It is nice that blogs on this website are read by a number of generations. In fact, mixing historical recollection with current opinion is one of the reasons this blog exists. Dave Faber who founded the original ‘Goonerholic’ was born a few years after me but started to follow Arsenal from a very early age. So our recollections of games were pretty contemporaneous. We often exchanged comments on past matches or Arsenal giants of the past and on our previous title seasons.
There can’t be many reading this who actually remember us winning the league in 1953. My Dad gave me a blow by blow account of the final game of that campaign which he marked by throwing his friend’s trilby onto the pitch as the final whistle blew. I come from a long line of hooligans! The first title won in my supporting lifetime was in 1971. This article will be part reminiscence and part comparison of how we prepared to win titles back in the day and how we now need to prepare to try to win them and will illustrate how football has changed fundamentally in this supporter’s lifetime.
I started supporting Arsenal in 1958. I was conscious the club had a glorious history but they were then struggling to match the achievements of the great sides of the past. I would wend my way back from Highbury chatting distractedly as little boys do with their dads and I’d constantly be asking about the relative merits of Alex James and Vic Groves and Alan Skirton and Cliff Bastin. Suffice it to say the versions I was watching rarely compared favourably to the giants of the past though Dad was a great fan of George Eastham and Joe Baker whom I (and Holic) idolised. Season followed season without Arsenal looking remotely likely to win the league and it took thirteen attempts after I started supporting them for Arsenal to get beyond the fifth round of the FA Cup.
When the 1970-71 season dawned there was no particular reason to believe that Arsenal might win the title. They had broken their trophy drought the season before by winning the Fairs Cup but that season had finished in mid-table and their best finish in the fifteen years before that was third place. Bob Wilson believes that the Fairs Cup triumph, following on from reaching two League Cup Finals, was an indication that the team was on an upward trajectory. It gradually became clear that he was right and a very unexpected title tilt began to develop. It is hard to compare transfer activity in the old days and now because in years gone by transfers could be conducted throughout both the season and the close season up until the transfer deadline, which was usually towards the end of March. There was no such thing as a transfer window. Arsenal undertook no extra extravagant buying spree in 1970-71, in fact the two bits of business they did were to sell Bobby Gould to Wolves and David Court to Luton.
Arsenal had brought Peter Marinello to the club in January 1970 and he was akin to a glamour signing but Bertie Mee began the season with the squad that had ended the previous campaign.
I think we all know how that season ended with the glorious double. The league title was secured at White Hart Lane and Liverpool were overcome at Wembley and it is staggering to think that Arsenal played 42 league games to win that title with a squad of just seventeen players (remembering that there was then only a single substitute permitted per game). It just seems inconceivable that Arsenal could plan a title campaign relying on such a small group of players and with no apparent strengthening in the preceding close season.
It took us eighteen years to win the title again on that glorious Anfield night where Mickey Thomas fired that never to be forgotten late goal. It truly was up for grabs then …. and we certainly grabbed it! If you looked at the preparations for that season George Graham had gradually melded a group of lads who had come through the club’s junior ranks (Adams, Rocastle, Thomas and Merson) with modest acquisitions like Dixon, Winterburn, Richardson and Smith. Bould joined in the close season. The big transfer opportunity at the start of that season was the potential signing of Tony Cottee from West Ham. If he had signed we might never have embraced Paul Merson but Cottee chose Everton and later in the season we were rebuffed by Cottee’s old partner in crime Frank McAvennie who went back to West Ham. George took an iterative approach weaving an exceptional group of young players with judicious defensive acquisitions and he worked very frugally that season.
When we repeated the title triumph in 90/91 we had allowed George to spend a little more. In the close season he made three acquisitions. David Seaman replaced John Lukic, who did very little wrong (shades of Raya and Ramsdale in recent times) and Andy Linighan was bought to bolster an already strong group of centre backs. The exciting acquisition was Anders Limpar a slight Swedish winger, purchased from Cremonese. I can only remember speaking to one person who didn’t love Anders….and that was George himself! I had the pleasure of interviewing him in the early nineties a couple of days after a brilliant piece of Limpar improvisation but George was singularly unimpressed! “That’s bloody typical of him! You never see him [all game] and he pops up like that”. We weren’t ad idem on the appeal of Anders but he was one of the reasons we won that 91 title. Points deductions, captain imprisoned but only one defeat. We were a scrappy game at the Bus Stop away from being Invincibles thirteen years early! The following year we signed Ian Wright. Had he been available the season before, our winning margin might have been even bigger.
Arsene Wenger joined us in 1996 and again did not announce his arrival with a transfer spree. Before he actually joined the club, he advised us to acquire Remi Garde and Patrick Vieira and during the season made a modest purchase of a young French striker Nicolas Anelka. During the next close season, Arsene acquired Ajax’s Marc Overmars who had survived major injury issues, Petit and Grimandi from Monaco, Boa Morte from Portugal, Alberto Mendes and, as the season started, Christopher Wreh. That team went on to do the double in glorious fashion helped particularly by the brilliance of Dennis Bergkamp who had been purchased before Wenger’s arrival, in the days of Bruce Rioch. Anelka was a particular success as was Overmars, although Arsene had to separate them physically on occasions! Petit and Vieira formed a tremendous double pivot in midfield. Judicious purchases had enabled Wenger to build a formidable machine.
Arsene, supported loyally by David Dein, became more extravagant in the transfer market as time went on. In 2001 we acquired a ‘fox in the box’ – Francis Jeffers, a second goalie Richard Wright, Gio van Bronckhorst but most significantly the incredible addition of Sol Campbell. A team with Henry, Pires, Adams, Vieira, Ljungberg, Kanu, Wiltord and Bergkamp was just too strong and we cantered to our third double. Before this we had finished second three times in a row (sound familiar?), had been runners up in the UEFA Cup as it was then and were mugged by Michael Owen in the 2001 Cup Final. It took Wenger four years to win again following his first success.
As the Premier League era advanced and as we moved into the era of the transfer window more emphasis was placed by the media on the drama of the window. Ironically we were skint as we entered the 2003/4 season and our only addition pre- season was Jens Lehmann, a rather eccentric but very talented keeper from Dortmund. During the season, despite our impoverished situation, we acquired Jose Antonio Reyes from Seville and he played an important part in the denouement of the Invincible season. Wenger, like Graham before him, had built carefully and assembled possibly the greatest team that Arsenal have ever had. But it should be noted that that squad contained players like Cygan and Stepanovs!
So are there any lessons to be drawn from the way in which our title triumphs have been put together? What is the main conclusion to be drawn that can help us to go that one step further in this coming season? I could pore through detailed data but the reality is that football has changed fundamentally. The timing of the window makes a difference but it is not possible to recruit a high quality PL winning squad in one window. It is a cumulative process and title teams emerge after several years of squad husbandry.
Arsenal have never known a window quite as active or spectacular as this one is shaping up to be! Three second place finishes have resulted from a clear strategy of investing initially in high quality PL hardened young talent with a high ceiling and bringing enormous talent into the squad. Two seasons ago we really went big on Declan Rice, Kai Havertz, Jurrien Timber and David Raya and so nearly took the title. As I write, it appears that we are possibly going to bring seven new players into the club before the season starts.
Kepa arrives to replace Neto as back-up keeper, Martin Zubimendi and Christian Norgaard replace Jorginho and Partey in midfield, Noni Madueke and Mosquera look likely to provide squad strength on the wing and at centre back and we await with bated breath the formal announcement that Viktor Gyokeres is our new ‘fox in the box’ and if the links to Eberechi Eze are true we will have brought a real star into the squad.
Big decisions about who will leave will have to be made but I think we can confidently say that KSE are prepared to invest very heavily into the playing squad, Mikel Arteta has very specific ideas about who he believes will strengthen us and in Andrea Berta we have a Sporting Director who really does make things happen and has a very clear methodology in making purchases.
It’s a far cry from 1970 when we did nothing in the close season to boost the squad but football is a very different game now and Arsenal have metamorphosed into a very modern football outfit . I would be interested to know how fellow Holics feel about how this window’s business is progressing and how well this modern Arsenal is preparing for another attempt to become champions.
A fascinating meander through club and TTG history. Bravo! I am excited by this window and Arteta says there is more to come. The project progresses!
Good stuff TTG. Plenty meat nicely arranged there for a vigorous debate. As you observe, Bertie’s inactivity rested on a team on the rise. Arsene thought he was in the same position when his only summer signing was Cech. He wasn’t! This time Arteta is under no illusion that upgrades are required in several positions.
The big question is whether adding an unsettled Isak is as good a bet as adding Gjokeres plus Eze?
Some thought-provoking comparisons there, TTG. Beyond doubt, title-winning teams are built, not bought, or perhaps these days, that should be title-winning squads are built, not bought.
More excellently put together recollections, TTG.
To answer Bath’s poser, I was originally in team Sesko regarding our new striker options.
However, having gleaned what I can from the professional and social media, I am now quite happy with Gyokeres and would actually have him -and especially if he comes with an Eze – rather than Isak. I’m not denying that Isak is a great striker but he has had his fair share of injuries and that scenario rarely improves as a player gets older.
Arsene Wenger certainly put together a world class team that really should have won the Champions League – and very nearly did. One top, top player that Arsene missed out on was George Weah – even though that’s who he thought he was signing when he bought your aforementioned Christopher Wreh 🤣
Wenger’s big miss for me was Xabi Alonso to play with Fabregas. Evidently the gap was £2m, but Wenger said he didn’t do it because “it would kill Denilson.” A sliding doors moment.
Arsene of course knew George Weah well from his time at Monaco . When George won the Ballin D’Or he dedicated to Arsene . I think Christopher Wreh was his cousin ?
C100 @5, I totally agree. If we had signed Alonso that season I don’t think the dominoes that fell shortly thereafter: Fabregas, Nasri, van Persie, would have left because adding Alonso at that point would have made us a title winning team. I thought Arsene was simply being parsimonious. I hadn’t heard that preposterous Denilson claim. According to rumour, Denilson was himself, allegedly doing his best to kill Denilson.
I have heard that comment from Wenger . He list his way in the transfer market around then and when he list Dein he really struggled . Alonso would have been a great addition
Many thanks for your excellent article TTG, and the same to Bath whose excellent previous post I didn’t get a chance properly to acknowledge before now. Bravo to both.
A magnum opus, TTG! Bravo!
MCMBD
Musical interlude, if the link works …
Thanks for that bt8. We haven’t had a musical interlude in ages.
If we had signed Xabi Alonso, would he or Arteta be our manager now?
Now that’s what I call a decent partner !
https://www.arsenal.com/news/announcing-guinness-our-official-club-partner
https://x.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1947654792899379560?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
TTG@14: The Guv’nor would have been delighted, too.
As a mere youngster, TTG, most of that was way before my time but very enjoyable nevertheless 🙂
@5 Countryman – still feels like a dagger to the heart.
@15 – I’ll believe it when I see the signing photo.
NUTELLA, SOPHIA LOREN, SUPERMARIO, PARMA HAM, GINO DI CAMPO, SILVIO BERLUSCONI. YOUR GIRLS TOOK ONE HELL OFA BEATING
I gotta tell you, boyos, it could be vodka lemonade cocktails at 35k feet (on me way to Cali) or it could be the Mellow Moods playing through my earholes, but I think the big double might be on.
(You heard it here first.😎)
Come on you rip roarin’, ne’er borin’, always scorin’ RRREEEEEDDDSSS!!!💪🏽💪🏽💪🏽
MCMBD.
Really interesting piece, TTG. Thanks vm. As you say, football is very much a different game to what it was even 10 years ago. The advent of clubs with no budget – by which I mean no constraints, as opposed to no funds- has led to other teams wishing to compete at the top having to have at least 2 quality players for each position. Liverpool were lucky with injuries last season. If they had lost just Salah and Van Dyke for extended periods, I don’t think they would have run away with it. You only have to look at the C130y lineup each week to see what that means. A pretty much unguessable selection is where we are headed. I’ve never known a bigger transfer widow for Arsenal than this one and it shows real intent from the ownership.
Dow an has only been on for five minutes and already looks the part
Dowman
A good run out for the lads. White, Saliba, Calafiori, Norgaard, Saka, Havertz, Martinelli, Rice, MLS and Nelson looked sharp. Zubimendi, Nwaneri and Dowman were very very impressive. This could be a very good season.
What Bath said @23 and C100 @21. Zubimendi’s quick, early, forward passing looks very encouraging. Saka and Martinelli will thrive on it.
I also thought that Josh Nichols did well after his first two minutes on the pitch when he looked all at sea.
Havertz seems to have bulked up his upper body, and Nwaneri has grown into his. Nwaneri also looks taller, but it may just be that he has grown out of that slightly crouching stance he had. He was wearing the No. 22 shirt, a very first-team-squad number, although he doesn’t seem to have been officially promoted yet.
Following that game, nice piece by Sam Dean about Max Dowman
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/07/23/15-year-old-max-dowman-arsenal-next-superstar/
>>>>>>>