Today, August 11, is a slightly weird moment in my year.
It’s a moment of anticipation and a moment of confidence, and also moment of nostalgia, a time when I try to remember other seasons, other kick-offs, other anticipations.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember them. Of the last 20, I’ve forgotten 17,
Yes, I reckon Arsenal will beat Fulham, who finished one point above relegation last season. Their new manager Lawrie Sanchez has signed lots of journeymen because he can’t sign anyone better. Brian McBride, the American striker, is their captain now and the ebullient David Healy is a bit like Micky Quinn, a pure goalscorer.
But, let’s get this right, Fulham are not as good as Ajax and Arsenal beat Ajax 1-0 in Amsterdam last Saturday. Also, Arsenal are usually a good team in August, especially when they have six days preparation for a game. Expect a convincing victory.
There are a few doubts, of course. Has Arsene got enough bodies ? How does Gilberto feel after being demoted from captain to joint vice-captain?
Will Gallas be a good captain? Well, he can’t be worse than Henry, the worst captain I’ve ever seen in my life. However, Gallas is an intense, self-contained character, very focused on his own game, a bit like Gerry Francis, who was not a good captain of England.
Making Gallas captain is a big call. In my view, it’s a very big call and a risky call. Maybe Arsene has seen something in him that nobody else has seen. I just hope Arsene hasn’t done it just to placate him, to keep him sweet, as he did to placate Henry. If Gallas has a bad season, Arsenal will have a bad season.
Today is a somewhat strange moment because I’m rarely around for Arsenal’s first game.
For once, I’m at home. The football season kicks off when half of England is on holiday and I’ve invariably been abroad when the Charity Shield was played and when Arsenal played their first game.
The three pre-seasons I remember are 1989, 1997 and 1998.
In 1989, Arsenal played Independiente in Miami in a pre-season friendly that was broadcast live on ITV and I heard that the players were fed up when they came back. They wanted more money. They expected bonuses, and they were gutted. That was what I heard at the time. Their minds were not on football when the season kicked off their first game was at Old Trafford and they were stuffed 4-1. Arsenal were in Manchester in body but not in spirit
In the George Graham years I’d usually come back for Arsenal’s second or third home game and my reporter pals would say, “Last week George wanted to know where you were.” I had become GG’s straight man, always feeding him the questions he wanted, except, occasionally, when I was annoyed with him.
In the early Arsene years, we were always in the Algarve, except in ’98.
The pre-season I remember best was the summer of ’97, when I went to Highbury and met Marc Overmars and Manu Petit. David Dein was really chuffed that day, I’ve never seen him happier. They had also signed Luis Boa Morte but he was on holiday after playing in an under-21 tournament where Portugal had reached the final.
Soon after that press conference to introduce Overmars and Petit we were in my brother-in-law’s apartment in the Algarve and it was a Sunday and Arsenal were due to play Coventry live on Sky. In the morning we were on the beach and the kids were getting off their steel pedalos in shallow water and a wave came in and slammed the pedalo against Caroline’s leg. I didn’t see this, I was 100 yards away. The lifeguard carried her up the beach and a nice young French couple gave invalid and parents a lift back to the apartment in their SUV .
So I told Caroline, who was 12, that she could watch the Arsenal-Coventry game with me and we got her injured leg propped up on a cushion. Just before kick-off there was a knock on the window : Helene, a little French girl with pigtails and glasses. Caroline jumped up, limped across the room and went out to play, leaving me on my own. That’s how bad the injury was.
As I watched that Coventry game, with no interruptions or distractions, I was thinking : We’ve only got two goalscorers. They way we play, only two players can score. We pass the ball forward very quickly and it’s always tackle, pass, sprint, bang ! Dennis Bergkamp looked dangerous, Ian Wright looked dangerous and scored two goals, Arsenal won 2-0.
The two strikers always shot or passed to each other, so nobody else could score. Parlour and Overmars would never get the ball in scoring positions, so they couldn’t score. The midfielders couldn’t score because the strikers always shot or passed to each other, so every attack ended with a shot wide or a shot saved or a goal. It was a really exciting style of football but only Wrighty and Dennis could score. That was a bit worrying. I was only 90 minutes into the season and that was quite worrying.
However, Overmars scored in their third game, their eighth game, their ninth game and after that he scored the goals that made the difference between winning the Double and not winning anything. Uniquely for a winger, his off-the-ball play was as good as his dribbling. The way he timed his runs was fantastic. Marc Overmars was world class and in every game where he didn’t play, Arsenal struggled.
Moral of that story : Early games can tell you a lot but not everything .
In the summer of 1998 we visited my brother Neil in Villanova, PA, and the London Palmers also had three nights in New York. On our last night we took the kids up the Empire State Building, which was on the same block as our hotel, the Best Western in Little Korea. Throughout the holiday Caroline had been wearing her red and white JVC Arsenal shirt and as we were going into the Empire State, some other English tourists were coming out and one youth saw Caroline’s shirt.
“C’mon the Arsenal !” he shouted.
“Have we signed anybody?” I shouted back.
“Kluivert!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“How much?”
“Eight million !”
That story was on the back page of The Sun that day, I later discovered. But Kluivert didn’t happen, thankfully. He is a tosser.
Then all seven Palmers all had a week in Stone Harbour, a small town on the south Jersey shore where you can buy a house for a $1million and a nice house for $2 million. While we were there, Arsenal played Manchester United in the Charity Shield at Wembley but we didn’t know who had won.
So when we got back to Villanova, a week after the Charity Shield, we got Neil’s wife Martha to do a search on her laptop and she told us the score : Arsenal 3 Manchester United 0.
We all shouted, “Yes!” and punched the air.
Those are the stupid things I tend to remember, the things you only do once in a lifetime, like celebrating the result of a match played a week ago.