All-Time Premier League: Arsenal

Ordering the teams alphabetically, I begin with a club whose inclusion in this league should surprise nobody. In the hundred and one years since Henry Norris talked his team into the top flight, the Arsenal have never been relegated. With a history encompassing thirteen League Championships and a record fourteen FA Cups, they provide us with as rich a selection of players as any team in the league. “Arsenal,” wrote Percy Young (1960), “is the footballer’s pantheon: having achieved distinction in some other place he is transferred there, and to list the great men is but to inscribe the names of practically all footballers of the greatest reputation within the last thirty years.” In the subsequent six decades, although they have not recaptured the undisputed dominance they enjoyed in the thirties, their status among the aristocracy of English soccer has never been in doubt, and that list has only grown longer and longer.

How, then, to whittle it down to eleven men? It’s tough, but here we go.

1. John Lukic is classed as a Leeds United man, and Pat Jennings had his best days with Tottenham Hotspur; but even without them, the list of goalkeepers to choose from is long and filled with stars. Dan Lewis, Frank Moss, George Swindin and Jack Kelsey are all worthy of mention; but none of them quite make the cut. All find themselves ousted by three keepers of more recent vintage, of whose excellence there is more visual evidence.

Bob Wilson and Jens Lehmann both make the 25-man squad, but not the first XI. Wilson, a teacher by training, became the first amateur player to be transferred for a fee in 1963, when Wolverhampton Wanderers sold him to Arsenal, and did not sign professional forms for the club until 1964, after he had made his first-team debut. He would take another four years to establish himself as Arsenal’s first-choice goalkeeper; but his success in doing so coincided with a huge uptick in the team’s fortunes. In ’68-’69, Wilson’s first full season in the role, they reached the final of the League Cup and qualified for the Inter-City Fairs Cup. In ’69-’70, they won the Fairs Cup. In ’70-’71, they won the League and Cup double; and Wilson, ever-present in both competitions, was voted the club’s player of the year. With his trademark technique of diving at the feet of attackers, he saved several goals, but it was a risky tactic. He also suffered several injuries, one of which forced him to miss the FA Cup Final of 1972, which Arsenal lost to Leeds. He also missed much of the ’72-’73 season, in which they lost the League championship by three points. Perhaps these injuries contributed to his early retirement from first-class football, at the age of 32, in 1974. He joined the club’s coaching staff and would stay there for 29 years, coaching every Arsenal goalkeeper until the summer of 2003.

That was the summer in which Jens Lehmann arrived. Unlike Wilson, Lehmann arrived at Arsenal Stadium with a reputation behind him; and unlike Wilson, he arrived at a club which had enjoyed recent success, winning two FA Cups and a Premier League title in each of the previous two seasons. But in his first season his, and the club’s, status in the game would be enhanced further. Lehmann was not as spectacular in style as Wilson, but his defensive organisation and distribution were of the first rank. He played in every game of the club’s unbeaten Premier League campaign of 2003-’04, and turned in a man-of-the-match performance to win the FA Cup Final in 2005. In 2005-’06, he held opponents scoreless in every round of the European Champions’ League until he was sent off in the final. In the World Cup at the end of the season, it was he and not Oliver Khan who was Germany’s first-choice goalkeeper. He left the club in 2008 as one of the greatest goalkeepers in its history.

But both Wilson and Lehmann find themselves relegated to backup status by David Seaman. Wilson won the League and Cup double once, Seaman twice. Like Lehmann, Seaman was considered one of the world’s best goalkeepers in his time at Highbury, and his time lasted for longer. His 564 games for Arsenal are a club record for a goalkeeper, 256 more than Wilson’s 308 and more than double the 200 appearances accumulated by Lehmann. How good was he? Good enough to replace Lukic, whose saves had helped Arsenal win the League in 1989 and won him a reputation as one of the best goalkeepers in the game. “I still think John Lukic is one of the best keepers in the country,” said George Graham; “I just think David Seaman is the best.” In his first season guarding the Arsenal goal, he would add fuel to his new manager’s fire: he was the last line of one of the meanest defences in the history of English football, giving up just 18 goals in 38 games on the way to the League championship. In the next twelve years, he would win three more, along with four FA Cups, one League Cup and a Cup-Winners’ Cup, earning the nickname “Safe Hands” for his assured efficiency. In addition to his being a superb shot-stopper, his long throws forward were a strong weapon on the counter-attack, and would suit the style of play of this team as well as that of those he played in. His seventy-five international caps, earned under six England managers, stand as a testament to his skill. I grew up watching him keep goal for England, and to my young eyes anyone else doing the job was unthinkable. It’s almost as unthinkable for anyone else to be preferred for Arsenal’s all-time XI. You want to see for yourself? How about this?

2. As he rolls the ball out to his right-back, George Male will be the receiver. Pat Rice and Lee Dixon both played in more official games for the “Gunners” than Male, with 618 and 528 respectively to his 318; but this difference becomes less overwhelming when one considers their careers in the context of time, and strategic considerations make Male the safer choice. It wasn’t Male’s fault, after all, that his career was interrupted by the Second World War. Rice and Dixon each played wide in a flat back four, Dixon sometimes in a five Both enjoyed great success in such systems, but what formation could an Arsenal all-time team use but the one which made the club famous throughout the football world? Herbert Chapman may not have invented the W-M formation; but it was he who perfected and popularised the system, putting the pieces together to create a winning machine. With only the centre-half between them, the full-backs will need to be a combination of wing-backs and centre-backs. If a change of formation is needed, Dixon will take the field; but first-choice right-back is a job for Male. A converted left-half, Male played the right-back position expertly in that all-conquering team of the thirties, earning 19 international caps to go with the four First Division Championships and FA Cup he won between his switch in 1932 and the outbreak of war. He made more than 35 first-team appearances in every season during that period, and combined his RAF service with almost 200 more games in wartime competitions. After the war, he returned to first-class competition; and in 1948, he became the first player in the Football League to feature in six Championship-winning campaigns. By then a reserve, he retired at the end of that season, aged 40. Laurie Scott, his successor, played well enough to win 17 caps of his own as a member of Walter Winterbottom’s post-war England team. Skill-wise, there seems to be little to choose between them, but Scott’s career didn’t last nearly as long.

3. At left-back, the same principle holds. Kenny Sansom, Bob McNab and Nigel Winterburn will all have their advocates; but what better partner for Male could there be than his long-time team-mate Eddie Hapgood? Walley Barnes, a Welsh international in the post-war period, also played with distinction in the W-M system; but Hapgood, whose cool, controlled style stood out through the thirties, has the superior record. He played in at least 35 games in each of the ten seasons leading up to the war – before the League Cup, before international club competitions, and before substitutions. He, like Male, played in the “Battle of Highbury,” coming away with a broken nose. According to Arsenal trainer Tom Whittaker, he suffered three such injuries and three concussions in his career, and broke both his ankles. Yet he fought through it all to make 440 first-class appearances for the club, more than any rival for his position except Winterburn.

When he arrived at Highbury in 1927, few could have expected him to be so durable. The nineteen-year-old defender, signed from Kettering Town, weighed only 9 stones and 6 pounds, and frequently frightened his colleagues and coaches by getting knocked out when he headed the ball. When he was asked to abandon his vegetarian diet, he built up his strength, eventually developing a formidable physique that made him one of the first footballers to become fashion models. His technique was already of the highest calibre, and he quickly established himself as a fixture in Arsenal’s first team. Hapgood, according to Jeff Harris in Arsenal Who’s Who (1995), “showed shrewd anticipation and he was elegant, polished, unruffled and calm.” Bob Wall (1969), one of Herbert Chapman’s assistant coaches, gives similar praise in Arsenal from the Heart: “He played his football in a calm, authoritative way and he would analyse a game in the same quiet, clear-cut manner. Eddie set Arsenal players the highest possible example in technical skill and personal behaviour.”

England players, too. In May 1938, with Hitler planning his invasion of Czechoslovakia, England played Germany in Berlin. Two months after the annexation of Austria, the German team could include players from the Wunderteam that h four years before. Upon being told by an FA official to salute Hitler’s henchmen before the match, an indignant Hapgood led his team-mates in revolt. They eventually gave the salute under protest, before beating the Germans 6-3. In all, he won 30 international caps, 21 of them as captain. Back then, besides the odd exhibition match, international football meant playing Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland once a year. In today’s game, with the World Cup, the European Championship, qualifying competitions for both and far more friendlies, that tally might easily have been tripled.

Kenny Sansom, who almost did triple it, is the substitute. Signed in the summer of 1980 in extraordinary circumstances, with the Arsenal directors deciding to trade the newly-acquired Clive Allen to Crystal Palace without playing him in a single competitive fixture, Sansom played well enough over the next eight years to take his tally of England caps to 86, playing in 37 consecutive internationals between 1984 and 1987. His time at Arsenal was a relatively unsuccessful period for the club, the 1987 League Cup being the only addition to its honours list in that time; but his international record, which far surpasses those of the double-winning Winterburn and McNab, indicates his status as one of the club’s greatest players. Ashley Cole, classed as a Chelsea man, is unavailable.

4. Patrick Vieira was the man who made Arsene Wenger’s reputation. Undervalued by AC Milan, who gave him only two games in the first team, he joined Arsenal in the summer of ’96, under the influence of a manager who hadn’t yet been appointed. By the time Wenger arrived to assume control, his fellow Frenchman had made his mark in the midfield. The word “moneyball” hadn’t yet been invented, but that was the spirit of the trained economist’s management method, and Patrick Vieira was its poster boy. A ball-winning, ball-playing, box-to-box midfield player, he was the heartbeat of two double-winning teams, two more cup-winners and the “Invincibles” of 2004. Every year from 1999 to 2004, he was named in the Premier League’s official all-star team. His achievements at Arsenal earned him the attention of Aime Jacquet, manager of the French national team; and along with his midfield partner Emmanuel Petit, he followed the League and Cup double of ’97-’98 by winning the World Cup on home soil, the pair combining for the tournament’s final goal. He was a second-string player in that tournament; but by the time Euro 2000 came along, he was ensconced in the French squad’s first XI. France won again, and Vieira was named in the all-star team. In the season that followed, the Premier League’s official sponsors made him their Player of the Year. Arsenal finished second in both the League and the Cup, in what would be their last season without silverware until his departure. They won the double again in 2002, the FA Cup in 2003 and the Premier League in 2004. In 2005, they reached another Cup Final, and after a 0-0 draw with Manchester United, Vieira drove home the penalty that won the shoot-out. It was his last kick in an Arsenal shirt, a fitting climax to his career at the club.

His return to Highbury the following season provided a bitter-sweet postscript. His new club, Juventus, were outclassed in a European Champions’ League match, and Vieira was at fault for the first goal, losing the ball to his compatriot and former club-mate Robert Pires. Francesc Fabregas, the man who had taken his place in the Arsenal team, scored as if to pick up the torch that Vieira had passed on to him. Juventus would win the Italian League that year, but were stripped of the title for match-fixing and forcibly relegated. Internazionale, who had been awarded the championship after finishing second, signed him. With him in the squad, they won Serie A in each of the next three seasons, but he was never a regular player there. Halfway through 2009-’10, he moved to Manchester City. There, he played more frequently, but was far from an ever-present. In a season and a half, he made 46 first-class appearances, slightly more than a tenth of the 406 he had made for Arsenal. He came into the 2011 FA Cup Final as a late substitute, earning one more winner’s medal before retiring.

In his prime, he was such a complete midfielder that to call him a half-back or an inside-forward feels like an injustice. He fulfilled the functions of both. In this team, I’ve put him at right-half, giving him the number 4 jersey which he wore with such distinction, but he’ll be the more attacking of the two wing-halves. As in the great Arsenal teams of the thirties, the midfield square is skewed to the right, giving Vieira’s attacking instincts the freedom to flourish.

Alex Forbes, Archie MaCaulay and Brian Talbot would all be worthy reserve right-halves, but Peter Storey’s longevity and versatility give him the substitute’s spot. Storey, a spoiler who could play at either full-back or half-back, made 501 appearances for Arsenal from 1964 to 1976, scoring 17 goals. Fabregas, who has the second-highest assist count in Premier League history, is still playing professional football for Monaco, and therefore ineligible.

5. Herbert Chapman did not invent the defensive centre-half. Indeed, he was initially reluctant to adopt the tactic. But when he did, it was his Arsenal team that became the arch-exponents of the third back game. Given this, it’s no surprise that the number 5 in this team lies between his full-backs, guarding the centre of defence his main priority. With the full-backs really playing fully back, however, he will have to be comfortable on the ball and step into midfield from time to time.

Herbie Roberts set the template, replacing the more attacking Jack Butler in 1927. Steadily if unspectacularly, he fulfilled the function faithfully for a decade, making 335 appearances for a dominant team before a broken leg led to his retirement. Although the England selectors of the time were reluctant to pick stoppers, Roberts’ disciplined defending earned him an international cap in 1931. Nineteen years later, Leslie Compton’s loyal service was rewarded with the same honour, making him England’s oldest post-war debutant.

But it’s not until we fast-forward from the age of Pathé newsreels to that of Match of the Day that we are confronted with our most outstanding candidates. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that Frank McLintock’s transition from a competent wing-half to a commanding centre-half in 1969 preceded the end of a seventeen-year trophy drought with triumph in the Fairs Cup, followed by the ’70-’71 double-winning campaign. The members of the FWA certainly didn’t think it was, voting him Footballer of the Year for the latter. David O’Leary, a composed sweeper whose emergence in 1975 plugged the gap left by McLintock’s departure two years earlier, never won such a high honour, but he did earn election to the PFA Team of the Year three times while spending twice as long as McLintock in the club’s colours. McLintock’s 440 games in nine years’ service are impressive, but O’Leary’s 722 games in eighteen make him the Arsenal’s record appearance-maker.

Either would have a very strong case for inclusion in this team, but both are left on the bench to make way for Tony Adams. Like Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, Adams was a mixture of the cultured and the coarse. Playing alongside O’Leary in George Graham’s team, he was a hard-tackling, hard-drinking, no-nonsense stopper whose drinking and driving conviction could have been considered a committed instance of method acting. Under the tutelage of Arsene Wenger, he overcame his drinking problems, in the process becoming an admirable example for his colleagues and another success story for his coach. Concomitantly, given a greater freedom of expression, he matured into a more cultured footballer capable of plays like this. He retired after winning his second double in 2002, having played in 674 first-class matches for Arsenal, second only to O’Leary. In those games, he had scored 49 goals, an excellent return for a defender. He had led the club to League championships in three different decades, becoming the most successful captain in its history. I’m too young to remember the other contenders for this spot, so availability bias may play a part here; but for me, he is exactly what this team needs. Although he usually played in a four-man defence, and sometimes even a five under George Graham, he showed that he could play well in a three under Bruce Rioch and in Arsene Wenger’s first season at Arsenal. In Terry Venables’ England team, he played the same part at Euro ’96, conceding only three goals in five games before the shoot-out exit in the semi-finals.

Martin Keown and Steve Bould, Adams’ frequent partners in central defence, are left out. Sol Campbell, an equally dominant defender who spent five years at Arsenal after transferring from Tottenham Hotspur in 2001, is disqualified by my one-team only rule.

6. Joe Mercer is an Everton legend, having played for them for fourteen years in the thirties and forties, winning a championship medal in 1939. But the last seven of those years, largely lost to the war, don’t count towards his statistics; and it was at Arsenal, whom he joined after League football resumed in 1946, that he had his greatest success – at club level, at least. As club captain, he led the team to two Division I championships and two FA Cup finals, beating Liverpool in 1950 and losing to Newcastle in ’52. He made 186 League appearances for the Toffees, but 247 for the Gunners. Although it was while an Everton player that he won his five international caps, Len Shackleton argued that it was in his Arsenal days that Mercer played the best football of his career. “When Joe Mercer discovered his legs would not allow him to run all over the field,” Shackleton explained, “when his physical condition hampered him, when he played almost entirely in his own half of the field, he was great. The service of wonderful passes that flowed from this spindly, bow-legged genius was, I am certain, fifty per cent of the reason for Arsenal’s post-war successes.”

The fifty per cent figure may be exaggerated, but there can be little doubt that he had a huge impact on the team. When he joined Arsenal in November 1946, they were at the bottom of the First Division. By the end of the following season, they were the League champions. In 1950, he won the FWA’s Footballer of the Year award to go with the FA Cup; and after a near-miss double in 1952, in which the Arsenal not only lost the Cup Final but lost their chance at the League on the last day, he and the team returned to win the League again in 1953. After an injury forced his retirement in 1954, Arsenal failed to win first-class honours for the next sixteen years.

Described by A.H. Fabian (1960) as “a five-eighth rather than a half back,” he is the ideal man to guard the space between the defensive and midfield players. A superb reader of the game, he will link the two, fulfilling a function similar to that of Sergio Busquets or Fernandinho. Wilf Copping, the more withdrawn wing-half in George Allison’s team of the late thirties, provides an alternative option. Honourable mentions go to Bob John of the Chapman years and Peter Simpson of Bertie Mee’s double team.

7. Right-wing is a tricky position. Perhaps partisans of the club feel differently, but for me no Arsenal outside-right stands out as an inner-circle all-time great. Look at the great Arsenal teams and the dazzlingly bright stars will almost always be found elsewhere, yet every one of these teams puts forth a good, if not a great, candidate. Limpar, Ljungberg, Roper, Rocastle…Liam Brady usually wore Number 7, but he rarely played on the wing and will be considered elsewhere. Look at the list again…Aha! For sheer longevity, one name stands out. George Armstrong could play on either wing, and his 607 appearances stand like a skyscraper above the rest. Ray Parlour, his closest competitor in that count, finished with fewer than 400, and he is definitely not the man we want here. Armstrong, a dribbling winger who survived the sixties and played well into the seventies, clearly knew how to adapt to change. If he could fit into a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 formation, he could surely fit into a W-M. He may not have been the star of the ’71 team, but he was voted the club’s player of the year the previous season, when they won the Fairs Cup; and in that double-winning campaign he certainly played his part. Nobody counted assists then, but he has been estimated retrospectively to have had a hand in more than half of the goals they scored. I think it’s fair to say he’ll do. He didn’t score a spectacular number of goals (68 in all first-class competitions), but he won’t have to. With Armstrong laying on chances, his fellow forwards can take care of that. His high work-rate would help the whole team play better, and his trickery on the right wing would provide a contrast to the more direct approach of the man on the opposite flank. Furthermore, Armstrong’s ability to play on either wing would add an air of unpredictability to the attack. If a greater goal-scoring threat is required, Joe Hulme can play in his stead.

8. Liam Brady wore Number 7 more frequently than Number 8 for the Arsenal, but he played more as an inside-forward than a wing-man - a fact which would be acknowledged in Italy, where he was given the Number 10 jersey. From his debut in 1973 to his departure in 1980, he was the creative hub of the Arsenal team, first keeping the club in the First Division, then inspiring an improved team to three consecutive FA Cup Finals in his last three seasons at the club. He was voted into the PFA’s Team of the Year in each of those seasons. Like Vieira, he beat Manchester United in a Cup Final, having a hand in all three of Arsenal’s goals in the 1979 final – a man-of-the-match performance that capped off in style a season in which his fellow professionals voted him their Player of the Year. Like Vieira, he made his last kick for Arsenal in a penalty shoot-out before departing for Juventus. Unlike Vieira, he missed it, and the European Cup Winners’ Cup was lost. It was a sad end to his time at the club, but he would always be remembered as one of Arsenal’s all-time greats. In 2006, he was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame, and as Arsenal moved into their new home at Ashburton Grove, Brady was one of 32 club heroes who were displayed on a mural on the walls of the stadium. Yet, when it comes to picking the inside-right for the all-time XI, even he is relegated to second place.

Has any single player had a greater impact on the Arsenal Football Club than Dennis Bergkamp? Only Charles Buchan (another inside-forward), who convinced Herbert Chapman to adopt the defensive centre-half, comes close in influence; and if Buchan and Chapman began Arsenal’s long tradition of dull, dirty, defence-first football, it was Bergkamp who began the process of remaking their reputation, rehabilitating not just Arsenal but arguably English football as a whole.

In 1995, English football was awakening as if from a nightmare. Graham Taylor’s national team had reaped the seeds sown by Charles Reep and Charles Hughes, failing to qualify for the World Cup after playing what may have been the ugliest football an England team had played since the head-down charging of the 1870s. Reep and Hughes, through the conscientious collection and the crude abuse of statistics, had concluded that long-ball “direct” football was the secret to success. Reep had worked with Taylor at Watford, and Hughes had become the FA’s coaching director. Their pseudo-scientific theories had, in the words of Brian Glanville, “poisoned the wells of English football,” and the pseudo-scientific strategies they espoused rendered redundant the concept of playing between the lines of defence, midfield and attack. Nick Hornby (1992), in his essay on Brady, described the typical English midfield of the era as “a sort of wall of muscle strung across the middle of the park in order to deflect the ball in the general direction of the forwards.” England had almost forgotten what classical inside-forward play was, and foreign footballers were needed to reacquaint her with the concept. Arsenal themselves, as Hornby noted, had not had a true playmaker since Brady left. Fortunately, following the formation of the Premier League, English football was flush with money to tempt them. Eric Cantona, exiled from French football, had helped the Uniteds of Leeds and Manchester to three championships in four years; and had he not been suspended for kicking a hooligan he might have had a fourth. Arsenal, in order to compete, wanted a playmaker of their own, and a Dutchman called Dennis stepped into the void. Bergkamp, bringing the best out of his colleagues, became the hub of the new Arsenal, the focus of an attractive, attack-minded team that piled up prizes and won praise wherever they went. They still had a nasty side, and Bergkamp himself wasn’t above getting his retaliation in first, but their free-flowing football earned the admiration of neutrals in a way their predecessors had not. As he grew older, Arsene Wenger used him more sparingly, relying more on younger forwards. In 2006, Wenger left him out of a European Champions’ League final that would have been his last game in first-class football. But by then his place in Arsenal history was assured, and his omission made him a Mosaic figure in the Arsenal story: he wouldn’t go to the promised land with them, but they would never have got there without him. In this team, in this league, he takes his rightful place as the advanced inside-forward, at the apex of the midfield and the base of the attack. He wore the Number 10 jersey, but it was to the right of his centre-forward that he formed his partnership with Freddie Ljungberg, and I’ve given him the inside-right’s Number 8. If he needs to be substituted near the end of the game, Brady can come in.

9. Less easy is the task of deciding whom to select at centre-forward. With honourable mentions for Jack Lambert, John Radford, Robin Van Persie and Alan Smith, the choice is whittled down to three men. Will it be Ted Drake, the battering-ram centre-forward who holds the club’s record for goals in a single season? Ian Wright, the penalty-box poacher who set the club’s all-time goal-scoring record? Or Thierry Henry, the wandering winger-cum-striker who broke it? Drake, who played under George Allison in the thirties, beats both of the others in goals-per-game, having scored 124 goals in 167 League games for the Gunners (including a club record seven in one game against Aston Villa in 1935), for an average of 0.743, rounded to 3 decimal places. Wright averaged 0.579 with 128 in 221. Henry’s 175 in 258 translate to an average of 0.678. That Drake’s raw totals are lower than those of Wright and Henry do not greatly count against him. Had his career in first-class football not been curtailed by World War II, it’s reasonable to assume that he would have played many more games and scored several more goals. However, there are two things that do.

First, when one considers substitutions, his advantage begins to narrow to negligibility. While playing for Arsenal, Wright spent 16,120 minutes on the pitch in Premier League games, scoring 104 goals. His best goal-scoring season, ’91-’92, was the last season before the Premier League was formed and therefore is not counted in those statistics. Assuming that he played every minute of each of his 30 League games for Arsenal that season, his 24 goals in those games give him a total of 128 in 18,820. His goal-scoring average thus increases to 0.612 per complete game. By the same measure, Henry’s average in Premier League games is 0.733, almost equal to Drake’s. Drake, who played before substitutions were permitted, gets no adjustment.

Second, Drake played in an era in which scoring goals was easier than it is today. 1934-’35, his first full season at Highbury, was the seventeenth-highest-scoring season in the history of English football. 2005-’06, Henry’s best goal-scoring season, was the sixth-lowest. In Drake’s record-breaking year, the First Division averaged 3.6299 goals per game, calculated to 4 decimal places. Drake’s 42 goals in 41 League games that season thus made him just over 6 times better than the average player at putting the ball in the net. To 4 decimal places, the ratio is 6.2086. In the 2005-’06 Premier League, the average game featured 2.4842 goals, making Henry’s 0.9094 goals per 90 minutes 8.0539 times better than average. I don’t know how many minutes Wright played in the ’91-’92 season but if one assumes, as above, that he played every minute of every match, one can compute an adjusted goal-scoring average of 6.9261. It looks as if, when one adjusts for the environment in which they played, Wright and Henry at their best were both better scorers than Drake was at his.

It’s close, but for verve, versatility and va va voom, it’s Henry who edges it. Wright may have been as good a goal-scorer as Henry, though I doubt it; but Henry, the star of the Invincibles, was so much more. Unavoidably, availability bias plays a part here for me. I can close my eyes and see Henry streaking away from the Real Madrid defence, whereas I’m (just) too young to remember Wright as anything but an analyst on television. But I think the record backs me up. Not only did Henry win the Premier League Golden Boot in four seasons of five between 2002 and 2006 (whereas Wright led the division in goals only once), but in the one year he didn’t he led the League in assists. Taking goals and assists together, in the fashion of ice hockey, he starts to look like the Premier League’s Wayne Gretzky. He led the league four years in a row from 2003-2006, and finished second in in each of the two seasons prior. In the middle of that span, he won the European Golden Shoe twice. Mere statistics, however, do not adequately convey his contributions, or express the experience of those who watched him play. The style in which he scored his goals was a wonder to behold; and his movement, wandering out to the left wing before cutting inside to pass or shoot, created plenty of space for his fellow forwards, or for advancing half-backs like Vieira, even when he did not touch the ball, and his partnership with Pires was particularly productive. Drifting out from centre-forward, Henry bamboozled the backs of opposing teams, giving his outside-left space to turn infield and score. That’s what I want him to do in this team, and he’ll have a Number 11 ideally suited to complement him. If a more straightforward sort of striker is required, the team can call on Wright or the battering ram Ted Drake.

10. But before we get there, let’s take a look at the man in between them, albeit somewhat further back. Alex James, the Paul Scholes of the inter-war period, went from being a goal-scoring inside-left at Second Division Preston (with 53 goals in 147 League games) to one who averaged about one in nine for the Arsenal (26 in 231). But don’t let his headline statistics fool you. At Arsenal, he played deeper, and it was his passes, laser-like long balls into the paths of the front-runners, that sent the other four forwards away on the counterattack. He didn’t need to score often, because his passes had been placed so perfectly that Bastin, Hulme, Jack and Lambert could complete the play on their own, getting their goals before James could join them up front. In short, if Joe Mercer was a five-eighth back, James was a quarter-back – and for American football fans, the comparison should be especially evocative, for in Herbert Chapman’s team he was the brains of the operation, spraying long passes over the top for his fellow forwards to chase. The formula worked wonders, yielding more than 100 League goals in a season three times in the eight years James spent with the Gunners. In ’30-’31, they scored 127, an average of more than three per game. The W-M was derided for being defensive, but no First Division team had scored at such a rate before, and none has since. (Aston Villa, who finished second in that season, scored one more goal but conceded 78 to Arsenal’s 59.)

James was criticised for a lack of pace, but Tommy Lawton (1955) argued that appearances were deceptive, saying that he had “seen the little Scot move at breakneck speed.” In any case, his close control allowed him to dribble his way out of trouble. “His greatest weapon was his ability to feint, either with his foot or with his head. I have seen him stand still, swaying like a snake under the influence of the charmer, and scatter experienced defenders this way and that.” With Vieira to his right, doing his dirty work for him in midfield, James can be left free to sit at deep inside-left and work his magic.

If he is injured or tired, he’ll have a ready replacement in George Graham, who played a James-like role in the ’71 team. George Eastham, his predecessor, was similar in style, but the statistics favour Graham. Eastham, most famous for forcing a transfer from Newcastle United and winning freedom of contract for footballers, played in 223 games for the Gunners between 1960 and 1966, scoring 41 goals. Graham, who joined the team almost at the same time Eastham left it, also spent six years in Arsenal’s team, scoring 77 goals. Graham, a Scot, won fewer caps for his country than the English Eastham did for his; but he also won three major honours with Arsenal, whereas Eastham won none. Initially signed as a centre-forward, he eventually found himself filling the hole left by Eastham. He later managed the club with as much success as he had played for it, becoming the only man to win the League with Arsenal in both roles. He has a case for managing the all-time team, but it’s as a player that he makes it in.

11. I promised an outside-left who could work well with Henry, coming inside to score as he moved to the wing. Robert Pires fulfilled that function expertly during their time together; but we’re not limited to reality here. Wing forwards cutting inside were a key feature of Champan’s W-M system, albeit one neglected by many mangers who tried to copy him, and Cliff Bastin did so to deadly effect. He pioneered the tactic, almost ubiquitous among modern wing-forwards, of positioning himself in the half-space, the better to run at defences. His left-wing partnership with Alex James was a great goal-producer: James provided the passes and Bastin provided the pace; and in this team, they’d do the same. I would expect him to work well with the other attackers in this team, too, given the chance. Exchanging positions and passes with Henry, keeping pace with Mr Va Va Voom? Running on to Bergkamp’s through passes? Following up Armstrong’s crosses at the far post? For the man they called “Boy,” this would be child’s play. Scouted and signed at seventeen years of age after playing for his hometown Exeter City, he slotted straight into the first team at Highbury and remained there throughout the thirties, making more than 35 appearances in nine consecutive seasons. An injury limited his involvement in the ’38-’39 season, and just as he was set to enter his prime World War II intervened. He served as an air-raid warden, stationed atop the stadium whose crowds he had delighted for a decade. The wartime games he played don’t count in the record books, and when first-class football resumed after the war his best days were behind him. He would play in only seven more games without scoring once. Nevertheless, his 178 first-class goals were an Arsenal record for almost sixty years. Had he not been halted so soon, that record would surely be his still.

With Henry or Armstrong capable of playing outside-left in Bastin’s absence, there is no need for another left-winger. Pires, Paul Merson, Marc Overmars, Graham Rix and Denis Compton will have to be disappointed. Instead, the twenty-fifth spot in the squad goes to Charlie George, the wild card in the pack. George wore Number 11 on several occasions, including the Cup Final of 1971, in which he scored the winner. However, it is his other numbers -6, 8, 9 and 10- that best express the midfield and centre-forward positions he played. Whatever one called him, he was the creative genius in the ’71 team, as hard to defend against as he was to classify.

So that’s the team, but which manager is to be trusted to get the best out of these players? Bertie Mee deserves a spot on the coaching staff, but this selection of players needs a man more attack-minded to oversee the operation. With Herbert Chapman busy managing Huddersfield, the job falls to Arsene Wenger.

Think my picks are wrong? Why not make up your own?

Next up: Aston Villa