What are my Highbury highlights?
What are my memories of the ground that was Arsenal’s home for 93 years?
Well, it’s different for everybody. Each of us is a lens that sees as we are, sees through our personalities, our circumstances, our histories.
And Highbury was really different for me because I saw a few games as a punter and hundreds as a journalist.
In the early Seventies I was a feature writer and rock critic, so I rarely wrote about football, and when I went to games I went to Chelsea and Spurs.
I remember being given tickets to an Arsenal game by one of the managers of the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, around 1972-73.I knew Peter Dally and Ted Way, who ran the rock venue for Chrysalis, and I used to dash into Ted’s office after gigs to phone in reviews to The Times.
I assumed that the Arsenal box office gave the Rainbow managers tickets for games in return for tickets for gigs, and since Arsenal were boring then, nobody wanted these tickets, so Peter gave them to me, and I went with my girlfriend Jan and saw them play Luton. They were good tickets for a dull game. We sat next to a pair of grumpy old geezers who had been going for thirty years.
I lived in nearby Stroud Green, within walking distance, but flatmate John Mair and I only went to Highbury to see the other team. We saw Juventus, when Roberto Bettega stamped on David O’Leary, a Derby game where I said, “Stop yawning, Mair, you’re bringing the game into further disrepute”, and we saw Manchester United beat Arsenal 4-2 with Steve Coppell scoring twice past Pat Jennings as Kenny Sansom ball-watched.
Before the World Cup, when I started to examine my highlights, I realised that my memories are very different to those of an Arsenal fan, or those of a typical journalist, if there is a typical journalist.
As I tried to think of the most exciting matches at Highbury, the most memorable moments, I realised that my main memories are George Graham and Arsene Wenger.
In 1983 I was writing for The Scotsman and Charlie Nicholas was interesting to Scottish readers, so I started going to write about Charlie, and did an interview with him. Charlie is bright and chatty and I enjoyed quizzing him.
Normally, Man United would thump Arsenal and Terry Neill would come into the old press room and say, “We had a lot of young lads in today. All credit to Manchester United.”
When they failed to beat Liverpool, Terry Neill would come in and say, “We had a lot of young boys in today. All credit to Liverpool, they played well.” In 1985 I told my sports editor, Ian Wood, that I did not expect to see a London club win the league in my lifetime.
Then in 1986 the club hired a new manager from Millwall and the first game of the season was Manchester United at Highbury and Champagne Charlie scored the only goal of the game, knocking it in from three yards.
Afterwards this slim, immaculate Glaswegian hardcase came in and hit me like a bolt of lightning. After one three-minute meeting I realised that George Graham was a different animal, nothing like Terry Neill, nothing like Don Howe. And nothing like Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, Kenny Dalglish, or any other manager I had met. From day one, George Graham was his own man.
He said, “I want to see Charlie in the box- the six yard box.” This was shocking news to me, and to Charlie. His exit-line was, “We’re gonna set standards here – and the players know it !”
I knew immediately that something would happen. I didn’t know what would happen, but I wanted to be there every week to find out because George Graham was compelling and different. He had presence and authority. I thought : This guy will make the players earn their money.
Personally, I was always more interested in managers than players because when I was a student at Manchester University I had met Alf Ramsey, Matt Busby and Tommy Docherty. And I had done an interview with Manchester City coach Malcolm Allison for our fortnightly student newspaper, spending a foggy morning on the pitch with him at Maine Road, yelling at Mike Summerbee, Johnny Crossan and company. We carried on chatting in the changing room while the players shrieked and splashed in the bath five yards away.
Malcolm Allison, who had played centre half for West Ham, had huge bonhomie and a massive appetite for the game. He was intelligent, funny, persuasive, larger than life.
He was the most charismatic person I had ever met. He was by far the most charismatic person I had ever met.
After meeting Big Mal I became fascinated by the alchemy of the group, the leadership challenge, the process of shaping a team, the power of one man’s personality to control and stimulate the performances of eleven players, and make them achieve great things.
The strangest thing about my Highbury years with George Graham is that the most memorable games of his era were at Anfield, Wembley, Copenhagen,White Hart Lane.
There is no Highbury game in those eight and a half years that stands out above all others, apart from the Benfica game, which they lost 3-1 in extra time. That is weird and I cannot explain it. Maybe it’s just too long ago and the games just blur into each other.
In the old press room, off the narrow staircase used only by reporters ands staff, I’d use a cassette recorder to tape the managers, who would come in and stand there and reply to questions from reporters. After a few years the press were moved upstairs to an upgraded facility with three rooms : a press conference room with a high desk and cinema-type seats for the hacks, a work-room with desks and phone lines, and a bar-coffee bar.
So King George was now enthroned. He sat above us, monarch of all he surveyed – and he didn’t think much of what he surveyed. I won’t repeat what he said privately to me about several reporters who are still household names.
Where Terry Neill had been garrulous, George Graham was succinct. He came in and said what he wanted to say and no more, then left. In that he was like Howard Kendall, who had won the title twice. Action and discipline win trophies, not blarney. A George Graham press conference was 2 minutes. A long George Graham press conference was 2 minutes 30 seconds.
For big games, the No.1 reporters were at Highbury, and for lesser games they were elsewhere, covering Liverpool or Manchester United, and after a while it always seemed to be me asking the first question, and over time people expected me to ask the first question and often the second question.
In the new press conference room George sometimes came in, sat down, and looked at me. We had a rapport. I liked him and he knew that I wasn’t scared of him, and maybe he liked that as well.
Once enthroned, George answered more questions and spoke for longer and sometimes, after a lot of pleading by the tabloid boys, he brought a player in with him. I was at all the games, big and small, so I became part of the furniture.
But in late July we usually took the kids to the Algarve for three weeks, so I often missed the first game of the season. Sometimes I came back to London and heard that George had missed his straight-man and asked where I was.
One year I came back and George walked in and saw me sitting in my usual seat in the front row and asked, “Where’s the tan?” He didn’t know that Myles Palmer doesn’t sunbathe.
Once, however, I went to a pre-season game at Leyton Orient, which Arsenal won 4-2. One of the goals Orient scored was a cross from the right wing which Lee Dixon should have headed away. It was sloppy defending and I thought George might be annoyed. He had, by then, spent hundreds of hours teaching his defenders how to prevent goals like that. But when I mentioned it he just smiled and said, “I’d rather that happened now than in a league game. It gives us something to work on.”
On one occasion, in the mid-Eighties, Malcolm Allison appeared in the press lounge after a game, so I stayed talking to Big Mal rather than go into George’s press conference.
Once again, I was missed
“Where’s Myles?” he asked.
“He’s next door talking to Malcolm Allison,” said some hack, helpfully. It was the truth but it didn’t go down too well with George. I had abandoned him. George expects loyalty. For me to be abroad in mid-August was inconvenient, but to be next door and ignoring him was plain rudeness.
One summer, when the Makita Tournament was played at Highbury against West Ham and Sampdoria, I met Hugh Southon , a bright tabloid hack who is really into rock music. We are on the same wavelength and became good friends. Hugh was writing for 90 Minutes, a weekly magazine edited by Paul Hawksbee, who works for Sky now.
One of the oddest facts about my life as a football reporter is that I had never seen 90 Minutes, or even heard of it, until I saw George Graham put a little colour magazine in his attache case during our first interview. He said it gave him a brief summary of what was going on in football.
Hughie persuaded me to write for 90 Minutes, giving me the phone numbers of any player I wanted. We would call players all the time and get 600 words off them. Hughie had the numbers of almost every player in the country.
I can remember talking to Kevin Campbell, Steve Bould, Lee Dixon, Ray Parlour, as well as loads of guys like Darren Anderton, Chris Waddle, Ray Wilkins, Mark Draper, Dean Saunders and many others. Only two players ever asked : Who gave you my number? They were Keith Curle and David Ginola.
Lee Dixon is a great guy and I did several pieces with him. But then a young alcoholic reporter phoned Lee one night at 11.50 pm and Mrs Dixon went ballistic and the number was changed. So one pisshead spoiled Lee Dixon for the rest of us.
I also did an interview with Lee at the training ground before an international against Poland, talking about a Polish left winger that he had faced in a previous game. But, on the night, neither of them played.
One of my most vivid memories of George was when he told us he had signed Lee from Stoke. He was so chuffed with himself. He was really, really pleased with himself. He was standing right next to me, beaming, as he said, “I’ve signed the best right back in the Second Division.”
His mood, the expression on his face, his satisfaction, made that moment unforgettable. But even George didn’t realise how good Lee Dixon would be, or how long he would be good.
I did three one-on-one interviews with George, the first in a little temporary office he was using while his proper office was being refurbished. At Arsenal the Secretary always had the biggest office but George apparently insisted on having Ken Friar’s office. In our third interview he told me that that the back four “would go on for a good few years yet.”
I was really dubious about that but he was proved right.
I remember the Littlewoods semi-final replay at White Hart Lane far better than the 1997 final against Liverpool, which they won 2-1 with both goals scored by Charlie Nicholas. A year later they met Luton in the same final and George ran out of centrebacks and had to play Gus Caesar.
For the Luton final I sat with Kevin Connolly, who edited the Arsenal programme, and Nigel Bidmead, who was doing Arsenal ClubCall at the time. They were at Colney every week talking to the players, so I knew a lot of stuff that I was not supposed to know.
In that final Arsenal played badly, even when they were winning,and we talked all through the game about how badly they were playing, and how disappointed we were. They were 2-1 up and then Winterburn missed a penalty and they lost 3-2.
We went into the press conference where George finished up by saying, said, “We’ll be back, you can be sure of that.”
Ten minutes later four of us stood with George in the room next door, a TV interview room where there were now no TV cameras or technicians. I was with Kevin, Lambros Lambrou and Kenny Goldman,That scene is branded in my brain. George was furious. He was absolutely livid because it was supposed to be George’s day.
I expected it to be his day and I wanted to see him enjoy his day and retain the Littlewoods Cup. I’ve never seen George as angry as he was that day. And I will never forget the grim determination on his face when he said, “We’ll be back. You can be fucking sure of that.”
A year later, when Mickey Thomas scored that dramatic goal at Anfield, George’s Arsenal won the club’s first league title since 1971.
A singer friend, Lee Kosmin, persuaded me to go to Barnet to see Andy Clarke, a young striker, and Andy scored a sweet goal.I heard that Andy Clarke had played for Arsenal reserves against Barnet in a practice game there. Partnered by Paul Merson, he scored two goals.So one day, after a game, I grabbed George Graham in the corridor and asked him what he thought of Andy Clarke and George said, “I haven’t seen him play but I’m told he’s no better than what we’ve got.”
Occasionally, George would talk to a few of us off the record. He told three of us about insider trading by the PFA. Since the PFA have details of every player’s contract, they know what every player earns. But the PFA also act as agents, negotiating new contracts, which is not fair on the clubs.
The PFA is based in Manchester and Gordon Taylor was the highest-paid trade union executive in Europe, and we reckoned he had re-negotiated the contract of Steve Bruce, the captain of Manchester United.
I thought that this “insider trading” was a good story, so I called Gordon at home. I could tell that by his reaction that he had never been asked this question before. His dog was barking loudly in the background throughout our conversation, which was quite lengthy, as these calls go. Indeed, it proved to be easier to get Gordon Taylor on the phone than it was to get him off it.
Quite soon, George began to remind me of Rod Stewart. They were both shrewd London-Scots who knew how to look after No.1. I’d known Rod quite well in the Seventies after we gave him the cover of Time Out three weeks before Maggie May came out. I saw quite lot of Rod after that – backstage, at parties, in the studio. Rod was born in Highgate and George was born in Bargeddie, near Glasgow, and they struck me as two tough, canny, hard-working London-Scots.
After six years with George I realised that he also reminded me of my dad. Both were smartly dressed, well-groomed and prematurely bald. Both talked succinctly, made decisions easily, and were prone to laughing at their own jokes. It took me a long, long time to twig the similarity, probably because George was taller than dad, slimmer, more handsome, and didn’t wear glasses. And, of course, George is my age. If someone is your age he will not usually remind you of your father.
OBVIOUSLY, I’ve written millions of words about Arsene Wenger on ANR in the last eight years, so you know what I think of him.
I won’t dwell on his first press conference – September 22, 1996 – because that day later became the first seven pages of The Professor, a chapter I called Prologue : Mission Statement.
So there it is. When I think of Highbury I think of George Graham and Arsene Wenger, two men who made very strong first impressions.
Where George Graham was military and somewhat menacing, Arsene Wenger was educated, charming and fluent, like a diplomat. George was like an SAS colonel and Arsene was like a French ambassador.
I wanted to write a book about George Graham and that didn’t happen. But I learned enough from George to write a good book about Arsene Wenger. I put everything I know about football into The Professor and those two managers mean a lot to me. I had fun with them at Highbury, and elsewhere, and learned a lot from them.
As I always say, you have to enjoy it, because I don’t believe in re-incarnation. We’ re only here once.