IF YOU had asked anyone at the start of the 1970-71 season to predict the likely winners of the Football League championship or FA Cup, Arsenal would not have been among the contenders. In 1970, the Gunners had won their first trophy since 1953, lifting the Inter-Cities’ Fairs Cup, but their league form was inconsistent in 1969-70 and they had finished 12th, losing as many games as they won. They completed their campaign with five wins in 10 games and they showed their resilience by overcoming a 3-1 deficit to beat Anderlecht 3-0 in the second leg of the Fairs Cup final.
Nevertheless, London’s best threat was supposed to come from Chelsea, who had won the FA Cup in 1970 and finished third. As it happened, London had its best year ever in 1970-71, with Arsenal winning the hallowed double, Tottenham securing the Football League Cup and Chelsea beating Real Madrid in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup in Athens. Three London sides ended their season in the top six, but the most durable and focused team in the capital was Bertie Mee’s Arsenal.
There was very little chequebook team building in 1970. Clubs relied on their reserve and youth teams to provide tomorrow’s stars and only a handful could spend big sums of money. The Arsenal side of 1970-71 was not constructed by large sums of money, in fact the biggest outlay the club had made was for Peter Marinello, who cost the Gunners £ 100,000 when they signed him from Hibernian in January 1970. Sadly, Marinello, who was being billed as “the new George Best” failed to live up to expectations. It was the second big signing that had not worked out as planned; in February 1968, Bobby Gould cost Arsenal £ 90,000 when he moved to Highbury from Coventry City. Gould was an industrious player, but played no part in the club’s Fairs Cup triumph.
Arsenal had a decent youth set-up and in 1970-71, actually won the FA Youth Cup. But it was a cluster of players who had graduated prior to 1970 that formed the backbone of the Arsenal squad in their historic season. The likes of Ray Kennedy, Charlie George, Pat Rice, Peter Simpson, Peter Storey, John Radford and Eddie Kelly, were all home-grown players. They were not all London lads, which underlined the strength of the scouting network the club had built. Rice was from Northern Ireland, Radford was a Yorkshireman, Kelly was a Scot and Simpson was from Norfolk. Kennedy hailed from the North East of England, as did a more established member of the Arsenal set-up, George Armstrong.
Of the young players who promised to become very good players, Charlie George, a skilful and precocious figure who divided opinion among football fans, was considered to be the the type of maverick whose main job was to excite the red-scarved legions on the Islington omnibus. George was local, was talented, but he had an ill-disciplined side that arguably cost him a far more glittering career in the game. In 1970-71, he started by breaking his ankle against Everton but returned to play a key role in the run-in to the end of the season. He played far fewer games than most people realise to this day, but he had a knack of scoring vital goals, including the winner in the 1971 FA Cup final.
Arsenal’s younger contingent were fortified by the experience of players like Bob Wilson, Bob McNab, Frank McClintock, Armstrong and George Graham. Wilson, an articulate and popular man who joined the club in 1963, had played amateur football with Loughborough Colleges. He had a spell with Wolves but eventually took over in goal at Arsenal and even won two caps for Scotland. McNab, a tenacious left back, was signed from Huddersfield Town in 1966 for £ 50,000 and was capped four times by England. McClintock had been around for some time and had played in two FA Cup finals for Leicester City before signing for the Gunners in 1964 for £ 80,000. He overcame a difficult start at Arsenal to captain the team and lead them to the double while also being named FWA Footballer of the Year in 1971.
George Graham arrived at Arsenal in 1966 from Chelsea as part of an exchange deal that involved Tommy Baldwin moving in the opposite direction, along with £ 50,000. Graham was a striker at Stamford Bridge and was exceptional in the air, but he had his best time at Arsenal as a strolling midfielder who could still score great goals.
In many ways, Arsenal’s success in 1970-71 was largely a triumph for the system. Mee was influenced and assisted by Don Howe, a technical coach who made Arsenal into a team with an indomitable spirit that was very difficult to beat. Not everyone liked their style, many journalists found them boring and an example of function over form, but they were also undoubtedly underrated. Arsenal won 14 games by a single goal margin, including 10 1-0 victories. They kept 25 clean sheets in 42 starts.
Arsenal success came after a period in which they had reached three finals between 1967-68 and 1969-70, so 1970-71 was, in hindsight, the culmination of a promising era. Their team had cost less than £ 200,000 which was no mean feat given previous champions such as Tottenham (1961), Liverpool (1966) and Manchester United (1967) had all cost more. It was a gruelling programme and it was possible they burned themselves out by chasing an excellent Leeds United side for months. It took eight years for the Gunners to win another trophy and only one member of the double side, Pat Rice, was still involved.
The team started to break apart in 1972 when George Graham moved to Manchester United to link-up with Tommy Docherty, his old Chelsea boss. Kennedy and George were sold by 1975 to Liverpool and Derby County respectively and Radford went to West Ham in 1976 where he struggled to make his mark. Arsenal finished fifth in 1971-72, despite the arrival of Alan Ball and like most of their London peers, they gradually declined. From winning the top two prizes in English football in 1971, Arsenal had slumped to 17th in the first division in 1976. They would rise again, however, with another batch of young players that would bring fresh success to north London.
GAME OF THE PEOPLE 