Tony Adams, and the building of the famous back four

By Tony Attwood

On February 18th 1987 Tony Adams made his international debut for England in a 4-2 win over Spain.  He was the first player to be born after England’s one and only world up victory in 1966 who played for England.

We already have, as you would anticipate, an article on Tony Adams and there is a piece on his most recent work.  The Arsenal History Society was also instrumental in bringing the statues that now adorn the outside of the Emirates to the stadium – although to be fair we didn’t include Tony Adams as the person we wanted to have a statue for.  But as Ivan Gazidis has so kindly said on several occasions, it was us that came up with the idea.

So, articles are there many for Mr Arsenal.

And thus it was that I thought I would do something different for Mr Adams today – I’d try and link him in with George Graham’s famous back four.

But to begin we must ask, was it really a famous back four (Adams, Bould, Winterburn and Dixon?  Or a five (including Keown) or a six (including Seaman).

Obviously you can pick and choose any way you want to say it, but the question I asked myself recently was, how did they come together.  And I found that although I had a fair idea, I could not bring all the dates to mind, until I started looking a few things up.

Player	Signed	Signed by…
Adams	Signed as a schoolboy 1980 (first game 5 November 1983)	Neil
Keown	Signed as a schoolboy 1980 left June 86 re-signed February 1993	Neil, Graham
Winterburn	Summer 1987	Graham
Dixon	January 1988	Graham
Bould	Summer 1988	Graham
Seaman	Summer 1990	Graham

So here they are…  the earliest date (1980) to the last (1993, the re-signing of Keown) was 13 years, but if we leave schoolboy signings out of this for a moment, the actual spread of time in terms was 1983 to 1990.  Seven years.  Or excluding the goal keeper, 1983 to 1988 – five years.

It is interesting to remember that two of these players were signed by Terry Neil, and that Graham let Keown go, and then brought him back again.

Here is another set of data that took me by surprise.  The number of games each man played:

Player	Games
Adams	504
Keown	333
Winterburn	440
Dixon	458
Bould	267
Seaman	405

These are astonishing numbers, and no wonder that we revere these players and the back four, five or six that they created.

It is a simple bit of analysis, but I did it because I just haven’t seen it set out in this way before.

Hope you find it of value.

 

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• “Laurie” Scott; signed by Arsenal on 12 Feb 1937
• Not 125 Years since the first Arsenal match at the Manor Ground

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The books…

• Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
• Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
• The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal – crowd behaviour at the early matches

The sites…

• Untold Arsenal
• Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
• The weight loss programme: The only guaranteed way to stay fit