By Tony Attwood
The full index of articles so far… is [published here](https://blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/100-consecutive-seasons-in-the-top-division)
Recent episodes of this series
So to summarise where we have got to…
In 1994/5 Arsenal came 12th in the league, and it was clear to everyone that serious change was needed if Arsenal were ever to get back to challenging for the league title which had been won in 1989 and 1991.
In 1995/6 we did get Bruce Rioch as manager and Dennis Bergkamp as a player. We remember the latter somewhat more than the former – Arsenal finished the season in fifth. It was clear who was to blame, and it certainly wasn’t Dennis.
The Wenger Era started in 1996/7 and Arsenal came third in the league, seven points behind the leaders, which was quite an improvement compared with the previous season in which Arsenal came fifth, 19 points behind the league champions.
And then in 1997/8 Arsenal won the league, just by one point behond Manchester United, but still, Arsenal won the league. The names of the players from that season and subsequent years are still held in the greatest of affection: Adams, Bergkamp, Bould, Dixon, Keown, Overmars, Petit, Parlour, Seaman, Vieira, Winterburn – and even Ian Wright was still there, playing 22 games although of course no longer the power he once was.
But there was more to 1997/8 than winning the league, not least because Arsenal did the double, again. And then we can go on and on, for Tottenham showed that they truly were stuck in a mid-table rut with no idea how to get out of it. This is not to say that those of us there looked at Tottenham’s performances and league position day after day, but wwe did notice.
Starting in 1990/91 when George Graham took Arsenal to their second league title in three years the final positions in the league for Tottenham read: 10th, 15th, 8th, 15th, 7th, 8th, 10th, and 14th – that last one being 1997/8. Now only in one of those seasons did Tottenham actually finish higher up the league than Arsenal,and that was in 1994/5 That was the season in whihc Paul Merson left the club for three months to sort out his addicitive behaviour, George Graham’s “bung” scandal was exposed and he was sacked, and yet even then Arsenal ended up in the Cup Winners Cup final – although we they lost that.
But that was it. That was the bad season – the season Tottenham finished 7th in the league and Arsenal 12th. After that, the club changed managers around again (Rioch) and again (Wenger) and then seemingly took on the world.
Indeed, we might recall that Arsenal had four managers in the space of 10 weeks in 1996/7, and yet came third, and then in 1997/8 won the league. But it wasn’t all one way – for in 1998/9 Mancheseter United fought back and took the title by just one point.from Arsenal (who also went out of the Cup in the semi-final).
So by 1999/2000 the league really did have two big clubs: Manchester United with a fan base and an income that no other team in the league could match. But Arsenal had other competitions they could try their skills out on: the FA Cup, the League Cup, the Champions League, the Uefa Cup and even the Charity Shield. The problem with the cup matches, however, was that they kept on going down to penalty kick shootouts, which Arsenal lost. But at least we were close.
It is clear that there was some thinking within the Arsenal hierarchy that one of the problems in cups had been moving the Arsenal Champions League games to Wembley, so that idea was now abandoned, but still, there seemed to be no way out of the cup misery.
Arsenal started the season by losing the Charity Shield game to Manchester United 2-1. A 2-4 Champions League defeat to Barcelona reminded everyone who still thought otherwise that although Arsenal were progressing, the club was not yet up there with the very best.
But a run of 21 goals in five consecutive games in November / December showed the power that Arsenal still had when dealing with regular teams, but at the very last, Arsenal seemed unable to get past the final hurdle. This was painfully emphasised in the final game of the season, where Arsenal lost to Galatasaray on penalties in the Uefa Cup final
In the league, Arsenal finished second for the second season running, and it was clear that Arsenal had a superb selection of players they could call on. Indeed, new players were regularly joining and emerging from the ranks – in this season, Freddie Ljungberg particularly caught the eye, having joined in the previous year. Wenger, it seemed, even with the restricted budget that a ground around half the size of Manchester United’s stadium, could still use his knowledge of European football to bring in the top players.
But the long and the short of it all was that Arsenal came second in the league, runners-up in the Uefa Cup, and went out of the FA Cup in the fourth round. Worse, although Manchester United had beaten Arsenal by one point to the title in 1999, in 2000 Manchester United finished 18 points ahead of Arsenal, who once more were second. Worse, Manchester U scored 24 more goals than Arsenal in the league, and although Arsenal’s defence was as sound as ever, conceding fewer goals than Manchester United’s, that hardly seemed to matter when the points distance was so huge.
Likewise, the fact that Tottenham continued their mid-table run, finishing 10th, also hardly seemed to matter – although a few of us did notice that Tottenham had finished 10th, or lower, in each of the last four seasons, while Arsenal under Wenger were a permanent fixture in the top three and had in fact won the Double.
But in 1999/2000 the final table had a grim look with Manchester United top on 91 points and Arsenal second on 73 points. Something had to be done, but with Arsenal’s stadium holding just 38,000 compared with Manchester United’s ground, which was double the size at the time it was difficult to see what… short of building a new stadium.
Certainly Arsenal did not have the financial resources to outbid ManU for players, and it seemed that without that Arsenal could neither overtake Manchester United in the League, nor in the increasingly important (financially and culturally) European Champions League.
And yet, and yet, there was hope, although of course most of us didn’t quite get it at first. On 10 August 1999, a young player called Thierry Henry made his first starting appearance for Arsenal (he had been a substitute in the previous game against Leicester City). He played four consecutive matches as outside left before replacing Kanu as centre forward in the fifth game of the season against Bradford City.
Then on 18th September, he scored the only goal of the game in an away match against Southampton In all, that season, he played 28 times as a starter as well as being a substitute five times in the league scoring 17 goals.
There were, of course, complaints – he appeared to be a goal-scoring centre forward, and yet he kept turning up on the wing, but there was one fact that no one could ignore….
1999/2000 was his first season, and he was our top goal scorer. True Arsenal scored 24 goals fewer than Manchester United, but Arsenal now had a replacement for Ian Wright, who had finished playing in 1998. Those of us who watched Thierry in that season, when he was basically yet another unknown Frenchman joining the squad, were bemused. We were told he was a centre forward, and yet he kept playing on the left wing. And some of the crowd made it quite clear where they thought he should be.
And yet, and yet, despite everyone knowing what he could do, he just kept on playing outside left. But, we also noticed, bhe kept on scoring goals.
I am not suggesting that many of us saw Thierry Henry, in his first couple of seasons with Arsenal, as one of the greatest goal scorers the club ever had. But I do think we realised that by playing on the left wing, when he was supposed to be the chief goal scorer, caused a lot of uncertainty among some of the defences Arsenal faced that season. It was clear that they really were not sure how to mark him, and indeed who should be marking him. Certainly one of my best memories from that season, when my season ticket was in the upper tier in the north bank, just to the right of the goal, was of Thierry getting the ball and being unmarked. Quite why defenders did not realise that although he wore number 14 he was a goal scorer, I have no idea.
I don’t think anyone at the time was actually saying, “next season, with Henry, we’ll win the league.” And of course, as it turned out, we were right not to say that. But I genuinely do recall a lot of conversations about a forward line that contained Bergkamp, Henry and Overmars. It really did feel like something we had never had before.
For more information about this and other series on this website please do take a look at our [home page.](http://www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk)