Fulham, Hull, Man City and Villa before then, plus lots of draws (the famous 4-4 at Liverpool in April) had done for us long before then. We ended up 4th on 72 points a long way behind Man Utd on 90, Liverpool on 86 and Chelsea on 83. We fell too far behind at the start to get up there and challenge. So there was little hope in that season other than our strong finish gave us hope for next season. Ah, what it is like to be a Gooner. Our only sustenance is hope. A penalty shootout to test our hearts The Champions League was good for us, though. Hope jumped up as we thrashed Twente in the first playoff. Then we had no-one to frighten us in Porto, Dynamo Kyiv and Fenerbahce in the group stage. We advanced nicely to qualification and then Wenger put out a weakened team against Porto, our main rivals in the final game, as he always did once we had qualified. Despite thrashing them 4-0 at home, they won 2-0 in that match and we came second, meaning we faced a group winner in the knock-out. That was Roma and we won 1-0 at the Emirates but they returned the score at the Stadio Olimpico giving us a heart-stopping penalty shootout after Eduardo missed the first. Luckily, Vucinuc missed their second to ease the pressure. It kept on till the 8th when Tonetto missed and Diaby became our hero. Man Utd were better than us We tossed aside Villareal in the next 4-1 on aggregate. But then came the semi-final and Manchester United, soon to be champions and well above us in the league. John O’Shea fired in a goal to give them a 1-0 lead to take to the Emirates. Did that mean we had a chance? I didn’t really think so. They had Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez, Berbatov, Park and Giggs to choose from as forwards. We had Lord Bendtner! We did have Van Persie, Adebayor and Walcott but we were well inferior everywhere. Fabregas would have got his game for them but maybe no-one else. They won 3-1 at the Emirates and that was the closest Wenger was to get to the final after that. We were clearly behind and we needed something big to happen to get us back to the top. We no longer had this class of player as the 2009 Champions League final I should mention that Barcelona clearly beat Man Utd in the final and they were better again than them and us. We were truly falling behind in class. Chelsea beat us twice at the end of 2009 and were also better than us Burnley beat us 2-0 in the League Cup but we did get to the semi-final of the FA Cup against Chelsea, we had hope when Walcott fired in an early goal but then Malouda equalized and our hate figure from Chelsea, Didier Drogba lashed in a late goal to give them the win and extinguish our dream of a trophy. Stan made his move but Wenger was still the master It is important, at this point, to say that Stan Kroenke increased his share to 28.3% in May 2009 making him the biggest shareholder. I didn’t like him as I felt Americans knew nothing about soccer and I favoured Alisher Usmanov the Russian billionaire simply because I felt he would understand football. I guess we are all glad I was wrong as surely Usmanov would have been kicked out like Abramovich. It didn't work out between Arsene and Stan But that is where we were, the team were a definite downgrade on the Invincibles, injuries were a constant problem and ownership was full of uncertainty. Somehow, with all that, Arsene Wenger got us to 2 major semi-finals and qualified us for the Champions League. Thank you belatedly Professor even though the fans weren’t happy, you had achieved a miracle. You kept giving us hope.

You’re havin’ a laugh, Arsenal I decided to hunt out funny Arsenal quotes to give us a bit of a break from all the doom and gloom at the moment. Arteta out, Arsenal are rubbish, the players don’t know how to play -until we win a few matches and then we are the greatest again. We are the team with the best average points ever in the English top flight, we have the longest unbroken spell in the top flight, we have a gold Premier League trophy, and the first successful foreign manager in English football. We also have some funny men. I bet you didn’t know that Arsene Wenger couldn’t count – “Manuel Almunia took the criticism and responded with one word – his performance on the pitch.” Arsene Wenger uses five words instead of one” Or his grasp of English “Where his balls go, you will be quite surprised.” Arsene Wenger on Denilson’s attributes His knowledge of economics “The Germans do well economically and we respect that. They are the only ones that make money in Europe. That’s why we’ve chosen a German.” Wenger on why Mertesacker was asked to collect player’s fines. Eh? “l should invite you sometimes to come into the dressing room and look at the legs of Alex Hleb after a game. You would be amazed.” Arsene Wenger His knowledge of biology “I’m amazed how big Patrick Vieira’s elbows are – they can reach players 10 yards away.” Arsene Wenger I guess they were elastic Ray Parlour’s cockney accent gave a few problems “Ray is without doubt the funniest player l’ve ever trained with. lt’s so important to have players such as Ray involved with the group, for his contribution on the field and spirit off it. I only wish I could understand more of what he says.” Gilles Grimandi on Ray Parlour Go on, say something, Ray “I can understand everyone apart from Ray Parlour.” Junichi Inamoto Merse probably only knew about betting shops Paul Merson: “Who the f*ck’s that?” Nigel Winterburn: “Bloody hell Merse, it’s Nelson Mandela.” It's Nelson Mandela, Merse David Dein had practical problems and a surprise “We nearly didn’t sign him because the letters did not fit on his shirt.” David Dein on the signing of Giovanni van Bronckhorst “I ran home immediately to my wife in excitement and said, ‘I’ve seen the nearest thing to a Brazilian footballer you’ll ever see in our Academy... and he’s from Lewisham!’” David Dein on David Rocastle Wrighty is right and Adams is honest about Dennis Bergkamp “Dennis Bergkamp is such a nice man, such a tremendous gentleman, with such a lovely family. It’s going to be hard for me to kick him.” Tony Adams on going up against his Gunners teammate on international duty “If Dennis Bergkamp was in Star Trek, he’d be the best player in whatever solar system they were in.” Ian Wright Bodily functions please the fans according to Ashley Cole “He only has to fart during a warm-up and they’re singing his name from the rafters.” Ashley Cole on Freddie Ljungberg It’s hard having a member according to Charlie George Maybe, Charlie “As for that rumour about me having an erection while I was lying there, that’s b*llocks. I never got an erection after scoring a goal.” Charlie George on his famous celebration after scoring the 1971 FA Cup final winner Arsenal people definitely suffer with biology Reporter: “You’re eyes are streaming – are you all right?” Mel Charles: “I’m OK. I’ve just got clitorises in my eyes.” The Gunners player suffered from cataracts Or maybe Grimsby, Nick? Journalist: “Where would your next move be?” Nicklas Bendtner: “If I could decide: Real Madrid or Barcelona.” Bendtner again – unfortunately no-one else “If you ask me if I am one of the best strikers in the world, I’d say ‘yes’ because I believe it.” Nicklas Bendtner You are some funny guy, Nick “Everything I do I always feel very confident. Whether it’s tennis, badminton, football, whatever. I just go out there and think I can do it and most of the time I can. What I’m good at I don’t mind saying because it’s not a secret, is it? Nicklas Bendtner The greatest striker in the world, although this seems like a terrible picture of Thierry Henry At least he got this right “I want to be top scorer in the Premier League, top scorer at the World Cup and over the next five years I want to be among the best players in the world. Trust me, this will happen.” Nicklas Bendtner I believed this one “l am not going to leave. Never. I am staying here for life.” Thierry Henry stays at Arsenal shortly before he leaves for Barcelona Ah, no, Theo Boo hoo Theo “I played so badly that even my parents booed me off when I was substituted.” Theo Walcott on playing for England U21s Our real hard man “The trick was to get in early as possible, hit them hard, give them a good wallop, make them feel as if they’d been in a car crash or hit a brick wall.” Peter Storey We love you Arsenal, we do “Once it was lucky Arsenal. Then it was boring Arsenal, but now we’ve got a real problem because we’re in danger of being liked.” Peter Hill-Wood Eh, yes? “Our objective is to keep Arsenal English, but with a lot of foreign players.” Peter Hill-Wood Don Corleone playing against Arsenal “It’s a bit hard to play like a gentleman with someone closely resembling an enthusiastic member of the mafia swiping his studs down your legs, or kicking you up in the air from behind.” Did Don Corleone really play for Italy? Eddie Hapgood, playing for England in a bad-tempered match against Italy at Highbury Never any problems at the back, Tony “When the captain said there was a problem at the back I thought he meant me and Steve Bould.” Tony Adams after an Arsenal flight was delayed Correct, Dennis “Dennis Bergkamp told me the Dutch always thought of the English as strong but stupid.” Tony Adams It’s a wonderland, Perry Perry Groves - he played every position except no.7 “Kenny Dalglish came on at the same time as me and everyone expected him to win it for Liverpool. But here I was, a ginger-haired nobody, setting up the winning goal for Arsenal.” Perry Groves on the 1987 League Cup final win over the Reds I will leave you with this one The late Peter Hill-Wood “Call me old fashioned, but we don’t need his money and we don’t want his sort. They only see an opportunity to make money. They know sweet FA about our football and we don’t want these types involved.” Peter Hill-Wood after reported interest in the club by US businessman Stan Kroenke

Edu gone – Arteta out,out,out? So Gaspar Edu is gone, on to a project encompassing many teams and possibly new ones in the future. He is ambitious, he is young enough, and I am certain his network, which is so crucial to such a role, encompasses the entire planet. Bizarrely to me, many fans are shouting good riddance already, I suspect because recent results have been below what we were expecting. Arsenal’s fans are incredibly entitled and I have written about this many times. We now expect to win every game and certainly Newcastle and Liverpool fans should have cried all the way home because we are so much better than them . Edu - a potentially great legacy destroyed Some fans seem happy Edu is gone and they are calling for Arteta out as well. Some Arsenal fans live in a parallel universe where reality is that Arsenal must win every game and the manager must go if that doesn’t happen. I live in a different reality. I have seen us spend many seasons midtable or worse. In the ‘60’s when I started we had no trophies. In the ‘70’s we had 4. In the ‘80’s 2. In the 90’s we had 6. In the 2000’s we had 5 and finally in the 2010’s we had 3. We have 1 since but we have many years to go yet before the decade is out. Does Evangelos Marinakis have a huge club up his sleeve? My point is simple. We are not Bayern Munich, or Real Madrid or Barcelona, or PSG, or Juventus, or even Celtic or Rangers. These teams have dominated their countries at various times. Their fans are the true entitled ones. There are four major trophies to aim at every year. The PL, FA Cup, League Cup and a European one if we qualify. That makes 40 in a decade. Our best is 6 since I have been a fan. That works out at 15% for our best decade and 0% our worst. It means that most seasons we have got nothing quite often. We are not entitled to success, and we need top people in charge to get it. Money, money, money? I feel Edu was top and that’s why he was headhunted. Was it money or ambition? I would reckon ambition but against that is Nottingham Forest, Olympiacos and Rio Ave? Really? Evangelos Marinakis, the Greek owner is reputed to be looking to buy a top European team but who? One of the elite mentioned in the previous chapter? It would have to be, surely, but buying a big club generally takes years of maneuverings and increasing your shareholding. Have they got one lined up? I cannot believe that any of the above three are going to eclipse Arsenal no matter how long Edu lives. Edu Robin Hood, robbing from the rich Greeks to give to the poor - himself Since Marinakis took over Forest in 2017 he has had 10 managers. Arsenal, in it’s entire history has had 20 managers. So that is a clue to why Edu has gone. Logically, money, and a huge amount of it is the attraction. Even if he gets fired he pockets lots of money and nobody really blames the football director. He will get another top job for sure. But also logically, he must have been offered a crazy amount of money, money that Arsenal weren’t willing to pay. More than Arteta, for example? Meaning that Arteta, and probably all coaching staff would have to get a raise. The Kroenke’s must have figured that Edu was not worth the salary that Marinakis was willing to pay so did not get involved in a bidding war. A wide series of talents needed For sure, he had to go straight away. Such a person could not have a foot in two camps. It is such a specialized job, you need eyes in every country for emerging talent, you need to keep abreast of all tactical elements that are evolving, you need the trust of agents worldwide, you need a gravitas so that when Edu comes calling, even top players listen, and you need a global network to run the football empire that is a modern top team. This, undoubtedly, Edu has. And probably there are few with his specialized knowledge of these areas, particularly when it comes to the greatest exporter of footballers worldwide, Brazil. Will Edu drown in the Trent beside Notts Forest City Ground? My conclusion is that unless there is a truly big club on Edu and Marinakis’s horizon, then talk of ambition being the driver is facetious. And you will never see any of the three current clubs among the elite of world football in my estimation. Forest’s capacity is around 30,000 and regarding investment, the current top clubs in England are awash with money, and neither Olympiacos nor Rio Ave can possibly become true top dogs. It really only leaves money as the driver and that surprises me. Edu seemed to be a real Gooner, and he has been totally involved in the move upwards. Bring the Maestro back Arsene Wenger didn’t want such a position to be created but Arteta warmly embraced the notion of as much help as possible. The Kroenke’s have a record of bringing in specialists to support in every department. They work on margins and even a 0.2% margin in our favour is to be welcomed. Arsene would be the greatest football director ever We will need then, a man who knows football inside out, a man respected everywhere he goes, a man who has a huge network of football people, who knows about even obscure players in obscure countries. Step forward the aforementioned Arsene Wenger! There could be no-one better. He has a great record of bringing in players and making them great. He hasn’t had too many disasters in transfers and he knows Arsenal better than any person alive. Arteta adores the man, and if Arsene Wenger is on the phone to any putative player, then they will listen. He even did a deal one time on an airport tarmac. Mikel, this is your task, bring him back! Bring him back. He will not leave us for money. I am sure the Arabs have offered him zillions but he is committed to helping Fifa evolve football worldwide. I believe he would love to come back to his true love, work with Arteta to MAGA(Make Arsenal Great Again) or even MATGEFT (Make Arsenal The Greatest Ever Football Team). BRING HIM BACK! Ps. Despite everything I wish Edu all the best. I hope he becomes a big success and he has made the right choice. He served Arsenal well and I am sure he will serve his new masters well.

Should we have stayed at Highbury? Quite a lot of you have been at the Emirates. You know what it is all about. It is a commercial wonderland. No matter how much money you have you could spend it there. So c’mon, you have won big on the lottery and you decide to bring a bunch of your mates (15) to an executive box for a big match day? £13125 will leave your pocket which is close to a grand a person. If you decide to let them buy what they want from the Arsenal store that could be any sort of figure. Throw in five star hotels and limousines you could be looking at £30,000 to £50,000 for your day out. And do you want the bad news? I had a look and most are sold out. You have to go on a waiting list. The Captains lounge - one of the many executive boxes The Emirates is a goldmine. Highbury was more like a copper mine. The Kroenke’s expertise is in sports centres that are also shopper’s paradises. They have the largest collection of them in the States. And hey, the ground has capacity for up to 75,000 for which an application to expand has been handed in. No doubt there will be more executive boxes bringing in lots more dosh if successful. A good big guy will always beat a good little one Highbury’s capacity was 38,419 but without anywhere near the footprint of the Emirates. The huge panorama surrounding the ground makes all sorts of possibilities for extracting money from fans. Highbury made $171.76M in its last year in 2006. The latest year for which we have figures for Arsenal is 2022/3 and it is £464M. The current rate of exchange is approx. £131M so you can see something like a 3-4 times rise. But last season we had Champions League football and again this year so the figure will be a lot more. The tight pitch at Highbury There is no argument. The Emirates brings in a lot more cash. It puts us up with the big boys. If we had stayed at Highbury the Kroenkes would have had to find ways of making money from a much lower match-day base. What do the fans say? What about from a fan's point of view? Highbury was more fun for me. It was smaller, more intimate, and the players were nearly in your face. The Emirates is much bigger including the pitch and it is harder to see what’s happening at the other end of the pitch. As against that there is much more happening there, it is easier to buy food and drink and go to the toilet. Arsenal Souvenirs are to be had in abundance. Little chance of meeting the players at the Emirates It is definitely harder to link up with players. At Highbury players would hang around for the fans after a match and you could even find them in the pubs afterwards. Good luck with trying that nowadays. The trophies say no What about trophies? The Emirates has a very long way to go to catch up with Highbury with 4 FA Cups and 5 Charity Shields over 18 years. We do need the Premier League and the Champions League to sit nicely in our trophy cabinet, and many times as well if we are to say that the move was a success. Wenger and Dein - the creators of the Emirates and the saviours of Arsenal The crucial factor is that Arsene Wenger and David Dein knew that the Emirates move was a strategic necessity. Billionaires and oil rich states were coming into play and Arsenal needed to compete. We were the second best current team to Manchester United when we left Highbury and now we are the second best team to Manchester City so it could be argued that, even in a football sense, we are starting to catch up. The move was essential. Our final Highbury years were the greatest The situation looks worse, however if you look at the 18 years of the Emirates against the final 18 years of Highbury. 5 League titles, 1 European Cup-Winners Cup, 5 FA Cups, 1 League Cup and 4 Charity Shields plus one drawn. Add in two doubles and a double League Cup/Fa Cup in 1993 and we surely have a long way to go. I would love to swop the Cupwinners Cup for the Champions League trophy I think it is fair to say that without the revenues of the Emirates, we would have no chance of matching the Highbury achievements of their final 18 years. We do seem to have a lot of strong elements in place to make the next 18 years as strong as those years. I would certainly take those records, particularly if you exchange the Champions League for the defunct Cup-Winners Cup. The Emirates is in a world of its own The Emirates will never have that close atmosphere of Highbury. It looks very different, it feels totally different, and the sound levels from the fans, now that we are winning, is raucous and pulls us all together. The Emirates is still new, shiny and very big. It is the base on which we can now spring forward. Will the Kroenkes ever make the Arsenal stadium better than the Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles which cost them $5.5 billion? In short, it is very hard to make any real comparisons between the two. We had to make the move. We made the right one. We are still in the same area. Islington is still our home. Arsenal is Arsenal and we have shown that our ground is not us, just a part of us. We are Arsenal, we have the best ground in the UK, the best fans (mostly, I don’t like the out brigade or the only support when we are winning brigade) and I think we might just have the best team as well. It is a good time to be an Arsenal supporter.

A Spanish DNA and what role has the Academy? We have a Spanish manager, a Brazilian director of football, a French set-piece expert and a German Academy manager. Plus we have American owners. I am not sure how much of our current DNA is English but surely the most crucial element is the Spanish one? And our biggest rivals also have their most crucial element a Spanish one. Are you happy, Pep Guardiola? I have often returned to the theme of how English Arsenal are and it is contradictory. Virtually all the Academy are English bar 2 and yet the full team has only three regulars, Saka, Rice and White. 2 or three others will get games but are unlikely to become regulars this season. We had a huge clearout this season with some 28 players going, mostly from the underage squads. Lots of these were English. Brexit obviously plays a part in the logic but it seems that selling the players is the biggest draw. The Academy, then, is a money-making machine? Wherefore art thou, England? We have six UK players in the first team squad (assuming Nketiah goes, and not counting Academy) with Ramsdale, Nelson and maybe Tierney also possibles for an exit. This is well under what is normal in top teams in the other top European leagues. Most could field a team from their own country (although not necessarily first choice). Definitely most would have more than 3 first choice. And Arsenal are not the worst in this regard at the top of the Premier league. Man City didn’t start one UK player on Saturday against Ipswich. Spurs had 2. Man Utd had 3. Chelsea had 3. Wenger and Emery liked bringing in youngsters Not long ago, Willock, Saka, Smith Rowe, Nelson, Nketiah, Maitland Niles, Balogun and others came in within a few years of each other. Wenger and Unai Emery liked bringing on youngsters. I am not so sure the same is with Arteta. I feel that he believes the old football saying: “You never win anything with kids”. No Academy player has come through with him so far and nailed down a top spot. Set to continue? Looks like it to me. Generate money not a place in the first team? Which means that the Academy needs to be a money machine, capable of generating sales of 10m plus per player to give us money to spend on established pros. Up to £34 million for Smith Rowe, up to £30 million for Nketiah, around £20 million for Balogun and so on gives us a return on the Academy. But under Arteta and Edu, not a road to the first team yet. Are you happy, Mikel Arteta? The average age of the squad has gone up now with most over 25. Only Martinelli, Saka and Timber were under that in Saturday’s game against Villa. We now have a seasoned team, many of whom have won big trophies and are established superstars. Even Arteta now is more in the middle for age for managers as five are now younger than him. Seems like only yesterday he was the youngest manager in the division. The Spanish are Supreme What we do have is a Spanish manager and they are the best. How can I say that? 3 of the CL sides are managed by a Spaniard, Pep, Emery and our boy. The three English managers are nowhere, Howe, Dyche, and O’Neil. Nor the three UK ones. That probably won’t change this season. Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche - a hard year? It seems to me that we have all the elements in place. A top Spanish manager, experienced pros who have won big trophies, 2 players for every position although I covered my reservations about this here last week. We also have players coming through the Academy who can fetch money or maybe even snatch a squad or first choice position. We have one of the biggest stadiums, we have smart business people owners whose main interest is sport, and we have a worldwide fanbase. We seem to have a united team and backroom staff. We have top class training facilities. A gigantic negative It is hard to think of a negative. Maybe our colour as red seems to have slipped down the ranking since 2000. There have been 11 red teams winning the Premier League, Man Utd 8, Arsenal 2 and Liverpool 1, to 14 blues, Man City 8, Chelsea 5 and Leicester 1. But we are left with one big negative, I reckon. Pep Guardiola just seems to up his team when necessary. They truly have strength in depth as top players seem to leave most seasons yet they keep on winning. No player seems truly indispensable. Saka, Odegaard, Rice, Saliba, and Raya look necessary for us. Possibly Gabriel as well. I believe we now have to flip-flop with Pep. Whatever he does, we have to do better. Anything you can do, I can do better 2 seasons ago he got 89 points so we knew we had to match that. We did but he got 91 points. This season we have to beat 91 but will he also then beat that? If we get 95 will he get 96? There is huge pressure on us as there is on him but he seems to get his players into a winning zone when necessary. They always do enough. Klopp, at the end, had a defeated look Our template has to be Klopp and Liverpool. In 2018/19 Man City took everything Liverpool threw at them and won by one point 98 to 97. The following year Klopp was merciless, he kept winning all the time, not giving Pep any chink of light until eventually City sank defeated, on 81 to Klopp’s 99. We must do the same. We must be ruthless, we must be mean, we must kick away all the lesser teams every week until Pep says, ok, boys, we will concentrate on the cups. The problem is that effort seemed to finish Klopp off, Liverpool never seemed to be that brutal machine again, as Pep upped his game from that point to win four in a row. Klopp was defeated by his mighty effort. Is the young lion better than the old one? So can we ask Arteta to take on Guardiola, not just for one season but year after year? Would he burn out like Klopp did in his mighty effort? We know Guardiola is ready for the fight nonstop. This season could be when we find out if Mikel Arteta can go one better then Jurgen Klopp, if he steps up to win and doesn’t have that hunted, haunted demeanour which Jurgen Klopp had in his last years as Liverpool boss. Guardiola was like a supreme predator, who lost one battle, but then destroyed his opponent. Can the old lion Pep be sent off with his head down? Can a smiling, babyfaced Spaniard be the king of the jungle and send Guardiola into retirement? I believe we will have all the indicators in place after this season, even if Arteta doesn’t manage to wrest the title from the lion. I will be watching Pep’s face, and I will know if he cannot stomach another fierce battle. That will be key, not giving Pep any joy until the very end. Arteta has to make it tough, no sleep, no rest, just pressure that never stops until Guardiola is squealing enough, whether I win or lose, I cannot go through this again. Pep did it to Klopp, now Arteta must do it to him.

The greatest English stadium and it is ours I have no idea how many of you Gooners out there who read my stuff have been to the Emirates. There is something like 1000 supporters in ASCB. I would say, judging by the amount I have seen, that quite a few have made the journey. I wonder how many have been to other stadiums in the UK? Probably not so many. Herbert Chapman likes looking at our magnificent stadium Today I want to praise the Emirates Stadium because it is unique. It is in the middle of a very busy part of London and close to the centre. Highbury was great, lively and yet impressive with its marble halls and the closeness of the pitch. However, the Emirates has everything, a museum, a huge shop, an extensive box office, lots of stalls and bars selling all sorts outside and long bars inside to cater for the food and drink of 60,000 spectators. It is a big operation and you become an essential part of the match day experience, you help to create the atmosphere and help Arsenal to win. All of our history can be found there What is it like? There are many statues of our greats, and, as you cross the bridges to get into the main hub, nonstop photos of major figures, past and present. The history of the Arsenal is all round us, everywhere we go. If you go there with a knowledgeable Gooner, such as myself, you can learn what it is that makes Arsenal great just by asking questions about everything you see. In my opinion this is one area in which Arsenal are the best. We have the most tributes to the club on match days because we have a huge area around the stadium. I don’t believe any other club in England has such a panorama. The Henry statue - a great meeting place Another fantastic aspect is if you arrange to meet anyone, there are plenty of excellent meeting points. The statues are the obvious ones, take your choice of all the Arsenal legends commemorated there and take the opportunity for selfies as well. Have your picture taken with the master himself, Arsene Wenger, or Mr Arsenal Tony Adams, or our greatest, Thierry Henry. Mingling with the fans is the greatest experience Outside the ground, there is the Arsenal Supporters club bar which is not only a very useful meeting point but also essential if you are to become a diehard Gooner. It is full of memorabilia from down the days and you may even spot a former top player there. The smell of the burgers is integral to the match day experience I guess most of you that go there come by public transport. There is a huge choice from the Arsenal tube station to the Holloway Road, Highbury and Islington, and Finsbury Road stations where you join the streams of fans chanting and singing. You can never lose your way to the stadium – you just follow the fans. As you get closer there are more and more stalls appearing, selling everything from burgers to scarves, caps, and programmes. The aroma of the food frying lets you know you are home at the Arsenal. You won’t starve and you could end up with more colour on you than any rainbow. I love that walk up to the stadium. I feel more at home then than maybe anywhere. The magic letters get you in All you need to do then is find your turnstile entry letter and there are sixteen A, D, E, H, J, K, M, N & S. which get you into the four stands The North Bank, The Clock End, The West and East Stands. Then you must find your seat but there are plenty of helpful stewards for newbies. It’s all easy. Get in early and there are no queues You first see all the food and drink stalls as they circle the entire ground. There are big queues but they move along quickly enough. You cannot bring alcohol to your seats, though. You create the atmosphere The Emirates is good for viewing in general but watch out if you are on the lower pitchside seats as often people stand for the entire match which means you also have to do so. I have a problem from a badly broken ankle three years ago and I struggle to stand for long periods. I am not tall either so it can be difficult to see. The higher stands are better for such practices as you have a better view of the entire pitch than when you are low where people stand in order to see better. I much prefer the higher stands. Pitchside can be tricky And the atmosphere? It just gets better every year. The addition of North London Forever to our repertoire means that excitement builds from when you hear the opening bars of Louis Dunford’s classic. The sound seems to rise up from the ground, through the stone, and you feel your heart lifting, you become an integral part of the stadium and the Arsenal. You are now Arsenal. You have a bearing on the outcome of the match. You are there to push your team on. You feel the symbiosis creeping into your body as you become one with the team, the crowd, and even the bricks and mortar of the stadium. You know you are home. More spaces = more success? There is talk of increasing the capacity to 75,000. The stadium is designed for many more as you can see where it dips. That can be built upon to make the capacity bigger, comparatively cheaply and quickly. I doubt if it could be done in the close season but I still feel that it could be done maybe by reducing the capacity and just having building works where the stands are being made bigger. Maybe six months might be possible in that scenario. It would just be the seats and the bars and food stalls underneath them. Arsenal fans can be fickle Of course, a bigger ground means that success must be guaranteed. Arsenal fans quickly slope away once we start losing. Not so long ago it was a lot easier to get tickets when we were high midtable. Now we are near the top everyone wants them. Our two main heroes need to be recognised at every match One thing I would like to point out and that is that without David Dein and particularly Arsene Wenger, it would never have been built but neither seem to appear regularly. That needs to change and they both need to be there and applauded at every match. Without them there would be no Emirates stadium and probably few of the many trophies and achievements that made us a great team. We must never forget that. Dein and Wenger - they are the Emirates Stadium To end on a positive note, we have probably the best stadium in the country. All around there is history, input from the fans (lots from ASCB), all kinds of everything in Arsenal accessories, fans from everywhere, some every week, some for the first time. All have that magical level of expectation that they are where they want to be, a part of the Arsenal, drinking in the sights and the smells, looking up, looking around, and being mesmerized by seeing their heroes outside and the real-life players battling for us on the pitch. We are home and we know it.

Meet, greet and stay smiling I guess the surprising thing about Alan Smith is the way he seems to care about the people he meets. Is it a practiced thing, born of all the meet and greets that a celebrity has to do? Perhaps, but I suspect not. He is the real deal. He makes you feel at home with yourself and seems unruffled by the tasks of meeting strangers who have come his way because of that celebrity. Lily and Krasi Kolev meeting the legend He very kindly agreed to meet me in the gleaming Millenium Hotel for an interview for this blog and we chose a quiet spot overlooking the garden. His fabulous wife Penny kept a discreet distance and we were good to go. He is tall, slim and could easily make a living as a male model showing off the latest fashions for the little more mature gentlemen. I suspect he has not put on weight since his playing days and maybe I should have asked him his secret. Has George gone crazy? I did ask him about his famous goal against Liverpool which gave us the chance and he started by telling me that George Graham surprised us all by going for five at the back. “We were all looking at him in the dressing room as if he had gone mad, but he replied we need to keep it tight, once they don’t score we have a chance.” George got it right but of course when Alan did nick one in, the Liverpool players crowded around the officials and he said “We all thought they were going to disallow it, but the referee pointed to the spot, and that is when the belief started. We knew we had a chance,” The Arsenal commemorative booklet which many people slaved over to produce And of course, Alan was on hand at the end to steer the ball towards Mickey Thomas although he could only see a yellow shirt coming through, but it was the redoubtable Mr Thomas who got the ball, got a nice rebound and slid the ball past Grobbelaar in goal. Somehow we had won. Alan was full of praise for the Liverpool supporters who stayed behind and clapped them. “It was a nice touch and we had a great time with our own supporters afterwards. The atmosphere was incredible and the noise levels, but maybe the Liverpool players were a bit flat, and they didn’t have many chances although the game was played at a hundred miles an hour.” Only another 100,000 retellings to go One could see that that game was the highlight of his career. His eyes light up involuntarily as he recounts the dramatic events despite, no doubt, this being the same story he has to retell every time he meets up with fans. It will remain possibly the most dramatic finish ever to a league season so he will probably have to churn it out regularly for the rest of his life. The huge throng of Arsenal fans at the football tournament I put it to him that if Liverpool had to win that by 2-0 they probably would have, but knowing they were 1-0 up inhibited them. He looked thoughtful for a minute and he responded “Yes, you could be right, knowing they could afford to lose 1-0 may have brought some complacency.” Henry, Wenger plus Smudger I asked him how he would have felt about playing alongside Henry and I posited that being a targetman who could get the ball, he would have suited Henry very well. “Henry could have played alongside anyone but, yes, I would have loved to have the chance. Himself and Dennis Bergkamp were a great combination. But Gary Lineker was like that, I could read his little flicks and movements, and he could get his goals.” Alan Smith: "Yes, I would have loved to work with these two" I also asked him about Wenger and he was definitely enthusiastic. “I kept in touch with the old team and Lee Dixon said that it was incredible, in Wenger’s first full season they had just done preseason and it was far less intensive than before, they felt they weren’t going to be fit but as soon the season started they felt as sharp as mustard, it was just the way he did it.” He went on to say that he would have loved that opportunity. I feel it was a pity as Alan retired at 32 in 1995 and he could have been there for the double, even if as a bit part player as Bergkamp and Anelka appeared alongside Ian Wright. The media beckoned and Alan bloomed We moved on to life after football and I felt this was a smoother lifestyle for him than playing football. He liked words, analysis and being fair which is a prerequisite for a co-commentator. He gave the impression that his upward progression from writing in a local Islington paper to writing for the Telegraph, being brought into Sky as an armchair pundit for Arsenal games to being co-commentator all happened without the big drama of being a footballer. He worked hard and always tried to bring something extra to his work, a layer of information and insight that only an ex-player can convey. He quoted Richie Benaud, the famous cricket commentator – “If you have got nothing useful or positive to say, then say nothing, let the pictures tell the story.” I asked him if he will continue in broadcasting until they put him out to grass and he laughed “Oh yes, I would love to continue for as long as they want me. Everything is changing in the broadcasting world, they now bring in more diverse people, and women are playing a far greater role than before, but I would hope there will be a place for me. I never thought I could be a media person and now I want to stay doing it forever.” Women officials and Colemanballs I put it to him that bringing women in, particularly as officials, could have a very positive effect as players screaming abuse at women would not be a good look and we badly need new officials for the modern game as it cannot exist without them. He agreed and opined that referees can get staggering abuse at lower levels. He wondered how anyone could be attracted into that and that women could potentially help to bridge the recruitment gap. Women are so much a part of football now I then asked him about pundit mistakes and I have to admit I couldn’t find any in a search online. Perhaps he is too shrewd to make such slipups but he told me about a time in Denmark with Martin Tyler at an under 21’s tournament when England scored. 1-0 to England and they were watching the replays when the game restarted. They kept talking about England being one nil up for the next few minutes until the news was passed on to them that the goal was disallowed. They had never noticed. Still, in comparison to the cockups I have made in my life this was minor. He is a rare person who appreciates the gifts life has thrown him He has had a great life in many ways and I feel he is one of the few of us who know that and accept it. He had to work hard, yes, to succeed as a professional footballer. It is down to many factors of which football skill is only one. Learning all the time, never giving up, working for the team, being disciplined, and being able to cope with lots of disappointments and defeats are grist to the mill of a professional footballer. Yet he did it all and won it all. Penny and Alan Smith plus a certain Mr Worth having a great time I feel that his second career really suited a man of learning, of words, of deep reflection, and was easier than the hard slog of dealing with the many personalities, angers, disagreements, jealousies and pressures of life in a top team’s dressing room. The subsequent career was something that he adapted to very well, he succeeded in a different way than the first one, and that suited an academic boy who loved languages. I am very happy he found fulfillment this way, that he wants it to continue for as long as possible and maybe he can come back again to talk about the Arsenal. We would love him back.

Don’t despair And so now we are useless. Arteta out out out and we need a new team to replace the cloggers we have currently. Eh, no, teams always get beaten. Even when Alex Ferguson had little competition in the ‘90’s, he still had a few defeats every season. I am going to take a look at our previous title wins and see how we recovered from wobbles to win in the end. George Graham didn't despair The most dramatic finale to a season was Liverpool vs Arsenal in 1989. Does anyone know what our previous two scores were before we headed to Anfield? I wrote about it here and we drew with Wimbledon at home and beaten by Derby also at home. And by the way, we were beaten by Aston Villa at home that season. We had run out of steam and Liverpool were the unstoppable Red Monsters. Of course, nobody told George Graham and the players that and Arteta should give old George a shout as to what he did then because it could be very useful. He had an impossible task and the players achieved it for him. Iconic Chapman destroys them all Our first legend was Herbert Chapman and he smashed it out of the park on his first title in 1930/31 with 8 wins and 2 draws in our last ten and won comfortably. His next title was 1932/33 and he could afford a draw and a loss in his last two matches as he had already won the title. Next season was Chapman’s last as Joe Shaw, our captain, took over as manager in January. We won with 3 points to spare over Huddersfield, comfortable enough with 2 points for a win. The next season 1934/35 was George Allison’s first and he won with 4 points from Sunderland. We were the Arsenal then, the Red monsters who always won. George Allison didn't give in to despair Except we weren’t as we didn’t win again until 1937/38 where we had 3 draws and 2 losses in our last ten. Wolves obliged us by losing 1-0 to Sunderland to gift us the trophy as we thrashed Bolton 5-0 and won by one point. I guess the fans thought we had no hope that last day as Sunderland were mid-table, a bit like West Ham now. Preston were right in it at the end only 3 points behind us so that was a three-way finish until near the conclusion. You must stick with your team and support them as they need it. It definitely gives extra points. Don’t despair. Preston by goal average on the last day long before Liverpool And so the war struck and the league was over. We next won in 1947/48 by 7 points from Manchester United so, although we dropped many points at the end it didn’t matter. The next time was 1952/53 again under Tom Whitaker. We beat Preston and it was dramatic, almost the same as the Liverpool game as we won on goal average with both teams on 54 points. They lost to Bolton Wanderers 2-1 and we beat Burnley 3-2. Bolton were close to the bottom and Burnley were close to the top. And like against Liverpool, we had lost and drew our last 2 so our fans were in misery. Don’t despair. Tom Whittaker didn't give in to despair I covered the Liverpool match earlier for George Graham’s first in 1988/89 but his next was when he consigned Liverpool to history in 1990/91. He won by 9 points from them although 2 points were taken away because of the battle of Old Trafford when both teams got embroiled in throwing their handbags at each other. I was there for that one. No drama for George. Let’s hope if Arteta does manage to win this season he also gets an easy win for his second. Wenger was our ace in the hole And then the master, our ace, Arsene Charles Ernest Wenger took over and he recorded his first title in 1997/98, a nerve jangling win over Manchester United by one point as a win over Everton 4-0 in our 3rd last game was enough. No last game dramas though. Arsene: made Man Utd despair Then came 2001/02 and we again beat Manchester United but this time by seven points. Some of you will remember how exciting that season was as by the end of March we were 3rd and miserable. We then went on a string of wins for Wenger’s best ever finish to a season and won easily. Don’t despair when there are matches to go. Of course, Wenger’s final win was the one you know everything about. 2003/04 was the year we did something great but I cannot remember what it was. What was it again? Oh, yes, we were Invincible, we didn’t get beaten, and we won by eleven points. Chelsea were looking up at us this time but we didn’t head into a period of dominance as we all hoped. We are still waiting. C’mon the Spuds and West Ham So, we could be hoping two of our London rivals, the Spuds and West Ham do damage to City and Liverpool. Our margin for error is really tight. We possibly could get a draw or a loss and still win. Liverpool are away to Everton as well and derbies are unpredictable. They have those four matches one after the other which adds to their difficulty. C'mon the Spuds but not against us Don’t despair, people, as I have shown in 1938, 1953, and 1989, we have done it on the last game when all looked lost. We can do it again and I suspect we might have to, City and Liverpool will be battling to the end. I reckon if all 3 teams have a chance on the last day, at least one of them won’t win, despite them being favourites. Six games to go and I believe six wins will be enough. We can make it happen. We do have the best goal difference if that comes into play. Don’t despair, we are Arsenal. Update to the Table of Doom Table of Doom Fixtures Current Max Man City Spurs (a) 73 91 Arsenal Spurs (a) 71 89 Liverpool Spurs (h) Villa (a) 71 89 So, the inevitable has happened. The Blue Monsters have taken over. Strangely, the best chance we have of winning the league is to become Tottenham fans for two of these 3 matches. If we beat them and they beat Liverpool and City or even draw we are right back in it. We probably now do need to win our six matches but it is certainly not over. Liverpool may go out of Europe but that could give them a singular concentration. We have conceded 4 goals in our last two matches purely due to lack of concentration and focus. If we regain our laser focus we can win our last games. It is up to Arteta now. C'mon the Irons Of course, if my 86 points prediction is still correct there are a few more bumps for all teams to overcome. It may be three teams in it on the last day. In our favour is that West Ham is the toughest-looking match of the three, so City may have a wobble. If it is only us and City then beating Everton could be key.

Bergkamp the Improver Book Review: Stillness and Speed – Dennis Bergkamp Ah, Dennis Bergkamp. In my opinion the greatest player Arsenal has ever had. And why? Because he could do things I have never seen anyone else do. I could watch a highlights video of him forever. Newcastle anyone? Bergkamp's control was magical Of course, Henry is regarded as our GOAT and probably rightly so, but it is illuminating that he rates Bergkamp as the best he has ever played with and that is because Dennis was the fulcrum of our attack and midfield. Ian Wright (probably regarded as our second GOAT) credits him with upping his game and wishes he could have played with him a lot sooner. Dennis could have been alongside Wolverine Bergkamp trained hard but smart, always watching what the ball does, how it moves, bounces, and how to control its movement. I would challenge anyone to demonstrate another player who could take a moving ball at any height and control it with, it seems, any part of his body. The ball stuck to him like glue. He was like a mutant and maybe we were lucky Professor X never snapped him up for the Xavier Institute. Better, better, better This book emphasizes one area above all else – Dennis Bergkamp improved Arsenal and Dutch football by being there, by showing his intelligence, by extraordinary diligence, and his never-ending striving for perfection. The Japanese concept of Kaizen could have been written by him, in which you must always push to do better, and is regarded as the manual of how Japanese became the world leaders in manufacturing. Cruyff always had the right ideas about football So what is this book? Well it is totally different from other soccer books in that it is less about his life and more about his football philosophy. But first I should explain that it is really two books, there is a huge Dutch version by Jaap Visser which basically includes both elements of this football book, it includes all the chronology of his life and covers what a normal football work does, photographs, upbringing, club records, etc., and the English version by David Winner which is a collection of interviews with Dennis and all the critical people in his life. Johan Cruyff, Arsene Wenger, Thierry Henry, Ian Wright and many others are interviewed and the ideas are bounced back and forth between them as Dennis comments on what they are saying and sometimes he sees things a bit different. Toy with the keeper If you read nothing else, read the extraordinary piece on freezing the goalkeeper, which Henry says was the biggest improvement he ever made to his game. When you are in on goal, you keep your eyes on the keeper, you do not look at the ball, and the keeper gets discommoded. You must always be calm but watch as the keeper panics. Henry became almost unstoppable when in on goal, we always knew he would score as we would with Bergkamp. I suspect that the two of them combined scored way more beautiful goals than any other pairing. Henry could put a keeper in the North Pole And hey, we could do with Bergkamp back and improving our goalscorers. Too many panic in front of goal, and our two icemen never did. Bring back Bergkamp and Pep would do poo poo in his trousers. Cruyff – the Dutch Master of all Johan Cruyff pops up all the time in this book and he has had an extraordinary influence on Bergkamp but also vice versa. I know some of my readers are young and I will give a brief resume of Cruyff here. He is regarded as one of the greatest players ever but I will nominate him as the greatest influence for good on the modern game. He pushed for total football, a strong press, an emphasis on creativity and attack, and that players must have the intelligence to decide what is best on the pitch. This he shared with Arsene Wenger. Players were not robots, and constantly telling them what they must do, a failing in the modern game, means that parking the bus can often work in the weaker team’s favour. Arteta, unfortunately, has this failing. He micromanages the team constantly which means the creative players can be stifled. Space – the football frontier Bergkamp believes that space is the most important element of football and you must have a clear vision in order to achieve that. Your opponent must never be able to predict what you will do and if he is confused, then you have space. It is why he put so much effort into controlling the ball, it creates space. Defenders could never predict Mesut Ozil Here he is on Mesut Ozil: “First touch in football is so important. If you talk about Mesut people say he is not marked properly, he always has a lot of space but he has got that space because he can create space by his vision and his first touch. With that you create your own time.” Dennis was multi-faceted This is a book for the football fan, certainly not just Arsenal ones. It shows a complicated person, a guy regarded as a gentleman yet hard as nails according to Martin Keown, and well able to handle the beasts of defenders prevalent in English soccer. He could not be pushed off the ball and I guess all the training with Adams, Keown and Bould helped a lot with that. Did I mention beast defenders? The book shows the unhappy time in Serie A. Still, Bergkamp learned a lot from them about diet, alcohol, and looking after yourself which slotted in perfectly to the next phase with Arsene Wenger who obliterated the English fast food and ten pints regime still prevalent at the time. Bergkamp gives great credit to how the English players could still perform strongly on the pitch and praises his Arsenal teammates for so doing. He did see them embrace the Wenger method though and add years to their game. To win all by improving Bergkamp, Cruyff and Wenger are shown as three different sides of the same coin. They didn’t always agree but perfection was what they all aimed for. Bergkamp was Invincible, thanks to Wenger, although I am sure they regard perfection as winning all matches. Cruyff was the genius who brought Barcelona to its peak. His flaw was that he had a penchant for argument, as the Dutch team are still famous for. Dennis preferred debate and not confrontation. But that dominant belief that you can always do better is the link that binds all three as they were conscious of it. I would say most great players were not. Rather they just loved being with a ball and doing amazing things with it. Everything must be improved I say read this book for a different perspective on what football has been for the past fifty years. It is a rare glimpse into what really goes on in the minds of the greatest names in world football. It is a cerebral tome about thinking about what you can do with a ball, what it does in certain circumstances and how you can train your body to use that to your advantage. Again I repeat that Dennis Bergkamp is the greatest footballer Arsenal ever had and the main playing reason, outside Wenger, that we won so many trophies. He made all the guys around him better. And I know, like me, you can watch those video clips forever.

Three managers to top them all George Graham -deserves a statue George Graham Player 308 apps Football League First Division: 1970–71 FA Cup: 1970–71 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup: 1969–70 Manager 9 years Football League First Division: 1988–89, 1990–91 FA Cup: 1992–93 Football League Cup: 1986–87, 1992–93 FA Charity Shield: 1991 (shared) Football League Centenary Trophy: 1988 European Cup Winners' Cup: 1993–94 Mikel Arteta Player 150 apps FA Cup: 2013–14, 2014–15 FA Community Shield: 2014, 2015 Manager 5 years FA Cup: 2019–20 FA Community Shield: 2020, 2023 Terry Neill Player 241 apps Manager 7 years FA cup 1979 Arsenal managers through and through In my lifetime we have had 3 Arsenal managers who played more than 100 games, won at least one trophy as manager, and who were fulltime managers of this great old club. Terry Neill, George Graham and Mikel Arteta. Now, all of you out there know who the current best one is – George Graham, who is ranked behind Herbert Chapman and Arsene Wenger. He took on the Liverpool machine and came out on top, who were the best ever English team at the time. He won 8 trophies at Arsenal as a manager, which puts him well ahead of the other 2. Arteta has won 3, an FA Cup and 2 Charity Shields, and Neill has just the one, the FA Cup in 1979. Of course, only Arteta has the chance to overtake Graham. I wonder how many Arsenal fans feel that he will? Am I really hearing Arteta out? The Arteta out brigade have already started with our current bad run, so if that is an indication getting George’s nine years will never happen. Even Terry’s seven won’t. I am, however, optimistic that Arteta is the right man at the moment. Of course, he now cannot afford the bad runs that he has had at the end of every season so far. We must finish strongly to collect trophies. I suspect that if he doesn’t get Champions league or a trophy it’s possible the Arteta out crew will get their wish. Certainly no European qualification could see him out for good. Terry Neill took us upwards Terry Neill never had that pressure. He took over in 1976 as the club were struggling. Relegation was somewhere on the horizon as the great double team were broken up and Bertie Mee lost his mojo. Neill took us up the table, got us 3 FA Cup finals in a row and a Cup Winners Cup Final appearance. His two best league efforts were 3rd and 5th. But competent rather than spectacular was the lot of Arsenal’s youngest ever manager. Bizarrely, Arsenal were his 3rd club despite being only 34 when he took over at Highbury. He had already managed Hull and a team from North London, I can’t remember their name. Terry Neill - a top class defender As a player, Neill didn’t win anything at Arsenal, and was gone just before the Mee/Howe axis started winning things. He did manage 241 games and was highly regarded as a top notch defender. He had 59 international appearances for Northern Ireland, way more than the other two. Arteta didn’t even manage one for Spain. He was our youngest ever, he had way more caps, and he had one of our greatest days under his belt, the 1979 FA Cup win over Manchester United, the famous Liam Brady final. Overall, one of our own, and he could be seen on matchdays escorting VIPs. He deserves more recognition And, of course, he also had a huge hand in creating the extraordinary amount of Irish at Highbury, cementing a massive fanbase across the pond. Ok, he is number 3 on this list of players/managers at Arsenal but for me, it was a colossal boost watching all the Irish superstars strut their stuff. Terry Neill - a fan till the end Will he get a statue? Probably not but he remained Arsenal through and through all his life and was one of our most dedicated followers, always being seen around the Arsenal on matchdays. The rookie could beat them all Mikel is number 2 and he has a long way to go to catch up with George Graham. Will he? Maybe not but I feel he will get somewhere before he has to leave. The only one on the list who was a rookie, and he did make rookie mistakes, allowing Aubameyang and Ozil a latitude that he shouldn’t, have, but he learned, and if he has learned how to finish strongly this season, then we might be celebrating. He needs to stay in touch, as at the end City may have lots of high pressure matches like last season. Arsenal capitulating made that easier for them last time, and they won the league easier than they should have. That, above all else is his benchmark, stay in touch and finish strongly. Mikel -Our captain, my captain He won the FA Cup and the Charity Shield at his first attempt, a wonderful achievement. His immediate predecessors were 2 greats, Unai Emery and Arsene Wenger, and he has done better than any Manchester United manager since Alex Ferguson in fashioning a team in his image, consistently getting better. When an immense manager goes, such as Arsene Wenger, the void becomes a giant chasm to fill. Arteta has the capacity to fill that void. Will he get a statue? Time will tell. Graham conquered all And so George Graham, the mighty tactician, disciplinarian and creator of a team that moved together like puppets, always catching teams offside, with a magical midfield of Rocastle, Merson and Thomas to feed the strikers. He gave us probably our best day ever, when we went to Anfield in 1989 needing to win 2-0 for the title, and won in injury time. It never got better after that. George Graham - an elegant player The critical thing about George is that he made Arsenal great again over many years. The last such time was the 1940’s. His nine years with our only 2 League Cups, the only European Cup Winners Cup, and the only ever winners of the Centenary Cup, plus 2 league titles and an FA Cup means he is number one on this list and number 3 overall in the pantheon of prodigious Arsenal managers. He didn’t get many caps for Scotland but won trophies as a player and was a vital member of the Double winning side of 1971. Tactics, discipline and teamwork He was responsible for bringing many top young players through at Arsenal and Leeds. He had one defining belief, that you get the best possible player for every position even if it means removing a fan favourite as he did with John Lukic, replacing him with David Seaman. Football was chess for him, you had to stay ahead of your opponent by thinking ahead of them. Can any of them get a statue like the legendary Herbert Chapman? Will he get a statue? He deserves one. The scandal that removed him certainly seemed to have a lot of extenuating circumstances, and an honest review of that could see him getting the recognition at Arsenal he deserves. And so there you go. We had 3 top players that became top managers, something that not many teams have achieved. Liverpool had 2, Bob Paisley and Kenny Dalglish, but I cannot think of any other top team that had trophy winning managers who also played for them. Good old Arsenal, we always lead the way. And if Arteta knocks out George Graham, boy would we be happy.

The big boys stand up to the bullies Just recently I watched a chat between Gary Neville and Thierry Henry over the famous Ruud Van Nistelrooy penalty miss and the aftermath with especially Martin Keown getting in the Dutchman’s face, and Neville wondered why Arsenal were so fired up. Henry responded that United were very physical that day and all the time. The crucial thing about that game was that United failed to beat Arsenal at home allowing Arsenal to remain unbeaten for the season. Roy Keane loved winding Patrick Vieira up To put it into perspective, Man Utd were easily Arsenal’s biggest rivals at that time. If Arsenal didn’t win the league, Utd did, simple as that. From Arsene Wenger’s first full season in charge in 1997/98 when he won the double until the Invincible season in 2003/2004, that’s what happened, 8 seasons and 2 teams locked together. That never happened before in English football and probably won’t happen again. What that intense physical rivalry did, though, was create the phenomenon that is the Premier league. It certainly looked like hate The two biggest hatreds were Ferguson and Wenger, and Vieira and Keane where the battles seemed non stop. The media loved it, stoking it up at every opportunity. The Red cards, Yellow cards, the wild tackles, the screaming in faces, the insults, the intimidation even in the tunnels, and a pizza being thrown by little Cesc Fabregas. Of the 2 teams, though, only Roy Keane and Martin Keown could conjure up that eyes popping, veins protruding, pure anger of a face that would send the Incredible Hulk running for cover. It was a violent circus with both sides only caring about one thing, beating the other. Scream louder, Martin, he can't hear you So, I decided to take a look at all matches from the time of Wenger to the Invincible season up to losing that tag at, where else, Old Trafford, and instead look at the card count for each match and see who were the winners there. I decided one goal for a yellow and 3 for a red. Now I should emphasise that there was a very strong belief at the time that Ferguson intimidated officials so much that Utd got treated leniently. Certainly before I went into checking this I can say I felt Utd were the most physical of the two, but that could be my Arsenal bias. Key: I will put Arsenal first every time whether home or away. Every match is Premier league except where stated. Arsene kept the intensity high All the matches And so the first match was in November 1996 at Old Trafford. Utd won 1-0 but we won 5-1 on cards with no reds. 5-1 Then February 1997 at home 2-1 Utd, and their first double over us. But we got the double on cards at 4-2 with no reds. 4-2 Then Nov 1997 at home 3-2 to us but a draw on cards 2-2. 2-2 Then March 1998 away and we did the double with one nil to the Arsenal and 3-2 on cards. 3-2 1998 Charity Shield and we hammered them 3-0 but they beat us on cards. 2-3 1998 September at home we again won 3-0 but lost on cards as Roy Keane got yellow but Nicky Butt got the first red of the sequence to give them 4 to our 2. 2-4 February 1999 away and 1-1 and a draw on both cards and goals. 2-2 April 1999 away FA cup 0-0 but we get our first red with Nelson Vivas to give us 4-2. 4-2 April 1999 again in the return at home and they beat us 2-1 and the snarling Roy Keane captures his first red card to give them 2-6 on cards. 2-6 The Charity Shield in 1999 and we won 2-1 but they got 2-3 on cards. 2-3 Shortly after we played them at home and were beaten 2-1 but they managed 1-4 on cards. 1-4 January 2000 at Old Trafford and a tame 1-1 with a gentleman’s game of only one card for Gille Grimandi. 1-0 October 2000 at Highbury and one nil to the Arsenal but Man Utd beating us at cards 2-3. 2-3 February 2001 Old Trafford and a horror show at 6-1 Utd. No cards though. 0-0 November 2001 League cup home and revenge at 4-0 but poor John Halls came on as sub and got a red to give us a 5-1 on cards. 5-1 November 2001 home and 3-1 this time but they beat us 2-3 on cards. 2-3 May 2002 and we beat them 1-0 at Old Trafford to secure the title but they won 2-4 on cards. 2-4 December 2002 Old Trafford and 2-0 to the Mancs but 2-1 to us on cards. 2-1 February 2003 FA cup Old Trafford 2-0 to us but 1-3 on cards. 1-3 April 2003 Highbury 2-2 but 3-2 on cards as Sol Campbell got sent off. 3-2 Charity Shield 2003 1-1 but Francis Jeffers got sent off for us giving us 5-3 on cards. 5-3 Old Trafford September 2003 our Invincible year and a feisty 0-0 match saw Patrick Vieira get sent off to give us 5-4 on cards. 5-4 March 2004 Highbury sees a 1-1 draw for both goals and cards. 1-1 April 2004 Villa Park FA cup semi-final and 1-0 Utd but we won 4-1 on cards. 4-1 And I will finish the sequence on our next match against them as they beat us 2-0 at Old Trafford in October 2004 to end our unbeaten spell in a match where we won the cards at 3-2. 3-2 We were the real bullies? I stopped it there as our time as Manchester United’s biggest rival was over. We haven’t won the league since. The money boys took over. One surprising aspect in all this is how few red cards there were. 4 to us and 2 to them. Alex Ferguson always had the refs in his sights So 59 card goals to the Red Devils and us? The mighty Arsenal? 67 putting us clearly in the lead as the dirtiest team in the sequence. 26 matches and 126 card goals equals almost 5 cards per game. I think that emphasizes the physical aspects to the contests. It always draws in the fans. The Premier league became the world’s Premier league, thanks, in large part, to the emergence of Arsenal as Ferguson’s first strong challengers. The battles on and off pitch were mesmerizing viewing for the punters and nowhere else could match. It is still the most fearsome rivalry in Premier league and First division history. Keane and Vieira never really made up although, perhaps surprisingly, Wenger and Ferguson did. They were the best of their time and loved snarling at each other. Up for the fight But come on, how many neutrals would feel that Arsenal were the dirtiest team, really? I suspect not many. Alex Ferguson did have a fearsome cachet that worked in his team’s favour. Refs were intimidated and it was widely believed that the intimidation worked. Ferguson always believed that any margin that he could get in his favour, he would make sure they did. My card analysis seems to backup that belief but we do have to remember one thing, Arsenal were a big strong team at the time. We had height everywhere, and we were certainly bigger than Man Utd. Wenger moved to smaller, less physical players when this team ran its course as did football fashion. Roy Keane - the most frightening face in football I can’t truly say whether we deserved this title during this period as I doubt if there was a more physically intimidating player than Mister Keane in all of the Premier league history. But he kept himself on the pitch for this fixture only going once at 74 minutes all the way back in 1999. He was probably afraid that Arsenal would kick poor Utd to pieces without him. And Fabregas didn’t throw the pizza at him. The only thing I can truly say with certainty is that rivalry defined the Premier league, had an intensity that I doubt if we will ever see again, and brought us to where we are now in football.

Born to be a footballer. Liam Brady and I have some parallels. We are both from Dublin, we come from large families, and being almost 2 years older than me, we grew up in that same milieu of Irish nationalistic Catholic forces controlling a poor country on the edge of Europe. He differs in that his brothers are all older and several were professional footballers before him. His uncles and outside family also played sport at the highest level in Gaelic games so it inspired the title of his book Born to be a footballer. Johnny Murphy, David O'Leary, Frank Stapleton and Liam Brady as young Irish kids at Arsenal He bumped up against the same Catholic forces early in his career as, when picked to captain Ireland against Wales at under 15, his school, run by the Christian Brothers, refused to let him go to represent a foreign game. He was expelled and forced to find another school exactly when studying for an important state exam. This was par for the course in the 60’s and 70’s, and in every area of society, the Catholic church held sway. Not so chippy about his nickname Around the same time he was chosen by Arsenal, despite, typically of an Irish kid at the time, being a Man Utd fan. He recalls an early occurrence during this time when the chief scout at Arsenal, his parents and himself were taken out to a fancy restaurant in London. His mother looked at the menu and said “he only eats chips”. And his immortal nickname was born, from fried potatoes and not an ability to chip the goalkeeper. The name never went away, although, reading the book, I am not sure he particularly likes it. This is how to win an FA Cup He broke into the first team at 18, under the mentorship of the legendary Alan Ball, and it wasn’t too long before everyone realized we had something special. If you do nothing else, look at a Youtube highlights clip to get an appreciation of what he could do on the pitch. The art of dribbling around multiple players has gone from modern football as has the degree of ball artistry that we could see on a regular basis. There was an excitement when Brady got the ball, a cheer from the fans, and an expectation of something different. Watch him ghost through several players near the end of the famous Brady cup final of 1979 against Manchester United, as Arsenal were on their knees when Man U rattled in two goals late on to almost destroy us. He took the ball well in our own half, with nothing on and players with heads bowed, and cut through Man U, bringing the ball close to the edge of the box, whipping it out to Graham Rix on the wing, who fired it in to Alan Sunderland, and one of our most famous late goals was created out of Brady’s magic. Juventus wanted him and the Arsenal board were greedy We all loved him but knew Arsenal were stingy with money, particularly with home grown players. When he bravely moved to Juventus in the early 80’s, there was little personal anger towards him. We hadn’t done anywhere near enough to keep what was probably the best player in the league. And so he went to Italy for huge money and a team brimming with many world superstars, Tardelli, Rossi, Zoff, Gentile, Scirea and Cabrini were integral parts of Italy’s 1982’s World Cup winners and Juventus had the legendary Giovanni Trapattoni as manager. It must have seemed an extreme ask of a kid from Dublin but Liam became one of the fans favourites and is still loved there today despite being ousted after 2 years by the arrival of Michel Platini, then probably the best midfielder in the world. Brady and Juventus - a love story Brady was incandescent with rage when told the news and said he would never play for them again. But on the last match of the season, there was a penalty given, and Brady, being the penalty taker, was urged by his teammates to take it. He stepped up and scored to win them the title in his last significant kick for them. But you can still trace the bitterness in this book as he recounts the story. He loved Juventus, the fans, his teammates, playing on the biggest stage in world football at the time. He and his wife learned Italian, loved the country, the food, and their fabulous villa by the lake. And it was all snatched away. But he spent many more years in Italy and is an iconic figure there. Italy took football very seriously One aspect that struck me on reading the book was how different the footballing culture was in Italy. England were dominating European football at the time but Italy had already embraced changes which Arsene Wenger brought with him a long time later, a good diet, little alcohol, top training facilities, etc. English football dominated despite the fast food, hard drinking and basic training culture prevalent at the time. Brady reunited with Trappatoni at Ireland All aspects of Liam’s life are covered here, from the early days with Arsenal and Ireland, to Italy and back to West Ham, where he seems to have had a very positive experience, on to his managerial days. First at Celtic, where a combination of many factors conspired against success, and then Brighton for 3 years. The Brighton years are a fascinating read of mismanagement at boardroom level as the club was laid low by greed. Brady did well considering all, but often had to dig into his own pocket to keep things going. He, however, kept in touch with all developments and played a role in getting the club back on its feet. He still lives there and is immensely pleased at how good management turned the club around to being probably the biggest success story, given their resources, in the Premier league. Anecdotal Bulgaria and other great stories Oh and by the way, there are several mentions of Bulgaria throughout the book as Ireland had them on the international stage, well worth reading. And also a good tribute to Paul Dickov, who Brady had at Brighton. He was full of praise for him. Brady always supported Arsene Wenger All the way through, there are references to funny and illuminating passages in his life. Pavarotti, silk pyjamas, Trappatoni’s 2 fingered whistle and his insistence that players must know their jobs and work very hard, his love of music, his “friendship” with Bono, the mentorship of Johnny Giles, his bizarre relationship with Jack Charlton, his media work and his struggles with Ireland’s most controversial football pundit, Eamon Dunphy, the early days with Arsenal, the amazing Irish connection, the amount of good friends he has in football, some surprising to me, and the list goes on and on. But don’t miss out on the funny story with Bruce Rioch. He spanned all our modern history The critical element to Liam Brady and this book, for football fans, is that he straddled all the important history, from Bertie Mee’s double to Terry Neill’s FA cup finals, both with the legendary Don Howe to guide them. Then the 90’s and the emergence of Arsene Wenger, with whom he built up a very strong partnership with Wenger famously saying that Liam was the most important person at the club. David Dein made an inspired decision to match Liam Brady with Arsene Wenger David Dein, the man who made the modern Arsenal, appointed Brady as Academy director in the mid 90’s, and insisted that Brady’s job was not to be connected to the manager’s, he could not be fired. He wanted someone who understood the continental values and culture that Wenger famously brought with him to change English football. The Academy kids could have continuity and safety because Brady was always a decent man and insisted on giving bad news to players and their families in person. All the Hale End stars bouncing bright for Arsenal now were first nurtured by Brady. Here he has produced a top class football book. It will stay as a classic of the genre forever, I feel. As a writer, a storyteller, an insight into 3 different worlds of football, the international, the pre-Premier League days of English football, and the all encompassing milieu and harsh cauldron of Italian football as it pushed along the modern game. Liam has shown a great talent as a chronicler of football and I hope he produces another tome for us to enjoy. But for us fans, it was the beautiful football he could produce, we were enthralled by the way he played, the grace, the movement, the balance, the goals, we couldn’t get enough of our wonderman. Johnny Giles said he was the most beautiful footballer Ireland ever produced, and I am going to say also for Arsenal. He was bello, stupendo, and in modo magnifico and definitely Nato per fare il calciatore.

Don’t be Blue, because my heart is true One day soon Everton will go down if they don’t find a way to put themselves back up near the top. They have skirted relegation for the past few seasons and one day their luck will run out. This year they are hoping the others will be crappier than them and that may save them again. The newcomers look especially poor. And yet Everton often pull out good performances against us. They won three in a row against us not so long ago. The first ever major football ground was Goodison Park We have probably kept them in the league. Will we get any thanks? Will we heck as like! They are our biggest rivals for the longest time in top flight football having been in since 1954, and they have had the longest period of being in the top flight of any team, only spending 4 years outside it. They had the first ever football song. They have 9 top flight titles, level with Man City in fourth. Man Utd and Liverpool are top with 20 and 19 and we are 3rd with 13. They have the record top scorer with Dixie Dean netting 60 goals in 1927/28. I don’t think Haaland will best that as possibly teams may figure him out and restrict him from now on, or maybe not. However, 60 or even 50 will probably not be achieved again. They were Giants They also, when Liverpool had their golden years, knocked them off their perch with 2 title wins in 3 years and almost a double, beaten by Liverpool in the FA cup final. They had the first major ground in Goodison Park in 1892. They are one of the old money football aristocracy of England. They are building a fabulous new stadium down on Liverpool docks. They have big money owners. They have an extraordinarily loyal fanbase, one of the best in the world. They are very similar to us. The fans want to save their great old club With one big difference, we are still near the top, we are just about kings of London, whereas their two huge rivals, Liverpool and Man Utd, have left them trailing helplessly in their wake, and the new money Man City are also easily surpassing them. Manchester is a short hop from Liverpool. It is far quicker to get there than for Arsenal to some parts of London. There is massive rivalry between Everton and the two old giants and the new one, than we have to face in London. If Everton go down and stay down for a while, we could even surpass them as the longest serving team in the top flight. The Survivors that don’t survive? I guess a lot of you out there would like that and there is a part of me also that would for the prestige of the Arsenal, but it is sad to see a great team laid low just by mismanagement. It is a fate that could happen any top team, even us. A great stadium for the Championship? I suspect some of you are wondering why an Arsenal blog seems to be about Everton and why it matters? I will try and explain my rationale. I think, of all teams in English football, Everton are our closest brothers. We are survivors, we take the bad times and ride them out, still turning up to support the team. We don’t get relegated, we battle and fight and turn things around. Neither Arsenal nor Everton ever had such a poor spell, in my time watching football, as the Blue boys are having now. Fans watching helplessly as huge money is spent, big plans unveiled, and for what? To battle with Luton and Bournemouth and suchlike for the privilege of dropping down to the cauldron of the Championship? Arsenal are too good to go down? Everton show that we should never be complacent, never think that it cannot happen to us. Rival fans criticized us unmercifully in the latter Wenger years for feeling entitled to being at the top. A lot of that criticism was justified. We hounded and humiliated our greatest ever manager because he believed in doing things the right way and we also didn’t have access to the fabulous money of the Chelseas and Man Citys. Wenger, almost singlehandedly, kept us in Champions League and winning FA cups and we drove him out like an ailing dog we no longer wished to take care of. Arteta is regarded as a great for bringing us what Wenger got run out of town for. The last time Everton had a sustained spell near the top was when Moyes and Arteta were there Of course, it was only some of our fans, and I hope and believe that the majority understood what our greatest was still achieving. But the criticism is valid. Tottenham, West Ham and many other London teams fans would have given both legs to have a manager who was giving them what Wenger was still giving Arsenal. Their fans love football Those Arsenal fans let us down. But as far as I can see, Everton fans have reserved the majority of their wrath for the owners, not the managers. Appointing Rafa Benitez, given his history, was, frankly, stupid. Even so, the fans reserved most of their ire for the owners who appointed him, and the same applies to Frank Lampard, who fell down a hole with the Toffees, yet the fans were reluctant to scream at him. Sean Dyche, a decent and well respected football man, could well make number 13 to move on since David Moyes took over at Man Utd in 2013. They couldn’t hang on to Carlo Ancelotti, who was making strides with them, and that started the abyss yawning at them. Rafa Benitez had made fun of them at Liverpool Pure luck seems to have kept them clinging on to their proud record, mostly relying on other teams to be crappier than them and last day results going their way. That must stop because one day they will make the drop. It doesn’t look like Sean Dyche is the right man to push them back up before that happens although I would be happy for him if he is. Hunting our great man was our lowlight We have seen at Chelsea that spending money on players is not the answer. What is needed now, at a big club, is a united vision, a team of backroom staff all facing the same way for the benefit of the team, fans who love the badge and players who come to love that badge. Arsenal seem to have that now, but the only sure thing that Everton have from that list is the fans. I have been in Liverpool and Dublin talking to true Blues, and in my opinion they, not their Red neighbour’s fans, are the best in the world. Even the greatest can be laid low by fickle fans In many ways, a lot of our own fans are similar, they can applaud the opposition and see goodness in any football fan. The entitled, and the Tottenham haters, are not in this category. They brought tears, that he was desperately trying to hold back, to our greatest ever Arsenal man. I cannot find it in my heart to easily forgive that, and I would not be happy to see Everton’s last proud record taken away from them even if we are the only beneficiary. I would love to see them sort themselves out, get back among the big boys, and get to see Arsenal take them on as second place to our first in the new Everton stadium. So, c’mon the Toffees!

Arsenal 2007-08 Anyone want to buy our players? One stark thing that strikes you about 2007-08 is the ability that Arsene Wenger had at getting the best out of players, and keeping us competitive while losing our finest players. Paying for the Emirates and competing against the huge money available at Chelsea, Man Utd and City put him at a big disadvantage. They could buy, we were selling. This year we lost the little known players Thierry Henry, Freddie Ljungberg, and Jose Antonio Reyes. Also among the biggest earners so saving on salary as well. Still we looked like we could win the league for a good while and had a pretty good run in the Champions league. Lassana Diarra - Arsene always knows We sold those three for 25 million (the world was different then ) and our most significant purchases were Eduardo and Bacary Sagna for 13,5 million. Wenger totally justified his reputation as a canny operator by buying Lassana Diarra from Chelsea for 4m in August 2007 and selling him for 5.5m to Portsmouth in January 2008 after only 13 games, some as sub. Including that in the calculations means that we spent 16m and got in 33.5m. No wonder the owners and the banks loved Arsene. But did the fans? Did we really care about our finances? Fans didn’t care about money I suspect most didn’t really. Our squad was now visibly weaker than the Invincibles of a short few years before. Only Gilberto and Toure were left as regular players. Almunia replacing Lehmann was probably the biggest drop in class but Bergkamp, Henry, Pires and Ljungberg were replaced by Adebayor, Eduardo, Van Persie, Bendtner and Walcott. Still good players but the most striking of them was Eduardo. We loved him and he would surely have gone on to have a great partnership with Adebayor but he was cut down with a broken leg in February against Birmingham and never got his game back on track. Sometimes bones just don’t heal right or the psychological strain stops you from performing at your best. Eduardo - a true tragedy Most fans agree that Eduardo was the player from that era that we most wanted to succeed. He had the ability to become a world great. Injuries were to plague Rosicky, Diaby, Van Persie and Walcott as well from that time. Those five, if operating at full throttle, would surely have got us the league that season and kept us at the top for seasons after that. We were going backwards And so we were behind I feel in the quality of players we had as compared to our peers and still got 83 points and 3rd behind Man Utd 87 points and Chelsea 84. When you consider that Henry, Ljungberg and Reyes never quite captured the heights after they were let go, it seems like Wenger, as usual, knew. Good luck with injuries could still have seen us capturing big trophies in the post Highbury era. Yes, even though an emerging City decided that the best way to challenge was to grab our best players. The mighty Barcelona also liked the look of our players. We were now a selling club like Brighton at the moment and Southampton not long ago. The third best team ever in England with one of the biggest stadiums and fan base were grooming players for what? Lesser upstarts like City. It was a hard time to be an Arsenal fan. Bacary Sagna - Arsene's best buy that season We were looking on with despair. We knew that teams don’t win by selling. But despite all that, it was testament to Wenger that he kept getting us so close. Probably close to a miracle. What then transpired on the pitch? A lowlight was the old chant of one nil to the Arsenal nearly disappeared with only 5 across all competitions and 58 matches. But we did have some nice wins coupled with some bad defeats, the most painful of all for me was being beaten by Liverpool in the quarterfinal of the Champions league. We played better than them for most of the 2 matches, got caught out by dodgy refereeing and got beaten 5-3 on aggregate. And the wait went on for my dream. The Spuds teach us a lesson Another bad defeat was Man Utd in the FA cup on the 16th February of 4-0. But the kicker of all was the Spuds in the League cup semi-final. An annoying Bulgarian and an even more annoying Irishman (I will let you supply the names of this partnership)kicked us in the arse. 5-1 to the Spuds and we ended up fighting amongst ourselves with William Gallas throwing a strop with Niklas Bendtner. The indignity of it all. Yes, Wenger played some kids but we were hopeless that day. I am sure you all watched on in disbelief. I am sure you have all blanked this horror from your mind We had good wins in the league against Everton 4-1 and Derby twice 5-0 and 6-2. We could still play a bit. A lot of draws though at 15 in all competitions and nine 1-1’s meaning we could have had a new chant – 1-1 to the Arsenal. This pair should have shown the fight against the Spuds, not themselves We did have a super 7-0 against Slavia Prague in the Champions league qualifying and we didn’t have a bad campaign although we came second to Sevilla in the group stage. We beat the champions A.C Milan in the last 16 in an unlikely fashion as I am sure you all remember. 0-0 at home meant we had to go away to the San Siro and beat them, something no English team had ever done. But we are the Arsenal, we destroyed them 2-0 in one of our best displays of the season. But then of course, that hard to take defeat against the Scousers of Liverpool. I could have smashed Steven Gerrard’s face in that night I was so disappointed. Long undefeated run We had a 28 match undefeated spell and we were top of the league for a long period but Eduardo’s injury coincided with us falling down the table. Wenger was somehow keeping the hope alive of the big trophies but there was a big but in all our minds, I reckon. We destroyed Derby twice But perhaps coincidentally, it was also the year that the Kroenke’s first appeared. They are different types of owners to most. They like to stay in the background and they have a great belief in hiring experts across many different areas. I believe they saw what Wenger could do that season and wanted to keep him or hire another such manager who could get the best out of his players. Unai Emery had such a reputation but it didn’t quite happen for him. Arteta has inherited that from Wenger, you must always get the best out of your players and I think the Kroenke’s saw that about him in the interviews. Overall, though, the feeling was worrying. We were selling our best. We had potentially great players injured. All around us new teams were appearing and the established ones were strengthening. Wenger would have needed to be a true magician to win the league or Champions league with our teams. We still had hope but not much else. 2007-08 was, I feel, the watershed moment when we truly became second best.

The series is back! I will put it together up to last season as I plot how I felt in the doldrum years when not much went consistently right. I will plot the downfall of Arsene Wenger and the attempts to replace him. All change on the North London Front Putting together the Emirates was probably the glue that holds 2006-07 together. Lots of good players left, presumably to cover costs and not so many came in. Results on the pitch were very patchy, and it was the first time in a long time that we heard transitioning in a negative way about Arsenal under Wenger. We were to remain in negative transition more or less ever since until hopefully last season. Easy to spend money at the Emirates Strangely enough, though, I remember being hopeful at the start of the season. We had just come off a good performance against Barcelona in our only Champions league final, where bad luck and Jens Lehmann cost us the win. We would now have a much bigger stadium so close to the old one that Highbury could be omnipresent and remain in our hearts. Gone was trudging past houses into the stadium to be replaced by bridges, statues, photos, shrines to players, and a huge commercial experience with plenty of ways to remove fans from their money. It was, and still is, impressive though. It changed from our dear old Highbury to an all encompassing Arsenal event at every stage. You were looking up in wonder all the time. But it did not lead to an uptick in our performances. But I will get to that. Our best players gone, and the new ones struggled First was the astonishing amount of players let go or loaned out, I reckon to save wages. 14 went, including Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires (still hurting from being subbed in the Champions league), Sol Campbell, Ashley Cole, Lauren and Jose Antonio Reyes among the most notable. It was hard to replace Robert Pires We got in 5 players, Rosicky, Song, Gallas, Denilson and Baptista and the bind that connects them was that they never managed to quite make it at Arsenal, although only Gallas is probably not remembered with much fondness by Gooners. Some were plagued by injuries, with Rosicky being the most tragic. He could have been superb for us, but getting consistent game time proved impossible to achieve. I still believed So why had I any optimism? Henry was still there, and Adebayor and Van Persie were emerging. Alex Hleb had come in the previous season and was showing a silky touch on the ball and of course Cesc Fabregas was top class. We still had good players and Arsene always seemed able to get the best out of his teams. Bergkamp was another big loss My optimism was misplaced though straightaway. Our first match was against Aston Villa at the Emirates and we drew. Then we lost to Man City and drew against Middlesbrough. 2 points, 3 matches and it wasn’t looking good. But then luckily for us we came up against 2 Uniteds, Manchester and Sheffield. The champions Utd were beaten at Old Trafford 1-0 to the Arsenal and then Sheffield United were beaten for our first win at the Emirates. Why did I doubt Mr Wenger? We didn’t frighten teams anymore But in truth, we never truly got going. We had 8 losses and 11 draws in the league and somehow finished 3rd, level on points with Liverpool on 68. We needed 84 this season to come second, in contrast. Yes we had some good wins like the one at Old Trafford. We had four 3-0’s against the Spuds, Liverpool, Watford and Sheffield Utd, a 4-0 against Charlton and 6-2 against Blackburn. Our home form was decent with only one defeat (West Ham) and 6 draws so the Emirates was doing us some good. Rosicky could have been a great for us As for the League Cup, which is certainly not our favourite trophy, we had lots of tough ties but came through them all up to the final against Chelsea. We had West Brom away and we won 2-0. Then Everton away and we won 1-0. Then Merseyside away again when we destroyed Liverpool 6-3. The hapless Spuds up next in the semi’s and over 2 challenging games we triumphed 5-3. Chelsea though were a bridge too far. A bad tempered match saw Jose Mourinho come out on top 2-1. Wenger, to his credit, stuck with the young players he had trusted in the lead up to the final. That was very brave against a Chelsea team who were starting to dominate English football. Wenger was never to lift the League Cup. Alex Song could maybe have been another And the FA Cup? Our trophy? Not this year but we again showed our superiority over Liverpool with an away win of 3-1. Bolton next and it took us 2 matches to also dismiss them 3-1. Then Blackburn and another two matches before they beat us 1-0. That 1-0 beating was part of a sequence I will come back to later. But in the Champions League we will destroy them all? And so the Champions League. Easy enough in the qualifier against Dinamo Zagreb 5-1 on aggregate. Then Hamburg, Porto and CSKA Moscow in the group stages. We did ok and were top of the group with 11 points, equal with Porto. But we never showed the devastating form of the previous season. The patchiness all round was worrying. We got an easy draw in the round of 16 against PSV Eindhoven. We had, after all, hammered the best teams in Europe on the way to the final the previous year. But for us Gooners, every time we believe that Arsenal are about to show our true merit, it seems to go wrong. Eindhoven beat us 2-1 over 2 legs and it was bye bye to my dream of the Champions league. We haven’t really looked like winning it since. Easy peasy PSV I know most of you out there remember all this as we moved to the Emirates but the quality of the team started to deteriorate. Big money signings were disappearing and our players were being snatched up or coming to the end of their times. It was starting to look like the 2 big trophies were out of our grasp, the Premier and the Champions League. Chelsea and Man Utd were pulling away from us. Big money had derailed us and we were no longer even kings of London. One nil to not Arsenal There was something else that year that maybe was a bad portent of the years to come. Our old chant of one nil to the Arsenal could have been replaced with its opposite, one nil to not Arsenal. We were beaten by that score 5 times in the league, by Man City, Everton, Sheffield Utd and West Ham twice, all teams below us. Twice in the Champions League against CSKA Moscow and the crucial match against Eindhoven. Blackburn also kicked us out of the FA Cup by that scoreline. 8 times our favourite score bit us in the bum. We only won four 1-0’s in all competitions, probably our lowest ever. We hadn’t even got anything to sing about in our shiny new and expensive stadium as none of those happened at home. Oh, Arsene, we needed a miracle, I would take 1-0 to the Arsenal all day long if we could win the big trophies. The odd bright spark in that season seemed like the dying embers of a once great team and manager. Could Arsene put it right?

The war for excellence Have you ever thought about what happens in elite sports? How it develops, changes, expands its vision, so that records constantly get broken, old truths get demolished? It is because of a war, a war between the old guard and the new, the previous generation and the now. And, of course this is a football column so I will concentrate on that but other sports provide a clearer, starker emphasis on what I mean. Pep Guardiola - found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs in 2001 but then cleared on appeal First we must go back in time. When we talk about the greatest teams ever in football, we think of the Hungary side in the 50’s, Real Madrid also in the fifties, Brazil in 1970, Liverpool in the 70’s and 80’s, etc. I would say if you took any of these teams in their prime and put them against say Fulham, exactly halfway in the Premier league, Fulham would win easily enough. Not because they are better footballers, but because they run harder and longer, they have everything done for them, diet, training, physiotherapy, modern medicine (painkillers, etc.). Not for them eating greasy chips and kebabs washed down with 10 pints of beer and an ashtray full of cigarettes. The New always beats the Old Of course, the comparison is spurious, as the old teams had heavy pitches, heavy balls, and different rules to contend with. Sports science was in its infancy and football was slower than most Olympic sports to utilize the power of pharmacy. The logic being that drugs cannot make you a better player. But if you can run harder and faster, you can press your opponent every time they come near the ball, not let them settle, and use your modern advantages to win. Ergo my belief that even the greatest teams of the past could not win against an average modern team. And why Olympic records are always broken. The sum total of the controlled life of the modern athlete gives them an advantage over competitors of the past. Arsene did not believe in cheating And so Roger Bannister’s miraculous 4 minute mile in 1954 is now a distant sum with more than 17 seconds faster being achieved. But nothing has been achieved, no matter what the sport, without the fact and suspicion of performance enhancing drugs. I believe football is no different. Here is Arsene Wenger: The Frenchman lamented that his Arsenal side had "played against many teams" using performance-enhancing drugs and stated later: "I'm not satisfied with the level of testing." The drugs do work In Hajo Seppelt's 1999 documentary "Indictment Doping: The Legacy of East German Sports," he put forward his suspicion that footballers were partaking in the use of illegal substances. Hajo Seppelt has the right suspicions "People who say that there is no doping problem in football, that's bull**t," Seppelt told CNN. "People say the drugs have no benefits, but look at the science and the distances covered by players in the game today." He is absolutely correct. Please go and look at a great game of the past on the internet, say Man Utd and Benfica in the European Cup final in 1968. The movement was much slower. Then, technique, vision, ball skills, dribbling and defences that would kick the ball anywhere away from the goal were the norm. Now speed is the critical factor, you push the ball past your opponent and outsprint him to get around him. Dick Pound has similar suspicions Here is Dick Pound, the founder and president of the World Anti-doping Agency: “We have always had trouble attracting FIFA to the problem. For many years, they sort of didn’t think the world anti-doping codes should apply to them. At one time, the world’s largest sport’s registered testing pool consisted of just 10 players, and you’re never going to catch anyone doing that.” They cheat, we cheat, and everyone cheats So what are we left with? The strong suspicion that drugs are endemic in soccer and that the authorities are not too interested in changing that. In all honesty I have stopped caring about many sports, athletics, swimming, cycling because I don’t believe they are clean. I clung to the belief that in soccer they cannot make you a better player but nowadays when I see the speed, the stamina and the 90 odd minutes of haring around a field I am pretty certain that players are using drugs. It goes back to the point I was making at the start. Anything that gives you an advantage must be used. Your best player is injured? Give him an injection and send him out. If your opponents are doing it you must, it is as simple as that, no matter what it is. Maradona - didn't understand that cocaine makes you a worse footballer We all know that cheating is normal on the field of play, stopping an opponent on a breakaway by any means possible is what is expected. As is diving and buying a freekick or penalty. Surrounding the referee and putting your hand up for everything is commonplace. But that is the cheating we see. What goes on that we don’t see? And as I have said, there are teams of people working in football who are trying to figure out any way they can get an advantage, no matter how small. Soon, a normal plane will not be enough to ferry your team to an away match and only a Boeing 777 will do. Cheating is now the only way to improve The thing is, they have most likely exhausted long ago any safe or legal way to improve performances across all sports. My suspicion is that the only way now is to cheat. Suppose you have talent and you are willing to train hard. Your mentality is strong enough to withstand the abuse you receive when you play a bad game, or make a silly mistake. But you know that your opponents have an advantage and it is them that will win the trophies, get the huge money, and the acclaim of being champions. In short, if one does it, then all have to. Otherwise you are Real Madrid of the fifties being unable to beat a mid-table team today. The sport moves on and you must move with it. Every little advantage must be taken up, legally such as tactics, sports psychology, diet, training, good pitches, and so on but also the underground stuff, the drugs and the cheating, the corruption and the scandals. Diving is now expected cheating Can anything be done to change it? Answers on a postcard, please. To me, at least, it is depressing that my heroes on the football pitch are probably utilizing performance enhancers. Let’s take Arsenal, we have divers, we have referee intimidators, we have hands going up for everything, we commit professional fouls, we waste time and it is because all teams do it. We cannot let an opponent have an advantage. So, do you believe we don’t keep up with underground practices also, that we can’t see on the pitch? We can’t see it, so it is not there? The unhappy fact that you must keep up and always improve, could well lead to the death of professional sport and there are very few talking about it. So, this time, my C’mon Arsenal is to show the way, to stop the cheating on the pitch and off it even if it means we cannot keep up. I doubt if many agree with me.

Squeaky bum time is when it matters. Key to below – These are the points total for the last ten matches under Arteta per year and the results for Arsene Wenger over the last ten matches for his era. The stars denote title wins. Mikel Arteta 2023 12 -18 points 2022 15 points 2021 20 points 2020 16 points Arsene Wenger 2018 18 points 2017 24 points 2016 20 points 2015 21 points 2014 20 points 2013 26 points 2012 18 points 2011 14 points 2010 17 points 2009 23 points 2008 18 points 2007 13 points 2006 23 points 2005 28 points 2004 23 points * 2003 18 points 2002 30 points * Max 2001 20 points 2000 25 points 1999 25 points 1998 24 points * 1997 20 points We must never finish Spursy again We have gone all Spursy, falling apart at the end. As you can see from the table above we have never had a strong last 10 games under Arteta. In all seriousness, it is a fault that we need to correct. The maximum we can now get from our last 10 games is 18 points. The minimum is 12. Last season we had 15 and we might be worse this season. If it continues then we will never win the league. You cannot win the league by losing games. For our 3 title wins under Wenger we had 24, 30 and 23. As 30 is the maximum and City has a tendency to get close to that in recent seasons, you can see the necessity to address this issue. We need to change our state of mind We are never likely to be so far ahead at squeaky bum time that we can afford to lose even the 10 points that has been Arteta’s best finish to a season so far. We will definitely lose at least 12 this season. It is the most pressing problem facing Arteta for certain. We cannot drop points against lesser teams I think we can fairly say that last season we were good enough to get points from Spurs, Newcastle Brighton and Southampton but we didn’t and fell out of the Champions league spot. This year we should have beaten Liverpool, West Ham and Southampton and, yes, Brighton which would have given us 9 points more and we would have been looking forward to beating Forest and claiming the title. This year we have been better than all those teams but failed to be clinical when it mattered. No more looking like this at the end of the season, Mikel One point to keep in mind is that Man City would still be regarded as better than us even if we had managed to get those extra points and won the league. I could live with that, Arsenal the under-dogs punching above their weight to snatch the title from City. They could do the double over us and lose the league just as we did over Leicester when they had their win. Next year we may be at the business end in Europe, the FA cup and League cup. That will bring extra pressure. Address this problem and all will be well But I really do believe that our biggest problem is having a Spursy end to the season. And, like I have said, it is not getting better and this season may be the worst under Arteta. So, what can be done about it? To talk about this, I would like to explain why I came up with this as a topic. My memory was that under Arsene Wenger, we normally finished strongly and so I took a look. The figures above show that I was right for most of the time. We finished with 20 points or above lots of times and for sure did on our 3 title wins. Arsene Wenger knew how to finish strongly. Bring on the evil flying monkeys Arsene knows and he is the answer And this is what I would offer. For Arteta to talk to the maestro and ask him what he did to produce such strong finishes. Because this is not about tactics, it is about man-management, and Arsene Wenger was maybe the greatest ever at that. As I have said above, we are better than the sides who took points off us but we allowed them to beat us when it mattered. Wenger normally didn’t when it got to squeaky bum time. As you can see above, even in the lean times as Arsenal were trying to pay for the Emirates, he regularly got 20 or above. Call on our greatest for help, Mikel Man management was Arsene’s forte I have alluded to before in this column about how very few players ever complained about him and also that quite often, once players left Arsenal, they didn’t perform to the heights that they did under Wenger. Most players say that he improved them enormously in their effectiveness. This is Arteta’s first job in the hotseat. He is doing great. But he must ensure that we finish strongly or his good work will be compromised. And who better than our greatest? Well, possibly Guardiola but I doubt if Arteta could ring him up and ask him to help him to win at the business end of the season. Of course, he would have seen what Guardiola does to make sure they have a strong finish when he was there. And Guardiola can rotate seamlessly, which we can’t. Arteta has been using his first choice players whenever he could as he doesn’t seem to have the same belief in his second string. Guardiola is happy at the end of the season but he won't help us Of course, I do accept that a lot of players are young. They probably need to get more football wise and yes, improve their consistency. And injuries haven’t helped. But that is the pressure point Arteta has to address with urgency if we are to make the jump up into champions. And my strongest recommendation is to ask Arsene for help. Arsene knows, we all know that. He can help you, Mikel, so that next year City and any other challengers see Arsenal as the juggernauts who keep winning and sicken them all, that despite their best efforts, Arsenal will be champions. At the end we need to be juggernauts Listen to this Irishman, Mikel, there is an answer out there. Use it. We are all Arsenal, we are behind you. We have your back. P.s I would just like to say thank you to the Arsenal Supporters Club Bulgaria for letting me write this column, and for putting up with my sometimes strange mode of thoughts which I fashion into a blog. It is refreshing to be allowed to write what I like, and I truly appreciate the support I get. I have brought in George Orwell, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and even Abba and crafted my story around them. Probably few football writers do but the Arsenal Supporters Club here have never complained about me when I drift off into the matrix. Thank you very much!