Arsènal

“Dead money”, Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood’s renowned caustic comment about David Dein’s £292,000 purchase of over 1,600 unissued shares in Arsenal Football Club in 1983, proved wildly inaccurate when, in 2007, Dein sold his shareholding (at the time consisting of less than the 16.6% stake he’d bought initially) for £75 million to Red and White Holdings Ltd. The 1983 transaction valued the club at a mere £1.8 million, even after several £1 million transfers had been undertaken, indicating the negligible importance that was then ascribed to a club’s assets apart from the players. And in compiling a fortune so large that it could pay for every ticket (at an average price of over £40) for every spectator to see all of Arsenal’s home matches for the duration of a season, by the time he sold, Dein had been part of a transformation in English football both on and off the field, and he felt much of it was due to his own contribution.

Yet back in the early 1980s, Dein, a successful entrepreneur through his commodity business, was just another Arsenal fan, albeit an affluent one. Living in Totteridge, both Graham Rix and Tony Woodcock were neighbours and friends, and he and wife Barbara often enjoyed socialising with them. It was a different story watching from the directors’ box at a time of decline for the team. Despite three FA Cup Finals, with one outright win between 1978 and 1980, and a European Cup Winners Cup Final, there had been scant success in the league, a poor return for a side filled with gifted personnel. Moreover, in 1980 and 1981, Liam Brady and Frank Stapleton were sold to Juventus and Manchester United respectively, and although star names such as Woodcock and Charlie Nicholas were brought in to replace the former idols, the team still failed to mount a challenge for the title. Dein bought into the club at a time when English football was enduring a lengthy and tortuous trip to rock bottom, underlined by the deaths of 39 Juventus supporters as a result of trouble involving Liverpool fans before the 1985 European Cup Final in Brussels, and the subsequent ban on English clubs from UEFA’s competitions for five seasons which cast a long shadow over the game.

In hindsight, one can appreciate Hill-Wood’s short-term view of Dein’s investment. Dein, however, was intoxicated with the increased involvement his new found status brought. His rise mirrored that of another self-made entrepreneur, property developer Irving Scholar, who took over Tottenham Hotspur in 1982. Both he and Dein had, as younger men, played in the same Sunday league, albeit for different teams, and it was a quirk that, as grammar school boys from the same part of north west London moving in the same circles, they did not come across each other. They quickly became friends once both were effectively running the clubs they loved.

There was a nice irony in their accession as successful young Jewish businessmen that they should have secured key roles as both Arsenal and Tottenham – their large numbers of Jewish fans notwithstanding – epitomised the conservative, ageist and reactionary administrations so prevalent throughout English football at that time. Akin to golf clubs, perhaps Arsenal operated a quota system on how many ‘outsiders’ they would allow into their inner sanctum, whilst Tottenham had no choice in the matter, the old regime having been swept aside by a new breed who just happened to be smarter, youthful and Jewish.

A groundbreaking merchandising business was created at White Hart Lane and Spurs floated as a plc in 1985, but not before manager Keith Burkinshaw, having accumulated two FA Cups and a UEFA Cup, walked away with the acerbic comment “There used to be a football club over there.” Burkinshaw’s prescient criticism proved to be accurate as Tottenham diversified into non-football areas which, instead of providing new revenue opportunities, accumulated debts that compounded the overspending on the rebuilt East Stand, eventually forcing Scholar to sell to Alan Sugar and Terry Venables in 1991. Arguably, to this date Tottenham are still struggling to achieve the success and status they acquired under Burkinshaw’s stewardship.

Seeing this turn of events across town must have encouraged Dein to become more proactive. With his share purchase in 1983, he had been invited onto the board in return for the amount by which his outlay had boosted the club’s coffers. One of his initial acts was to agitate for the dismissal of then manager Terry Neill, a situation Brian Clough had anticipated. Dein had been introduced to Clough by Ken Friar, the club secretary, when Nottingham Forest were the opponents at Highbury as “our new director”. “Now don’t you go making trouble for your manager, young man”, was Clough’s immediate and typical response.

It may have been an era when Bob Paisley’s Liverpool were the dominating force in England and Europe, but both Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa had shown that the Football League Championship, and indeed the European Cup, were not beyond the reach of a run-of-the-mill First Division club. Smaller than Arsenal in terms of resources, they had built successful teams due to the managerial abilities of the exceptional Brian Clough and Ron Saunders respectively. Arsenal had an excellent cup record, but in the early 1980s never challenged for the league. Terry Neill had been given the funds to buy the best but had by and large failed to produce a team that equalled the sum of its parts. When Brady and Stapleton moved on, both intimated that they were leaving for bigger clubs. Certainly, despite the rich history, there was a feeling that Arsenal were a club marking time, and perhaps had never fully recovered from the 1979/80 season that saw them play 70 matches and reach two cup finals, yet fail in both and miss out on European qualification as well.

Matters came to a head with a League Cup defeat at home to Walsall, two divisions below Arsenal, at the end of November 1983. Less than three weeks later, after two subsequent Division One losses, Neill was given his cards. The Arsenal board were historically very reluctant to dismiss managers (there had been just eleven in 60 years, two of whom had died in the post). But the manager probably knew his time was up when, shortly before the Walsall defeat, he admitted, “The players don’t seem to know what it is to hunger for goals and glory. Some days I think they just want to pick up their money and go home. But we’ll finish in the top six again this season. Whether or not I’ll be around to see it is another matter!”

Increasingly, there were supporter protests on matchdays, demanding Neill’s sacking. And Dein, so recently one of their number, empathised with the fans and argued for a change in the manager’s office. “I am not a hatchet man,” he said later in relation to Neill’s departure, “but I like to think of myself as an action man. And where surgery was needed, I was prepared to recommend it.” Neill had been concerned about the new director’s relationship with the players, whilst Dein was obsessed about the club’s position in the table. However, if, as Neill said, the players were content to just go through the motions, the inability to motivate them was down to him. Dein could have picked this feeling up from his mates in the squad, even if they felt the nature of their association had changed somewhat now that he was effectively one of their employers rather than a mere fan with whom they could socialise.

At the time Dein stated that Neill “was not the right person to lead us into the next decade.” And despite Dein’s role in his sacking, Terry Neill is today very generous about him. A regular media pundit when Arsenal are in the spotlight, Neill readily praises his erstwhile antagonist for the part he played in the transformation of the club that has occurred since he left. Moreover, there was little for the former manager to feel bitter about. The reason the players were not performing for him was unrelated to who was on the board. In his own words before the Walsall debacle, he had accepted that he had done as much as he could. The task for any manager who had known success (and four cup finals in four years at the end of the 1970s was no mean feat at a time when competition was more widespread than it is today) was to renew his resources, changing the key components before they passed their sell-by-date. Thus the Liverpool team that Bob Paisley led to European Cup glory in 1977 was very different to the one that won the championship in his final season in 1983. In the intervening years, players came and went, but the bandwagon rolled on. Retiring six months before Neill was sacked, Paisley could count 12 major trophies in a reign of similar duration to Neill’s at Arsenal. One FA Cup trophy was scant return for all those years.

Neill had survived for so long because of the traditionalist view from the boardroom that regarded him as one of their own, with almost 20 years’ loyal service as player, captain and manager. Besides, he was a good egg. Dein would come to fill an executive vacuum that existed at the club, in the process coming into conflict with club secretary Ken Friar, a more cautious individual by nature, who had effectively become part of the furniture, having worked his way up through the ranks since starting out in the post room as a teenager.

Dein’s background was far more cut and thrust. The family business began in Shepherd’s Bush Market importing exotic fruit and vegetables from the Caribbean. From these humble origins, Dein oversaw its transformation into a commodity-broking company with offices in Pall Mall. However, when he joined the Arsenal board, his enthusiasm for his business waned somewhat, in contrast to his new life at the football club that his wife has described as being akin to taking a mistress. Although Dein was ambitious enough to see the post of vice-chairman created especially for him in January 1984, the change in the boardroom didn’t initially seem to beneficially affect the playing side.

It would be another two and a half seasons after Neill’s exit before the new vice-chairman would begin to see real potential emerge. Don Howe – Neill’s number two and the coach of the 1970/71 double side under Bertie Mee – was promoted to the post of manager, yet no significant improvement was seen as Arsenal finished sixth, followed by a fall to seventh by May 1985. During the following season, then Barcelona manager Terry Venables was sounded out about coming to Highbury.

Venables had won the Spanish league during his first season and was in the midst of a campaign that would end with a defeat on penalties in the European Cup Final. He was hot managerial property and exemplified the kind of sea change that Dein felt was imperative if the club was to show any sense of ambition. Howe got wind of what was going on and resigned in March 1986. He had earned a reputation as an excellent coach, but never really convinced as a top class manager despite subsequently carrying out the role at several clubs. Venables himself rejected the possibility of the post because he objected to it being offered behind Howe’s back (and the respect he had for Howe was subsequently demonstrated when the latter became part of the England set-up when Venables was appointed national team coach in 1994). Howe’s precipitous departure at least made it easier for the board. Dein later admitted, “We were having second thoughts about the long-term viability of Don Howe. He found himself in an invidious position and resigned.”

So whilst chief scout Steve Burtenshaw took over as caretaker manager for the remainder of a season that saw the club finish in seventh position once again, Dein was on the hunt for a man who could actually change the culture of mediocrity at the club. It was not the only change he intended to effect. The name of Arsenal was still box office despite a solitary trophy since 1971, and Dein intended to ensure that the club profited financially as a result. In his belief that what was good for Arsenal was also good for English football he widened the scope of his ambition. There was an opportunity, he felt, to increase the potential revenue the game could earn, but also to steer such increased income towards the clubs that were most responsible for earning it. He believed the First Division was subsidising the supporting acts lower down on the Football League ladder to an unjustified degree.

In 1985 Dein was elected to the Football League Management Committee (FLMC), the only member who was not the chairman of a football club, even if in reality he was now the principal director at Arsenal. “I don’t know why he’s bothering with all the football politics,” said Peter Hill-Wood at the time, reflecting what many now see as a further example of the short-sighted attitude of a board that was in dire need of a shake-up. Ironically, Hill-Wood would have been a more obvious candidate for the FMLC had he been interested, representing old money, the establishment and a laissez-faire attitude that had become synonymous with Arsenal’s methods over the years. Now, though, Dein would stir up a hornets’ nest in his attempts to improve the club’s lot.

With Everton chairman Philip Carter, he was mandated by the FLMC to look after the television negotiations. Following the tragedies of Birmingham, Bradford and Heysel (within the space of less than three weeks) and the unforgivable loss of supporters’ lives, the stock of English football had fallen so low that both ITV and the BBC were indifferent to its questionable attractions. Absent from the television screens for the first half of the 1985/86 season, league football returned only when a derisory fire-sale offer was accepted from the two broadcasters: £1.3million for the rest of the season and £6.2 million for the following two seasons. As that deal approached an end, in alliance with the other of the ‘Big Five’ clubs – Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool – Dein and Carter courted ITV.

In 1988, British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) was preparing to launch and needed exclusive content. It was prepared to raise the rights fees for live football, providing competition for the BBC and ITV for the first time. Greg Dyke had become chairman of ITV Sport and, as a result of Irving Scholar’s persistent probing at a lunch with the Big Five representatives, admitted to the Tottenham chairman that the BBC and ITV had previously worked as a cartel to hold down prices for broadcasting rights artificially. This was music to Dein’s ears. “I wanted to pinch the football rights from BSB’s grasp,” recalled Dyke, “and he [Dein] might be able to deliver them. He in turn wanted more money for his club and the other big clubs and I could afford to pay it.”

Dyke’s policy was to “go direct to the Big Five clubs of the day and offer them a minimum of a million pounds a year each for the exclusive right to broadcast their home matches. This was more than any of them had received in the past.” Moreover, up to then, fees to the Football League were more evenly spread and even filtered down to encompass the lowest division. As far as Dyke was concerned, “The Football League could sell the rest of the First Division matches to whomever they wanted, but of course without the big clubs’ home games, they were worth much less.”

With support from Tottenham, Manchester United and Liverpool, Dein and Carter agreed to a deal which would see their five clubs do very nicely, albeit at the expense of the top flight’s lesser lights as well as those in the divisions below. For £11 million a year, rising to £18 million after three years, ITV had bought the rights to show 21 live matches, as well as highlights from any other fixture in the league if they desired, as well as League Cup coverage. The rest of the league, effectively powerless with the Big Five not prepared to contemplate any alternative course of action, fell in line, with the consolation that they would also be financially better off as a result of the settlement, albeit as second-class citizens. But there was obvious indignation at the way that Dein and Carter had ensured that the Big Five were the primary beneficiaries, and both men were unsurprisingly booted off the FLMC as a consequence.

It was a set of circumstances that would have analogous repercussions almost 20 years later. On both occasions, those who felt Dein had betrayed their trust removed him from office. In 1988 he acted as he did in the belief he was serving the interests of both his club and the game in general, but was at the same time working independently of those he supposedly represented. He was a man wearing two hats – one for Arsenal and another for the Football League. He felt he had served both parties well and saw no conflict of interest. Indeed, his parting shot revealed the resentment he felt. “What other employer,” he asked, “fires a man who has just brought him £44 million?”

By the time the deal was struck, Arsenal had consolidated their status as one of the Big Five through two successive seasons of progress under new manager George Graham. As a former Gunner with a good managerial apprenticeship at Millwall, he was an obvious candidate for the job. There was a vogue at the big clubs for recruiting former players as managers – Howard Kendall had done very well at Everton, emulated across Stanley Park by Liverpool’s Kenny Dalglish. In a BBC Football Focus piece on Graham in 1986, filmed in his office at Millwall, clearly visible on the shelf behind him were books on Arsenal and The Good Food Guide, an indication of his tastes, perhaps even his priorities. Certainly here was a man David Dein could relate to. In the frame for pulling the trigger on Terry Neill, Dein never received the same (positive) public exposure for promoting George Graham’s credentials with his co-directors.

Once at Arsenal, the new man was fortunate to inherit a very promising group of players who were emerging from the club’s youth system. Reassured, and immediately putting into practice Brian Clough’s dictum “in this business, you’ve got to be a dictator or you haven’t got a chance”, Graham felt free to dispose of many of the senior players who he felt might not be so malleable to his modus operandi. So Paul Mariner and Tony Woodcock were released before a ball had even been kicked in anger, and over the course of his first two seasons, Viv Anderson, Charlie Nicholas and Graham Rix were also shown the exit door. Captain Kenny Sansom was the last major casualty, sold against his will to Newcastle at the beginning of the momentous 1988/89 season, having been stripped of the captaincy midway through the previous campaign. (His replacement as skipper, Tony Adams, would hang on to the armband until his retirement in 2002). These were men who had been around long enough not to respond to the strict discipline that Graham wanted to instil as the best way of getting a positive response from his charges, described by defender Lee Dixon as “a sergeant-major approach to management”.

When it came to contracts, Graham’s toughness as a negotiator was soon established. A young Martin Keown was one stubborn individual who met his match when he held out for better terms and found himself sold to Aston Villa. Graham later showed the folly of his intransigence by re-signing Keown in 1992 on terms that made the disparity in their 1986 dealings look paltry, although it did establish a precedent. Striker Alan Smith, who Graham recruited from Leicester in 1987, recalls Graham’s negotiating technique, “He liked to keep a ceiling on things which he didn’t like to go over. He’d say, ‘Tony Adams is on that so I’m not giving you any more.’” The bottom line though was that Graham felt he should be the top earner as he had the ultimate responsibility. “He always wanted to be on more money than the players and so as long as he was, he would be happy,” says Smith. From the receiving end, Paul Merson described the manager’s way of working: “It was pointless having an agent. He used to come in and say ‘Right, this is what you’re getting, here’s your new contract. If you don’t like it, see you later.’”

But it was not only the players who were affected by Graham’s methods. David Dein, despite his power at the club, was still starry-eyed, delighted to be working alongside a former hero. In his twenties he had supported the side that won the 1970 Fairs Cup followed by the domestic league and cup double in 1971, of which George Graham was an integral part. But although he had helped to bring Graham back home, Dein increasingly found himself marginalised in the day-to-day dealings with the players that he had previously enjoyed, as Graham took it upon himself to deal with the contract negotiations and transfers, aided by coaching staff such as Steve Burtenshaw and Theo Foley who loyally backed up his every move. Dein reluctantly accepted the change, admitting, “I pride myself on being a good negotiator, but George has got me knocked into a cocked hat.” His admiration for Graham was such that it may have impaired his judgement. When Graham called, Dein – according to colleagues – invariably responded, sometimes putting aside commercial decisions in order to involve himself with the playing side. Dein’s willingness to help, however, did not endear him to Graham, who remains dismissive about the alliance between Wenger and Dein which he intimates allowed Dein “to play with his toys” in a manner you can be sure he would never have stood for.

An incident in February 1988 after Graham had been in the manager’s seat for less than two years, pointed up the reality of the relationship. At the end of a press conference to promote the forthcoming friendly between Arsenal and the French national team, a friend of David Dein’s and a director of the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency who had produced a radio campaign to promote the match on Arsenal’s behalf, asked for a lift back into the West End. “Certainly,” replied Dein “but I am taking George”, who was just chatting to some journalists on the other side of the room. After a few minutes chit chat, Dein’s friend said, “Come on David, let’s go”. “I can’t interrupt him,” said Dein. “Of course you can,” said his friend. “You want to go. I want to go. He’s only talking to some hacks. Tell him we’re going.” Dein demurred. “Ok then, I’m going to”, said his friend.

By the end of the 1980s, Arsenal had many more options, with a flair midfield including home-grown players such as Paul Davis, David Rocastle and Michael Thomas augmented by solidity at the back. Using his knowledge of the lower divisions from his days at Millwall, Graham had been able to pick up some bargain buys that would serve the club well for years to come: Lee Dixon, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn, although the latter had been promoted with Wimbledon so had some top-flight experience. Arsenal’s first-team squad was a step up for all of them. Even better, the mix of home-grown and cheap purchases did not command superstar wages, allowing the manager to run a tight ship. In a sense, though, Graham was making a rod for his own back, as the board, seeing what could be achieved on a modest budget, sometimes refused to provide funds when he did want to make a noteworthy signing, such as Tony Cottee from West Ham. This concept of aiming for success on the cheap resounds at the club to this day, in spite of all that has changed. It is to Graham’s enormous credit then that in 1989 he wrested the league title from Liverpool.

Part of the reason that Arsenal pipped Liverpool to the title in 1989 was an event that had huge ramifications for the future of the game in England. The Hillsborough disaster that saw 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death on the occasion of an FA Cup semi-final postponed Liverpool’s fixtures three weeks, with the club’s players attending numerous funerals. When football resumed, the team went on an unbeaten run – including the FA Cup Final against Everton six days before facing Arsenal at Anfield in the (delayed) final league match of the season. Whether or not the players were drained from their experiences is difficult to say, but with the visitors requiring a 2–0 victory to win the title, Liverpool seemed to play within themselves, and ultimately conceded the League Championship trophy to George Graham’s team through goals by Alan Smith and, sensationally in the last minute, Michael Thomas.

The only Arsenal matches David Dein voluntarily doesn’t attend are those that occur during his annual winter break overseas “to recharge my batteries”. In the 1980s he often stayed at his wife Barbara’s family home in Florida. A keen student of American sport, he would go to see NFL games whenever possible and it was here that he first became aware of the importance and potential of the corporate market. Closer to home, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa had paved the way in showing how executive boxes could not only produce a healthy new revenue stream but in so doing subsidise ticket prices in other areas of the ground. All very well in theory, but in practice the cost of a seat at Tottenham has always been amongst the most expensive in the top division.

Magnificent a stadium as Highbury was, hemmed in by the gardens and houses backing onto the stands, the possibilities for expansion were restricted. Additionally, the art deco facade of the East Stand was a listed building. There could have been re-construction, but it would have been a difficult task to find accommodation for boxes without alienating many of the die-hard season ticket holders. Instrumental in putting a roof on the Clock End and 53 executive boxes above it in January 1989, had Dein known what would happen later that season – namely the Hillsborough disaster and in the wake of it the Taylor Report advocating making stadiums all-seater – he might have instead considered a double-decker stand with seats above and below the executive boxes, or at least filled in the corners.

In theory, to maximise potential earnings executive boxes should have the best views in the stadium. Of course the Clock End boxholders could watch the game from a good height and get some perspective on the play, but they were still behind a goal. In an attempt to make good this deficiency, corporate packages that included seats in the West Upper were offered. Clients would dine in the Clock End complex of which the hospitality boxes were just one part. Behind the new boxes and out of sight of the pitch were an indoor five-a-side hall, a suite which was used as a pre-match restaurant and doubled up as the players’ bar after the game, as well as administrative offices.

The new Clock End was officially unveiled before the Arsenal v Tottenham match, three months before Hillsborough. Once completed, the only real change that could be made was the conversion of the terracing into ad hoc seating to comply with the new legislation. There was no room to place further seating above the boxes, thereby capping Arsenal’s capacity, an insoluble problem that eventually led to the abandonment of Highbury when, with more foresight, it could have accommodated a significantly larger number than the 38,500 who were ultimately able to fit in. Of more pressing concern was the fact that Arsenal were falling behind other clubs with lower attendances whose stadium improvements, especially for the corporate customer, produced a much higher per capita income than Highbury.

After making a disappointing defence of their title, Arsenal were not widely tipped to win anything in 1990/91. Yet after an amazing ride that saw them come from eight points behind Liverpool, they won the championship by a street. If two points had not been deducted for their part in a scuffle against Manchester United they would have been nine points clear at the finish, reflecting then Crystal Palace manager Steve Coppell’s view that “in terms of coaching, discipline and organisation, they are the best team in the First Division”. Although they registered an impressive 74 goals, it was the solidity of the backline that was most remarkable, conceding a meagre 18 times over the course of the campaign and losing only once. Despite the frustrated expectations of the previous season – after the leading the table at Christmas, they ultimately finished fourth – Graham had by and large retained faith in the existing squad, merely strengthening it with the addition of Anders Limpar, Andy Linighan and David Seaman, later augmented by further products of the youth team factory, such as Kevin Campbell and David Hillier. (Of the 16 players who won Championship medals in 1990/91, no fewer than half had emerged from the youth team, a staggering accomplishment unmatched since the days of Matt Busby at Manchester United more than 30 years before.) How times have changed – plus ça change, plus c’est la difference, as Arsène Wenger might comment.

Thus Graham was able to devise a playing strategy based on consistency in both selection and performance. “The beauty about being consistent,” he reflected, “is that even when you have achieved it, the desire for it has still got to be there. There are not many footballers who have achieved that year in year out. We’ve done it over the year. Now we have to do it over the years.” But it was not to be, and after two titles in three years the level of consistency, and with it league success, dropped sharply away.

As one Dein favourite, Anders Limpar, fell from grace, another emerged to replace him. (The portents were not propitious when Graham told Limpar that his lack of goals “has got nothing to do with your physical make-up, it’s your mental make-up. You’ve got to put yourself in goal scoring positions” – a harsh criticism for a midfield player who scored 11 goals from 34 appearances in 1990/91.) A long-time admirer of Ian Wright, Dein held Crystal Palace’s Chairman, Ron Noades, to his promise of first refusal if the south London club ever considered cashing in on their prime asset and thus paved the way for the player to cross town early in the 1991/92 season despite the manager already being able to field Alan Smith, Kevin Campbell, Paul Merson and Limpar in the same line-up.

The ensuing campaign was a watershed in Graham’s tenure. Wright was ineligible to play in the European Cup due to the timing of his transfer, and a naive Arsenal side were taught a lesson by Sven Göran-Eriksson’s Benfica at Highbury that resulted in their elimination from the competition in the club’s first appearance since their debut campaign in 1971/72. Graham took on board what he had witnessed and prioritised muscle and brawn. “I love one-nil wins,” he admitted to Tottenham director Douglas Alexiou.

Defending with determination and limited in ambition whilst lacking their hitherto exemplary consistency meant that, whilst never challenging in the league, Arsenal usually rose to the big occasion and became very difficult to beat in cup ties, with long balls to the lightning-fast Ian Wright often the most favoured tactic. Michael Thomas and David Rocastle were sold in the summers of 1991 and 1992 respect ively, whilst Paul Davis also became surplus to requirements. Creativity had slipped down to the bottom of Graham’s list of priorities for good. The flirtation was over. He was no longer prepared to pander to creative players; his ungenerous treatment of David Ginola at Tottenham a few years later was no surprise to any Limpar fan. What Graham wanted above all was work rate and he now preferred the likes of David Hillier and Danish import John Jensen as his central midfield, stolid rather than solid, with little flair and even fewer goals. Paul Merson summarised his attitude to his team as a case of “if you weren’t working hard, you weren’t playing” and thus creative players became something of a luxury, an irony for a manager nicknamed ‘Stroller’ in his playing days. It was a return to the time of ‘boring, boring Arsenal’, which first emerged during Billy Wright’s uninspiring spell a quarter of a century before (though for Arsenal’s critics they would have felt the tag most apt for the 1970/71 team who, in their view, won the title in a manner completely devoid of style). And yet under Graham it was tolerated because of the cups that were won. An FA and League Cup double in 1993 was followed by a European Cup Winners’ Cup triumph a year later, but the never-say-die resilience in the knockout competitions could not sustain the week-in, week-out demands of the league and Arsenal never seriously competed again for the title under Graham after 1991. He was now the authoritarian who failed to get the best out of his players on a habitual basis. Alan Smith reflected, “He was the horrible boss who made us do horrible things but there was certainly respect there. It was only really towards the end when we’d been together too long, he was growing frustrated and we’d heard it all before, that it became really tiresome. But I would say that from 1987 till ‘92 it was hard work but enjoyable as we had our fair share of laughs in training.”

As the players were securing their second title under Graham, the board made plans for a new North Bank stand to comply with the Taylor Report. The notion of simply placing seats on the existing terracing (the plan for the Clock End) was rejected in favour of a two-tier stand that would cost a then phenomenal £22.5 million. The plans were unveiled just as Arsenal were in the process of winning their 1991 title, a time when (with standing capacity reduced post-Hillsborough as a temporary safety measure before stadiums could be converted) the season’s concluding home fixtures were all-ticket affairs, as opposed to the customary practice of queuing up and paying on the day. The club announced that season tickets for the new all-seater stand could only be purchased if fans were willing to pay either £1,500 or £1,100 for an ‘Arsenal Bond’. In theory it was an imaginative way of raising the finance and was underwritten by the Royal Bank of Scotland. And yet it created a furore. Fans were used to paying £5 a match for a place on the terracing and so understandably there was a huge resentment that the only way they could remain on the North Bank was by paying over £1,000 for the right to buy a season ticket. It was bad enough that they no longer had the right to stand, but this was adding insult to injury.

As the public face of the scheme David Dein copped most of the flak, and there was a lot of it flying around. The fanzine 1–0 Down, 2–1 Up even went as far as proposing that bricks from the North Stand should be thrown through the window of Dein’s Bentley, a move that resulted in someone doing just that when he parked near a Greek restaurant in Bounds Green. Unsurprisingly this led to the threat of legal action against the fanzine and an out-of-court settlement and a subsequent front-cover apology in what 1-0 Down termed a ‘libel special’ issue.

Given that the corporate boxes in the Clock End had proved popular, and with Dein’s sense of ambition for the club, it was something of a mystery as to why boxes were not integrated into the new stand. At least their exclusion did not mean a reduction in the potential capacity, the structure creating 12,500 places in comparison to the mere 6,000 that would be provided by the Clock End, which simply had seats grafted onto the terracing the following season, despite the numerous restricted sightlines it produced. However, many of the bonds were not sold, leaving the Royal Bank of Scotland to pick up a large portion of the building costs. Price rises for the new bondholders’ season tickets were pegged to the rate of inflation for ten years, though, and as the price of admission rose by leaps and bounds in the decade to 2003 those who did buy a bond turned out to have landed a bargain. When Arsenal were at last able to charge the market price, the cost of a bondholder’s season ticket was tripled at the first opportunity.

Still, Arsenal’s big move forward at the dawn of a new era was only a new stand. Having dethroned Liverpool, into the vacuum stepped Manchester United, showing all the other clubs a clean pair of heels as they quickly demonstrated that having the best team facilitated their ascent to the status of the biggest, the richest and the most profitable club in the world. Their success on the field provided the foundations for a commercial empire the like of which the world of football had never known before. And where Manchester United went, others were quick to try to follow. But Arsenal lagged behind, seemingly ill at ease in this new commercial milieu. They appeared to know their price but not their true value. And in charge of commercial matters with very little marketing experience, David Dein exemplified this attitude. As a successful salesman by day and card player and gambler by night, he had innate confidence in his own ability to strike the best deal. And he was invariably successful – up to a point.

Anxious to maintain control and to show the board good returns as a result of his own efforts, he found delegation a difficult art. Although he has denied this, he also did not easily accept the advice readily forthcoming from friends and associates alike. So when handling Arsenal’s European competitions broadcasting rights (at this time there was no collective selling and the clubs managed their own rights), he favoured a tendering process, going with the highest bidder on the assumption he was getting the best market value. If he had worked with a rights specialist, the club in all likelihood would have secured a better deal but then he wouldn’t have appeared as the rights expert to a board who didn’t have a deep knowledge of the subject. But to be fair to Dein, he traded on Arsenal’s status as a desirable addition to any sports agency’s portfolio of clients. Indeed so keen were the German agency UFA to represent Arsenal that they guaranteed them the huge sum for the time of £1 million for their broadcasting rights in the 1991/92 European Cup. This backfired spectacularly for UFA when the English champions lost to Benfica in the second-round, and it was obliged to hand over a seven-figure rights fee for a pair of relatively low-profile ties.

In the 1980s, neighbours Tottenham had rebuilt their East and West Stands, of which their corporate boxes were an integral part. It made Arsenal’s decision not to incorporate them in the redeveloped North Bank look all the more bizarre. If over 100 boxes could be filled at White Hart Lane surely there should have been no problem in matching that at Highbury, a venue closer to the city, offering a greater number of event-like fixtures, based on the comparative success and the aggressive marketing of the Premier League. The new North Bank stand might have been an impressive structure compared with the bland ones being erected elsewhere but it was not even maximising its season-ticket revenue, as prices of the bondholder’s seats were – allowing for inflation – held down for a decade whilst giving no opportunity to milk what would become a hungry hospitality market in the years that followed. It was no surprise then that as late as 1997 – five years into the life of the Premier League – Arsenal’s turnover was smaller than Tottenham’s, lagged behind that of Liverpool and Newcastle, and was less than a third of that of Manchester United. It was taking much longer than Dein envisaged when he was one of the prime agitators of the breakaway league for Arsenal to sit in their (in his view) rightful place at the top of the pile.

In the mid 1980s, Dein had supported Irving Scholar’s advocacy which brought about the reduction in the size of the First Division to 20 clubs, the introduction of play-offs and most significantly the abolition of gate sharing, which meant the big pay days for smaller clubs became a thing of the past. By the time the FA’s endorsement allowed the old First Division to break away and to create the Premier League it was back to 22 clubs, much to Dein’s distaste. Only Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur voted against the increase. But the die was cast.

As his implacable adversary Chelsea chairman Ken Bates put it, “David Dein was so over the moon at getting his little Premier League, he couldn’t understand why Ken Bates was so supportive. We got a few things in there . . . he’s only now beginning to realise what hit him.” And enshrined in the constitution was one club one vote, which led irrevocably to the award of the live television contract for the new league to BSkyB, Rupert Murdoch’s television arm having gathered in BSB to become the only satellite option for football. As Bates explained, “The clubs did the Sky deal [the vote was 14–6 with, amazingly, two abstentions] because we were deter mined to smash the Big Five dominance and we were determined to get a fair share of the money . . . if the ITV deal had gone ahead, the Big Five clubs would have been perpetuated.” Outmanoeuvred, David Dein was mortified at the turn of events: “It will be seen as a black day for football . . . it was like amateur night . . . the way it was presented, the way it was negotiated beforehand and the way it was subsequently implemented . . . how can you create heroes on a minority channel?”

Further, as one of the chosen few who had previously received preferential treatment from ITV, Arsenal were not – despite all the hype of the new deal – materially better off. Compared to their sizeable share of the £18 million at stake for the last year of the ITV contract, the more democratic allocation of broadcasting funds for the member clubs of the new league (50% equally divided, 25% according to television appearances of which there was a minimum number for every club and 25% according to the position in the final table) allocated little more to Arsenal. The £35.5 million first year’s payment by Sky only made a significant difference to the smaller clubs outside the Big Five, of which Everton and Tottenham were soon reduced to the ranks by their lack of playing success. So much for the reputed sum of £304 million, which was based on including an estimate of overseas rights sales that were never realised. The actual sum paid by BSkyB for its five-year contract was just under £200 million.