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- 1992/3: more Arsenal trophies but not THE trophy
- Arsenal win the league on their 100th anniversary
- 100 seasons in the top division: fourth but the signs are not good
By Tony Attwood
The Index to 100 seasons in the top division
Arsenal approached 1994/5 as a team that knew how to win trophies, having won the Premier League in 1991, the FA Cup and League Cups in 1993 and the Cup Winners Cup in 1994.
Added to that, after a poor season in the league in 1992/3 Arsenal had bounced back to fourth in the 1993/4. So hopes were high for 1994/5 but hopes do always win trophies, and that was the case this season.
For although us mere supporters who paid our money and turned up at each game, knew nothing of it, there was disaster in the making, and everything fell to pieces in 1994/5. Now of course it wasn’t all a disaster as Arsenal did make it to the final of the Cup Winners’ Cup (although that game was lost), but much more to the point George Graham was sacked on 21 Feburary 1995 in what became known as the bung scandal (after it was revealed he had receive an unsolicited personal sum as the result of a transfer of a John Jensen and Pal Lyderson. Graham had been in charge for nine years and won six major trophies by the time he was kicked out.)
Additionally, Paul Merson missed half the season being treated for a variety of addictions. Ian Wright scored 18 goals; it was the only highlight as Arsenal finished 12th. It was their lowest position since 1976 as the club missed relegation by just six points.
Arsenal ended up having won just 13 out of 42 games, while of the London teams, Tottenham, Queens Park Rangers, Wimbledon and Chelsea all finished high up the league. Arsenal did make it to the final of the Cup Winners Cup, qualifying for that competition through being last season’s winners, but lost on penalties.
But apart from the events themselves, there was the fact that George Graham had not only been an Arsenal player, he had been the most successful Arsenal manager in years, although, before the bung allegations broke, there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the style of play that Arsenal had settled into. It was also the case that most of the players who made their debuts that season were not of the standard the club needed. And indeed, the only player signed in 1993/4 who appeared in the team for the first game of the following season was Stefan Schwarz. That Arsenal lost at home to Millwall in the third round of the FA Cuop seemed to sum it all up.
The fact of Arsenal’s decline was hammered home by the end of the season in which Arsenal won just one of their last eight games, and that was against Ipswich Town who were relegated, ending up 16 points away from safety.
Arsenal themselves finished 12th in the league under Stewart Houston as caretaker manager from late February – he was not tipped to get the job for the new season.
But this whole situation was a shock that reverberated through football, as Arsenal had for many years been known as a club that was stable and solid, a club that did not hire and fire, a club that stood by its men. And indeed this had been shown with the support the club had given to Paul Merson with his multiple addiction problems, and it was something that the whole club and its supporters were indeed very proud of.
But this was all about to end – although of course that was not immediately clear. Bruce Rioch became manager for the 1995/6 season, but despite taking Arsenal back up the table he lasted only until just before the start of the 1996/7 season. His campaign might best be called “decent” or perhaps an “improvement”, which it was, but Arsenal clearly had someone else in mind for the top job, as we shall see after our review of 1995/6.
That the new man was a manager no one seemed to have heard of, that he was foreign (practically unknown for an English club manager at that time) and that Rioch had only lasted one year, made the whole episode even more mysterious. It simply wasn’t Arsenal.
But Arsenal were indeed about to enter the most mysterious territory since they packed up and moved out of Plumstead and set up a new ground in N5.
