The Making of Modern Arsenal - Part One - 1986 - 1995 - The George Graham Years
THE MAKING OF MODERN ARSENAL PART ONE 1986 - 1995 - THE GRAHAM YEARS
ARSENAL FANS OF a certain age have been fortunate to see not only two of the best managers in the club's history but two of the best of all time.
Both with very different personalities and very different football philosophies, George Graham and Arsene Wenger brought more success to the club than could ever have been imagined.
To put it into perspective; Arsenal had won 14 major honours in the first 100 years of its existence. In the 34 years since Graham's appointment in 1986 it has won a further 16.
Starting today I will be looking back at the impact both managers had on the club and how they created the modern era of success. In Part One I start with the man who began it all, George Graham.
When Graham returned to Highbury to take over as manager in the summer of 1986, Arsenal had been a sleeping giant, treading water for far too long.
Since the break up of the great cup side of the late 1970s, neither Terry Neill or his successor Don Howe had been able shake the club out of its slumber despite some rather high profile signings, such as Tony Woodcock, Charlie Nicholas and Paul Mariner.
There had been talk of Terry Venables or even Johan Cryuff coming in to replace Howe so when Graham was announced on 14 May 1986 it was seen by many as a safe appointment. A stop gap even.
And he had not been the first choice either. The club had initially approached Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson with Graham marked as his assistant, but when Ferguson turned down the offer due to his commitments with the Scottish national side following the death of Jock Stein the previous year, Graham was instead installed as the No. 1.
While being a successful player with the club, winning the European FAIRS Cup in 1970 and the Double the year after, his only managerial experience had come with minnows Millwall.
In his four year's at The Den, Graham had saved the club from relegation to the Fourth Division in 1983 before gaining promotion to the Second in 1985. In fact the team he built would later go on to reach the top flight.
But for all his success, Graham had always been seen as something of maverick character, nicknamed Stroller as a player for his laid back attitude. So would he be tough enough to take on the job of reviving this once great club?
The fears were to prove unfounded however as the appointment of Graham would be an inspired choice.
Immediately the Scot released some of the old guard. Woodcock and Mariner, two players who represented all the old problems, were shown the door, while youngster Martin Keown was sold to Aston Villa for £20,000 after he had rejected a new deal.
Instead of raiding the transfer market to find replacements Graham instead put his faith in the promising crop of young players coming through the ranks. He also instilled a more disciplined approach, a stricter training regime and began laboriously working on the defensive side of the team.
But the revolution would take time. His first team selection on the opening day of the 1986/87 season against Manchester United on 23 August 1986 showed only two changes from the side that had lost 3-0 at Oxford United on the final day of the previous season; Teenagers David Rocastle and Niall Quinn replacing the departed Keown and Woodcock.
The only further change he would make in the early weeks of the season was in midfield where Steve Williams would replace Stewart Robson, who had been injured in the North London on 6 September. By the turn of the year Robson would be the next one out of the door signing for West Ham United.
Moreover Graham's first move into the transfer market would be the modest signing of Perry Groves from Division Three side Colchester United for £50,000 later that same month.
After a slow start to the season where only nine goals were scored in the first nine games, Graham soon had Arsenal firing again. The upturn in form ironically coincided with an injury to star man Charlie Nicholas at the end of September, after which the team went on a club record unbeaten run of 22 matches to head the table.
The run was built on a solid defensive base and a youthful exuberance, a team playing with no fear. But while it was too early for this young team to sustain a title challenge and they would finish 4th, Graham had instilled more belief and desire, and this was perfectly illustrated in the Littlewoods Cup semi final against neighbours Tottenham Hotspur.
Trailing three times over the three matches, Arsenal came back to win in the last minute of the replay, and then in the final they came from behind again to beat outgoing champions Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley, with the fit again Nicholas scoring twice.
The team that triumphed at Wembley in April 1987 was Graham 's team mark one - Lukic, Anderson, O'Leary, Adams, Sansom, Rocastle, Williams, Davis, Hayes, Quinn, Nicholas.
After winning a trophy in his first season, Graham set about building a side that could challenge Liverpool for the league title.
Viv Anderson left in the summer of 1987 to join Manchester United and during the 1987/88 season the rebuilding would begin in earnest.
In came Nigel Winterburn from Wimbledon, Kevin Richardson from Watford, Lee Dixon from Stoke City, Brian Marwood from Sheffield Wednesday and Alan Smith from Leicester City for a combined fee of less than £2.5 million.
They were all fairly modest signings but they were young, hungry players who Graham would be able to mould into the team he wanted.
All the changes saw a rather more inconsistent season in 1987/88, finishing 6th, although they did set a club record with 14 wins in a row between September and November 1987. But after defeat in the final of the Littlewoods Cup to Luton Town in April 1988, Graham knew he still had work to do.
The final piece of the jigsaw was the arrival of defender Steve Bould from Stoke for £390,000 in the summer of 1988 to complete his famous back four. However when Graham had been unable to sign striker Tony Cottee from West Ham United, who chose Everton instead, many felt it was a year too early for a title challenge.
So team that started the 1988/89 season away at FA Cup holders Wimbledon would be Graham's team mark two - Lukic, Dixon, Adams, Bould, Winterburn, Rocastle, Thomas, Davis, Marwood, Smith, Merson.
The only change he would make to the side until the final stages of the season would be Richardson replacing Davis, who received a record nine match ban in October for an off-the-ball incident with Southampton's Glenn Cockerill.
Later in the season, with Marwood injured and the team struggling under the pressure of a title challenge, Graham pulled a tactical masterstroke. Bringing back veteran defender David O'Leary, he adopted a sweeper system.
This was seen as controversial move, replacing an attacking player with another defender, but it enabled the two full backs to bomb forward without unsettling the defensive shape of the team.
It was no coincidence that Winterburn and Dixon scored three goals between them in the title run having scored just one between them in the previous 32 matches.
In the final match at Anfield with Arsenal needing to win by two clear goals to take the title from Liverpool, it was expected that Graham would revert back to the more traditional formation. But he kept the sweeper system in place.
So the team that started that historic match was - Lukic, Dixon, Bould, O'Leary, Adams, Winterburn, Rocastle, Thomas, Richardson, Merson, Smith.
Although it was seen as a defensive 5-3-2 formation it had the flexibility to become 3-5-2 when Arsenal attacked.
It might not seem that unusual now but back in 1989 every team played 4-4-2 so it showed Graham was not afraid to experiment when it really mattered.
With Rocastle pushed inside and Thomas given more freedom to make those famous late runs into the box, it gave Arsenal a strong midfield base and that proved crucial at the end as it was Thomas who burst forward to score the vital second goal.
So in less than three years Graham had sent Arsenal back to the very peak of English football.
Although Smith won the golden boot it was goals from midfield that were a feature of this team's success. Marwood hit double figures before his injury, with Rocastle and Thomas scoring 15 between them it gave Arsenal a goal-scoring edge that in the end proved crucial.
Added into the mix was the size and sheer physical power of the team. It was 1980s football but not as we knew it and Graham's young guns looked set to dominate for years to come.
But the Scot's first mistake was not to strengthening his squad over the summer of 1989. Exploring the Scandinavian market which would later prove costly, the only new arrivals were the permanently injured Icelandic midfielder Siggi Jonson from Sheffield Wednesday and defender Colin Pates from Charlton Athletic for the combined fee of £975,00.
After the title defence fell away in 1989/90 with the team eventually finishing 4th, mainly due to injuries and a lack of goals away from home, Graham began to rebuild again in the summer of 1990.
In came goalkeeper David Seaman from Queens Park Rangers for £1.3 million, defender Andy Linighan from Norwich City for £1.2 million and winger Anders Limpar from Cremonese for £1 million.
With two years' extra experience, players like Merson, Adams, Dixon, and Thomas were all reaching their peak, and later in the season young Kevin Campbell would emerge to replace the injured Rocastle.
In the end the 1990/91 season would prove to be one of the best in the club's history. In 50 matches across the three domestic competitions Arsenal lost just three times and only once in the league. It had been over 100 years since that had last happened in the top flight.
The success was built around a strong defence which conceded just 18 goals, only the second time a top flight side had let in less than 20 in a single season, but the team, just like in 1989, also played some wonderful attacking football.
Smith won another Golden Boot, Merson and Limpar both hit double figures and even young Campbell chipped in with nine in the final 17 matches.
The team that finished the season was Graham's side mark 3 - Seaman, Dixon, Bould, Adams, Winterburn, Campbell, Hillier, Davis, Limpar, Smith, Merson.
There was already a shift away from the strength and power of the 1989 title side. Thomas, who would soon be on his way to Liverpool, was replaced by youth team graduate, David Hillier, a small man-marker who rarely scored goals.
This metamorphosis would continue over the next two years.
After a slow start to the title defence in 1991/92 season, Graham would again dip into the transfer market, breaking the club record with the £2.5 million capture of striker Ian Wright from Crystal Palace.
While this was an exciting purchase and of course Wright would be a huge success, going on to break the club's goal-scoring record, it changed the whole dynamic of the team.
The midfield was now by-passed as the instruction was to get the ball forward to Wright as quickly as possible. With the famous back four still in place clean sheets were a given, and with Wright always likely to snatch a goal 1-0 to The Arsenal was born.
But some of the players who had brought the earlier successes were to suffer. Smith stopped scoring, hitting only 13 in two seasons, Merson was moved to a wider position thus affecting his output, and even Campbell found himself very much in the shadows of Wright.
To illustrate where the team was heading, Keown was then resigned from Everton for £2 million, six years after he had been sold for a tenth of that price, as Graham looked for another defensive destroyer.
As a result Arsenal instantly became much more of a cup side, capable of getting a result in a one-off match but lacking the consistency to mount a serious title challenge.
This was not all bad though as it did lead to a first ever domestic cup double in 1993, and only a second ever European trophy with success in the Cup Winners Cup in 1994.
The fact that in the five matches across the quarter final, semi final and final of that competition, Arsenal conceded just one goal and scored four perfectly illustrated Graham's new philosophy.
The biggest problem now was a lack of creativity in midfield.
With the dynamic talents of Rocastle and Thomas replaced by the rather more stoic Hillier and John Jenson, with youngsters like Ian Selley and Steve Morrow providing the workmanlike back up, the focus was very much on Wright.
The team that won the Cup Winners Cup in 1994 showed the direction Graham had been heading since 1991 - Seaman, Dixon, Bould, Adams, Winterburn, Morrow, Davis, Selley, Campbell, Merson, Smith, in for the suspended Wright and scoring the winning goal.
By the start of the 1994/95 season, flair players like Limpar and Davis had been replaced by the likes of Eddie McGoldrick and Stefan Schwartz. But Graham's day were already numbered and he knew it.
When it came to light in early 1995 that the Scot had accepted an 'unsolicited gift' of £425,000 from Norwegian agent Rene Hauge over the signings of Pal Lydersen and Jenson in 1992, which eventually led to a years' ban from the FA, the club were forced to dismiss him. The fact Arsenal was sitting in the bottom half of the table at the time clearly did not help his cause.
Graham seemed to have lost his focus and perhaps the players had stopped responding to him. Despite his strict disciplinarian reputation, the club suffered several high profile disciplinary issues during his reign.
Club captain Adams was sent to prison for drink driving in 1990 and later admitted to being an alcoholic. Merson was banned by the FA for drink and drug offences in 1994 after admitting he was addicted to gambling. And then there was the infamous Tuesday Club.
Graham always said that as long as the players were performing on a Saturday he was not too concerned. But imagine how much more successful they could have been with a stricter policy in place? For proof take a look at Ferguson's Manchester United side from the same era.
Perhaps Graham's own playing days, when he was known to be partial to a party or two, meant he gave his players a little too much benefit of the doubt.
The arrival of Arsene Wenger in 1996, with his strict diet and fitness regimes, lengthened the careers of the likes of Adams, Dixon, Bould and Winterburn, and also brought out the best in others who had been allowed to cruise through the final years under Graham, such as Ray Parlour and Keown.
But for all his faults towards the end, in his eight and a half years in charge at the club, Graham had won six major trophies in four different competitions, the most successful Arsenal manager of all time.
He had completely turned the club around from the early 1980s slump and crucially returned it to the peak of English football for the start of the new Premier League era.
It is interesting to wonder what may have happened had Graham not been appointed in 1986. Could Arsenal have ended up like those sleeping giants of Newcastle United and Everton, once great clubs struggling to recapture former glories?
There is no doubt Graham's success paved the way for what would follow under Wenger, although having plotted the downfall of Liverpool in the late 1980's, Graham's Arsenal should have taken on the role later filled by Ferguson's Manchester United. It was perhaps an opportunity missed.
Back in 1995 the club was in turmoil. How could they replace a manager as successful as Graham? It would take just over a year but Arsenal, and vice chairman David Dein in particular, would find someone who would not only transform the club but the whole of English football...
Coming up in Part Two I look back on the early years of Wenger. A time of je ne sais quoi and French flair never seen before in the English game. Watch out for that coming soon.
ARSENAL FANS OF a certain age have been fortunate to see not only two of the best managers in the club's history but two of the best of all time.
Both with very different personalities and very different football philosophies, George Graham and Arsene Wenger brought more success to the club than could ever have been imagined.
To put it into perspective; Arsenal had won 14 major honours in the first 100 years of its existence. In the 34 years since Graham's appointment in 1986 it has won a further 16.
Starting today I will be looking back at the impact both managers had on the club and how they created the modern era of success. In Part One I start with the man who began it all, George Graham.
When Graham returned to Highbury to take over as manager in the summer of 1986, Arsenal had been a sleeping giant, treading water for far too long.
There had been talk of Terry Venables or even Johan Cryuff coming in to replace Howe so when Graham was announced on 14 May 1986 it was seen by many as a safe appointment. A stop gap even.
And he had not been the first choice either. The club had initially approached Aberdeen manager Alex Ferguson with Graham marked as his assistant, but when Ferguson turned down the offer due to his commitments with the Scottish national side following the death of Jock Stein the previous year, Graham was instead installed as the No. 1.
While being a successful player with the club, winning the European FAIRS Cup in 1970 and the Double the year after, his only managerial experience had come with minnows Millwall.
In his four year's at The Den, Graham had saved the club from relegation to the Fourth Division in 1983 before gaining promotion to the Second in 1985. In fact the team he built would later go on to reach the top flight.
But for all his success, Graham had always been seen as something of maverick character, nicknamed Stroller as a player for his laid back attitude. So would he be tough enough to take on the job of reviving this once great club?
The fears were to prove unfounded however as the appointment of Graham would be an inspired choice.
Immediately the Scot released some of the old guard. Woodcock and Mariner, two players who represented all the old problems, were shown the door, while youngster Martin Keown was sold to Aston Villa for £20,000 after he had rejected a new deal.
Instead of raiding the transfer market to find replacements Graham instead put his faith in the promising crop of young players coming through the ranks. He also instilled a more disciplined approach, a stricter training regime and began laboriously working on the defensive side of the team.
But the revolution would take time. His first team selection on the opening day of the 1986/87 season against Manchester United on 23 August 1986 showed only two changes from the side that had lost 3-0 at Oxford United on the final day of the previous season; Teenagers David Rocastle and Niall Quinn replacing the departed Keown and Woodcock.
The only further change he would make in the early weeks of the season was in midfield where Steve Williams would replace Stewart Robson, who had been injured in the North London on 6 September. By the turn of the year Robson would be the next one out of the door signing for West Ham United.
Moreover Graham's first move into the transfer market would be the modest signing of Perry Groves from Division Three side Colchester United for £50,000 later that same month.
After a slow start to the season where only nine goals were scored in the first nine games, Graham soon had Arsenal firing again. The upturn in form ironically coincided with an injury to star man Charlie Nicholas at the end of September, after which the team went on a club record unbeaten run of 22 matches to head the table.
The run was built on a solid defensive base and a youthful exuberance, a team playing with no fear. But while it was too early for this young team to sustain a title challenge and they would finish 4th, Graham had instilled more belief and desire, and this was perfectly illustrated in the Littlewoods Cup semi final against neighbours Tottenham Hotspur.
Trailing three times over the three matches, Arsenal came back to win in the last minute of the replay, and then in the final they came from behind again to beat outgoing champions Liverpool 2-1 at Wembley, with the fit again Nicholas scoring twice.
The team that triumphed at Wembley in April 1987 was Graham 's team mark one - Lukic, Anderson, O'Leary, Adams, Sansom, Rocastle, Williams, Davis, Hayes, Quinn, Nicholas.
Viv Anderson left in the summer of 1987 to join Manchester United and during the 1987/88 season the rebuilding would begin in earnest.
In came Nigel Winterburn from Wimbledon, Kevin Richardson from Watford, Lee Dixon from Stoke City, Brian Marwood from Sheffield Wednesday and Alan Smith from Leicester City for a combined fee of less than £2.5 million.
They were all fairly modest signings but they were young, hungry players who Graham would be able to mould into the team he wanted.
All the changes saw a rather more inconsistent season in 1987/88, finishing 6th, although they did set a club record with 14 wins in a row between September and November 1987. But after defeat in the final of the Littlewoods Cup to Luton Town in April 1988, Graham knew he still had work to do.
The final piece of the jigsaw was the arrival of defender Steve Bould from Stoke for £390,000 in the summer of 1988 to complete his famous back four. However when Graham had been unable to sign striker Tony Cottee from West Ham United, who chose Everton instead, many felt it was a year too early for a title challenge.
So team that started the 1988/89 season away at FA Cup holders Wimbledon would be Graham's team mark two - Lukic, Dixon, Adams, Bould, Winterburn, Rocastle, Thomas, Davis, Marwood, Smith, Merson.
The only change he would make to the side until the final stages of the season would be Richardson replacing Davis, who received a record nine match ban in October for an off-the-ball incident with Southampton's Glenn Cockerill.
Later in the season, with Marwood injured and the team struggling under the pressure of a title challenge, Graham pulled a tactical masterstroke. Bringing back veteran defender David O'Leary, he adopted a sweeper system.
This was seen as controversial move, replacing an attacking player with another defender, but it enabled the two full backs to bomb forward without unsettling the defensive shape of the team.
It was no coincidence that Winterburn and Dixon scored three goals between them in the title run having scored just one between them in the previous 32 matches.
In the final match at Anfield with Arsenal needing to win by two clear goals to take the title from Liverpool, it was expected that Graham would revert back to the more traditional formation. But he kept the sweeper system in place.
So the team that started that historic match was - Lukic, Dixon, Bould, O'Leary, Adams, Winterburn, Rocastle, Thomas, Richardson, Merson, Smith.
It might not seem that unusual now but back in 1989 every team played 4-4-2 so it showed Graham was not afraid to experiment when it really mattered.
With Rocastle pushed inside and Thomas given more freedom to make those famous late runs into the box, it gave Arsenal a strong midfield base and that proved crucial at the end as it was Thomas who burst forward to score the vital second goal.
So in less than three years Graham had sent Arsenal back to the very peak of English football.
Although Smith won the golden boot it was goals from midfield that were a feature of this team's success. Marwood hit double figures before his injury, with Rocastle and Thomas scoring 15 between them it gave Arsenal a goal-scoring edge that in the end proved crucial.
Added into the mix was the size and sheer physical power of the team. It was 1980s football but not as we knew it and Graham's young guns looked set to dominate for years to come.
But the Scot's first mistake was not to strengthening his squad over the summer of 1989. Exploring the Scandinavian market which would later prove costly, the only new arrivals were the permanently injured Icelandic midfielder Siggi Jonson from Sheffield Wednesday and defender Colin Pates from Charlton Athletic for the combined fee of £975,00.
After the title defence fell away in 1989/90 with the team eventually finishing 4th, mainly due to injuries and a lack of goals away from home, Graham began to rebuild again in the summer of 1990.
In came goalkeeper David Seaman from Queens Park Rangers for £1.3 million, defender Andy Linighan from Norwich City for £1.2 million and winger Anders Limpar from Cremonese for £1 million.
With two years' extra experience, players like Merson, Adams, Dixon, and Thomas were all reaching their peak, and later in the season young Kevin Campbell would emerge to replace the injured Rocastle.
In the end the 1990/91 season would prove to be one of the best in the club's history. In 50 matches across the three domestic competitions Arsenal lost just three times and only once in the league. It had been over 100 years since that had last happened in the top flight.
The success was built around a strong defence which conceded just 18 goals, only the second time a top flight side had let in less than 20 in a single season, but the team, just like in 1989, also played some wonderful attacking football.
The team that finished the season was Graham's side mark 3 - Seaman, Dixon, Bould, Adams, Winterburn, Campbell, Hillier, Davis, Limpar, Smith, Merson.
There was already a shift away from the strength and power of the 1989 title side. Thomas, who would soon be on his way to Liverpool, was replaced by youth team graduate, David Hillier, a small man-marker who rarely scored goals.
This metamorphosis would continue over the next two years.
After a slow start to the title defence in 1991/92 season, Graham would again dip into the transfer market, breaking the club record with the £2.5 million capture of striker Ian Wright from Crystal Palace.
While this was an exciting purchase and of course Wright would be a huge success, going on to break the club's goal-scoring record, it changed the whole dynamic of the team.
The midfield was now by-passed as the instruction was to get the ball forward to Wright as quickly as possible. With the famous back four still in place clean sheets were a given, and with Wright always likely to snatch a goal 1-0 to The Arsenal was born.
But some of the players who had brought the earlier successes were to suffer. Smith stopped scoring, hitting only 13 in two seasons, Merson was moved to a wider position thus affecting his output, and even Campbell found himself very much in the shadows of Wright.
To illustrate where the team was heading, Keown was then resigned from Everton for £2 million, six years after he had been sold for a tenth of that price, as Graham looked for another defensive destroyer.
As a result Arsenal instantly became much more of a cup side, capable of getting a result in a one-off match but lacking the consistency to mount a serious title challenge.
The fact that in the five matches across the quarter final, semi final and final of that competition, Arsenal conceded just one goal and scored four perfectly illustrated Graham's new philosophy.
The biggest problem now was a lack of creativity in midfield.
With the dynamic talents of Rocastle and Thomas replaced by the rather more stoic Hillier and John Jenson, with youngsters like Ian Selley and Steve Morrow providing the workmanlike back up, the focus was very much on Wright.
The team that won the Cup Winners Cup in 1994 showed the direction Graham had been heading since 1991 - Seaman, Dixon, Bould, Adams, Winterburn, Morrow, Davis, Selley, Campbell, Merson, Smith, in for the suspended Wright and scoring the winning goal.
By the start of the 1994/95 season, flair players like Limpar and Davis had been replaced by the likes of Eddie McGoldrick and Stefan Schwartz. But Graham's day were already numbered and he knew it.
When it came to light in early 1995 that the Scot had accepted an 'unsolicited gift' of £425,000 from Norwegian agent Rene Hauge over the signings of Pal Lydersen and Jenson in 1992, which eventually led to a years' ban from the FA, the club were forced to dismiss him. The fact Arsenal was sitting in the bottom half of the table at the time clearly did not help his cause.
Graham seemed to have lost his focus and perhaps the players had stopped responding to him. Despite his strict disciplinarian reputation, the club suffered several high profile disciplinary issues during his reign.
Club captain Adams was sent to prison for drink driving in 1990 and later admitted to being an alcoholic. Merson was banned by the FA for drink and drug offences in 1994 after admitting he was addicted to gambling. And then there was the infamous Tuesday Club.
Graham always said that as long as the players were performing on a Saturday he was not too concerned. But imagine how much more successful they could have been with a stricter policy in place? For proof take a look at Ferguson's Manchester United side from the same era.
Perhaps Graham's own playing days, when he was known to be partial to a party or two, meant he gave his players a little too much benefit of the doubt.
The arrival of Arsene Wenger in 1996, with his strict diet and fitness regimes, lengthened the careers of the likes of Adams, Dixon, Bould and Winterburn, and also brought out the best in others who had been allowed to cruise through the final years under Graham, such as Ray Parlour and Keown.
But for all his faults towards the end, in his eight and a half years in charge at the club, Graham had won six major trophies in four different competitions, the most successful Arsenal manager of all time.
He had completely turned the club around from the early 1980s slump and crucially returned it to the peak of English football for the start of the new Premier League era.
It is interesting to wonder what may have happened had Graham not been appointed in 1986. Could Arsenal have ended up like those sleeping giants of Newcastle United and Everton, once great clubs struggling to recapture former glories?
There is no doubt Graham's success paved the way for what would follow under Wenger, although having plotted the downfall of Liverpool in the late 1980's, Graham's Arsenal should have taken on the role later filled by Ferguson's Manchester United. It was perhaps an opportunity missed.
Back in 1995 the club was in turmoil. How could they replace a manager as successful as Graham? It would take just over a year but Arsenal, and vice chairman David Dein in particular, would find someone who would not only transform the club but the whole of English football...
Coming up in Part Two I look back on the early years of Wenger. A time of je ne sais quoi and French flair never seen before in the English game. Watch out for that coming soon.
Really enjoying the blogs. Looking forward to the next part.
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