‘We all fought for each other – Arsenal do not have that now’

Alan Smith explains to Paul Hayward how the club have lost the edge George Graham instilled

Paul Merson once told his psychiatrist he wanted to be like Alan Smith: stable, happy, untroubled. Arsenal fans would love today’s team to be more like the Gunners Smith played for from 1987-1995. Character transplants are not easy, in football or in life, but the squad Unai Emery has taken on could use a few implants from the 1989 title-winning team. In his autobiography, Heads Up, Smith writes: “Arsenal under George [Graham] were steely and stubborn, hard working and committed, with a ruthless streak running right through the middle.” If this was Graham’s gift to Arsene Wenger, Emery’s inheritance is less clear.

“Yeah, we all fought for each other, we weren’t a team that could be bullied,” Smith recalls. “You’re normally the image of your manager, aren’t you. George always used to say, ‘Don’t let them call you southern softies, if they want a scrap, they’ll get a scrap, and we never back down’.

“I was never a massive fighter, but we had enough of that in the team. It wasn’t just physically, it was mentally – standing up to those challenges.

“Arsene Wenger’s teams have been different over the last 10 years. They had a soft underbelly, I think; with the culture that’s become ingrained, there’s been a lack of accountability for some players. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see someone like [Mesut] Ozil substituted when he isn’t pulling his weight. That wouldn’t really happen under Wenger.”

On the other side, Smith praises Wenger for developing “the whole infrastructure of the club”, which has given Emery “something to build on, to develop”. But it seems apt that his book is piled in the Waterstones where we talked beneath a sign that says: For the realists.

Smith’s eight years at Arsenal, after spells at Alvechurch and Leicester City, were synonymous with “edge”. Sometimes too much edge. He remains bruised from Graham turning on him in the dressing room at a time when a “bungs” scandal was closing in on Arsenal’s manager. Smith was in shock when Graham shouted at him: “And you, yer c---, you’re always on the treatment table! [Smith’s career was ended by a knee injury, at 32].”

Looking back, he says: “When I got that rollicking late in my career, it did hit hard because we’d always had such a respectful relationship and we’d been through such a lot together. To use the word he did, it was just – wow, I’m used to a rollicking, but not a word like that.

“That was just reflective of what he was going through [Graham was sacked in 1995 for receiving “unsolicited gifts” from the agent, Rune Hauge]. He knew what was coming, probably, and it changed his character. But I wouldn’t want that to deflect from my general attitude towards him: I have great respect for what he achieved at the club and with us as a group of players.”

The zenith was a moment Smith still thinks was the biggest in modern top-flight history; better, even, than the Sergio Aguero goal that won the 2012 championship for Manchester City. The date: May 26, 1989. The place: Anfield.

“First of all it was the last game of the season, everybody else had packed up and gone off to the beach,” Smith says. “It was between the two teams gunning for the title – Liverpool being the team to beat at the time.

“Anfield was a fortress. They were a fantastic side: Rush, Barnes, Hansen, all those players. To go up there and not just have to win but win by two: it was unheard of, really. We had something in 89 that the Arsenal team doesn’t have now. That real resilience, determination, a winning mentality.”

These were qualities shared later by Manchester United, who Smith might have joined. One night in 1987, as Coronation Street was on the television, the family phone rang. “Alan, it’s Alex Ferguson. He says he wants to speak to you,” his mother called. But Smith, now a journalist and broadcaster, had his “heart set on Arsenal”.

The book portrays a rich cast of characters at Alvechurch and Leicester: players swanking it up in Ford Granadas, slapping sticking plasters on nipples under polyester shirts and listening to half-time

‘It is so refreshing to see Ozil being substituted. That wouldn’t happen under Wenger’