George Graham

And I was very fortunate again.

When I left school at 16, I was offered... one of the old yts schemes some people may not but the the older youth training scheme so at 16 couple of days about a week or so after i'd finished school i i got on the train and went down started living in london with an italian family who were sort of helping the arsenal at that time with players who were coming down on these types of schemes so i stayed there for a couple of years and then again very fortunate to be offered a professional contract at arsenal So all in all, I spent around about eight, nine years at the Arsenal and went right through to playing in the first team under George Graham.

It was some fantastic players.

Ian Wright.

Arteta certainly wasn't.

And maybe this is where Arteta being a former player and indeed captain of Arsenal comes in useful because I don't feel like Arteta's really paid much lip service at all to the kind of expectations that maybe so- and maybe this is unfair because you could say, "Oh, he's going back to kind of classic George Graham era"

Yeah, George Graham, yeah.

But I don't think that Arteta, I mean, Arteta didn't really bring like pretty football, for want of a better phrase, to Arsenal.

But he, he just built so- he built something new.

But the flip side is that Arsenal will have battles every week.

The only thing I will say now is that, with Arsenal, is that this is probably the strongest depth of squad I've ever seen Arsenal have, even in comparison to the iconic teams of George Graham, Wenger.

The fact that they can take five players out of their team and replace them with another five, and they invariably don't look any weaker.

There's only one player Arsenal really can't do without, maybe two with Raya, the goalkeeper.

I, I don't see any real kinda control of the situation.

I remember that iconic team back in the '80s of AC Milan, Baresi marshaling a really high line, and they were catching everyone out.

Likewise, Arsenal under George Graham with that famous back four were so good at it.

Barcelona are not good at it, and yet they still persist with it.

They've come out.

Manchester United have won... one right out the gate it's as if nothing has changed but in fact the 1990s would tell us something very different this is a bit of a false dawn actually for united um there's some lessons that you're going to experience over the the decade to come before that night in barcelona ironically enough um And it's really only George Graham who seems to understand what has changed in European football at a kind of consistent level through that.

It's a funny one, isn't it? Because I'm sure there's a lot of English writers at the time saying, well, here we go.

We're just going to pick back up from where we left off.

It's still there.

George Graham started

it.

George Graham and...

John Docherty was what the manager took over him.

They built a side in their fans' kind of image, really.