Michael Cox - The Mixer - The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines

The arrival of Wenger, who had grown up in his parents’ pub near Strasbourg, also coincided with the end of the drinking culture at Arsenal. Regular boozing was a widespread practice at Premier League clubs, but appeared particularly prevalent at Arsenal, with captain Adams the ringleader of the famous ‘Tuesday club’, when a group of players would follow a heavy training session with a heavy drinking session, safe in the knowledge that Wednesday was a rest day. Even then, however, drinking the night before training was common, and turning up hungover wasn’t frowned upon by teammates if the player got through training properly. On Bergkamp’s first pre-season tour of Sweden, he was dismayed when, midway through an evening stroll with his wife, he spotted the rest of the team drinking at a local pub.

But everything changed a fortnight before Wenger’s arrival, when Adams shocked his teammates by announcing he was an alcoholic. Two of his teammates immediately wondered, if Adams was an alcoholic, whether they had a drinking problem too. This worked out perfectly for Wenger, who would have encountered serious problems overhauling the drinking culture himself. When Ferguson had attempted to solve this problem at Manchester United, he was forced to sell the two chief culprits, Paul McGrath and Norman Whiteside, who were among United’s star players and fan favourites, and he initially struggled. Wenger, luckily, found his captain did the job for him, and Parlour admitted Adams quitting drinking was the best thing that could have happened for his own football career, never mind Adams’s.

Similarly, Wenger was fortunate that Arsenal had signed Platt the previous summer, shortly after Bergkamp’s arrival. The midfielder had spent the previous four seasons in Italy and introduced new practices to the Arsenal dressing room: the use of a masseur, for example. Again, the introduction of foreign concepts was more likely to be accepted coming from Platt, who had captained England 19 times, rather than from an unknown Frenchman who had been working in Japan. Bergkamp’s professionalism, Adams’s new lifestyle and Platt’s Italian innovations were a series of happy coincidences that prepared Arsenal for Wenger’s new regime. Even Platt, however, hated one of Wenger’s ideas: stretching sessions. Ahead of Wenger’s first game, away at Blackburn, Wenger called an early-morning meeting in the hotel ballroom and instructed his players to go through a mixture of yoga and Pilates routines. Eventually, stretching became an accepted, regular part of training – albeit not on matchdays – and Arsenal’s veteran defenders credit this practice for extending their careers.

All these physiological innovations were crucial tactically, because while Wenger’s Arsenal would later become renowned for their technical football, his 1997/98 double winners were more celebrated for their physical power, especially in the centre of the pitch. While the defence and strike partnerships from Rioch’s reign remained in place, Wenger overhauled the midfield almost completely, recruiting French defensive midfielders Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira, plus left-winger Marc Overmars from Ajax, while Parlour improved and played on the right. This quartet epitomised Wenger’s Arsenal at this stage; while boasting technical quality, there was no outright playmaker – that was Bergkamp’s role. Vieira and Petit were renowned for their tenacity, Overmars for his acceleration, Parlour for his energy. Strength, speed and stamina.

Vieira, who arrived at Arsenal upon Wenger’s request while serving his notice in Japan, later outlined the difference. ‘It wasn’t based on technique or on an attacking strategy,’ he says of the 1998 title winners. ‘The quality came from individual players such as Bergkamp or sometimes Overmars.’ In stark contrast, he describes the Arsenal’s 2001/02 champions by saying, ‘The way in which we won this second double had been very different from the way we had done it in 1998 … gone was the long-ball game, in came quick, accurate passing to players’ feet.’ Vieira is exaggerating the difference – the 1997/98 side were noticeably keen to keep the ball on the ground compared with other sides of that era – but Arsenal took time to become renowned as a truly beautiful side.

For example, Wenger’s Arsenal were heavily criticised in the early days because of their atrocious disciplinary record, with Vieira and Petit frequently in trouble with referees. Only three clubs received more bookings during 1997/98, and Arsenal’s red card tally under Wenger became a running feature in newspapers. Indeed, Arsenal’s shift from primarily physical football to primarily technical football is best summarised by Wenger’s attitude towards referees – initially he complained they were too strict, later he’d complain they were too lenient. Many ex-players, like Arsenal’s Parlour and Lee Dixon, plus regular opponents Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs of Manchester United, insist the 1997/98 side was the best incarnation of Wenger’s Arsenal because they were physically powerful and refused to be bullied.

Wenger has never been a particularly keen tactician, rarely attempting to change matches by making a surprise selection decision or switching formation regularly. In his early days he preferred a 4–4–2, however, and angered Arsenal’s players by interfering with team shape before he’d officially taken charge. For a UEFA Cup tie at Borussia Monchengladbach, Wenger travelled with the team but was supposed to be merely observing before officially starting the following week. However, with the half-time score at 1–1, Wenger decided to take charge in the dressing room and ordered Arsenal to switch from the 3–5–2 system they’d played for the last year to 4–4–2. It backfired badly – Arsenal lost 3–2, and Adams was furious with the sudden intervention. He persuaded Wenger that Arsenal were comfortable with a back three, and they remained in that shape for the majority of 1996/97.

Although it was unusual to see Arsenal playing with a three-man defence, they were suited to that system because they had three top-class centre-backs, with Adams alongside Bould and Martin Keown. Indeed, the 3–5–2 enjoyed a sudden wave of popularity during the mid-1990s, with the likes of Liverpool, Newcastle, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Leicester and Coventry all using the system regularly, with varying levels of success. As a general rule, utilising a 3–5–2 worked effectively against opponents playing 4–4–2, which remained the dominant system, as it offered a spare man in defence against two centre-forwards, and an extra midfielder to overload the centre. The wing-backs were forced to cover a huge amount of ground, providing attacking width yet retreating to form a five-man defence. Although that allowed the opposition full-backs freedom, this wasn’t a significant problem during the mid-90s, before most full-backs had become speedy attacking weapons.

Contests between two sides playing 3–5–2 were often hopelessly dull, however – both teams had a spare man at the back, while the midfield was congested and the wing-backs simply chased one another up and down the touchlines. Arsenal’s consecutive goalless draws in February 1997 against Leeds and Tottenham, for example, were both matches between two 3–5–2s. ‘It’s quite ironic,’ said Wenger, ‘that while the rest of Europe are moving to the flat back four, more and more sides in England are adopting the old continental approach using sweepers and wing-backs.’ England was, as ever, out of step tactically, and Arsenal’s evolution into title winners came after Wenger switched to 4–4–2 for 1997/98.

He started the season asking his players to press in advanced positions, which wasn’t particularly effective, and it’s interesting that the crucial tactical change came at the request of the players rather than the manager. In the first half of the season Arsenal defended poorly by their exceptionally high standards, and after a 1–0 home defeat by Liverpool a team meeting was called. Wenger suggested that the problem was a lack of desire, with players not working hard enough. But Adams, Bould and Platt intervened with a more specific suggestion, saying that Petit and Vieira needed to position themselves deeper in order to shield the defence properly. It didn’t work immediately – there was to be a 3–1 defeat at home to Blackburn, which convinced Wenger that Adams required six weeks’ rest to recover from an ankle injury – but Arsenal’s defence was superb in the second half of the campaign, at one stage going 13 hours without conceding, which included a run of 1–0, 0–0, 1–0, 1–0, 1–0, 1–0. ‘1–0 to the Arsenal’ still applied, although they hit 12 goals in the next three games, prompting Arsenal fans to ironically adopt opposition fans’ ‘boring, boring Arsenal’. They became the first Premier League side to win ten consecutive matches.