Football: Typical George: smart but not flashy

Spurs begin to look like their manager's suits.ley

AS THE coach carrying Tottenham Hotspur's players rounded the final corner on the way to Highbury yesterday it was led by what looked suspiciously like a white charger. Considering the melodrama which surrounded the occasion this seemed routine stuff.

George Graham, once heroic player and manager with Arsenal, had simply decided to return to his former club leading his new one (their oldest and bitterest enemy) on an appropriate form of transport.

But as the procession grew nearer it became obvious that it was not George, and nor was the steed white. The rider was PC 870 of the Metropolitan Police Mounted Division and the charger was a grey horse, dappled at the back, called Trevor. The man of the moment had not, it turned out, ridden through the throngs waving to them but was on the coach with his team. As he stood up to alight, fans pressed close around the doors leading to Highbury's sanctum. Briefly a cry went up: "Judas, Judas, Judas." But it was desultory and served only to remind how thin is the dividing line between traitor and messiah.

George took no notice, merely smiled that wall to wall, cheek to cheek, smile and bounded up the steps to the marble halls like a fellow who had been that way 10,000 times before, which, as he played nearly 350 games for them and was then manager for another 500 or so, he probably had.

It was all surprisingly low key. There were no banners either welcoming him or spurning him. The chant which mattered, and few fans mustered enthusiasm for that, was "We've got Arsene Wenger", which perfectly illustrated the fickle way of sporting fans and the transitory nature of triumph.

The match did not go quite as expected but only in the sense that Graham did not, as is his wont during the first half of matches, take a seat in the directors' box. Several theories abounded about this, chief among them that he did not wish to be in close proximity to the Arsenal directors who fired him in February 1995 when he was being accused of having taken a bung of some half a million pounds.

But maybe it was simply because George felt he should be in the dug-out closer to his charges as they might need his succour and direction.

In every other way, the match went precisely as expected. Arsenal were all over Graham's Spurs like a cheap suit, you might have said, but the piece of cloth that Graham was wearing in the dug-out, eschewing an overcoat on a cold day, was as usual beautifully cut.

For most of the match George stood up inside the glass structure. When he ventured outside to issue directions with an outstretched arm, he put himself in full view of the Arsenal fans. At first this made little difference, but as the match wore on and Spurs held out it became a matter of immense irritation. They insulted him with more and louder Judas shouts and something more contemporary and also of two syllables.

But at the end, when all the Gunners' efforts had been in vain and Graham had acquired his seventh draw in 24 matches as a manager in this North London derby, the other six, of course, in charge of Arsenal, the other spectators had another focus for their ire.

"What a load of rubbish," they insisted in time-honoured fashion. And a chorus of "boring, boring Spurs" that was both reminiscent of the old days and completely inaccurate at the same time.

The crowd had seen a defence organised in the Graham way which the Wenger way could not break down. And when Trevor the grey horse came trotting down Avenell Road they should have known what was coming.