The 1989/90 season was probably the best of my career. Although Arsenal finished fourth in Division One after winning it a year earlier, I thought I’d played well, either up front or out wide on the left. At the age of 24, I reckoned I was playing the best football of my life and I was hoping to establish myself in the team. Then Anders Limpar came along and put the mockers on everything.
That title of ours 12 months earlier – won at Liverpool on the last day of the season – was picked up by a virtually all-English side and that certainly isn’t going to happen again in a hurry. Nowadays, foreigners are joining English clubs practically every hour. The signings are never secret, most of the negotiations seem to be conducted on the sports pages and the arrival of a new player from overseas is announced a long time in advance. But it was different then, very different.
Anders appeared practically out of the blue as far as I was concerned. Our manager George Graham realised he had to bring in new players, so he made three £1 million signings in the summer of 1990: David Seaman from QPR, central defender Andy Linighan from Norwich – neither of whom was going to keep me out of the side – and Anders.
He started his career in Sweden but moved to Switzerland with the Young Boys Club of Bern and then on to Cremonese in Italy, so I didn’t know much about him, even though he’d been in the excellent Swedish squad for the 1990 World Cup finals in Italy. He joined us on pre-season tour, coincidentally in Sweden. There was a great team spirit at the club and we were a fairly young squad, so of course we welcomed them on board. ‘Where do you play?’ I asked Anders, and he said, ‘Left side…’ Please let him say left full-back, I thought to myself, but he paused for a second and then said, ‘How do you say in English?’ The agony continued until he eventually finished the sentence by saying ‘…left wing.’
Bollocks! I thought. The gaffer’s not bought him to play in the reserves, has he? Still, you have to get on with it, so I gave him a forced smile, a bit like Tony Blair meeting someone he can’t stand the sight of but pretends he wants to be their bestest friend. ‘Great,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘Hope it all works out for you. See ya.’ Then I walked away and said to myself, ‘Better get my cushion out again and put it on the bench…’
I then started to think what every player thinks when someone comes in who plays in their position: All right – how good are you then? I want to see what you can do. Let’s see if you really are better than me… Then I saw him in training and my heart sank. Fuck me, I thought, he is good. I’m going to have a year being his stuntman. As always, that was very perceptive of me because that’s exactly what happened. If he was away on international duty I’d get a game in the Rumbelows Cup or something like that but he was definitely above me in the pecking order.
But it was an inspired signing, because he transformed Arsenal from being a very good side into a great one and, despite my fears, I still took part in 32 of the 38 league games we played on the way to winning the title – 13 from the start and 19 coming on as sub. Much as it sticks in my throat to say it, I’ve got to admit that it was a good move on George’s part. Nevertheless, with my starts and sub appearances, I still got a decent look in that year.
As he was a foreigner, albeit one who spoke the language really well, we needed to introduce him to a few old English customs. When he arrived at Arsenal, Anders was virtually teetotal, so of course one of the first things we did was take him out for a drink. The Tuesday Club was the name we gave our weekly drinking club – assuming we didn’t have a midweek match – and we would go to a variety of places for the day and night, as long as they sold alcohol. To introduce Anders to one of our haunts, we went to AJ’s in Mill Hill in North London, not far from our training ground. It was where we had taken Jimmy Carter when he was signed from Liverpool and he managed to piss down my and Paul Merson’s trousers.
Well, there might be a few piss artists in Sweden who could have given us a run for our money, but Anders definitely wasn’t one of them. After four bottles of Heineken he started talking Swahili and then it was ‘Good night and God bless’. He would always say to us, ‘Imagine how fit you’d be if you didn’t drink,’ and I suppose he had a point. But it’s not as though we were at a disadvantage: every club had a drinking culture so why should we be an exception? Anyway, we had better players, which is why we won things.
That first season Anders was at Highbury we won the championship and he was fantastic. We were so good as a team in that 1990/91 season that we won the title seven points ahead of runners-up Liverpool. That was despite having two points deducted because of a brawl in our match with Manchester United and having our captain Tony Adams jailed for a drink-driving offence halfway through the season. We only lost once in the league – away at Chelsea – all season.
Anders may only have had little trotters for feet and very little back-lift before letting go, but he had real power in his shooting. You’d watch him in training and you’d think, Fuck me, he’s good. Left foot, right foot, it didn’t matter. But then you think, OK, this is happening in training, but what’s it going to be like in proper games? It didn’t take long to find out when he scored his first goal for the club.
Arsenal were in a four-team pre-season tournament at Wembley involving Aston Villa, Real Sociedad and Sampdoria. Our first game was against Villa, and I was watching it, from the bench of course. With just over half an hour gone, Anders went down the left wing, checked and cut inside. He was still only six or seven yards from the touchline but suddenly he bent the ball with the outside of his left foot and just smashed a shot past the goalkeeper’s left hand and into the far corner.
All right, I thought. It was a great goal, but it was only pre-season. It’s not big boys’ football, after all! But he turned it on everywhere that season. Grounds don’t come much bigger than Old Trafford and he scored a great goal there in October 1990. We had a corner on our right just before half-time and the ball was tapped to Anders. He was practically on the by-line and with his back to goal, but he half-turned to face the goal and in that instant saw United’s goalkeeper Les Sealey was at his far post.
Anders didn’t hesitate: he just bent his shot low and hard towards the near post with his left foot from the most acute of angles. Sealey scrambled across and flicked it out, but it had gone over the line. A few of their players went through the motions and protested it hadn’t – well, they would, wouldn’t they? – but the referee Keith Hackett was in a perfect position and didn’t bottle it. It was a great goal and the kind of thing that elevated Anders to a higher level: he had the vision to score a goal like that but also the confidence to try to score from that position at a place like Old Trafford.
The game will best be remembered, though, for the brawl that broke out in the second half. Anders – who’d been embarrassing them by nutmegging their players – and our full-back Nigel Winterburn were in at the start of it, while Brian McClair, who tried to kick lumps out of Nigel’s back while he was on the ground, and Denis Irwin were there for United. A four-man brawl is pretty good, but that was just the start.
Pretty soon 21 players were involved – David Seaman decided he couldn’t be bothered – and both sets of benches went on the pitch too. As a sub, I couldn’t stop laughing at it all. Anders ended up being shoved into the hoardings at the side of the pitch by a United player, which was the nearest they came to tackling him all game. Both clubs and loads of players on either side were later fined, and George Graham came up with the clever idea of getting Arsenal to fine him as well – it sent out the right message about Arsenal and the behaviour expected of everyone at the club.
It was great stuff, though, and you can relive it on YouTube any time you like. It might have happened years ago, but that punch-up is always high up whenever a list of best ever football brawls is drawn up. Strange to think that Anders, who’s only a little chap, and those nutmegs of his were the catalyst not just for that brawl but also for the element of needle that exists between the two sides to this day.
As for nutmegging opponents, some people think it’s taking the piss, but I don’t. I think it’s brilliant if you’re good enough to do it. On the occasions that I used to do it, I’d shout, ‘Whey!’ as I went past the defender, just to rub it in. If you’re a spectator paying £50 or £60 to go and watch a game, I think that’s what you want to see. You’ve paid a lot of money and you want to see something that ordinary players just can’t do. It’s not showing disrespect, it’s showing skill. I suppose your feelings about it are governed by who’s doing it. If it’s a player on your team it’s wonderful; if it’s an opponent then it’s an absolute liberty.
Anders made 39 appearances in all competitions that season, plus a couple as sub, and got 13 goals in total. He wasn’t our leading scorer, but he would find the net against the best. You could never call him someone who just turned it on against the lesser teams, either. He was that good they were all the same to him. He’s not like, say, Ronaldo at Manchester United who can tear mediocre sides apart and show all the tricks in the book and then some, but struggles against the top sides.
That goal by Anders at Old Trafford shows what I mean, and the next season he scored an even more memorable goal when we hammered Liverpool 4–0 at Highbury. He gathered the ball in his own half, moved quickly into theirs, shuffled a bit, gave a little shimmy, moved the ball on to his right foot just past the centre circle and noticed the keeper was off his line. The next thing anyone knew he’d lobbed their goalie from 40 yards and it was in the net.
It’s not just me who rates him either. George Graham didn’t see eye-to-eye with him towards the end of his time at Arsenal, but he has said of Anders that when he came to the club, ‘He was probably the most exciting player in the English league. He had flair, he was quick over five yards, so quick, two good feet and a magnificent shot.’
Ian Wright, one of the best goalscorers in Arsenal’s history, went so far as to say that in his early days at the club 95 per cent of his goals were created by Anders.
The funny thing is that, if you asked an Arsenal fan today to draw up a list of club legends, Anders probably wouldn’t be anywhere near the top. The reason for that is simply that, despite that fantastic first season, he wasn’t at the club long enough to have as much impact as his quality deserved.
In his second season Anders struggled, because we struggled as a team. He was not a grafter, and in one sense he was a luxury player. He could be out of this world for 20 minutes and then that was that. It was fine when the team were on fire as we were in the championship year, but not when things weren’t going as well.
George Graham said at the time of Anders’s subsequent move to Everton, ‘Anders needs a new challenge. He is coming to the end of his contract and he deserves the chance of regular first-team football. He is one of the most talented players I have coached but he has not been able to transfer that ability on to the pitch on a regular basis. He has been a very popular player with the fans and I wish him all the best.’
I have my own take on that. I’d moved on to Southampton by then and perhaps having the safety net of his stuntman removed meant that he went down a gear. Well, it’s a theory, isn’t it?
Our paths crossed while I was at Southampton and he was still at the Gunners. They came down to play us and I was the spy in the camp. I knew all the Arsenal moves and strategies: what they planned at corners and free-kicks, their strengths and weaknesses. I practically did the team talk for our manager Ian Branfoot: how they would take people away at near-post corners, how one man would peel away to the far post and one to the near post, how at free-kicks they would put three men on the end of the opposition wall, how defenders and midfield might show you inside…
I ran through all the technical stuff but, when it got to Anders and the best way to nullify him, I just said, ‘Boot him.’ I said our defenders should larrup him in the first few minutes just to let him know they were there. It’s not that he couldn’t take that sort of stuff, it’s just that no one likes it, so it would put him off his game a bit.
I’d been out with a broken toe so I was sub for the match, but I came on for the last 25 minutes or so and got a really good reception from visiting Arsenal fans, which was quite touching really. I was playing wide on the right and Anders was playing on the left so we were opposite each other as soon as I came on to the pitch. We’d got on very well at Highbury and as I ran on the pitch he shook my hand.
A little later we had a goal kick, so Anders dropped back to cover the midfield near me and I heard him saying urgently, ‘Perry! Perry!’
What did he want? ‘All right, Anders?’ I said.
Then he said, ‘After the game, we swap shirts?’
I was about to say it was fine with me when the ball flew over our heads and on to Iain Dowie, who was busy knocking it down so someone, namely me, could run on to it. Instead of being there to support him, I was talking about shirts with Anders!
He was such a top player that I was thrilled that he wanted to change shirts with me but in those days it wasn’t the done thing unless it was a Cup Final or European match. If you swapped your shirt at the end of a game, the kit man would kill you!
Anders was at Highbury when Arsenal beat Sheffield Wednesday twice to win the FA Cup and League Cup in 1993. He didn’t figure in all those Wembley games, but his time with the club was drawing to a close. In March 1994, he was transferred to Everton for £1.6 million, after turning down the chance of going to Manchester City. Even though it was late in the season, he’d only figured in a dozen Arsenal games so it was the right move for him at the age of 28. He was promised first-team football at Goodison, which he wasn’t getting at Highbury by that stage. Arsenal were inconsistent and so was Anders. When a team are struggling, you need more grafters and Anders wasn’t that type of player. The flair players there had become a liability.
Everton had a great team in the middle and late 1980s, but they’d gone off the boil by the time Anders joined them – they were getting old. Only Arsenal had been in the top division longer than Everton, but that year they had to wait until the last game of the season before they avoided the drop. Anders almost dropped them in it when he gave away a penalty, when, for no reason other than he felt like it, he decided to clear a Wimbledon corner with his hand. ‘I had a brainstorm,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t reach the ball with my head and instinctively I stuck up my hand. I felt gutted for the fans and when we went two down I couldn’t see a way out of it for us.’
Despite being 2–0 down, Everton managed to win 3–2 and avoid the drop. The following year he was outstanding when he helped Everton win the FA Cup by beating the favourites Manchester United 1–0. Anders was also part of the Swedish squad who finished third in the World Cup in America in 1994.
But it wasn’t long before he was on the move again. He’d been unsettled for some time at Everton when in January 1997 Trevor Francis, the Birmingham City manager, signed him until the end of the season for £100,000. That too ended in tears after four games when he was fined for failing to turn up for a reserve match and his contract was annulled.
‘There was an element of risk when we took Limpar from Everton,’ Francis said. ‘His ability and technique were never in question but he has had one or two problems with other managers concerning commitment. I felt he may have provided us with that extra bit of quality we needed. Rather than let him hang around until the end of the season, I decided it was better if he was released from his contract now.’
After that Anders went back to Sweden to play for AIK in Stockholm for two years before heading for Colorado Rapids in America’s Major League Soccer. He spent a couple of years there before returning to Europe and signing for another Stockholm club, Djurgarden. You’d hardly think that would set anyone’s pulse racing, but by then Anders was running a bar in the city called The Limp Bar – another original name – and the AIK fans didn’t like him signing for their local rivals. They spat at poor old Anders, called him a ‘traitor’ and smashed up the bar. He finally called it a day in 2002, saying his body couldn’t take it any more. I know the feeling.
I’ve mentioned other people in the game, such as George Graham and Ian Wright, who also rated Anders highly. But there was also one little kid who idolised him during his time at Everton. This lad would imagine he was Anders as he kicked a ball around with his mates near his little home in Croxteth in Liverpool, often reliving that 1–0 Cup Final victory over Manchester United. The boy’s name? Wayne Rooney.