Danny Murphy writes
Why do you follow Arsenal if you had five happy years on the Shelf ? I used to go to Spurs with my two friends who were Spurs fans, one week Spurs, the next week Arsenal. They are still Spurs fans and I am still Arsenal. How did you change?
Many thanks, Danny
Myles replies : I didn’t change. If you’re new to ANR, you probably wonder why I write what I write and you probably wonder where I’m coming from. You’re may be baffled by my attitude.
It’s quite hard to explain, hard to know where to start.
Before I got married I lived within walking distance of Arsenal. Four of us had a flat in Ossian Road in Stroud Green, between Crouch End and Finsbury Park.
Only one of my three flatmates was into football. John was a witty Scot who worked for the Chemical Bank and he’d watched every Arsenal home game in 1970-71 but Arsenal were now stagnating. They were nearby but boring.
In the mid-Seventies we used to go to games together, mostly at Spurs but sometimes at Arsenal and West Ham. Standing in what later became the Junior Gunners area, we saw Steve Coppell score twice in a 4-2 win for Man United, saw Bettega stomp viciously on O’Leary, watched games where Liam Brady didn’t cross the halfway line because he was leaving at the end of the season.
We used to get the W3 bus to White Hart Lane and get in front of a crush barrier on the Shelf, when possible. One night we saw a replay against Derby County where lanky, ball-playing striker Roger Davies turned Mike England inside out and some Spurs fans, who were walking out, said to us, “Well deserved it, mate!” They thought we were Derby supporters. I think Derby won 6-3.
At that time I was a freelance feature writer for Time Out, The Times and Radio Times and I also wrote some stuff for Rolling Stone, Oz and other music magazines.
I loved reviewing gigs and doing interviews and had loads of fun with The Faces, Stevie Wonder, Vinegar Joe, Brinsley Schwarz, Sutherland Bros & Quiver, Traffic, Joe Cocker, the Grateful Dead, watched the ’74 World Cup with the Average White Band in Chelsea, chatted to Mick Jagger at a party for Van Morrison, played table tennis with Alice Cooper at the group’s house in Connecticut, met the Eagles, Little Feat, the Crusaders, all my favourite groups. I never met Kool & the Gang, unfortunately, but saw them twice. I refused three times to review Roxy Music for The Times, but did Procol Harum twice, and although I didn’t know them, I can remember being in their dressing room at the London Palladium. It was a very big dressing room.
I hated reviewing albums because that was too easy. I had thousands of albums sent to me, and tickets for any gig I wanted to see, but, after a while, I felt I’d done rock journalism. I got bored and began to co-manage groups, which was more of a challenge.
When I married a British Airways stewardess in 1976, I left the flat and we bought a house. She was away a lot, so nothing much changed, except that I now lived in a different part of north London, I wrote my first two books, we went to USA and West Indies quite a lot – Barbados, St Lucia, Tobago, Antigua.
On Saturdays John’s mate Danny, a social worker, used to come round in his old Volvo and pick me up and we would collect John by a railway bridge in Golders Green, and leave Danny’s car in the same place that Mark Jacob later used when we were doing his book What’s The Story? Boring Glory, criticising Alan Sugar.
Then I started writing about football for The Scotsman and did stuff on Charlie Nicholas, who had been signed from Celtic. He was a star and Scottish fans were very interested in how their hottest young footballer was doing down south.
In August 1986, on the first day of the season, Arsenal played Manchester United and beat them and Charlie scored the goal. After the game an immaculately-groomed Scottish hard man came into the press room. He was the new Arsenal manager and I’d never met him.
Within seconds I realised that something was going to happen. I’d met dozens of managers but never anybody like this guy. He was brisk, businesslike, succinct, very determined, knew exactly what he wanted. He had presence. His manner was very demanding, slightly menacing. The implied subtext was : Pay attention, I’m only going to say this once.
Before that I had been annoyed by the blarney of Terry Neill, a guy I did not take seriously. The difference between the Irishman and the Scot was stunning.
George Graham said, “We’re gonna set standards here – and the players know it.”
I knew from the way he said it that a heavy character had taken charge. It was a big moment for me, an unforgettable moment. It was exciting. The regiment had a new colonel. If you were a soldier in his army, you would be doing it his way. I remember thinking: “This guy will kick ass. He’ll make the players earn their money. I don’t know what’s gonna happen but I want be here to find out.”
Yes, George changed my life that day. After that I went to every Arsenal game in London and got to know a lot of people who are still my friends today. I liked George, had a lot of laughs with him (and other reporters), learned a lot from him, became his feed-man at press conferences every week, did one-on-one interviews in his office, and so on.
And I have to say this : for the next three years, from 1986 to 1989, George Graham’s judgements, his choices, were bullseye. They were bang-on. He was totally on top of his job. In that period he was more impressive than any football manager I’ve ever seen.
Many things happened that I still smile about. Like the day he was asked about a player from Stoke and replied, ” I’ve signed the best right back in the Second Division.” I remember that so vividly. I can see George’s face now. He was so chuffed that his satisfaction was palpable. Lee Dixon was superb. Lee Dixon played 458 games in the next 14 years and earned 22 England caps.
Later on George Graham lost the plot, as all managers do.
In 1996, I met Arsene Wenger and he was different too.
While George wasn’t like any manager I’d ever encountered, Arsene wasn’t even like a manager. He was more like an ambassador or a sophisticated corporate salesman or an academic technocrat.
As with George, I had a sense of beginning, a feeling that something new would start. But it wouldn’t be more discipline, it would be something more subtle than what George had done, something less easy to see, harder to measure, more complicated to explain.
I didn’t know if Arsene would be successful but I was all in favour of English football being modernised. That was long overdue.
So that’s it, Danny, I didn’t switch from Spurs to Arsenal. I continued to go to the Lane, as most reporters do.
One day Ian Grant sat next to me in the Arsenal press box and that led to me writing for ANR.
And that led to the Carling semi and Spurs 5 Arsenal 1.
And the 5-1 led to two friends ringing me up after the game and saying, “I switched it off at 3-0.”
Myself, I watched the whole of the second leg on Sky. The build-up, Hoddle, Merson, Poyet, Wenger. It wasn’t a contest because Justin Hoyte is not a centreback. And Traore, Walcott and Fabianski were out of their depth. And Denilson and Gilberto are not a balanced pair.
It wasn’t a game because it only lasted 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Cerny goalkick, Jenas gets above Denilson, heads to Keane, who chests it to Berbatov, first-time pass back to Jenas, who takes four touches and scores. A very slick move that bamboozled Hoyte, Traore and Gallas.
The Carling Cup Final is Chelsea v Spurs on Sunday, February 24.
And Chelsea will win because they have far more money to buy players.