Goonerholics Forever

After Wenger had led us to a Double in his first full season, expectation was high in N5. One problem – we had an implacable opponent in Manchester United whose treble in 1999 could so, so easily have been another Arsenal double. Further frustration in Copenhagen and in the FA Cup against Liverpool led to scurrilous suggestions that Wenger wasn’t a winner. As a result, Arsenal spent heavily in 2001-2 to remodel their side in an effort to clinch another title.

Ned tells us how that adventure played out, though primarily based in New York, the centre of the worst terrorist outrage in history, just as the 2001-2 season began. 

TTG

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2001-2: A Double Double

North Bank Ned

What do you remember of that season and where were you mainly watching it? 

I was mostly in New York. However, the 9/11 attacks occurred shortly after the season started. I had clear sight lines to the World Trade Center and saw both towers fall. Football took a back seat for quite a while. 

It was a strangely detached season for an Englishman in New York, for other reasons, too. At that time, there was little coverage of English football in US newspapers. No inescapable social media. No blogsphere to talk about; Arseblog started in the second half of the season. Only occasional live games and highlights were available on a couple of cable channels. You had to find a dodgy internet stream or go to a sports bar that subscribed to the very expensive multi-sport cable service exclusively for sports bars, and was (a) open in the morning as some kick-offs were at 7 am, (b) showed English football, and (c) had our game on. 

I didn’t discover Nevada Smith’s, the soccer pub in Greenwich Village, until quite late in the season. It is now sadly long-gone, a victim of the developer’s wrecking ball. It was many a New York Gooner’s matchday venue of choice, despite being a Man U bar. Geordies and Scousers congregated there, but followers of many clubs showed up as it showed so many games. I remember Roma fans there, sipping espresso. Heaven knows where they got it at that hour. Guinness was the breakfast of champions in Nevada Smith’s.

We had finished second for several seasons and fallen short in the UEFA Cup in 2000 and the FA Cup where we were unluckily beaten by Liverpool in 2001. Discontent with Wenger was growing among some Gooners. Do you see parallels with Arteta’s position now?

History can repeat itself, but never does so exactly. There wasn’t the toxicity of social media then. Abramovich and his £50-note-firing tanks were still a couple of seasons away. Another difference was that Wenger had already put serious silverware in the trophy room with the 1997-98 double. 

The footballing competition with Fergie’s Man U was the dominant narrative —and the 6-1 defeat at the OT the previous season still stung. They had, after all, won seven of the previous nine Premiership titles. You saw Man U shirts all over NYC then, just as  you see Barca and Real Madrid shirts today. 

My recollection is that the Arsenal board, not Wenger, faced more criticism for failing to match United’s big-name signings due to the strict wage structure. But the FA Cup loss to Liverpool prompted the need for a rebuild. Still, I was a long way away, so it all might have looked very different from the other side of the pond.

Thierry Henry suggested we needed ‘a fox in the box’ before the season started, notwithstanding that we already had him. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that criticism of Arsenal as a goalscoring force is nothing new! 

AW had bought a ‘fox-in-the-box’ before the start of the season: Francis Jeffers from Everton. Perhaps ‘cub-in-the-box’ would be more accurate, as Jeffers was 20. But he couldn’t stay fit, and when he was, he couldn’t displace TH14 or Sylvain Wiltord from the side. He was shipped back to Everton after playing fewer than two dozen games over two seasons. Checking the records, I see we still scored more goals in 2001-02 than every other team except Man U. They had van Nistelrooy, Solskjaer, and Cole up front. TH14 was the league’s leading scorer. It wasn’t as if Freddie Ljungberg, Bobby Pires, and Dennis Bergkamp couldn’t put the ball in the net. 

Returning to your initial point, the club has a tradition of iconic, goal-scoring, big No 9s, and as fans, we feel somewhat bereft without one. That might explain the high expectations and disappointment surrounding Gyökeres.

We had been very active in the transfer market before the season. Which buys did you think worked particularly well?

It’s hard to think of anything that tops getting Sol Campbell on a Bosman. Beyond Jeffers, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, from Rangers, was the big-money arrival — when £8 million was big money. An OK buy, but had he not torn his knee ligaments early, we wouldn’t have gone out and bought Gilberto. Richard Wright arrived from Ipswich to be David Seaman’s long-term replacement, but that man would ultimately prove to be Mad Jens. 

The best acquisition after Campbell was arguably Kolo Toure in the January window for £150,000, although he didn’t make his debut until the following season. Almost imperceptibly, the Invincibles were falling into place.

The sensation in the close season had been the acquisition of Sol Campbell. Can you remember the impact of that signing and how important a signing did you consider he was? 

It was a stunning surprise, especially as he was coming down the Seven Sisters Road. You will remember the papers called it ‘a coup’. Wenger got kudos for talking Sol into signing for us rather than going to Barca or Inter, both top European clubs then and both of whom had offered him much better money. I seem to remember Denis Bergkamp presciently saying Sol was the missing piece of the jigsaw that would let the team break Fergie’s grip on the title.

Who do you think were our key players in our league title success that year? 

The first choice team was probably: Seaman, Lauren, Campbell, Keown, Cole, Ljungberg, Vieira, Parlour, Pires, Bergkamp, Wiltord, Henry. I know that is twelve, but they were the most used players. We wouldn’t have won the double without one of them. If I had the invidious task of choosing just one, I would go for Denis Bergkamp for (i) being the bridge between the 1997-98 double side and what would become the Invincibles and  (ii) his pirouette at St James’s Park—when he flipped the ball past the defender’s right side, spun past him on his left, and slotted home. That goal is up there with my all-time greatest Arsenal goals.

Can you remember when you began to believe we could win the league that season? 

Looking back over the season’s records, I was surprised to see that we didn’t lose a game from Christmas on. I remember the title race being wide open well into April, with Man U and Liverpool on unbeaten runs. Liverpool weren’t mathematically out of contention until they lost at White Hart Lane with three games to go, their first loss since January, and Man U had only lost once over the same period. We still needed at least a draw at Old Trafford in the penultimate game. Having won the Cup the previous weekend, that was never in doubt!

We clinched the league at Old Trafford . Do you remember that night and how did you celebrate it? 

It wasn’t a night for me, but a working Wednesday afternoon. So like, many of the games that season, I didn’t see it. I don’t think I was able to check the score until the game was over. So there was no real celebration until going to watch the last game of the season against Everton.

What other thoughts do you have about that season? 

I can’t emphasise enough how monumental it felt to break Fergie’s three-year grip on the title after being runners-up each time — and having had to put up with the insufferable smugness of Man U fans for the duration. It was also pleasing to leave them without any silverware for the first time in what seemed like forever. However, in many ways, it proved to be a false dawn, and we had hit peak Wenger with this double team. The Invincibles were its Indian Summer, but they didn’t win as much as they should have and were quickly broken up. The move to the Emirates would soon have to be paid for and the slow slide into ‘fourth-place-is-a trophy’ territory started, Wenger said at the end of the 2001-02 season there had been a shift of power, which perhaps was true in relation to Man U, but he missed the shifting of the tectonic plates under both clubs that the money that was about to come into the game would cause.

Another Double was the outcome of a season that began with global turmoil. Wenger’s claims that Arsenal could go unbeaten all season were mocked after Rooney’s super strike but the team was growing into a very special force . Gunnersaurus Stunt Double takes up the story in 2003 and describes the most important season in Arsenal history.

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As we strive to clinch this year’s title we are besieged with jibes and barbs from the media that Arsenal have not won the title for 22 years . But that last title win was VERY special because during that season Arsenal were unbeaten. As Thierry Henry paraded around Highbury, he made the point that no team had ever achieved anything like Arsenal did that season. Gunnersaurus Stunt Double takes us back to that wonderful campaign and relives his memories of the Invincibles. 

TTG

The Invincible Season 

Gunnersaurus Stunt Double

The 2003/4 season was a particularly special season which saw Arsenal claim the title of ‘The Invincibles’. Did you ever anticipate that such an achievement was really possible at the start of the season? 

A couple of years before the Invincibles season, Arsene Wenger had publicly stated that he thought it possible for a team to go unbeaten through an entire league season. For this hubris/idiocy, he was lambasted in the media. The British press at the time were, at best, xenophobic. They much preferred Sir Alex Ferguson, who they saw as one of their own, to the upstart Frenchman. Sure, they knew he was good, but they never resisted a chance to stick the boot in. Stop me if this sounds familiar.

Back then the media could get away with stuff that they can’t anymore. They regularly complained that Arsenal did not have enough English players and fumed over our starting lineups. We were ruining the English game. (Just like we are today).

Every year we would go to Old Trafford where thousands of their fans would chant that our manager was a paedophile. Just let that sink in; it is beyond disgraceful. But the fact that it was accepted by the media is even worse. It was not called out. We, and he in particular, just had to get on with it, amidst vile treatment. So, like most Arsenal fans, I was bullish about our team and our manager as the season approached. Everyone was out to get us. Bring it on.

In truth, I thought the inexcusable media were probably right that going an entire season unbeaten was a pipe dream. It seemed too big an ask, and as the season began it was not on my mind. I was optimistic about our title chances, but that was at least partly because I always am. I’ve squinted at plenty of worse opening day team-sheets and convinced myself we could win a title if things went our way. What usually happened was Wenger took us to a fourth-place finish that, judging by the calibre of our squad, looked like a bloody miracle, but in 2003, that was still years down the line. We were still at our peak.

Did you get a chance to see many games that season?

I was a teenager during this season, and so the journey our team went on meant a huge amount to me because, well, everything did. I did not get to a game at Highbury that year, and this was before the various online ways of watching a match that exist now, so I was limited to watching the matches on Sky, listening on the radio, watching highlights on MotD, and (if younger readers can imagine such a thing) reading the newspapers. I suppose I was reading Arseblog by then, but I don’t remember for sure.

At what stage did you realise that we were seeing something special? Were you firstly interested in winning the title or did you always believe that we could go unbeaten throughout the season?

It’s funny to look back given the stature the Invincibles now have, but during that season I felt we drew too many games. We were hard to beat, and tough enough to stand up to some rugged outfits, which I loved. But there were games where I’d watch Bergkamp, Henry, Pires and the rest, and think to myself, how are you lot drawing with Portsmouth? Not in a modern, ‘lose my shit and spray anger all over social’ media kind of way. More in a, ‘this is a top team and you are capable of better’ kind of way. And, of course, I was as scarred as we all were from United teams winning league titles that we should have got over the line. Our failure to win back-to-back league titles during this period still rankles. So, early in the season, every draw felt like it could come back to bite us. No matter how good we ended up being, as it was unfolding it felt like winning the league would be tough enough without saddling the added burden Arsene had willingly drawn down on us with his comments. Sometimes, it felt like he wanted the pressure. Personally, I could have done without it! 

We had a wobbly moment when we went out of the Champions League to Chelsea (ouch!) after losing in the Cup to Manchester United. Did you have a temporary loss of faith then? Could we have avoided that Chelsea defeat given we had beaten them three times already that season (sound familiar?). 

I don’t want to think about that Wayne Bridge goal. Ever! I still remember feeling sick when it went in. Genuinely nauseous. That is the year we were the best team in the world and other big-name clubs fell away in the CL too. It was there on a plate. The final was Porto v Monaco (hardly a clash of titans) and it spawned the uprising of one Jose Mourinho. Proper sliding doors moment. 

For what it is worth, yeah, we could have avoided defeat. The goal that sunk us was the kind of naïve concession that was to become a hallmark of later Wenger teams and that fortunately we don’t see often from Arteta teams. But, ultimately, it’s all a bit ‘if my auntie had balls’. And it all worked out in the end.

The FA Cup loss sucked. By that point, I’d be lying if I said thoughts of the treble were not on my mind. After our ’98 double, I cannot express how pissed off I was that United bettered it a year later. We could all see how good our team was in 03/04, and I dearly wanted to match their achievement. Instead, we went out of both cups in a week and I was gutted. Back then it was hard to imagine us not challenging for top honours every year, but even so, there was the sense of a glorious chance wasted. Getting done by a Man Utd side who were by then miles below us in the league made it no better.

However, it was over that period that we drew at home with Manchester United in the league and then beat Liverpool with that Henry hat-trick to stop our season from falling apart – at least if you believed the hype. So, even though it was a time of tremendous disappointment, it was also the first time that I started to believe we could really go unbeaten. I had hoped that for a while, but by that point there were less than ten games to go, and we had gotten through our toughest tests. Make no mistake, Man Utd could see that we were gunning for something truly special and they wanted to stop us in our tracks. Getting past them without loss felt big. We still had to play Spurs, who would obviously be well up for it, and go to St James’s Park to play a good Newcastle outfit, but it was getting close enough to believe.

Truth be told, it suddenly meant more after the two cup exits. We were strong favourites to win the league, but that team were so good it would have been somehow underwhelming if all they got to show for it was a league title win.

I was also incredibly protective of our club and our manager. The media have never liked Arsenal, and that is just fine. I don’t like them. But I wanted to rub their noses in it after Arsene earned his vindication, did what most people thought was impossible and upset all of the received wisdom about English football. Every one of those nasty, agenda driven journos who piled in on Arsene were close to getting the largest slice of humble pie they’d ever seen (even if, when it did eventually come, many of them lacked the good grace to eat it). Yet, the flipside was clear. If we lost to Leeds, or Birmingham, or whoever, then the entire establishment could breathe a sigh of relief and get on with the happy job of ridiculing us (for getting so close to achieving something they said could not be done). It felt like we were against the world. By that point, I did not care about the draws. 1-1 against Portsmouth was not, in isolation, a brilliant result. But it left us with only two more games to get through, and not losing had become far more important than winning. I was thrilled to get out of Fratton Park with a point!

Every game was stressful. The enormity of the achievement was clear, the simplicity of messing it up equally so. All it took was one bad day, one dodgy penalty and red card (which we were no stranger to!) and it could have all gone wrong. To fall in that final run would have been heart-breaking. We had the league sewn up, but this felt much bigger than a mere league. This was immortality, up for grabs.

When we did it, I was on cloud nine. With hindsight, I suspect that if we had gone on in the cups, we would not have gone unbeaten in the league. I have always rued not winning the CL that year, but in truth, would I have swapped it for the unbeaten season? The answer is no. One team wins the CL every year. It is less of an achievement than what we did in the PL that year. It was also the most Arsene Wenger thing ever; an achievement born out of the twin abilities to dream bigger than anyone else, and to dig his heels in with an almost pathological stubbornness. It was so very Arsenal.

Do you believe any team will ever repeat the feat of going unbeaten all season in the league again?

I cannot see how it will ever be matched. In the last couple of months this season, every time I watch Wolves, I think they are a decent outfit, and they are bottom of the league! The PL has too much strength in depth and is too physically challenging. It took over a hundred years for anyone to do it (since Preston in what we can reasonably say was a very different football landscape) and I don’t think we will see it again.

Do you remember when it became obvious we were going to win the League?  Do you remember clinching it at Tottenham and how that felt?

I honestly have no idea exactly when the league felt inevitable and all eyes switched to the unbeaten season. It was a while ago and I tend to remember how I felt much more than I remember individual results, even goals. I am amazed on those occasions when one of our number (often the inimitable Doc Faustus) references some specific Rosicky goal from a group stage game that I cannot recall for love nor money. I never know how other fans do that. Thank God for Youtube. 

I do remember feeling incredibly proud of what we had done so far, a sense that it was job done. But also, a strange sense that our brilliance had created a new opportunity that was unlikely to come around again. Winning the league was weird in a way. Until that point, all talk of the unbeaten season could be batted away with ‘we haven’t even won the league yet’. So, after that was done, there was nowhere to hide. It felt like the pressure grew when we won the league, instead of fading away. I don’t think any other team has ever had to face that.

Winning the league at Tottenham was hilarious and brilliant. So, so good. I would have preferred to actually win the match, but watching them celebrate the annoying last-minute equaliser when the result was still enough for us to win the league at their place said everything about the relative aspirations of the two clubs. Always in our shadow.

Who stood out in what was a wonderful team?

It is not possible to pick out one player. That was such a good team, and they carried no-one. But, as I’ve just been thinking about winning the league in the enemy heartland… I love Sol Campbell. I just love him. For him to win the league for Arsenal at WHL was epic. And a sickener for them. Beautiful.

What other reflections do you have on that season?

I was talking a few days ago with a younger Gooner who does not remember any of this. He has never seen us win a league. I could not explain to him what it was like that year. We did not just win it, we managed what may be most remarkable achievement in modern football. It was stunning. And it felt like sticking two fingers up at the world, at all who doubted us. Everything was perfect. Just walking to the shops felt better than it usually would. Arsenal were champions. Arsenal were unbeatable. It was pure magic!

What was best about that team?

Well, there are too many right answers here. It was so strong. But I’ll pick something. I loved how directly we broke. Seeing five, six, seven red shirts just bombing forward in unison, it was like watching the Red Arrows. Backtracking defenders did not know what to do. We were devastating. And such athletes too. Fast, strong, determined, ruthless. But also skilful, with a clarity of thought matched by the ability to execute at breakneck speed. We were a multicultural, multiracial, all-singing, all-dancing, all-fucking behemoth. We tore up the rulebook and did things our way, inspiring a new generation whilst enthralling the longstanding faithful. That team had an impact on football, even society, that few can match. Thierry Henry is still a global icon. Sol Campbell still takes the piss out of Spurs whilst selling phones in big money campaigns. Dennis Bergkamp is known to all Gooners simply as ‘God’.

They were, and are, iconic.

Final thoughts?

For me, it all comes back to the visionary who imagined it all. Even when that team was defending, we always felt that in ten seconds we could have the ball in the back of the opposition’s net. They worked things out for themselves, Le Boss never being too prescriptive in how they played. That team and that achievement itself were the dream of one man, the almost perfect realisation of his football philosophy – right down to not winning any other tournaments in an effort to win the league perfectly. He was always, for better or worse, the most stubborn idealist you will ever encounter. As much as I love everyone associated with that triumph, it can be truly laid at the door of one man, and one man only. 

He took more shit than anyone. But now, he gets the glory.

Arsene Wenger, Invincible.

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We now hope against hope that Mikel Arteta will lead Arsenal to their fourteenth title , one that will be part of a very special season . Come on you Gunners! 

2001-2 A Double Double.