Peter Simpson Testimonial

Peter Simpson is another of those players who arrived at the Arsenal in the early 1960s and hung around for about 15 years seeing average merge into legendary and back to nondescript in a career that saw him play nearly 500 games yet not earn a single England cap.

Read any memory of him and the word laid back just cries out from the pages. Stan, he was nicknamed after  the comedian Stan Laurel which may give a clue to how he was perceived by his team mates, was not the kind of central defender to do things rashly. Perhaps it is no coincidence his best form for the Arsenal came when he was partnered by Frank McLintock who was less backward in coming forward.

Indeed McLintock, captain during the 1970/71 Double season, describes his one time partner as 'an underrated player 'indeed,  he is the last person to recognise how good he was' in his memoirs True Grit.

Terry Neill played alongside Simpson in the years preceding the double and later managed him for a while when he returned to the club in 1976 and recalls a story from the mid 1970s in his autobiography. Simpson had called into Neill's office and said 'I'm worried about my form. I think I've lost my enthusiasm and my pace.'

Neill retorted with 'you've never had any great enthusiasm or pace but I think you're are one hell of a player.Now get out of my office!'

In the programme for Simpson's testimonial against Tottenham in 1976 Bob Wilson, by then the only pro Arsenal voice in a Liverpool fawning media, wrote a witty page extolling Stan's qualities.

Interestingly the programme has Steve Gatting, now back with Arsenal on the coaching staff, wearing number 3 while the match report shows John Radford as an unlikely left back. Oh, and do you recognise our sub that evening? Parker as in Brian, our reserve goalkeeper

Wilson's final game for the Arsenal came in 1974 at home to QPR afterwards there was a bit of a bash. Simpson was among the first to arrive and among the last to leave. Rather than accept a lift home he said he was happy to walk 'don't worry about me Bob, you know how much I love training' and off home he walked with 'a cigar in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other'!

I don't think they make players like him anymore which is a shame.