This series takes a look at what was happening to Arsenal and in the world around them on this day at one point in Arsenal’s past.
17 March 1949
It’s Pat Rice’s birthday
Pat played 397 games for Arsenal and scored 12 goals, before going to his only other club: Watford, for whom he played 112 times. He also played 49 times for his country: Northern Ireland.
Pat worked in a greengrocer’s on Gillespie Road (you can’t get much closer to the old stadium) and became an apprentice in 1964, and a pro in 1966.
Like most players who have come up through that route he played just a few games in his early years, but even so he was picked for N Ireland in 1968. Eventually when Storey moved into the centre of midfield to become the ultimate enforcer Pat took over at right back. He won the Double and had three seasons where he played every game.
He was the last of the 70/71 side to leave the club, and was made captain – and as such was presented with the FA Cup in 1979. He played in five FA Cup finals and the Cup Winners Cup final.
He left us in 1980 and helped Watford gain promotion to the First Division, again playing as captain. He retired from playing in 1984.
And that year Pat came back home, and was youth team coach, a job he kept until 1996. He won the Youth Cup twice.
And then the big time: he became manager after Houston resigned (Houston was caretaker after Rioch had been sacked). He managed three league games – and won the lot.
Then along came Arsène Wenger who made Pat his assistant manager and that led him to being one of only two men who have been part of the three Doubles. The other of course is Bob Wilson.
At the end of the 2010/11 season it was announced that Pat was about to retire, and the disgraceful anti-Arsenal media that was in full flood at the time, ran disgraceful stories that Pat could no longer stand working with Mr Wenger. But Mr Wenger got Pat to do one more season – before he eventually stepped down after 48 years’ service. .
In tribute Mr Wenger has said, “‘Pat is a true Arsenal legend and has committed almost his whole life to Arsenal Football Club, which shows huge loyalty and devotion to this club…I will always be indebted to him for his expert insight into Arsenal and football as a whole. On the training pitches and on matchdays, Pat has always been a passionate, loyal and insightful colleague, who we will all miss.
“He’s just been tremendous. It’s a sad, sad, sad day. His life was linked with Arsenal and Arsenal have been privileged to have him as a player, a captain, a coach, and personally I’m very grateful for his contribution to my period here.
“I would like him to forgive me the bad moments I’ve given him as well,” Mr Wenger added. “He’s been a constant, loyal supporter. I’m just very grateful and privileged to have had him at my side for such a long time.
“[His experience is] important when you come from abroad… to have an assistant who knows the culture of the club and the country.”
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And a postscript from Andy Kelly: A piece of useless trivia. Pat’s brother had a barber shop in Drayton Park. As you turn from Gillespie Road into Drayton Park there is a small white building between two town houses – that’s where it was.
Here are some of the players that Pat nurtured whilst in charge of the youth team: David Hillier Paul Merson Niall Quinn David Rocastle Michael Thomas Kevin Campbell Andrew Marriott (went on to play for Wales) Alan Miller Andy Cole Steve Morrow Paul Dickov Ray Parlour Ian Selley Stephen Hughes
16 March 1962
Beware the untried manager
Billy Wright was one of Arsenal’s most unsuccessful managers – and certainly the most unsuccessful of modern times.
Quite why he was such a failure may be because top footballers generally are – Andy Kelly and I did an analysis of Arsenal managers based on how good they were at playing football (it was published in the Arsenal programme in the Arsenal Uncovered series) and it showed beyond any doubt that our most successful managers were by and large average (or less) at playing the game.
So there is no point in looking at our table of Arsenal managers analysed by top four finishes – because Billy Wright doesn’t figure. But if we look at Arsenal’s managers analysed by history, games and success then we can see that he comes near the foot of the table. Excluding temporary managers the only people who did less well than he did across more than two seasons were Leslie Knighton and George Morrell from the early days of the 20th century.
The only insight I have into this (apart from analysing managers by their playing ability) comes from the ex-Arsenal players and stadium staff who visited my father’s garage on Westbury Avenue. He was told that Wright did not arrange the supervision of training properly, and that players would come in, put their track suit over their clothes, jog round the pitch one, and go home again (or down the pub). Of course that might just be tittle tattle, but certainly results on the pitch sometimes suggested this was how it was.
So, what to make of Billy Wright (1924 to 1994)?
Part of his problem might have been that he only ever played for Wolverhampton, so had no understanding of the huge variety there is in the way clubs work. Then there is the fame associated with being the first football player in the world to get 100 caps, and holding the record for longest unbroken run in competitive international football. Or captaining your country 90 times. Maybe he just thought everyone else ought to be able to do what he could do.
He joined Wolverhampton aged 14 and made his first team début aged 15 in 1939 in a wartime game. His postwar début was in the 1945–46 FA Cup in a two legged tie against Lovells Athletic. (It is an interesting side note that there was no league that season – only the FA Cup, so all games were played home and away, what with the clubs having little else to do! Arsenal were knocked out in the third round by WHU – but of course the ability of the clubs to compete depended on how many players they had been able to round up after the end of the war.)
But, really Wright should have known more about training since Billy Wright was a Physical Training Instructor in the army.
As a player he won the league three times and the FA Cup once retiring in 1959 to become manager of England’s youth team. He then came to Arsenal in 1962, a high profile non-Arsenal man, to wipe aside the failures of the Swindin era.
His results were uniformly depressing…
Season
League position
FA Cup
1962/3
7th
5th round lost to Liverpool
1963/4
8th
5th found lost to Liverpool
1964/5
13th
4th round lost to Peterborough
1965/6
14th
3rd round lost to Blackburn*
* Blackburn finished bottom of the 1st division that season.
Amazingly the 7th position gave a qualification to the Inter Cities Fairs Cup. Arsenal were knocked out in the second round in the 1963/4 season.
What he did do was sign or promote from the youth team the likes of David Court, Jon Sammels, Bob Wilson, Peter Simpson, Jon Furnell, John Radford, Don Howe, Frank McLintock and Peter Storey.
Brian Glanville is quoted as having written of his time at Arsenal, “he had neither the guile nor the authority to make things work and he reacted almost childishly to criticism”.
He gained the CBE in 1959, and has a stand named after him and a statue of him at the Wolverhampton ground. A campaign has been run in recent years to award him a posthumous knighthood.
15 March 1884
Beware the single source!
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Leslie Knighton. He was the man appointed as Arsenal manager in 1919 and who lasted until 1925, when he was replaced by Herbert Chapman.
If you have not heard of Knighton, you may be forgiven – these days few people who don’t make the AISA Arsenal History Society blog part of their regular reading will know much about him. And yet his influence upon Arsenal has been immense.
Unfortunately, that influence was for all the wrong reasons.
Knighton won nothing as Arsenal manager. In fact Arsenal were almost relegated in three of his seasons, Arsenal coming 17th, 19th and 20th out of 22. His highest position achieved in six seasons was 9th.
So we can understand why he is largely forgotten. And indeed, I doubt that he would ever be mentioned at all in terms of Arsenal, other than in statistics were it not for the fact that 20 years after being dismissed as Arsenal manager, he wrote his autobiography.
Sadly, others involved at the top of Arsenal at the time (most notably Jack Humble and Lt Col Sir Henry Norris) did not write their own versions of what happened at Arsenal at the time of his managership, and so the only version of events we have (apart from the statistics in terms of results, transfers and the like) is Knighton’s story.
Now the problem is that Knighton wrote his autobiography in his retirement in Bournemouth when he was suffering from ill-health, and it appears he was short of money. Perhaps through false memory over events over 20 years before, or perhaps because he was encouraged by a Sunday newspaper that serialised a part of his memoires, Knighton’s story strays rather a long way from reality.
And even though at the same time as his autobiography appeared, so did that of the infinitely more successful George Allison (2 league titles, one FA Cup, and the man who kept Arsenal running during the second world war), it was the Knighton book which was taken as gospel. The fact that Allison contradicts some of Knighton’s claims (particularly in relation to Henry Norris) is ignored by historians.
Indeed you may have come across the Knighton tales – that Sir Henry would not let him buy players costing over £1000. That Sir Henry had minimum weight and height requirements for players signed. That Sir Henry insisted that the whole Arsenal scouting network was wound up, and that he (Knighton) was left working with an informal group of pals to keep the club supplied with players.
That these allegations have been published and republished over the years as the truth, shows just how lazy most football journalists are, because a simple look at the facts shows us that Knighton did indeed sign players for far more than the alleged £1000 maximum. In fact, Sir Henry was generous beyond belief with his transfer budget.
What’s more in the book Knighton suggests that he offered more than double the alleged maximum for one player.
He also talks about how, because of the lack of finance, he was forced to play the brother-in-law of the club’s physio on the wing, as he had no other players available. In fact the player in question was a man who had pre-war won the league with Rangers in Scotland, and played for the Scottish League in a game against the English league. He played as an amateur for Arsenal, and was the star player of the Arsenal side when he did.
Knighton was not a totally useless manager as he did recruit some very good players. But the failure of football historians to read Knighton’s book alongside the autobiography of Allison, is a serious error. Allison knew Sir Henry Norris and worked with him from 1910 onwards, and the two men both worked in the War Office during the first world war. Real historians never look at just one source.
Arsenal were probably the first, or at least one of the first clubs to arrange away-day excursions to football matches. And certainly if there were other clubs doing what Arsenal did in terms of away day games, they didn’t do it on such a scale. Nor indeed with such results.
As the volume “The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal” by Mark Andrews shows there were often 2000 or 3000 away fans at Arsenal games before the first world war – all of course travelling by train.
Many of these fans worked in the Torpedo Factory and it is their familiarity with explosives and incendiary devices that led to the tendency for fans to bring explosives on trips, and letting them off on the trains on the way to matches, before drinking in the away town, and during matches.
The Torpedo Factory workmen were described by the Woolwich Gazette as “among the very elite of our artisans”.
The most serious action by these excursionists at a ground was on 14 March 1908 when their perpetual firework display almost destroyed a stand. The Kentish Independent of 20 March 1908 received its information from the following understated extract in the Football Post.
“FOREST STAND ON FIRE A FORTUNATE DISCOVERY”
“Just after the conclusion of the match, the stand on the ground behind the Trent goal was discovered to be on fire, but a number of attendants speedily procured buckets of water and subdued the outbreak. It is supposed that a lighted match, or, more likely still, one of the fireworks let off during the game had fallen beneath the woodwork, smouldered, and eventually broken into flame”
But the Arsenal fans did not just throw fireworks around. For according to a letter to the paper, during half-time the away support (called “the invaders”) “gambolled, wrestled, danced jigs, raced about the field with the ball, confusing and sorely trying the lenient police force, who might easily have placed at least one or two under arrest.”
Additionally, another report on the same incident noted that “someone produced a football, and in an instance there was a mad crowd on the playing field, amongst whom were several “red caps” and a man with a wooden leg, who had a drive at the ball with his timber toe”.
The same VHM stated that the behaviour of those at Nottingham before the game had “brought discredit upon Woolwich”. Carrying on he says: “nothing of the fireworks and decoration of their person with red hats, parasols and favours, etc, except to say that they all add to the fiendish aspect of the orgie”.
This was all part of the pre-industrial misrule traditions of the carnival and fete which were are largely mirrored in the behaviour of the excursionist at the turn of the century.
It is possible that they started throwing fireworks at games as early as 1893, but the main torrent of gunpowder mingling with all the other football smells was between 1904 -1908.
Unfortunately, the Torpedo Factory was moved to Greenock in 1910, and almost all the men migrated to remain in work, as the government were looking to centralise this ordnance production. This strapped Arsenal of much away support and was the most likely factor in the fall off in enthusiasm for Excursions, more so than the poor team performances.
13 March 1957
George Frederick Allison died on this day in 1957 aged 73.
He was Arsenal’s first ever match day programme editor, a journalist of international renown, an important member of the War Office team working on propaganda in the first world war, the BBC’s first sports commentator, and manager of Arsenal, winning the league twice and the FA Cup once.
George Allison came from Hurworth on Tees, village south of Darlington. I don’t think they have anything up to commemorate their most famous son – after finishing this piece I’m going to drop them a line and see if they have.
George is reputed to have played amateur football, and (so the story goes) starting writing about his team for the local paper. He had a trial with Shildon, a local non-league club who are still in existence playing in the Northern League. (Ditto – have they done anything to commemorate him?)
Being a better writer than footballer he took up the former and dropped the latter and at some stage before 1906 was apparently assistant to the manager of Middlesbrough FC – although there is little information available on this.
So here’s the first question: what took George to London in 1906? My guess is a desire to break into the big world of journalism. He worked for Edward Hulton who ultimately started the Daily Sketch.
But it appears that he initially got freelance work and quickly established himself as a football writer who was willing to go out to the wilderness of north Kent to report on Woolwich Arsenal. This was the era when the club was on the edge of becoming something special for both in 1906 and 1907 Woolwich Arsenal got to the semi-final of the FA Cup and indeed in 1907 they had their best league finish – 7th in the first division. Indeed it is said that Allison wrote reports on the matches at Plumstead for several different papers using different journalistic “voices” and different writing nom-de-plumes. (It was the basis for my novel “Making the Arsenal” – just in case you’ve read that).
By 1910 things had moved on. He became the greyhound racing correspondent of Sporting Life, and under Henry Norris’ ownership of Woolwich Arsenal started to write Gunners’ Mate – the leading article in the match day programme.
It is also reported that at the coronation of King George V (an event which failed to set the working classes of London alight with royal enthusiasm) he met Lord Kitchener, and wrote up the story for the New York Post which led to a regular weekly column in that paper. In 1912 he joined the staff of William Randolph Hearst, the American politician and newspaper magnate.
In 1913 George Allison edited the first club handbook in which appeared the first official history of Arsenal FC while still working for Randolph Hearst – and that is interesting as Hearst is described in the book Unreliable Sources as a man who “routinely invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures and distorted real events.” A similar charge is laid in the book “The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism” by Upton Sinclair.
Given that the early histories of Arsenal seem to be a little wayward in their reporting of what actually happened it may be that Allison took the same route on occasion. Certainly it seems likely that the tale which the Arsenal handbook ran in the 1960s, of Arsenal being unable to play local clubs after they became professionals, was quite untrue. Maybe that’s how the tale started.
Certainly the “Universal News Bureau” owned by Hearst, re-wrote the news of the London papers and then sent it out to American afternoon newspapers under the names of non-existent “Hearst correspondents” in Europe.
Knowing this much background we might guess at once at what George Allison’s job was in the first world war. He worked with the War Office and the Admiralty writing propaganda – thus carrying on his close liaison with Sir Henry Norris who rose to become in charge of recruitment for the army, conscription and later
Interestingly he would have worked closely with Sir Henry Norris in the war office – Sir Henry being in overall charge of recruitment and later conscription to the army and the decommissioning of conscripts after the war
Post war Allison became a director of Arsenal, and also worked for the BBC and was the first person to do commentaries on major sports events such as the Derby, the Grand National, the football international England v Scotland (then an annual match) and, most notably, the 1927 Cup final of Cardiff v Arsenal.
George Allison was the main football commentator of the BBC and it is said that by 1931 the BBC was broadcasting over 100 games per season. This was the era in which the Radio Times ran a picture of the pitch divided into squares with a background voice saying which square the ball was in as play moved around the field. It is also said that this was the origin of the phrase “Back to Square One”.
But Chapman fell out with Allison, and called a board meeting (to which Allison was not invited, although he was a director) and persuaded the board to ban Allison from doing any more radio broadcasts from Highbury. Eventually the League banned the BBC from doing live radio broadcasts of matches – a ban that remained until 1945.
When Herbert Chapman died in January 1934 the club appointed Joe Shaw as temporary manager for the rest of the season before giving the job to George Allison. He won the league (1933-4) and the FA Cup 1(935-6), followed by the League again (1937-8).
If you know the face and look of George Allison it is probably because you have seen him in The Arsenal Stadium Mystery movie (1939) where unlike most of the rest of the club, he had a proper acting role as himself in the film, and says, part way through the game that is the heart of the story, “It’s one-nil to the Arsenal. That’s the way we like it.”
Bob Wall (Herbert Chapman’s assistant said in his autobiography “Arsenal from the Heart”, “Allison was a complete contrast to Chapman… He never claimed to possess a deep theoretical knowledge of the game but he listened closely to what people like Tom Whittaker and Alex James had to say. Like Chapman before him, Allison always insisted that, no matter how good a prospective signing might be, he would secure him only if his character was beyond reproach.”
In the second world war Allison was persuaded to run Arsenal on his own from a small room at White Hart Lane, although he had wanted to retire. He remained for the 1946-7 season, in which we came a disappointing 13th, going out of the FA Cup in the third round to Chelsea. After this single post-war season George Allison retired, and he died ten years later on 13 March 1957.
12 March 1900: the biggest win
On this day Arsenal recorded their biggest ever league win: Arsenal 12 Loughborough 0. Only 600 turned up to this Monday afternoon game, and such was the state of Loughborough, Arsenal paid their visitors train fare to and from the game so that the match could be played.
The reason it was played on a Monday afternoon was that the game had originally been played on the previous Boxing Day but had to be abandoned after 75 minutes due to fog making conditions unplayable. At that time Woolwich Arsenal led the away team by four goals to nil.
Those lucky few who attended the replayed game on what turned out to be conditions utterly the opposite of the abandoned game were probably expecting a similar score.
Arsenal were not exactly setting the league alight, with a distinctly average record for the season. However, Loughborough were the Second Division’s whipping boys, having lost 19 of their 24 league games and conceded 71 goals in the process.
Worse, the Loughborough club were in dire financial straits. So much so that Arsenal had to lend them the money to travel down to Plumstead.
By half-time Woolwich Arsenal led by 4-0 with goals from Cottrell (2),Mainand Gaudie. Loughborough completely capitulated on the second-half and the Reds scored another eight goals by Dick (2), Tennant (2),Anderson,Mainand two more for Gaudie to complete his hat-trick.
This proved to be more than adequate revenge for Arsenal who had recorded their record league defeat four years previously by Loughborough. For Loughborough it was one of the final nails in their coffin. They played nine more league games and folded on 29 June 1900.
Loughborough did complete the season, with their final record being won one, drawn six and lost 27 and did apply for re-election, but not surprisingly the other clubs did not feel they could continue to pay for Loughborough’s travel to and from away games. In 34 league games they had conceded 100 goals. Woolwich Arsenal ended the season in 8th.
The 12-0 scoreline equalled Arsenal’s previous biggest win against Ashford United in the FA Cup in 1893 and remains the club’s biggest league win.
March 11 1972; Newcastle United 2 Arsenal 0
Attendance: 31,920
At the end of February 1972, Arsenal who had won the double the season before, we unbeaten in the last 16 league and cup games and there was that Arsenal were on the move once again. And at first the defeat on 4 March 1972 to Manchester City was seen as just an occasional defeat.
But it was not. Arsenal had two cup draws with Derby, and then consecutive defeats to Ajax in the European Cup and Manchester City. Arsenal looked tired from their recent defeats, their trip to the Netherlands, In the second FA Cup game with Derby it took them over 20 minutes to launch even a single attack.
So there were nerves on 11 March when double winning Arsenal went to Newcastle.
It was not a good game, and if Newcastle had noticed sooner that only Armstrong looked lively for Arsenal, they would have scored more, but as it was it took them until the second half to up the pressure. With George retiring to be replaced by Batson, Ball needed to step up and take control. He tried, but missed two great chances, while Newcastle started to hammer the Arsenal goal.
Only Wilson, as ever, was truly on form and with Kennedy continuing to look off the pace and Ball missing when it was easier to score, Newcastle broke in the 70th minute and Macdonald scored from 10 yards. The second came in the third minute of injury time as Arsenal pushed forward for an equaliser. Simpson was dispossessed, and with Arsenal caught forward Smith ran on to tuck the ball way.
There was a little relief thereafter as on March 13 1972; the result in the cup was Arsenal 1 Derby County 0, the game being played (as the second replay) at Leicester City’s ground.
That game was noted as being the Arsenal of last season, cool and commanding, assured and certain, held together by McLintock, with Graham and Armstrong filling in the gaps where ever they occurred.
Arsenal looked quite happy for Derby to have most of the ball, waiting instead of the occasional break. Clough tried one of his famous tactical switches which involved removing McGovern and pushing McFarland into attack, and it did result in their best effort – but effort was all it was. Arsenal were through.
Arsenal in fact went on to the Cup Final and lost 1-0 to Leeds, but in the League Arsenal finished in fifth.
The following season Arsenal challenged again and came in second, just three points behind Liverpool. But then came the collapse. 10th the following season, 16th in 1975, 17th in 1976, and in those last two seasons, there was serious talk of relegation.
As fast as the Uefa Cup winning team and the double winning side had arisen, it has fallen apart. Mee, it seemed, had known how to manage players who had never won anything. He just wasn’t so good at managing players who had just won it all.
10 March 1905
On this day Chelsea FC were founded.
And why, you may quite reasonably ask, should that be of interest to us? Well, it is interesting given that some Tottenham fans still argue that Arsenal somehow tricked or bribed their way into the first division in 1919.
There’s a lot of it, but that is because we bring in a huge amount of evidence, rather than the generalised “Arsenal must have bribed there way in” that many books and sites use.
Now I mention this because Chelsea’s arrival in the league is much more curious than Arsenal’s arrival in the first division over 100 years ago, and yet it doesn’t get mentioned. However one of the totally legitimate things that Chelsea did had a huge impact on Henry Norris, the man who guided Arsenal to Highbury and to the 1st Division. And so it’s worth noting.
Chelsea in fact are one of only three teams (Bradford City and Thames were the only other two I know of) who were simply given a place in the league for reasons that had nothing to do with their football related achievements.
In 1904 the Mears brothers bought the freehold of Stamford Bridge Athletics Ground as a speculative venture when the previous owner died. Their aim was to get Henry Norris, then a director at Fulham to move that club to the ground. Norris did indeed announce in 1904 that Fulham was leaving Craven Cottage, although this may well have just been a ploy to get the rent on his ground (owned by the Church Commissioners) reduced.
When Fulham did a new deal with the church for a lower rent on the Cottage the Mears brothers they did a deal with Great Western Railway who wanted the Stamford Bridge site as a coal dump. However the owners then reneged on that deal and decided they could make more money out of the football club. (There is a story, almost certainly untrue, about a dog causing the change of mind, but there’s no real evidence of anything quite so bizarre. Money was almost certainly the key).
So Chelsea Football Club were founded on 10 March 1905 and they applied to play in the Southern League. Tottenham objected – which was bizarre in the extreme, and shows the oddity of Tottenham’s approach at the time. There was no reason why the existence of Chelsea in the Southern League could hinder Tottenham, and the objection was well noted when Arsenal moved to Highbury in 1913. “Tottenham object to everything” was the call, and the club’s reaction in 1913 was treated with derision. Tottenham in fact, shot themselves in both feet, in their attempts to make themselves the one and only Southern League club in London (Arsenal at the time already being in the Football League).
Stuck with a ground and no league to play in Chelsea applied for a place in the Football League, and got in as the League wanted to extend its influence and ensure that the Southern League became weaker – so having more London clubs in was helpful. Certainly Chelsea had a big (although very badly built) ground.
Despite a lack of real success, the crowds did indeed turn up, and the first Chelsea Arsenal match got 55,000 in the ground.
Henry Norris certainly noted this success of a very large stadium in the heart of a residential area, and that had an enormous influence on his drive to move Woolwich Arsenal from Plumstead to Islington eight years later.
9 March 2008
St Totteringham Day was celebrated by Arsenal fans worldwide as the day when Arsenal reach a number of points that cannot be overtaken by Tottenham Hotspur. Sadly it looks like we might not have one this year, but there was a time when it was a fixture in the calendar.
In 2003/4 this day was reached with an amazing 10 games to go. But in 2008 that record was smashed as Tottenham still had 11 games to go when they found to their dismay that they could not overtake Arsenal’s 65 points (currently having just 32 points).
What made this even more amazing is that this was the year in which it was almost universally predicted by pundits, failed managers and the hangers on that Arsenal would slip into mid-table and the all-conquering Tottenham would end up 4th.
It did of course eventually happen, although the bit about all conquering Tottenham hasn’t quite emerged yet.
8 March 2003 & 8 March 2013
On 8 March 2003 the result was Arsenal 2 Chelsea 2 in the FA Cup 6th round. Jeffers and Henry scored.
Ten years later on 8 March 2013 Francis Jeffers signed for Accrington Stanley, his 12th and final club. He played for them seven times and scored two goals. He had a trial with Chester the following year but did not play for them.
Born in Liverpool, on 25 January 1981, Francis Jeffers began his footballing at Everton, coming on as a sub on 26 December 1997 in the game Man U v Everton. He was 16.
He scored 20 goals in 60 games and built a partnership with ex-Arsenal man Kevin Campbell. But after an argument over money (he was offered the biggest contract in the history of Everton but then turned it down) he was turned upon by Everton fans.
And so he came to Arsenal for somewhere between £8m and £10m depending on the source you read, on 14 June 2001. (Interestingly in the light of the rest of his life, Jeffers’ own recollection of this event is different. He said in an interview recently, “Arsenal were chasing me and Everton needed money coming in.” No mention of a failure to agree terms with Everton, or indeed in other situations, as you can see below.
Now as we all know Arsene Wenger made some brilliant signings – both in terms of unknown players who come good, good players who get much better (Henry, Pires) and young players who flourish. In the latter camp we think of Walcott and Ramsey perhaps, in the middle group Henry, Pires.
It is hard to think how Mr Wenger and indeed everyone else got Jeffers so wrong – indeed why he was not only offered Everton’s top package ever to stay, but Arsenal broke their own record to buy him.
Perhaps it was all the “fox in the box” tale that journalists were preaching in relation to who Arsenal now needed. But for me, from the off one had the feeling that here was either a man who believed his own agent’s publicity, or else a little boy lost.
Of course there were the injuries – bad enough to suffer, but worse when your club gets to the Cup Final (2002, 2003). He scored en route to the latter – but they were two against Farnborough, although there was also one against Chelsea.
As for the league win of 2001/2 he played six games.
His last game for us was the 2003 FA Community Shield. It was typical of life for Jeffers. He came on as a sub and got sent off again. On 1 September 2003 he was back at Everton – on loan.
And the goal scoring had gone. He played 22 and scored twice. And just as he had fallen out with the Everton management before, he fell out again and was sold to Charlton for £2.6m on 10 August 2004. He scored five in 24 and went on loan to Rangers but was returned early because he wasn’t cutting it in the Scottish league.
His contract ran down at Charlton and he went to Blackburn. He scored one goal for them before going on to Ipswich on loan. Here his form picked up a bit, and Ipswich tried to buy him but amazingly Blackburn (who had got him on a free) refused, and even when the ice thawed a little Jeffers rejected Ipswich’s terms.
On 9 August 2007 Jeffers signed for Sheffield Wednesday, played in a 1-4 defeat to Ipswich who must have been glad they had got him, and got injured.
His form got better but playing against Stoke City on 20 October 2007, he came up against the utterly evil Ryan Shawcross and was stretchered off with ankle ligament damage.
The injuries, the occasional goals and very occasional bits of brilliance continued until on 25 August 2009 Jeffers was sent off for headbutting Tommy Fraser in a 2–0 League Cup defeat to Port Vale. He was placed on the transfer list. No one wanted him so he was released as Wednesday went to the third division.
By this time we were in the era of unsuccessful trials. He would turn up at a club, have a trial, and not get a contract. Blackpool, and even Everton gave him a chance.
So next it was Newcastle United Jets in Australia.where he signed on 29 October 2010 on a 10-match contract. And guess what, although Newcastle wanted Jeffers to stay, they couldn’t agree terms.
So to Motherwell where he stayed until 1 June 2011 when he was released and he went back to … Newcastle United Jets on 20 October 2011. He scored four goals in 25 games and he was let go.
On 12 October 2012, Jeffers signed for the Maltese Premier League club Floriana. He left after two games claiming he had not been paid. On 8 March 2013, Jeffers signed for Accrington Stanley.
In November 2013, Jeffers had a trial at Bury, and then a trial with Brunei DPMM. He didn’t sign.
Later, police were called after allegations of aggressive behaviour which have since been reported as “brandishing a broomstick” at his father-in-law who sustained injuries. He was charged with threatening behaviour, he was bound over to keep the peace for 12 months.
However in one interview he said, “I’ve played with some good managers. Walter Smith, David Moyes, Mark Hughes but, to this day, Arsene Wenger is by far the best manager I’ve played for.
“Arsene and Walter had totally different styles. Walter was a bit more of a shouter and talker. Arsene was very hands on. He liked to see every training session but he was pretty quiet. He very rarely raised his voice. He did not need too much shouting. He set his team up the right way and we never lost that many games. He had a lot more world-class players. His job was made easier.”
He was last reported to be a youth coach with Everton.
