by tictoc
I've been an Arsenal supporter for the best part of 20 years and that time can be divided into two very different periods; those years that Arsene Wenger managed the club and those years that he didn't.
Whilst Arsene Wenger brought immediate success to the club we are now at a stage where either his tactics, of even employment, as our manager is being questioned by many in the game.
There are those asking Wenger to consider the way he sets up Arsenal to play their football whilst some believe it is time for him to leave all together, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to officially voice my opinion on the matter based on my experiences with supporting Arsenal.
I suppose the best place to start with reviewing my life following Arsenal would be the day I first became a supporter of the club, and I remember that day well.
Don't get me wrong, I couldn't give you the exact date, but I do remember the conversation I had with my mother following a day in Primary School where all my friends were talking about the football teams they supported. It was 1993 and I had just joined a school in
I had to pick one, but I had no idea which one to pick.
My parents were not fans of football and so I had no club thrust on me from birth and I had to ask my mum who she thought I should support and it was then that she told me her father was always an Arsenal fan and so, before I could name a single player or fact about the club, I became one of them also (and would tell this to anyone who would ask).
For a while I was a fan by name only (rather like a lot of the Chelsea fans I meet today) and it took me a little while before resembling anything like the modern day supporter I am now, who’s emotional fortune rises and falls with the form of the team, and this happened by firstly falling in love with the players. It is fair to say that the club was a distant second in those early days as I started following Arsenal at the start of the 1993 campaign.
The 1993-1994 season Arsenal finished 4th whilst winning the European Cup Winners Cup with a 1-0 score line.
We achieved success in my first year as an Arsenal supporter and it was not the first time I had witnessed a 1-0 score line to get us there.
This was also the season that it took us an amazing (by today’s standards) 42 league games to score 53 goals whilst proudly conceding only 28 goals (10 goals fewer than the champions) and it was this year I was first introduced to the phrase 'boring boring Arsenal'.
Understandably then, my hero’s of the club was pretty much the entire back line...in fact, when ever I played football in the park I always wanted to be a defender because those were the players I was trying to emulate. I wanted to be Tony Adams and when I thought of Arsenal, and when I think back to The Arsenal, I think of those days when we taught the rest of the premiership how they should defend.
This is why when I play football today, I still play in defense. I grew up learning to play in the position I wanted (and still want!) to play in for the masters of 1-0 football and I didn't care at all for those who claimed we were boring.
At the end of the 1995 season Arsenal finished 12th and reached the final of the European Cup Winners Cup for the second year in a row.
This was a disappointing season, but there was a silver lining that I didn't know at the time and this was it: undoubtedly, the events of that year set in motion a chain of events that led to The Arsenal going an entire premier league campaign without being beaten.
And it all started with the departure of George Graham.
George Graham was sacked that year after it was proved he had taken a bung some years previous (although some would say he isn't the only manager of a north London team to be guilty of such a crime) and so he, with his unflinching philosophy of football that won very few plaudits from the neutral, left the club and his full time replacement, by the name of much forgotten Bruce Rioch, came in.
In 1995-1996 Arsenal improved their league standing to 5th place, with thanks to new signings David Platt and Dennis Bergkamp, with the closest to silverware coming via the semi-final of the Coca-Cola cup where they were defeated by Aston Villa.
We had a new manager for the first time in almost my entire life, certainly the period in my life which I could actually remember, although not a lot had changed in the way we played or the players I was worshipping.
We had conceded only 32 goals that season, less than any other team that year, and still had the tag of boring. Did we care? Did we hell. We were The Arsenal and we were proud of every single 1-0 victory we could muster. We knew no different and showered praise on the defenders that kept so much pressure off David Seamen and boasted about the way we had mastered the offside trap.
We had mastered it so well that it inspired a scene in the 1997 film 'The full Monty' in which one Chippendale wannabe was trying to teach a 'dance' move to another Chippendale wannabe before simplifying it and describing it to the others as ''The Arsenal offside trap''; before explaining that, ''Lomper 'ere is Tony Adams right? Any bugger looks like scoring, we all step forward in a line and wave our arms around like a fairy.''
If ever a film scene could fully explain the feelings of the neutrals towards one football club, then this was that scene. We weren't particularly liked, not to be watched anyway, due almost entirely on the reliance of our defense to see out a victory.
And as well as Sam Allardyce thinks his team defends, I've yet to see any of his teams referenced in Bafta winning films...
In September 1996-1997 Arsene Wenger joined the club, taking over from caretaker manager Pat Rice, in which he quickly signed an unknown 20 year old Patrick Viera, culminating in a 3rd place finish.
When Arsene Wenger joined the club I was 12, and just starting secondary school, and recall a conversation with a fellow Arsenal fan in which we both agreed that we did not like the signing of Arsene Wenger. He has just signed from a team in
I did not trust Arsene Wenger, which probably did have something to do with the fact that I was 12 and hated everybody (especially the French), and did not expect much of him nor believed he had proved himself as a manager capable of improving my football club.
In reality, Arsene Wenger had already proved himself plenty by winning the French league title in 1987-88 and the UEFA Cup winners cup in 1991-1992; and whilst in Japan had quickly taken a club from fighting relegation to the next year winning their National Cup competition and finishing second in their respective league campaign.
When researching his time in Monaco further its also interesting to note that he was responsible for signing a young, internationally unrecognized, George Weah along with other stars such as Glen Hoddle, Jurgen Klinsmann and Youri Djorkaff.
If at the time I had known that Wenger had a tradition of singing Spurs best players, and others that would go on to be regarded as some of the very best of their generation, then maybe I would have been a little bit happier in his appointment...
And in reality Patrick Viera did replace John Jensen who was only really famed for scoring one goal in his entire Arsenal career (perhaps one of our most eagerly awaited goals ever) and I think it is fair to say that Viera was a better signing for the club than Jensen was ever likely to be.
But I say all this with the ability of hindsight; and so at the time of our new manager joining us, whilst not expecting much in terms of silverware, I reverted back to my default position of supporting the back four more than the club itself.
That was until the start of the 1997-1998 season and is when the so called 'Wenger Era' really started.
In the 1997-1998 season Arsenal won the League and FA cup double under Arsene Wengers first full year, thanks to the players already at the club and new signings such as Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars and, one of a few young French strikers to join the club under Wengers control, Nichols Anelka.
It was 1997-1998 that we got a glimpse as to what Arsene Wenger wanted to create at the club and the direction he wanted to take us and it was from this moment on that the club was effectively his. He had free reign to impose his idea of football on the pitch and what I have witnessed is a complete transformation of the not only the team, but the philosophy and standing of the club in the eyes of many including our biggest critic, the neutral.
This wasn't done in that season, it took us longer than that, but the seeds had been sown.
That team still had the old guard in defense with Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn on either side of Tony Adams, Steve Bould or Martin Keown in the center and all just in front of England’s numbers one goalkeeper, David Seamen, and they were still the players that I cheered the loudest.
But the club clearly had a much more attacking aggression to them and this was undoubtedly going to happen when Overmars, Bergkamp, Anelka (who was absolutely electric) and Petit sat along side other attacking players such as Paul Merson and David Platt (despite what some recall, we already had players at the club with an ability to score!).
They had the confidence to go forward knowing that they had one of the best defenses in World Football, plus the likes of Viera and Ray Parlour, to recover the ball if they lost it.
For many, it was also the manner of Arsenals Premier League winning goal of that season that really epitomized the change of culture of the club (well, it wasn't really the winning goal as it was the fourth of a four-nil win over Everton at home, but it was the one everyone remembers due to the fact that it was 'Mr. Arsenal' himself who scored it).
Tony Adams, who in his many previous years at the club had been part of a very much flat back four, ran through the field to be played in, fittingly, by Steve Bould to score a left foot half volley into the back of the net.
As an Arsenal supporter, as a supporter of the back four, this was without doubt the best way we could have possibly scored and resulted in even the commentator declaring 'Would you believe it? That sums it all up'.
It took three years for us to win a trophy again, that being the FA Cup, and four before we would win the Premier League but in the absence of trophies our game and team improved immensely and we were undoubtedly getting a reputation for being one of the most attacking sides in Football.
Due to this, in Wenger's first 9 years he won a total of 3 Premier league titles and four FA cups cementing him in the hall of fame as Arsenals most successful manager of all time.
It was during this time that the players I had fallen in love with as a child slowly left and when Ray Parlour and Martin Keown finally called an end to their Arsenal careers in 2004 it finally signaled the end of The Arsenal that I first supportered, and the commencement of another; and it is maybe this reason why when asked who my favourite Arsenal players of all time are I instantly reply 'Martin Keown and Ray Parlour'.
Yes, I know that neither Martin Keown or Ray Parlour were the best players to play in their position even for Arsenal (although like all Arsenal fans I would argue with all my breath that Parlour was both a great player and criminally underrated), but they were the players that connected me to the team I loved as a child and there is no stronger feeling than the one of nostalgia when it comes to football.
So despite watching, and immensely enjoying watching, great players such as Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and current stars such as Cesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie, my favourite players are the ones that embodied my young memories of The Arsenal and are for that reason both defensive players.
I don't think I will ever forget Martin Keown jumping on Ruud Van Nistelroy (okay, it wasn't right but I'm sure that any fan out there can understand why such raw passion, from a Hero of mine, against one of our biggest title rivalries would live long in the memory) or Ray Parlour for scoring against Chelsea in the FA Cup final of 2002 (or captaining The Arsenal to a 5-1 win against Inter Milan in the San Siro in what was one of his best ever performances) and I genuinely feel sorry for any fan that are too young to remember such events.
As of today we are widely considered the most entertaining football team in
In fact, since George Graham got sacked the only consistency Arsenal fans have known is that they've yet to see Tottenham finish above them in the league (whilst every year hearing that Tottenham will finish above them in the league)!
Everything else at the club has changed and there is most definitely an argument brewing between not only commentators and spectators of The Arsenal, but also between two opposing sets of fans of the same club, from those that want to see the club return to something resembling the hard hitting and defensively sound team of George Graham and those that consider themselves 'football purists', who want to see the same attacking flair from Wenger's Arsenal and argue that (like Barcelona) it can bring in the silverware once more.
Personally, I can appreciate and agree with the arguments coming from both camps, but here is my view: given a choice between the time we had no success in the later years pre-Wenger, and the no success we are seeing at the moment, I much prefer today’s option.
Not because of the football we are playing, but because I can see this good team developing into a great team that wins trophies, whilst playing the football we are playing.
To me, we have always played great football. Firstly, I watched us dominate teams in terms of defending (although not really scoring enough goals at times) whilst today I watch us dominate teams in terms of attacking (whilst being defensively suspect), and whilst the neutral might enjoy watching us much more as the second team, I've never not enjoyed watching us.
The club is on a sound financial footing, rather unlike many of our competitors, and we have one of the most promising youth teams in
And when new UEFA regulations prevent teams from spending literally 100's of millions of pounds on recruiting new players then I truly believe that our patience with Wenger and the team will reap us with great, shinny, rewards.
So for me, I say we keep Wenger and his philosophies. Not because of the neutral, but because he can bring success back to the club.
And no, I make no apologies for the cheap shots on our rivals in this blog, it is the best part of being a football supporter…and I've had enough of it directed towards me!
