Arsenal
Graham's achievements at Millwall attracted attention from First Division clubs, and with the resignation of Don Howe as Arsenal manager in March 1986, their directors first offered the job to FC Barcelona coach Terry Venables, but he rejected their offer and Arsenal switched their attention to Alex Ferguson, the Aberdeen manager, as their new manager with Graham as his assistant. However, Ferguson (then in temporary charge of the Scotland national football team following the death of Jock Stein the previous September, and still in charge of Aberdeen) had decided to wait until after the World Cup that summer before deciding on his future. Graham himself had never even applied for the Arsenal position [11] but on 12 May 1986 his chairman at Millwall, Alan Thorne, told him that Arsenal wanted to speak to him about the manager's job. After an interview with Peter Hill-Wood, David Dein and Ken Friar at Hill-Wood's home, the Arsenal directors appointed Graham as their new manager on 14 May 1986. [12] A month after arriving at Highbury, Graham was himself linked with the Scotland national team, possibly combining it with the Arsenal manager's job, [13] but that role went to Andy Roxburgh instead.
Arsenal had not won a trophy since the FA Cup in 1978–79, and were drifting away from the top teams in the League, having not finished in the top five during any of the previous four seasons, during which the major honours were picked up by an all-conquering Liverpool as well as the likes of Manchester United and Everton.
Graham quickly discarded the likes of Paul Mariner, who already had been released on a free transfer, Tony Woodcock, Stewart Robson and Tommy Caton, and replaced them with new signings and youth team products. He also imposed much stricter discipline than his predecessors, both in the dressing room and on the pitch and told the team he expected them to be dressed in club blazers on match day. [4] Arsenal's form immediately improved, so much so that the club were top of the League at Christmas 1986, the club's centenary, for the first time in a decade. However, Graham said he knew the team weren't ready to mount a sustained title challenge. [14] This was proven to be correct as Arsenal finished fourth in Graham's first season in charge, but they went on to win the 1987 League Cup, beating Liverpool 2–1 at Wembley on 5 April. The key players in the upturn were young defender Tony Adams and high-scoring winger Martin Hayes.
While Arsenal lost the League Cup final the following year (a shock 3–2 defeat to Luton Town), they remained consistent in the league. Graham's side featured tight defensive discipline, embodied by his young captain Tony Adams, who along with Lee Dixon, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn, would form the basis of the club's defence for over a decade. However, contrary to popular belief, during this time Arsenal were not a purely defensive side; Graham also built up an impressive midfield containing David Rocastle, Paul Davis, Michael Thomas and Paul Merson, and striker Alan Smith, whose prolific goal-scoring regularly brought him more than 20 goals per season. [4]
At the end of Graham's third season (1988–89), the club won their first League title since 1971 (when Graham had been an Arsenal player), in highly dramatic fashion, in the final game of the season against holders and league leaders Liverpool at Anfield. Arsenal needed to win by two goals to take the title; Alan Smith scored early in the second half to make it 1–0, but as time ticked by Arsenal struggled to get a second, and with the 90 minutes elapsed on the clock, they still needed another goal. With only seconds to go, a Smith flick-on found Michael Thomas surging through the Liverpool defence; the young midfielder calmly lifted the ball over Bruce Grobbelaar and into the net, and Arsenal were League Champions. However, there was no chance to enter the European Cup just yet for Graham's team, as the ban on English clubs in European competitions (which was imposed by UEFA in 1985 following the Heysel disaster) continued for another season.
After finishing fourth in 1989–90, Graham signed goalkeeper David Seaman and Swedish winger Anders Limpar in the close season; both players proved vital as Arsenal won a second title in 1990–91 and reached the FA Cup semi-finals, losing to arch-rivals Tottenham Hotspur. They lost just one league game all season - their 24th match of the league campaign against Chelsea on 2 February.
Arsenal finished ahead of runners-up Liverpool in the race for the league title that season; in February 1991 the Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish had suddenly announced his resignation as manager, and Graham's name was among those mentioned by the media as a possible successor to Dalglish. However, Graham was quick to rule himself out of the running, and the job instead went to another Scot, Graeme Souness.
In the autumn of 1991, Graham went on to sign a striker who would break the club's all-time top scoring records, Ian Wright from Crystal Palace, and led the club into their first entry in the European Cup for twenty years. However, the continental adventure was short-lived: Arsenal were knocked out by S.L. Benfica in the second round and failed to make the lucrative final stages. 1991–92 brought more disappointment when the Gunners were knocked out of the FA Cup in the third round by lowly Wrexham, though Arsenal did reasonably well in the league, finishing fourth.
After this season, Graham changed his tactics; he became more defensive and turned out far less attack-minded sides, which depended mainly on goals from Wright rather than the whole team. Between 1986–87 and 1991–92, Arsenal averaged 66 League goals a season (scoring 81 in 1991–92), but between 1992–93 and 1994–95 only averaged 48; [15] this included just 40 in 1992–93, when the club finished 10th in the inaugural season of the FA Premier League, scoring fewer than any other team in the division. [16]
Graham's Arsenal became cup specialists, and in 1992–93 they became the first side to win the FA Cup and League Cup double, both times beating Sheffield Wednesday, 2–1 in the League Cup Final and 2–1 in the FA Cup Final replay. The next season they continued in the same vein, winning the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, their second European trophy; in the final Arsenal beat favourites and holders Parma 1–0 with a tight defensive performance and Alan Smith's 21st-minute goal from a left foot volley.
The 1994 Cup Winners' Cup proved to be Graham's last trophy at the club. It was on 21 February 1995 that Graham, who had led Arsenal to six trophies in eight seasons, lost his job after a Premier League inquiry found he had accepted an illegal £425,000 payment from Norwegian agent Rune Hauge following Arsenal's 1992 acquisition of John Jensen and Pål Lydersen, two of Hauge's clients. [4] Graham was eventually banned for a year by the Football Association for his involvement in the scandal, after he admitted he had received an "unsolicited gift" from Hauge. [17] At the time, Arsenal were struggling a little in the league, had lost a League Cup quarter final to Liverpool, been dumped out of the FA Cup after a third round replay by Millwall, and (as Cup Winners' Cup holders) had also lost the Super Cup to AC Milan. Regardless, Graham's sacking was more down to the illegal 'brown envelopes' of money, as the word "bung" embedded itself in the football lexicon.
Leeds United
After serving his ban, Graham's return to football management came with Leeds United in September 1996. After the fifth game of the season he replaced the long serving Howard Wilkinson. Graham was swiftly appointed but found himself unable to make an immediate impact, leading Leeds to five losses from his first six in the league and another defeat to Aston Villa in the League Cup.
Going into November, Leeds hovered just above the relegation zone and no side in the division had conceded more goals. Graham's miserable start to the job was compounded with a 3–0 defeat away to Arsenal, one of Arsène Wenger's first games in charge. But soon enough, the Scottish coach's methods started to bear fruit in a brutally efficient fashion.
By the turn of the year, Leeds were unmistakably a George Graham team – risk-averse to the point of parody, yet unarguably solid as a rock. Before Christmas, they went a club-record five games without conceding, with goalless draws in successive outings against Middlesbrough, Tottenham and Everton. Packing the defence with as many bodies as possible, with Lucas Radebe becoming a top-class operator and Nigel Martyn offering a strong argument to be England's No. 1. Leeds had become a defensive powerhouse. It was The Graham Way: at least eight of Leeds' 11 men were focused first and foremost on nullifying the opposition. It invariably worked. They ended the season with 20 clean sheets – a club record for a 38-game season that's unlikely to be broken. In the end, Leeds scored just 28 goals. Not only did they stay up, but they somehow finished 11th.
Where Leeds scored 28 goals in the 1996–97 season, they notched 57 in the 1997–98 season. That one season would prove useful in laying solid organisational foundations for the years to come. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was signed in the summer of 1997, scoring 16 Premier League goals, and 22 in all competitions, as Leeds finished 5th during Graham's one full season in charge, while the club continued their ascent under his former assistant and successor David O'Leary. [18] Graham left Leeds in acrimonious circumstances, returning to London to take over at Tottenham on 1 October 1998.
The move came at Leeds' hotel on the island of Madeira following Leeds UEFA Cup first round penalty shootout victory over Portuguese League side Maritimo 29 September 1998. Spurs' Alan Sugar telephoned Leeds chairman Peter Ridsdale, who admitted that after a brief telephone conversation a deal was done, with compensation agreed which would allow Graham to fulfil his wish of returning to London. Graham made no secret of his desire to head back to the capital following Leeds' 3–3 draw with Tottenham in North London on 26 September 1998. He cited family and personal reasons. [19]
Since 2001
After Spurs, Graham never returned to management. He was a pundit on Sky TV for several years, in particular their PremPlus channel. He also commentated on the 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 FA Cup Finals featuring Arsenal.
However, he was linked with several managerial vacancies after leaving Tottenham. In October 2001, following the dismissal of Peter Taylor at Leicester City, he was linked with that vacancy, but it was filled by Dave Bassett instead. [22]
The following season, with Glenn Roeder under fire at the helm of a West Ham United side heading for Premier League relegation, Graham's name was mentioned as a possible replacement, [23] but Roeder actually lasted until the opening weeks of the 2003–04 season and this time there was little mention of Graham's name in the hunt for a successor, which ended with the appointment of Alan Pardew. In the 2003 close season, the resignation of Graham Taylor at Aston Villa saw Graham's name mentioned by the media as a possible successor, but again nothing came of it, with this vacancy being filled by David O'Leary, who had played under Graham at Arsenal and worked as his assistant at Leeds. [24] He and O'Leary had both been mentioned as candidates for the job at Sunderland twice during the 2002–03 season following the departure of Peter Reid in October [25] and Howard Wilkinson in March. [26]
