Interview: I'm ready for top challenge, says the man who'd love to be managing Arsenal again

Today's capital derby will evoke treasured yet tainted memories for an old general of both camps. Nick Townsend talks to George Graham

For George Graham, there is no escaping the intrusion of Arsenal into his life. The past, both the glory and the grief, will never leave him. It is part of his psyche. But he cannot even escape the present. In the café (well, we say café, but in the chic north London quarter the speciality is not so much double egg and chips but lamb with courgettes on a tarragon jus), a 10-minute stroll from his Hampstead home, where he can occasionally be found lunching and is doing so on this particular day, he regularly comes across members of today's Highbury Hill mob. Players like Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, who are domiciled in the area, are also customers. "Always very polite," he says of the pair. Not that one would assume any differently.

You wonder what the Frenchmen would have made of him as a manger. It would certainly be an intriguing cross-pollenation of eras, bringing together a coach who moulded arguably the most resourceful defence of them all, and a team who are one of Europe's finest going forward.

It is nearly eight years now since that accursed day, 21 February 1995, when the Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood called him into his office and, during a two-and-a-half minute conversation which preceded by a few hours the Premier League inquiry report into his transfer dealings, relieved him of his duties and asked him to leave the premises.

Since then the Scot has undergone the gamut of experiences at Leeds United and Tottenham, but his affinity with the Gunners remains as profound as his appreciation of the squad Arsène Wenger has assembled. You ask him whether he would have fancied handling this present side? "Oh, yes," Graham nods, without hesitation, and proceeds to verbally tick them off, though with just a hint of criticism thrown in. Once a manager, always the severest of judges.

"Dennis Bergkamp, he's got a wonderful football brain and Patrick Vieira for his Roy Keane-type of play. He's a natural winner. Henry on his day is magic, a special player." Graham pauses. You sensed the litany of praise couldn't last. "I just wish when he doesn't have a good day that he'd still contribute. After some games, you'll say 'was he there?' [Ruud] Van Nistelrooy, even when he has a bad game, he can still make a big contribution."

Maybe, you suggest, Arsenal of 2002 could benefit from some of the Graham pragmatism, circa 1989, Wenger's men having been defeated in four matches out of the last eight in the League and Manchester United having exposed a definite vulnerability last Saturday. Arsenal looked at times like Wenger had over-inflated their egos. Today, Arsenal travel the two miles or so down Seven Sisters Road to their avowed north London rivals. Neighbourliness will be as strained as that reported between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Sol Campbell will, no doubt, be received with the due reverence reflecting his decade at Tottenham. Or he may not.

Graham is regarded as a somewhat tainted if valuable museum piece by many at Highbury and down the Lane as an item most were only too happy to reject as inauthentic Tottenham work despite winning a League Cup and entry into Europe. Today he will be just a paid and very interested bystander at the contretemps, as he offers his views as a pundit on BSkyB's pay-per-view channel, Premiership Plus.

"You'd never, ever, criticise Arsenal because the football they play going forward is scintillating, really top class," says Graham. "You don't want to stop them doing that. But there's a thin line between super-confidence and arrogance. I think a few players, especially at Arsenal, have been bordering on that arrogance."

So what would you do in such circumstances? "Just tighten the rope," he says, gesturing with his hands, as he adopts that knowing smile. "But you've got to be careful. When you're coaching world-class players with the technique they have, you've maybe got to put up with it in certain games. You don't mind that. It's when it starts to become a habit."

It is the present rearguard that most offers cause for concern, particularly in comparison with Graham's quartet – Dixon, Adams, Bould and Winterburn – which acquired an almost legendary status. Adams & Co were partly responsible for what became simultaneously a fans' mantra and a critics' sneer: one-nil to the Arsenal.

Whether Wenger's defence is quite equipped to secure Arsenal a domestic and European double he so craves is open to doubt at present. Graham opines: "At the moment I believe Arsenal need Martin Keown to give them that toughness and Sol [Campbell] would probably prefer him alongside. The jury's still out on [Pascal] Cygan. He's 28, and the first question I would ask is, 'Where has he been?' As for Sol, I think he's a great individual defender, but whether he can dominate a back four the way [Tony] Adams and [Steve] Bould did for me is another matter."

From a Tottenham perspective, Graham sees no likelihood that they will emulate their nearest rivals in the near future, in success or in the style that epitomised the Bill Nicholson sides. "You've got to remember that his was the team in the country," says Graham. "Yes, if Tottenham had a side like that again they could possibly produce the football that Arsenal are playing. But they have to get that team first. Now, whoever is the manager, whether it was me, or Glenn, just cannot pick world-class players out of thin air."

He adds: "Wenger's worked hard on it to get his players; he's landed world-class performers. I don't know that Tottenham have got any. There have been some. Teddy [Sheringham] has been a special player, but he's coming to the end of his career now, and little [Robbie] Keane is very exciting, but Spurs' biggest problem is going to be this next year because how do you replace influential players like Teddy, Les [Ferdinand] and [Gus] Poyet?" He stops for effect. "It's going to be hard. I was sacked for saying that we needed five players, and the situation is still the same."

After Graham's year-long ban, following the "bung" inquiry, he re-established Leeds as a potent force. While doing so, he was mentor to his former player David O'Leary, and the Irishman succeeded him when Graham moved to Tottenham. The Leeds connection remains, with Terry Venables, one of Graham's closest friends – and with whom the Scot began his coaching career at Crystal Palace – now in charge.

Well, when we last heard. Defeat by Bolton tomorrow night would further inflame the passions at a decidedly unfestive Elland Road, though any rational arbiter would contend that it was an absurdly premature reaction. "Of course it is," says Graham. "First of all he [Venables] would not have known the problems on and off the pitch when he took the job, and obviously with some of the performances there's a lot more problems there than anybody knows, some deep-rooted I would think. It doesn't matter who the manager is."

But will Venables ever cut it as an adopted son of Yorkshire? There is a parallel here with Graham's experiences at Tottenham. "I look at a lot of Italian football and over there coaching is like a merry-go-round," says Graham. "Take [Sven Goran] Eriksson. He's coached the two major clubs in Rome, Roma and Lazio. There wasn't the great hou-ha about that as there was here when I took over Tottenham. I still can't figure it out. Are we more passionate than the Italians? I don't think so.

"If you're on the road to failure, they'll come up with all these reasons. 'Oh, he's ex-Arsenal. Oh, he's a cockney [in Venables' case]'. If you're successful who cares what you are. Whether it was Glenn Hoddle, an ex-favourite, or me, who's Scottish and ex-Arsenal, at Tottenham was immaterial. I just don't understand that thinking."

Today, there are a few supporters who will go to extreme lengths to force their views on a club's manager and board. Graham's son Daniel was beaten up. "Families probably suffer more than the actual person themselves," says Graham. "I took a bit of stick at Tottenham," he says, adding quietly: "Hmm just a bit. But it's part of the job. If you don't like it, don't do it.

"Society's more demanding. Years ago, the clubs would decide things and the fans would accept it. Fans don't any more. They're getting a platform, whether it's TV or radio, to voice their opinions. The clubs may not like those opinions, but they're having to take them on board."

There is still a residue of bitterness about his dismissal by Tottenham – "it was hurtful, very, very hurtful," Graham says. "The manner in which it was done was wrong" – yet, here, more than 18 months later, it is slightly surprising to find him still an unemployed football manager. Graham has been approached by clubs both here and abroad, but maintains: "I don't think I want to start at the bottom again. I've done that. I want to take over something that whets my appetite, where I'm thinking, 'Right, if I can get that right there, hey, we could really do something'. The question is: where is one with those possibilities?"

Looking fit (he works out three times a week and plays tennis regularly) and primed to return to the fray, he insists that he will travel anywhere for the right job. For a man who was renowned for his extraordinarily high success to value-for-money quotient when it came to acquisitions, he would relish the kind of budget that some managers and coaches, here and abroad, have enjoyed in recent years. "When I was at Leeds the budget was very small. In many ways it backfired on me, this reputation I had. Everybody wanted a Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for £1.6m. Chairmen thought, 'We can get success on the cheap, let's get after him'. In two and half years' there, I think I spent roughly £14m on 10 players."

Yet, there are sceptics who submit that, Graham, who has just turned 58, is yesterday's man; that he and others of that generation lack modern ideas, lack hunger. "A myth," he snorts, pointing to Bobby Robson, who is approaching 70. "The ingredients needed to be a success nowadays are not much different from 20 or 30 years ago. All my teams have always had hunger."

Still, the perception now is that top managers will emerge from a younger brigade. Like his former captain Tony Adams, who some regard as a natural successor to Wenger. "At the present time I don't think so," says the man from Bargeddie. "Tony's taking a degree, studying hard. He's not even been back to Highbury, I don't think."

Graham adds: "You just never know. When I was a player with Frank McLintock, everybody thought he was the next great manager because he was such a leader on the pitch. But I always equate it with the army. You get the generals who actually take them into battle and the field marshals sitting at the back there, reading the maps. It's not necessarily the great captains who make the good managers. Look at me. Jesus, I couldn't run. I just told everybody I used to think quickly."

He's still doing it, to the advantage of a television station's audience. He's good at it, too. But not half as decent as he was as a manager.

Biography

George Graham

Born: 30 November 1944, in Bargeddie, Scotland.

Playing career: 1962-64 Aston Villa (eight apps, two goals); 1964-66 Chelsea (73, 35); 1966-72 (Arsenal (229, 60); 1972-74 Man United (43, 2); 1974-76 Portsmouth (61, 5); 1976-77 Crystal Palace (44, 2). Scotland (13, 3).

As a manager: 1982-86 Millwall; 1986-95 Arsenal; 1996-98 Leeds United; 1998-2001 Tottenham.

Management honours: 1985: Earned Third Division promotion (Millwall). League Cup: 1987, '93 (Arsenal), 1999 (Tottenham). League: 1991 (Arsenal). FA Cup: 1993 (Arsenal). European Cup-Winners' Cup: 1994 (Arsenal).