IN 2003/04, ARSENAL’S men’s team was known in English football as ‘The Invincibles’. Under Arsène Wenger, the Gunners won the Premier League and went unbeaten through the whole season. Nobody could touch them.
In 2006/07, Arsenal’s women’s team became known in English football as ‘The Invincibles’. Under Vic Akers, the Gunners won the quadruple: the FA Women’s Premier League, the FA Women’s Cup, the FA Women’s Premier League Cup and the UEFA Cup (the Champions League of women’s football). We too were unbeaten in all our fixtures that season, winning twenty out of twenty matches in the league. We also won the Community Shield for good measure. Nobody could touch us either.
At that time, Arsenal Ladies provided the backbone of the England team as well, which probably went a long way to us achieving more success at international level. We also had the likes of Emma Byrne, of Ireland, Julie Fleeting, of Scotland, and Jayne Ludlow, of Wales, in key positions. We were a very good team – the best I have played in.
We in fact won the Premier League and FA Cup double three seasons running, from 2005/06 to 2007/08, and were only denied once, by Everton Ladies, in the League Cup during that time. We won four Community Shields in a row too. But the big highlight was that UEFA Cup win – even though I wasn’t allowed to play in the final.
For an English women’s team to win the top honour in women’s European club football is really something. For years those competitions have been ruled by German and Scandinavian sides. But we were too good for all of them in 2006/07 with the side we had, even though both Faye White, our team captain, and I missed the final: Faye through injury, and me through a stupid suspension.
We’d played Brondby, of Denmark, in the semi-final. The first leg was away from home and I picked up a yellow card during the second half for kicking the ball away, which was ridiculous. We were winning 1–0 and, with the tie being away from home, I was penalized. A little while later I made a strong challenge in our own half. I felt that I’d won the ball but, probably because I went to ground in doing so and caught the player as well, the referee gave me another yellow card. So I was sent off for two yellows, which I thought was unfair in the circumstances.
As I was on my way back to the bench, the home fans started jeering at me. So, without thinking too much about it, I stuck my middle finger up at them. I also kicked a chair quite vigorously when I got back to the Arsenal dugout.
I was frustrated, with myself and the treatment I’d received. I genuinely didn’t think I deserved to be sent off. And then I was being wound up by the fans. So I told them where to go and subsequently had to face the consequences, which included missing out on the most important match of the season, and what would have been the biggest club match I had ever played in.
The fourth official ushered me away on the night. He had seen everything. And he put it all down in his match report, of course. The sending-off got me a two-match ban, which kept me out of the home leg against Brondby and the first leg of the final, should we make it. The added offence of the middle finger got me a further ban of one match, which in effect ruled me out of both legs of the final. Without the gesture I would still have been available to play in the second leg.
Vic appealed on my behalf. Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein also tried to help me. We sent a letter of apology, tried to wangle a deal somehow, but all efforts were to no avail and I ended up missing what would have been my biggest game for the Gunners as a result. I was gutted.
I am still gutted all these years later. For this remains the only occasion when an English women’s team has won what in effect is the European Cup in women’s football. The competition has been renamed the Champions League now, in fact. I was devastated at the time, and that level of hurt doesn’t leave you very quickly. I felt I had done my bit on the field in the group games, the quarter-finals and the first leg of the semi-final to help the team get through to the final. And then I had to swallow the fact that I would play no part in it.
I felt rotten in the changing room that night, but I was still made to feel part of the team. I was there in the changing rooms before both legs, first in Sweden then back at Borehamwood. But I was not allowed to sit on the bench during the games, because I was banned. I had to sit up in the stands, away from it all.
Marta, the Brazilian super talent, was the star player for our opponents in the final, Umea. The team was also stacked with Swedish stars. Both matches against them were hard-fought encounters, but we prevailed. Alex Scott scored a cracker for us from thirty-five yards in injury-time which won the game out there. Alex also kept Marta very quiet. She had her in her pocket, actually. But we were under the cosh a lot.
Borehamwood was packed for the second leg – probably the most packed it has ever been for one of our matches. It was three or four people deep at some parts of the ground. It was a great atmosphere, quite intimidating for our opponents but terrific for us.
Umea played very well in the second leg. They hit the bar, they hit the post, and Emma Byrne made a few good saves as well. On the day they probably deserved to score, but it was just one of those times when you get the feeling that the ball will never go in. I think it was one of those moments when it is written in the stars that a certain team is going to come out on top. And that year it was Arsenal Ladies.
I still regret in a big way missing out on it all for doing what I did. But I can’t change that now. It’s in the past, and life has to go on. I might not have played in the final, but I still felt that I was part of the winning team. Vic made sure of that. He is brilliant like that – another great boss and a good friend.
We were the first, and so far only, English women’s team to win such an honour. I think that is fitting because I believe that team was the best women’s football side ever to have come out of England. Winning that trophy said it all. We did the quadruple, including the big one in Europe. I don’t really see an English club doing that again for a while. Not with the strength of women’s football in Germany, France, Sweden and even Russia today. I think it will be a hard task. That Arsenal Ladies side was very special. The number of quality players we could field plus the experience they had was something else, it really was. We knew how to win matches, at home and abroad. And you can’t bottle that.
We dominated women’s football in England for three years. The FA Women’s Cup finals, shown live on BBC One, were real thrashings: 5–0 versus Leeds United Ladies, 4–1 versus Charlton Ladies, 4–1 versus Leeds again. It was like cruise control for us. They were good, fun days, but I was sure we would win those matches before we had even kicked off. Sorry if that sounds arrogant. It’s just that we were so much better than the rest.
My first FA Women’s Cup final for Arsenal was at the New Den, home of Millwall, in 2006. It was a really hot day, and as we walked out to inspect the pitch and stretch, Leeds, our opponents, were vigorously warming up at the other end. They had been doing this workout for about twenty-five minutes before we even got out there. Vic took us out to see it for ourselves. I thought it was a bit dumb for them to be doing that, personally. I think we all did.
Vic explained to us that all we were required to do, in order to conserve our energy levels, was a limited warm-up and stretch – in the shade. He had been watching Leeds warm up in the sun and he knew that they wouldn’t last in the heat. To me, this was an example of Vic’s experience in big games like this. By contrast, it was Leeds’ first final, and their inexperience showed.
We stretched out in the shade at the other end of the pitch, and we only did that for fifteen minutes or so. From that moment on I knew we would win the cup. We all did. That is the mentality we had in the team. And we were right to be confident. It was good to win the FA Cup at a London venue too. We wore the redcurrant Arsenal anniversary kit as well, and I scored a penalty. It was a fantastic day.
That was my first ever FA Cup winners’ medal. And it is true what people say: there is no other game like it, for both men and women. League matches are different; the FA Cup final is a one-off game and it is played in front of the biggest audience. It is, by far, the most-watched game of women’s club football on television. The women’s final is normally played on a Bank Holiday Monday so you always get a good crowd, whether it’s in the north or the south. The FA Cup final was always the one game I wanted to be involved in when I was growing up. Winning the FA Cup is special, and it meant a lot to me.
For me, our best performance was the last one we all played in together, in 2008, when we beat Leeds at the City Ground. I got two goals that day, Jayne Ludlow and Lianne Sanderson got the others. We beat Southampton’s record of eight wins in the competition too, which pleased Vic a lot. To win a match like that in such style in front of a large live television audience was really pleasing. In total, I scored five goals in those three successive FA Women’s Cup final wins for Arsenal.
As I said, we were almost unbeatable in those days. We became so used to winning matches that we hardly ever lost. In fact, the only domestic defeat we suffered during that very special three-year period was against Everton in the 2008 FA Women’s Premier League Cup final.
I suppose we knew that if we weren’t mentally right then a surprise could be on the cards. Charlton had taken the lead against us early on in the 2007 FA Women’s Cup final, for instance, up in Nottingham, but we powered back to win comfortably. Importantly, we were always secure in the knowledge that tactically and technically we were sound. We also knew that player for player, nobody could touch us. As time went on, it must have been mentally tough to play against us too.
Some of the scorelines we were recording were massive. It can be a challenge to keep that going when you are not being tested as such. But we prided ourselves on our professionalism. We never got bored. We never slacked. We always set new targets.
For us, it was always a target to try and score a goal as early as possible in games because we knew that some of the teams were already beaten before they had even got off the bus. They were coming to Borehamwood to play Arsenal, and that was enough to intimidate them into a defeatist attitude. So we knew that if we got an early goal we had pretty much won the game there and then. Vic set us the task to score as early as possible for that reason, and a lot of our games were won within the first five or ten minutes.
The biggest test for us came when we failed to score in the early part of a match. When that first goal didn’t come, it was a case of us waiting to find an opening. We knew we would get chances with the attacking personnel we had, and we knew that that talent would take those chances. We just had to stick with it and be patient sometimes.
Everyone bonded and everyone clicked in that team. We all had the same goals and we all worked hard to achieve them. It is an old adage, but hard work does pay off. We knew we were a good side and it was a lot of fun to play for Arsenal Ladies in those years. We were buzzing in training, buzzing in the league, and buzzing in the cups. I scored 100 goals in 112 games for the Gunners in those years. It was great.
We were very attack-minded and so good at going forward that the opposition didn’t really stand a chance – not English opposition anyway. There’s always the possibility of a surprise for any team, no matter how good it is, but as I said, we were surprised once in three seasons. We had Karen Carney on one side and Rachel Yankey on the other. We were just so strong on both flanks. Karen and Rachel played in those positions for England too. Julie Fleeting was our target up front. And what a target she was. She always found the right position to be in. She got a lot of goals for us. She was like some sort of hunter in the box. If you could find her, she could put her head on it and it would be in the net. Julie is one of the best goalscorers in and around the box there has ever been in the women’s game.
Our game was on fire at that time. Every one of us was an international. Katie Chapman was so strong in the midfield. She is solid and breaks everything up, making everybody’s job so much easier, and gets things moving as well. Alex Scott and Faye White were at the top of their games too. Every position in that Arsenal side oozed quality. The list of potential goalscorers seemed endless. We had so many options, so many different players capable of scoring goals from anywhere on the pitch. We were the complete side.
It was so nice to play in a team like that where every one of us was on the same page. Back in my college days, it was down to me to score the goals and create the chances. That brought a lot of pressure. But the rest of the team at Seton Hall were lacking in certain areas. At Arsenal, nobody was lacking in talent. And if they had an off day, the rest of the team would cover for them. There never came a day when we were all off our games. One of Julie, Kaz, Jayne, Lianne, Yanks and me would always pop up and score a goal for the team.
Vic deserves all the credit for the Arsenal Ladies success story. He is Mr Arsenal. He is also the kit man with the men’s team, and for twenty-two years he was the brains behind the success of the women’s team. He created it, he cherished it, and he made it what it became. Any advice you ever needed, any concerns or problems you had, you just went off and found Vic and had a chat. He was always available, to every one of us. He was based at the training ground and that was ideal. He was a father figure to us.
He started off the Arsenal Ladies team more than two decades ago. He had a hunger for the game and he wanted to see it grow. He is a major reason why the game has grown like it has. He still complains and moans about certain aspects of women’s football because he just wants to see the game developing properly, and for it to get the respect it deserves. Vic has always tried to push the game forward and he has always strived for better things for us, both on and off the pitch. Put simply, he is just a great guy. He’s a funny guy too. And a cuddly guy! He reminds me of a teddy bear. I have told him that.
But, seriously, he is someone to be trusted. He is a friend for all days. He is a nice fellow who always wants to have a laugh and a giggle. He is devoted to Arsenal Ladies and always has been. If it hadn’t been for him, there wouldn’t have been the same success story. The team would not be in the position they are in today. No way.