So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology (9 page)

How far ahead he was can hardly be conceived in 2011, when it seems that there isn’t much to be invented in football any more. We all know about the clock installed on the South stand, so that players and fans had a clear idea of how much time was left, something that, unbelievably, nobody had thought of before. This, by the way, is the reason why the giant screens at the Emirates show a 90-minute countdown, as intended by Herbert (and vetoed by the FA, as it would undermine the referee’s authority, in their view), not the conventional clock you see in other grounds. Floodlights? Installed on the West Stand in 1932, vetoed by the FA, again, and only used for evening training sessions until 1951. Numbered shirts, white footballs, goal-line referees – all Chapman’s ideas. Then there’s the renaming of Gillespie Road tube station as ‘Arsenal’, a promotional masterstroke; his superb columns in the Sunday Express, designed to advertise the club as much as to enlighten their readers, and which are now, thankfully, in print again. No other manager had done such a thing previously. But then again, there’d never been such a thing as a ‘manager’ like Chapman before, a man who combined roles previously held by the club secretary, the head coach, the chief scout and, in many instances, the chairman himself. No aspect of Arsenal’s life was too grand (the construction of the magnificent West Stand) or too inconsequential for him, down to the design of the new turnstiles (the first which provided a reliable head-count of the supporters who went through them) and scoreboard. He even thought of a new ticketing system, based on the one used on the London Underground, to cut queuing times. Ideas? “I would borrow one from a programme boy at Highbury, if it were a good one,” he wrote.

Yet the greatness of Chapman doesn’t stop at creating a near-invincible team and transforming a club, transforming football, in fact, through a considered, purposeful, and no less revolutionary for that, quest for innovation. It has been said of the former England cricket captain Mike Brearley that he had ‘a degree in people’; in Chapman’s case, that degree would have been a PhD. The outpouring of grief that followed his tragically early death on 6 January 1934 showed that he’d been loved as very few men who’ve wielded such power have been. His players loved the man as much as they respected the coach. He could be a strict disciplinarian, on one occasion deciding against signing a very talented footballer because of a dissolute lifestyle that ran against the values of Arsenal. But, far more often, he retained a ‘human touch’ that earned him the affection of his charges. He valued their input, as we’ve seen in the case of Charlie Buchan’s championing of a new tactical system. He made sure they were well looked after, financially and otherwise; only the best hotels and the best restaurants would do; regular golf-outings were organised to provide relaxation and gentle exercise; but also to make these young men bond in a way that was quite out of the ordinary at a time when most professional footballers were treated as mere chattels by their clubs.

Chapman’s elegance of manners also expressed itself in the way opponents were received at Highbury: he made sure that the floral displays which greeted visiting directors echoed the colours of their clubs, a tradition which has happily survived to this day, unlike, alas, the salute addressed to all four corners of the ground by the home team. Herbert wouldn’t have liked the sign placed at the entrance of the London Colney training ground very much either, which reminds fans that they can’t request autographs and that, in any case, the players have been instructed not to give any; a far cry from the days when young boys could turn up at Highbury and be invited to shake Alex James’s hand in the dressing-room by Chapman himself.

Herbert the humanist – in the proper sense of the word, of a man who loved mankind – was also a supreme psychologist adept at using his gifts for the good of his club. You might have heard the story of how, on a trip to tempt away a player from a rival, he bribed a hotel barman to ensure that the drinks served to his companion and himself contained no alcohol whatsoever (despite ordering whisky and ginger ale, I believe) while those offered to his hosts would contain double shots of liquor. You may be less familiar with another Chapman tale; of how George Male was brought to his manager’s office, fearing he’d be told that his services were no longer required, only to learn that he, a left-half, would be playing at right-back from then on. Male, who’d never played in that position – and remember this was an age in which tactical roles were far more rigidly defined than in ours – left Chapman’s office convinced that not only would he be able to drop back one line and switch flanks, but that he’d become the best right-back in the country as well. Which he did, playing nineteen games for England in that position, six of them as captain, until the outbreak of WWII.

I’ve been fortunate enough to pass by Chapman’s famous bust by Epstein at Highbury on many occasions, in the days before paranoia struck, when journalists were still allowed through the Marble Halls on match-days. I’ve never walked by without feeling a surge of pride for, and in, my club. He was ours: he transformed the Arsenal; he made champions of us. He made us. I also mourned him, and still do. If only in imagination, I’m one of the thousands who walked behind the hearse taking him to his final resting place in Hendon. What a blessing: the greatest creation of the greatest football manager of all, was and remains the Arsenal we love; and what sorrow, to know we shall never see his like again.

***

Philippe Auclair, France Football’s England correspondent, regular contributor to The Blizzard  and Champions, and author of Cantona -The Rebel Who Would Be King, has been a Gooner ever since he saw Liam Brady score that goal against Spurs. He also has a parallel career in music, under the name ‘Louis Philippe’.

8 – WHAT IS ARSENAL? - Julian Harris

What is Arsenal?

I put this question to a mass of Gooners on the popular Interweb forum, Twitter, and quickly gained a stream of pithy explanations of what fans associate with the club.

Some notable points from the findings:

Around one in six responses included the word, “class”

The same number mentioned, “tradition” and / or “heritage”

Even more mentioned Highbury, many specifying the Marble Halls

Several described, “doing things the right way”

A few included, “innovation”

Astonishingly, the most flattering and complete response came from a Leeds United fan, “You [Arsenal] have had the perfect balance between heritage, tradition and modernity,” stated the gentleman simply known as Al.

Thanks, Al.

Admittedly, it was not the first compliment about Arsenal I’ve heard from a Leeds fan. A couple of hours after our boys trounced them 4-1 at Elland Road in 2002, a thick Yorkshire accent echoed across a town-centre pub’s toilets, where I was busy removing several pints of ale from my system (they actually talk at urinals, up north, I have learned).

“You hammered us t’day,” the friendly Leeds fan said.

‘What a nice chap’, I thought, and made some attempt at an affable, albeit awkward, response. “Yeah thanks, we, errr, we did ok.”

But it wasn’t over yet. The conversation, I mean. “The only thing I don’t like about this Arsenal side,” he continued – and then detailed a complaint so racist that my precious southern liberal conscience renders it unprintable. Suffice to say, our team that day included Kanu, Toure, Lauren, Campbell, Vieira, Wiltord, Cole and Henry. I’m sure you can work it out.

Bigotry aside, however, it was a cracking trip, and several thousand Gooners happily boarded trains back to the capital, all singing and lager-filled and what-have-you. But for every near-perfect away day like this, there is a dull and lengthy round-trip to witness a demoralising defeat, or some other annoyance. On driving back down the seemingly-never-ending M1-A1 after Sunderland’s last-second equaliser in September 2010, I could not help but ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’

Why had I just spent over £100 on yet another away game, to a stadium I’d already visited twice? Why was I so miserable?  Why was I shouting expletives at Stan Collymore on the car’s radio? Why didn’t the defence just bloody hoof the ball clear?

But why did I care? Why do I have a red cannon tattooed for life on the left side of my chest?

Why did you buy this book?!

It is quite possible, Reader, that you too have pondered  – or are pondering – such questions. For most of us, supporting the team is a continuation from childhood. To borrow from Fever Pitch: Arsenal winning trophies is the only thing we have consistently and passionately wanted since we were at school. Yet for children, it makes more sense. Children cling onto interests, suddenly and capriciously; they idolise certain adults; they dream about victory; they run around kicking a ball at any opportunity; they like wearing colourful outfits.

None of these things apply once we have become cynical, miserable, lazy and inactive adults. So why do we still bother? One answer was contained amidst my aforementioned Twitter survey. Too many people to ignore said either, “my dad” or, “my granddad” when asked what they most associated with Arsenal. I suspect in years to come that “mum” and “grandma” may enter the equation, but for now it seems that father/son footballing relationships remain dominant.

The rise of Internet genealogy in recent years is a symptom of people’s on-going quest for continuity and heritage. Thankfully Arsenal provides us with tradition and heritage aplenty. Dare I suggest that our club is perhaps more wedded to its past than any other in England? Other clubs often point to one or two defining periods in their past; yet while the 1930’s are assumed to be Arsenal’s glory era, the team also won league titles in the 1940’s, 1950’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s.

Moreover, the club’s transition from one era to the next – from Chapman to Allison, from Graham to Wenger – is a mirror of the lineage of so many Arsenal-supporting families. The journey from one generation to another is often fraught with troubles, fall-outs and failings, yet the name stays intact and the DNA continues its evolution. Players, and some managers, quickly come and go; the club remains constant.

Yet this merely raises the need to examine our original question – What is the club? What is Arsenal?

Around two thousand years ago – even before Spurs last won the league – a Greek historian, philosopher and all-round intellectual type named Plutarch posed this conundrum: If a ship is repaired over a period of time, having each of its bits of timber replaced one by one, is it still the same ship?

The ship may look similar, and perform the same function, but all the timbers are different. In terms of its logistical, material make-up, Arsenal Football Club is at least 99 per cent different to when it was founded in 1886. The stadium is different, the training ground is different and players are different. Indeed, every fan is different. All the pieces have been replaced, several times over, during the club’s long and varied history. Yet it is still the same club, right?

“We” moved to Highbury in 1913, didn’t we? “We” won five league titles in the 1930’s, right? That was Arsenal, the same club we still support, and not some alien historical entity. Fortunately for this chapter, I am firmly on the side of the ancient sophists who confident stood up and declared, “Yes, it is the same ship!”

The individual components of A Thing, I would argue, do not themselves comprise the meaning of The Thing. Rather, the meaning comes from how those components interact. And thus, even by changing those components entirely over time, if the replacement components combine to produce some kind of on-going effect, then The Thing is still the same Thing.

To put it another way, I’ll paraphrase a more modern and less highbrow writer than Plutarch – Bill Bryson. Over the years of your life, the particles that make up your body replace themselves over and over again. You are losing particles right now. Yet you are still you. Whereas, if you sat there and unpicked each atom one by one from your body, with a pair of tweezers, you would just end up with an atomic cloud by the side of this book, that bore no resemblance to you whatsoever. It is not what you are made of that counts, it is how it all comes together.

In conclusion – Arsenal does still exist. Hurrah!

It is therefore little surprise that fans associate both themselves and the club with its history, and cling onto bygone eras. It gives purpose and backbone to the current, fleeting moments. You’re not just watching a millionaire in a Nike top; you’re watching a player who, whether he knows it or not, is continuing the unique innovation of putting white sleeves on red shirts. You’re supporting the team with the cannon that harks directly back to the club’s foetal period amongst the grimy machinery of the Woolwich Arsenal.

Arsenal, I feel, strive for identity and meaning more than other clubs, perhaps because we are not inherently and directly associated with a geographical location. On top of the departure from Woolwich almost a century ago, the club’s modern-era names – both “The Arsenal” and “Arsenal” – suggest an entity several degrees above mere geographical concerns. Can you imagine a chapter of a book beginning: “What is Colchester United?” The second line would presumably read: “A football team from Colchester.” End of chapter. The same goes for Newcastle United, Gillingham, Aberdeen, Olympique Marseille, et cetera.

I do not mean to belittle these clubs, each of which I am sure has a fascinating history, but there is undoubtedly something different about the Arsenal, reflected in its unique name. While the club is certainly now anchored in its Islington surrounds, and proudly established as north London’s premier team, its legacy and meaning extends beyond this geographical pin – which is perhaps what attracts so many fans from throughout the world.

The respect for the club’s history is on-going, with a new group of fans digging into the club’s past and, even today, unearthing new evidence. Arsenal historian Tony Attwood, for example, believes that Henry Norris – controversial chairman and part-owner in much of the 1910’s and 1920’s – has largely been misrepresented and wronged by history’s authors. “There should really be a statue of him outside the stadium,” Attwood told me. “He’s basically the club’s founding father, arguably even more so than Herbert Chapman.”