The history of Arsenal football club changed quite dramatically over a few weeks in 2006.
Just two years before, they were the Invincible champions of England, a team combining a sophisticated flair with a bite to match their bark. But by 2006 Arsenal had started a decline, even if, at the time, it didn’t look like it could get out of control.
After winning the 2005 FA Cup, Arsenal lost Patrick Vieira. By the end of the next season, though, they had finished a disappointing fourth in the league, gone out in the fourth round of the FA Cup and were about to lose Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell and Lauren. The saving grace for Arsene Wenger, and perhaps one of the greatest achievements of his time at Arsenal, was the fact that he guided an injury-ravaged Arsenal to the Champions League final in Paris.
But it was an anomaly of a success rather than a continuation of what had gone before. The reality is that Wenger’s glory days as Arsenal manager had ended with the 2005 FA Cup triumph, when the Gunners beat Manchester United on penalties in Cardiff. By the time the 2006 Champions League final came along, the phrase ‘transitional period’ had begun to creep its way into common parlance. Reaching the Champions League final wasn’t the last hurrah of Wenger’s heyday, it was the high water mark of the stagnant period.
But talk of a ‘transition’ wasn’t altogether unwarranted. Arsenal were about to lose the bulk of their Invincibles side, with Thierry Henry one of the few big names to remain at the club for the 2006/07 season. The new stadium at Ashburton Grove was on the horizon, and if the Highbury goodbyes were tinged in nostalgia, the move to the Emirates was greeted with a certain apprehension.
It was clear that a new and bigger stadium was necessary, but concerns over the soulless corporate nature of the move (150 corporate boxes were installed at the Emirates Stadium, whereas Highbury had only 48), worries over what the stadium repayments would mean for the club’s ability to compete in the transfer market, and fears that the atmosphere at the new ground would lead to problems on the pitch were all legitimate grievances for many associated with the club. In many ways, then, losing big-name players was only part of the problem.
But so too was the stadium.
Jose Mourinho’s first season in the Premier League saw the evolution of the ‘Makelele role’ into English footballing lore. A deep-seated midfielder whose job was solely to defend nullified teams playing with a number 10. Dennis Bergkamp had played this second-striker role with distinction, and the position was probably Arsene Wenger’s most important weapon over the previous few years, using the pace of Henry and the position sense of Patrick Vieira and Gilberto Silva to create space for the Dutchman. But now defensive midfielders were being ordered to patrol this space, too. Maybe that was the first sign that Bergkamp’s retirement was to come at the perfect time.
All of these issues – the loss of important players, the difficulties posed by the stadium move, and indeed the changing nature of English football’s tactical evolution, were quite neatly summarised by one event just weeks after Arsenal said goodbye to Highbury, lost to Barcelona in the Champions League final, and moved into the Emirates Stadium: Dennis Bergkamp’s testimonial.
Bergkamp honoured Arsenal for years with his contributions on the pitch. He was one of the finest players of a generation and arguably the greatest player Arsenal have ever had. But it was Arsenal who honoured Bergkamp with a testimonial in July 2006, and giving him the privilege of being able to say that the game played in his honour was the very first one to take place at their new stadium.
Ian Wright, Emmanuel Petit, Patrick Vieira and Marc Overmars played against the likes of Marco van Basten and Johan Cruyff in front of 54,000 people (the capacity was reduced for safety reasons as the stadium staff were attempting to get used to the new ground). Those glowing names of Arsenal’s recent past turned out against legends who had long ago made the transition from star to legend. It was a jarring spectacle in some ways, as perhaps many of those players hadn’t really left the club long enough to be considered ‘legends’ just yet. It felt slightly raw, and that would only have been exacerbated by what was to come for the rest of the 2006/07 season.
Arsenal’s team looks thrown together by comparison with the team of legends who, only a few years previously were winning silverware at Highbury. Jeremie Aliadiere made 23 appearances in all competitions, and Justin Hoyte started 18 of Arsenal’s Premier League games, making 36 appearances overall. It’s little wonder that the Gunners finished the season trophyless once more, and finished outside of the top three for the first time since 1996.
At the opening of a new stadium, the phrase ‘new era’ will almost certainly be used. There will always be some truth to that, but in Arsenal’s case, it’s probably more accurate than in any other. And as if to confirm the prescience of this seminal event, a banner was flown over the Emirates Stadium. Over the last few seasons, banners of dissent from disgruntled fans have become commonplace; a plane trailing a message through the air over the north London stadium has become a trope of modern football. But the irony of a banner proclaiming “a bright new future” flown over the Emirates on the day it opened in 2006 was lost on the crowd. If they suspected that hard times were ahead for their club, they surely couldn’t have realised just how stagnant their club would become.
But one testimonial wasn’t going to get people unduly worried about the future of a club who had just reached a Champions League final and gone an entire Premier League season unbeaten two years before. Even if they were about to lose several huge names, how bad could Arsenal’s decline really be if they almost won a European Cup with Mathieu Flamini filling in as a makeshift left-back? But that was to view the problem in a bad light. In reality, this team was in such a dire state that their manager had to resort to playing Mathieu Flamini at left-back.
Arsenal may have reached that final in Paris, but even that was, ultimately, to be a trophyless season. 2006 can often be seen as the year when Arsenal started their decline, but that happened a season earlier. Despite reaching the final, it was to be their first of an eight season dry spell, making it nine full years between the 2005 and 2014 FA Cup victories.
In that intervening period, Arsenal have rarely adequately replaced their departed legends. Dennis Bergkamp’s special place in the hearts of Arsenal fans may even be heightened because of that. And for Bergkamp himself, perhaps there’s also a sense that his career happened in exactly the right period of time. It took in the start of the Wenger revolution and ended before the momentum fizzled out.
Perhaps that sentiment is best summed up by Johan Cruyff, who played for the Ajax legends team against Bergkamp’s Arsenal on the day. He revealed after the game that he had twice tried to sign Bergkamp for Barcelona: “First he chose Inter and the second time Arsenal,” Cruyff said. “I must admit, that last choice hasn’t been a bad one.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone saying that about an Arsenal player in the decade since then.