Pat Rice, MBE

Look at the hair. The shirt. The tie. The trousers. Grateful you were never brought up in the 1970s?! Pat Rice was our captain then and in this picture he is sat with our groundsman of the time, Fred Vigo.

35 years later and Rice finally severed his connections with the Arsenal. This week has seen him down Buck House filling in her maj on George Graham's defensive philosophy and Arsene Wenger's tactical nous.

Bet he wasn't smoking a pipe mind!

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.

The Day The Babes Died

Much of Manchester United's current glamour predates the likes of Beckham, Cantona, Best and Duxbury. The Busby Babes were apparently a great side. I never saw them play but those who did, and I once went to a BBQ with Gordon Nutt, who played for Arsenal against them in what was to be the last time many of them played alive in England, says they were amazing.

Remember, no TV in them days so nothing on You Tube.

Anyway, Busby survived, dragged the survivors from the wreckage and built another team who conquered Europe in 1968 and a legend was born with a holy trinity of Best, Law and Charlton.

And Best, it will be remembered, grew up a fan of the biggest club in  the country, Wolves!

The airport in Munchen where United came to grief was later used for concerts and I must admit on one mad night I went to see ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again there after seeing 1860 Munchen earlier in the afternoon.

It was fitting therefore that the 25th anniversary of that disaster should come against the Arsenal in a League Cup semi final at Old Trafford. They had won the first leg 4-2 at Highbury and the second game didn't have much to commend it.


You know things are grim on the field when the biggest cheer of the night came when the scoreboard announced Ken and Dierdrie would be staying together! (Coronation Street in case you didn't know!)

To quote from the newspaper clipping of that game. Little did the write know just how long:

Never have I seen Manchester United greater - nor have I seen such superb fighting spirit in an Arsenal team for many seasons. All the 63,000 spectators at Highbury will agree this was a match to remember for a long, long time.

A Red, Red Robin

It smacks in a way of the big boys looking for revenge pretty damn quick. In 1969 Arsenal lost 3-1 to Swindon Town in the League Cup Final; as shocking then as it sounds now. Within 6 months we were inviting the Robins to Highbury for revenge, sorry, a friendly.


Stinks, doesn't it? Sounds rather like the school bully and alpha male, you know the one who got all the girls and none of the acne, got beaten up behind the bike sheds and he wanted a piece of revenge...in his back garden.

Swindon would have been onto a hiding to nothing. Make a bit of cash yes but then have the Arsenal say look, we can beat you!

But it was only  meaningless friendly. It was to be 10 years and a bit before the Arsenal met Swindon again and that too was also in the League Cup. The first game at Highbury was a draw before Swindon, then in the 3rd Division, or was it the 4th, won the replay at the County Ground 4-3.

So it was that we entered the last decade of the century and Swindon still had the upper hand over us. And if we're weren't meeting in Cup games there was little chance of ending that hoodoo. Until Swindon went and got promoted to the Premier League. We played them twice of course in 1993/1994 and beat them twice. It's taken a long time but even now has the slate been wiped clean? Those twin defeats still appear in the record books, they will never be eviscerated from our memories.


There is another team nicknamed the Robins who have a hex over us...but let's not go there eh?

G"Day Mate. When We Hosted The Aussies

This was never the most exciting game Highbury has witnessed but it holds a personal resonance for me. From this friendly in late 1984 three years later I was to make Australia home for a few years, not always legally (!) and many of the names became familiar to me.

Striker John Kosmina of course had a short spell with the Arsenal in the late 1970s but made little impact and soon returned down under; now he is coaching an A League team I believe.

My first game in what was then known as the National Soccer League featured a dark haired striker who reminded me of Kevin Keegan with his mobility and directness despite not being the biggest player in the world. His name was Frank Farina, then with Marconi, who later blazed a trail to Europe at a time when player rarely did.

Then we have Ian Gray. He played for Australia against England in 1991 and had the misfortune to score the only goal of the game in the wrong net. I also think I may have met him one night at an FA Cup Final showing in Sydney but cannot swear to it. Tragically died a few years back.

Little Joe Watson, a few years later I saw him score a cracking goal for APIA, 35 years plus, in the mud at St George Stadium.

By the time I moved to Australia I had of course forgotten all these names; I had to start from scratch. But you just gotta love some of that facial hair!

DownUnder before Shanes and Megans turned it into a cast for soapies!

Arsenal's First Asian Tour

Arsenal recently confirmed they would visit Indonesia later this year for the first time in 30 odd years. The last two years they have been to Malaysia and China twice as well as Hong Kong.

Their first trip to Asia came in 1968 when they played games in Japan and Malaysia and in the programme for the opening game of the 1968/69 season Bob Wall wrote a few paragraphs about the trip.

As was the club's habit in the years following the Munich air disaster the team took separate flights east, one group flying via Hamburg and Anchorage, the other through Paris and Anchorage.

Arsenal were less impressed with their Japanese opponents, Wall describing them as a good Third Division, but recognised the hard work being put into football even then and talked about their desire to appear at the World Cup one year. They didn't just appear of course. 34 years after Arsenal's visit they co hosted it!

Indeed Wall, recognising the potential, said that 'they will become a force in the world football scene before very many years have passed'.

The first game was against an All Japan XI in Tokyo in front of 50,000 fans, what was a record attendance for football back then. We won 3-1 which was not bad against a Third Division team I guess though Wall commented the pitch was not that good!

The second game was in Fukuoka where the pitch was worse and it rained most of the time. Arsenal won again, this time 1-0, and so they returned to Tokyo for the final game, a sightseeing trip to Kyoto being wiped out by the inclement weather.

Some confusion surrounds the attendance in the second game. Wall says it was around 20,000 while Fred Ollier in the fantastic Arsenal A Complete Record goes for 10,000.

Back in Tokyo and again another record attendance for Japanese football with 70,000 filling the National Stadium and we won 4-0.

Then it was off to Kuala Lumpur for a final game which we won 6-2 against a President's XI which Wall describes as players from 'various different Asian countries'. Substitute David Jenkins scored a 16  minute hat trick in that game.

23/05 All Japan XI 3-1 (Gould, Radford, Neill)
Wilson, Rice, Storey, McLintock, Neill, Simpson, Radford, Court, Graham, Gould, Armstrong
26/05 All Japan XI 1-0 (Simmons)
Wilson (Furnell), Rice, Storey, McLintock (Woodward), Simpson, Court, Radford, Jenkins, Graham (Simmons), Gould, Armstrong
29/05 All Japan XI 4-0 (McLintock, Jenkins, Radford)
Wilson (Furnell), McNab, Storey (Rice (Nelson)), McLintock (Woodward), Neill, Simpson, Radford, Court, Jenkins,Gould (Simmons), Armstrong
02/06 President's XI 6-2 (Jenkins 3, Gould, Court, Simmons)
Furnell, McNab, Storey (Rice), McLintock, Neill, Simpson, Radford, Court, Graham (Simmons), Gould (Jenkins), Armstrong

Check out the line up in the first game. Of those 11 players no less than seven returned to Arsenal at various times in their careers for various jobs!

Today's tours are very different of course with national media following the club and regular updates on line and on Arsenal TV meaning not much gets missed back home. These days fans can be expected to be waiting at the airport to greet their jet lagged heroes, camp outside the hotel (I know one guy who checked into a hotel in KL but spent the night at the same hotel as the players hoping to get Andrei Arsharvin to sign his shirt!) and catch a training session.

Sunderland & Angry Of Hammersmith

With Arsenal travelling to Sunderland today I thought it would be a good idea to look back at a previous encounter between the two teams and it wasn't difficult to decide which game...I only have the one programme from Roker Park back in 1985!

With Newcastle and Liverpool still to visit Roker the Arsenal game on 9 March 1985 produced the Mackems largest home crowd of the season which was odd when you consider the home team were 5th off the bottom and we were 5th off the top.

What had happened though was that Sunderland had just reached the League Cup Final; their first major final since that famous day when they had beaten Leeds United in the FA Cup Final in 1973.

Days before Arsenal cruised into town Sunderland had beaten Chelsea in the League Cup semi final 2nd leg 3-2 at Stamford Bridge giving them a 5-2 aggregate win and a chance to play Norwich City in the final two weeks later.

Sunderland manager Len Ashurst wrote in his programme notes that he was writing them before the game at Chelsea so was blissfully unaware of reaching the final saying 'I wonder what the outcome will be'! Such was the whacky world of publishing deadlines I guess.

The 1st leg against Chelsea had been a firey affair off the field with the Arsenal programme posting a couple of letters from fans who had been upset with the incidents they had seen including the obligatory 'I probably won't go to another game'! All that was missing was some old duffer calling for the birch or national service. I wonder who the Sunderland equivalent of Max Kester was?!

Their last home league game had seen over 14,000 fans turn up for the Stoke game; with a Cup Final in the offiing the crowd doubled against the Arsenal as fans realised they had Wembley tickets to buy.

We didn't have many travel that day and the few we had we split between a pen on the open terrace and a few seats to the side.

I was in the seats and behind us were a few Sunderland lads, so much for segregation, and after the game, a 0-0, they come up and asked us for the vouchers that had come with the programmes as these were needed for ticket applications.

Where Was This Perry Groves World?

OK I may have been gone a long time but when I first started reading that Tintin lookalike Perry Groves had become a cult figure I had to reign in the horses. El Pel a hero?

Nothing against the fella, he was George Graham's first signing back in 1986, but I don't recall Highbury buzzing with love towards him. Indeed my memories of him, I called him Twinkle Toes because of the way he appeared to run on the tips of his toes, are of a hard working player sure but not much more. I certainly don't recall any special attention from the fans. In fact possibly the opposite.

Fast forward a couple of decades and the guy is now a legend. History has been kind to him and he is perhaps making more impact now than he did as a player, the Littlewoods Cup Final against Liverpool notwithstanding, through his work for the club and his shagging exploits in his book We All Live In A Perry Groves World.

It's not a bad thing of course this revision of history for the player but as this letter in the programme against Notts County back in 1991 showed five years into his Highbury career he seemed to have difficulties winning the support over.

Glory Hunting Tossers

1982/83 was a bloody awful season all round. We reached the semi final of the FA Cup, knocked out by Manchester United, and the semi final of the league cup, knocked out by Manchester United. In the second half of the season the faithful dwindled and the only league game to attract over 25,000 was Swansea City on New Year's Day.

Stoke City 19,428
Brighton 17,972
Forest 21,698
Luton 23,987
Ipswich 17,639
Southampton 24,911
Coventry 19,152
Man City 16,810

By the time we played United for the 4th time that season everyone was well and truly fed up with what was going on...or not and just 23,602 turned up for the team sitting 3rd. Yep, Luton and Southampton attracted more to Highbury than the biggest club in the world (trademark).

Against this  backdrop the club decided to increase admission prices! The team was going nowhere, the fans were staying away and Arsenal, in their infinite wisdom decided fans who wanted to stand would have to pay an extra 20p to watch their mid table heroes while seat prices ranged from 3.50 to 6.50.

Obviously the manager Terry Neill was aware something needed to be done. His splurge in the transfer market the previous summer had not been successful with only Tony Woodcock doing the business on a regular basis. Lee Chapman had become a target for the boo boys in record quick time while Vladimir Petrovic had taken a long time to arrive but departed pretty sharpish.

Neill returned to the transfer market at the end of the season, signing Ian Allinson, John Lukic and Charlie Nicholas and the fans responded with the opening three games of 1983/84 averaging around 40,000.

You Were Wrong Tony!

This comes from Tony Adams notes in the programme for a League Cup tie v Oldham Athletic in 1994.

You can see he doesn't anticipate his career lasting much longer, this game was 11 years after his debut against Sunderland, as he says outfield players can't go on as long as they used to.

He hoped to be proved wrong and he certainly was as he carried on playing for another eight years and said that Arsene Wenger was directly responsible for those extra years.

A proud man, I don't think Tony Adams likes to be proven wrong too often but on this occasion I am sure he won't mind.

Back to the game it was my last Highbury home game and Paul Dickov scored both goals to put Arsenal through to the next round. Dickov of course went on to manage Oldham and only got the tin tack earlier in the week!

Peter Hill Wood

It seems impossible to imagine an Arsenal without a Hill Wood. When I was growing up it was Denis and no one ever had a bad word about him. Read books by the likes of Terry Neill and Malcolm MacDonald, they all speak fondly of him.

Denis went and Peter took over as chairman. Now he is characterised as a bumbling old toff better known for mishaps than anything else. 'Thank you for your interest in the club', 'we don't want his sort here'.

And when the Arsenal introduced the controversial bond scheme in the early 1990s he called those who shelled the 1000 quid + 'suckers'!

When Peter was appointed to the board in 1962, the picture and text come from the West Ham United programme on 13 October, he became the 3rd generation Hill Wood to have served on the board and now, 51 years later he is still there.

That family must have some programme collection if they didn't use them to light their cigars!

Pity poor Peter? He was the only director, along with Robert Bellinger, without any kind of title! His old man was an MC but poor old Pete had to make do with an Esq after his name.

Another link with the past. Guy Bracewell Smith, who boasted an MBE and a BA, was a director back in 1962. Today a relative, Nina, is an Honourary Vice President

Greatest Night Ever

I may have missed out on the success we have enjoyed under Arsene Wenger and indeed much of the George Graham glory but for me the greatest night following the Arsenal was this game. Some might prefer the night at Anfield or Old Trafford or White Hart Lane (twice!) but this was special on so many levels. If you were there you know what I mean, if you weren't then check this out.

Put it this way. Football can be a harsh mistress at times but on this evening we were, for once, proud to say that name.

The line up was interesting. Six of the 11 listed in the line up had come up through the ranks; contrast that with Spurs who had signed 10 of their 11 players.

We had eight English lads in that 11 while they had one Belgian and one Argentinean.

We won 2-1. It was our third visit to White Hart Lane and we won each of them 2-1.

When There Were Few

It seems strange now looking back on this game. Everton were building a team that would briefly challenge Liverpool's hegemony at home and only Heysel prevented them from knowing what they could achieve in Europe.

Arsenal were early 1980s crap. Terry Neill had invested heavily in the summer bringing in what many thought would be a classic big man, little man pairing up front with Lee Chapman and Tony Woodcock but it wasn't working and by November Chapman was becoming peripheral though he did come on as a sub in this game.

Talking of rare sightings, which I wasn't, Danny O'Shea got a start in this game.

Despite what the programme said we didn't bother with George Wood in goal. Dunno about others but I never felt truly comfortable with him between the sticks. Maybe it was because he was a genteel birdwatcher and not some spit roasting mega star.

The Everton team was being rebuilt. Already the nucleus of success had been established by Howard Kendall with Southall, Sharp and Sheedy while Steve McMahon proved he was a footballer before he became a pundit in South East Asia.

Game ended 1-1 and was probably instantly forgettable but for the crowd. The weekend before the Scouse derby had seen 52,741 fill Goodison Park but Everton had been tonked 5-0. In the previous round of the Milk Cup they had been drawn against Welsh opposition like Arsenal (Cardiff City). In their case Newport County.

In the 1st leg in the valleys they had scraped a 2-0 win in front of 8,293. In the return at Goodison the crowd was 8,941!

Things weren't much better for the Arsenal at the time and we only had about 200 fans make the journey north; for me it was my first visit to Merseyside and in the interests of being skint I opted to stand, a mistake I never repeated there were the away terrace was below the pitch!

Obviously the Merseyside football fan is a discerning one. Whereas the Newport game attendance was just below 9,000 they turned out in force for the Arsenal...13,089!

Something happened in the seats during the game, I'm not sure what, it was above. This sudden chant went up along the lines of Hey hey Goodbye which was a song from way back when. No idea if some Everton had got among the Arsenal up there.

I had made my own way up from Reading but I had no idea how to get back to Lime Street so managed to bunk a ride on the special buses the Travel Club had laid on for the fans who had come up from London. I do know I had a long wait at the cold station for my train home and finally got back to Reading about 4 am on the milk train then had to wait for the onward train home from there. Must have got in about 6 or 7 in the morning...happy days!

Copping One For The Arsenal

There was a big build up to this particular game. Hooliganism was as ever attracting more headlines than the football, probably with good reason when you consider some of the tripe being provided in those days, and Arsenal had gone into this game making a big thing about swearing as the boxed text showed.

The Arsenal fans on the North Bank responded with a humour that was prevalent in them days with a chant of 'we're not swearing anymore'. It last until United took the lead I think halfway through the first half. The North Bank responded with 'swearing is back' before segueing effortlessly into 'you're gonna get your fucking heads kicked in.'

Thing is, despite all the talk before the game of no swearing etc everyone around me cracked up. Although admittedly  big roughty toughty that I was at the time, I was safely ensconced in the Schoolboy's Enclosure starting out on the rite of passage so many of us went on then.

After the game I was with my mate walking down the tunnel at Arsenal tube and this lad pulls me up and starts going on that I had threatened his girlfriend; funny when I was as intimidating as Lux from Graham's Gang, a popular kid's programme then.

Anyway he was giving the verbals while I think I was more worried about not creasing my programme. My mate, as heroic as I, did nothing while crowds filed down to Mind The Gap and catch the tube.

There I am, in the Schoolboys!

With a final shove to the chest the lad, he was a Manchester United fan of course, was gone with his mates no doubt to boast at school in Reading how he had done some Arsenal n their own manor (I learnt the patter from the books!).


By the time we got back to school of course we had chased this group of lads half way back to central London!

Me and my mate carried on our journey home and, I can happily relate, the programme survived!

First Competitive European Game

A generation of Arsenal fans have grown up accepting European football as a birthright. Did you know Arsene Wenger has taken us into the Champions League on 16 successive occasions? That's unbelievable and you would think the club would have done more to shout that particular achievement from the rooftops.

Since the Second World War more European teams would come to England to play friendlies and open up a new generation to the way they played the game across the water. The impact of those early games, culminating in Hungary winning 6-3 at Wembley is best explored in Jonathon Wilson's excellent 'Inverting the Pyramid' but suffice to say by the late 1950s continental football was becoming widely accepted and even the stuffy English started to dabble their big toe in that particular pool.

In 1963 Arsenal qualified for the Inter Cities Fairs Cup for the first time and their first opponent was Staevent of Copenhagen ( a select team drawn from teams in the Danish capital). Arsenal won the first leg there 7-1 extending an impressive record in Lego land of 20 games without defeat (W18 D2 L0 F65 A16); a record we couldn't keep going in 2000 unfortunately.

There is an interesting story in the programme for the Staevent game which shows just how things and times have changed. In 1923 3rd Division Swansea Town also went to Copenhagen but the hosts felt their lowly guests would not be good enough. A Danish committee member promised the Swansea players 10 cigarettes each for each goal they could score...Swansea won 8-2 and celebrated no doubt in a sea of nicotene!

The Second Colour Debate

When Arsenal introduced their latest away kit, black and purple hoops, there was the usual outrage and shock that Arsenal should so trample over tradition. For a generation of Arsenal fans, that includes me, we associate yellow or gold as our second kit; certainly it is one that has brought us much success over the years.

But it hasn't always been yellow. The blues and whites that have featured in recent years have long been used by the club.

And as this letter shows controversy over away colours have been nothing new! The letter comes from 1968/69 season!

And as these two images show blue and white were used extensively throughout the 1960s!

The line up comes from a game in 1963/64; can you spot a young George Armstrong?

The action comes from a game at Brammal Lane against Sheffield United and I love this picture. Look at the stand. That was the pavilion used by Yorkshire County Cricket club when they used the field during the cricket season.

Arsenal v Manchester City 27/8/68

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Back in 1968 the Daily Telegraph identified three areas Arsenal needed to do to restore prestige to the famous old club.

1. remove Herbert Chapman's bust
2. the manager having absolute authority on playing matters
3. better relations with the press

Wonder what they would say say now with Chapman being joined by Henry, Adams and Wenger in being cast in stone or whatever.

The story so incensed the club that chairman, Denis Hill Wood, felt inclined to write some notes in the programme refuting the claims made in the paper.

At the end of his column the Old Etonia rather sniffily concluded 'If any member of the Public or the Press think otherwise they are greatly mistaken and I welcome this opportunity to clarify the position once and for all'.

You can just imagine him reading the paper and choking on his cigar and port at the sheer affront against his football club and, by extension, him.

It was normal for the Chairman to write some comments in the first programme of the season. That he should feel the need to do so so soon into the season shows how seriously the allegations must have been felt at the time.

Strike A Light

Arsenal came late to the commercialisation of football. Yep, may seem hard to believe today but it took us a long time to accept even advertising boards round the pitch and even a name on the shirt. Advertising in the programme was also seen as somehow sullying the good name, and image,of the club.

Which makes this early sponsorship all the more bizarre. The game against West Brom in 1982/83 was sponsored by a box of matches!

They certainly went all out to generate interest. In the previous league game, against West Ham, they put out another full page advert offering a discount on terrace admission for the game against the Baggies. And for those who don't know, terraces used to be quite popular, we stood on them.

The question of course now is, in the day and age of multi million pound sponsorship deals, why would Arsenal attract a company that produced matches? West Brom at the time had a shirt sponsor called Swan who may or may not have been a car rental company...how sad do you think I really am? It so happened Swan was the name of a large manufacturer of matches.

Perhaps it was all some kind of in joke?

Whatever the reason, and no matter how comical we think it today, the company went all out, offering to knock a substantial 50p off the admission price at a time when the cheapest seat at Highbury was 3 pound!

Notts County Keeper Turned National Team Coach

Many Notts County fans will recall Raddy Avramovic, their goalkeeper from the late 1970s, early 1980s.

I got to meet him when he was coaching the Singapore national team and I asked him about any Arsenal memories he may have had. And he had one alright. Winning 1-0 at Highbury, he named the scorer and described an umbrella on the pitch!


He recently retired as coach of the Singapore national team and returned home after nine years there.

The Vladimir Petrovic Saga

For those who can remember Petrovic's story was always one of what might have been.

In the summer of 1982 Terry Neill did a most un Terry Neill thing and he spent big. Very big. In came experienced England striker Tony Woodcock, promising Lee Chapman and a real life foreigner in Red Star Belgrade's Petrovic.

As a club we hadn't really dabbled in the foreign market while that lot up the road had gone all Argentinan four years earlier. Then came Petrovic. These were the days of the cold war and Yugoslavia was considered the least communist of the European nations and one thing that set them apart, though I am sure it was never discussed at SALT talks, was their allowing players to actually play abroad when they reached the age of 28. Or something like that.

Petrovic signed ahead of the season but there were soon delays and come the first day of the season chairman Peter Hill Wood, yep same guy, was disappointed, saying 'we are very disappointed with the unexpected hitch' and the club were 'trying very hard to get agreement to him coming before January.'

In the same programme, against Norwich, Neill explains that 'there is a meeting of the Executive of the Yugoslavia Football Association on 15 September when our appeal will be held.'

By the time of the Notts County game three days after the FA meeting, Neill was saying he wasn't confident; back then programmes were printed several days before the game.Ironically Notts County had a Yugoslavian international in their ranks: Raddy Avramovic who later went on to coach Singapore with some success.

By the time of the UEFA Cup tie with Spartak Moscow Neill revealed the all important meeting had in fact been cancelled!

Vlad's tale then disappeared for a while before resurfacing when Neill, against Everton in the middle of November all but admitted defeat saying that it was unlikely he could be released until January by which time the club may no longer want him.

On New Days Day we entertained Swansea City and an obviously frustrated fan wrote into the letters page saying he hoped the club could eventually sign him. The reply was pessimistic; the complicated situation at the moment is such that Petrovic is unlikely to come to Arsenal.'

But things had happened. Before the Tottenham game on 27 December a series of phone calls between London and Belgrade had got things moving and despite the denial in the Swansea programme Petrovic actually made his debut that day and first appeared on the back page against Stoke wearing the number nine shirt.

Those who were there will remember his class that day and the sublime free kick he scored at the Clock End.

Of course the Swansea game was not his first at Highbury as the back page above shows. In 1978/79 he played for Red Star Belgrade in the UEFA Cup!

Arsenal v Huddersfield Town 13/11/54

Way before my time, and birth, this programme has a couple of feature of interest especially given the environment that surrounds the game today.

The rivalry with that lot up the road goes back nearly a century but perhaps the animosity of today is of a more recent construct. By more recent I mean going back to the 1970s.

Back in the 1950s in England we had never had it so good. Football was booming, everyone smoked and London still had smog.

I find these two cuttings interesting given the prism we look through today when considering that lot up the road. That their fans should find it within themselves to send such a telegram was remarkable in itself. Can you imagine them sending us an email back in 2004 ahead of the title decider at their place?

This is not the forum as to whether the word yid is offensive or not in a football sense. The fact is both Arsenal and Tottenham have long boasted a substantial Jewish support; it comes with the territory. Their fans have adopted it as they clarion call and that is their decision.

Given the current feeling and the association purely up the road the announcement of a Remembrance Parade is interesting. Plus the fact it was being held on a Sunday rather than a Friday.

Of course memories of the war would still have been present, it having ended just nine years earlier.

Some more items of interest from the pages but I'm not scanning any more in case it falls apart on me!


Jack Kelsey was in goal for the Arsenal; his other Arsenal career before he went on to run the club shop when it was a much smaller affair than today while appearing for Huddersfield was Ken Taylor who had a summer job playing cricket for Yorkshire.

Can't imagine any of these pampared egos on legs in the modern age padding up, can you? This was though the day of maximum wage so it was not uncommon to find players with part time jobs on the side. A former Arsenal captain, Joe Mercer, had left by the time of this game but he run a grocer's shop in Liverpool and I believed he may well have done much of his training up there.

Much has changed, eh?

Burton & Primorac

Nope, they are not the names of a couple of new age lawyers. Terry Burton and Boro Primorac are currently on the Arsenal coaching staff.

Most people know that Burton had a prior spell with the club as coach, a few may well recall his times as a youth player. But Primorac? Who can recall the time he played at Highbury?

Back in the late 1970s Primorac counted Hajduk Split among his clubs in what was then known as Yugoslavia. In 1978/79 they were drawn against the Arsenal in the 2nd round of the UEFA Cup and Primorac appears on the team sheet of that programme wearing the number 6 shirt but he doesn't appear, at least he is not named, in the team picture.

Interestingly the the pen picture of him in the programme suggests he signed for Hajduk 18 months earlier. That would have coincided with the John Radford testimonial with the team provided the opposition. However the programme from that night has no mention of him.

Terry Burton of course rejoined Arsenal in the pre season after a good wander round since leaving. He never made the grade at Highbury but certainly gets plenty of mentions in programmes from those times.



In later years Burton found himself on the coaching staff of Wimbledon where he had his kit sponsored by a certain Jan Wells! But why was his picture in black n white?!

Introduction

There is a joy to football that transcends a mere 90 minutes on the field and that joy really comes to the fore the more you engage with your club. Every badge, every picture, every programme has its own story; in the case of programmes more than one. Watching a game on TV is fine but lacks the whole experience that goes with being in the stadium, travelling to the stadium in hope and leaving in despair, yet again.

I have spent several years trying to find an angle for an Arsenal blog that hasn't been covered before and now I think I have found one though it has taken me several decades and the arrival of ebay to make it happen.

Once I had an awesome programme collection. It's scope may not have been immense but from 1968 to 1992 the number of homes I was missing could be counted on one hand. But I did have some absolute beauties. A friendly away to Stuttgart in the mid 1950s signed by Gordon Nutt for example. Eastern Athletic in Hong Kong in 1981. Bill Harper's testimonial signed by three players. There were not many of them around and while I could have kept them I decided to sell the whole lot on the cheap and while I regret it I don not resent the chap who added them to his collection. One person's misfortune etc.

Yep, I was proud of it.

Thing is I moved overseas and at some stage I had a decision to make and it was perhaps one of the worst of my life. Those programmes represented a massive part of my life. Not just my life. Of the club as well. They are a history, a throwback to how things used to be before Sky, PR and spin took over the beautiful game and corporatised it on a par with a fast food chain or a budget airline.

You're not going to read match reports here. You're not going to find the latest players linked with the club and there will be no analysis of Aaron Ramsey's latest performance on the flank. And if you really want to know what Abou Diaby's favourite shirt is when is he doing the hoovering try google.

This is all about trivia. It's about past names, games and trains. It's about how football was enjoyed before the advent of billiard smooth surfaces, executive boxes and 100 quid tickets. Maybe it's of a more naive time. I don't know. But it's of a time I can recall and relate to even though I am thousands of miles from home and the number of times I have seen Arsene Wenger's Arsenal play in England can be counted on one hand