Arsenal: the French Connection

How The Arsenal Became l’Arsenal by Fred Atkins

Review by Tony Attwood

If one describes a book as “strange” that is normally a preface to criticising the volume and suggesting that if only the publishers had asked this particular reviewer to write the book, a much better volume would have been produced.

But in calling “Arsenal – The French Connection” strange I don’t mean a criticism, it is more a feeling that yes this is a really good book to read but oh, how I wish that in certain parts there had been more.  But then of course maybe there will be a second volume on the way – which I guess is a compliment.

So my comment is not to say that as an author of books on Arsenal I could have done any better, I just wish that Fred Atkins had gone further, and further again.  And if he hasn’t I hope he considers it.

The book covers the French link with Arsenal from 1886 (the foundation of the club as Royal Arsenal) through to contemporary players like Koscielny, Squillaci and Coquelin.

As is my habit with non-fiction works these days, I flipped around in the book, rather than reading it in sequence.   There is for example a chapter which contained a fair amount on Herbert Chapman’s signing of Gerrit Keizer, a goalkeeper who played the first 12 games of the 1930/31 season and then never played for Arsenal again and that is where I started.

I was interested because last season I wrote an article in the Arsenal programme about this man and his strange life (only I spelled the name Keyser – maybe I was wrong) and I am currently working on a series on Chapman, and trying to understand his policy on goal keepers is getting close to keeping me awake at night.  It seems to have been the great man’s blind spot.

So I consider myself a bit of an expert on Keyser / Keizer, and I have to say the book covers his life well.    But with Remi Garde and Gilles Grimandi I wanted more – because I wanted to know about their work in football after Arsenal.

And although there is some, by and large it is not there, even though Grimandi writes the intro to the book.  But to be fair that is not what the book is about.  It is a record of French players in Arsenal colours, not a set of insights concerning the players themselves or their life outside Arsenal.

Actually that is not totally true because the Robert Pires chapter does take in his life beyond Arsenal, but it doesn’t bring to life Robert’s second book, which I believe is not yet available in English.  (I even had to text Walter from France, to get a translation of the title – which shows you where my linguistic skills are).

And I felt that Francis Coquelin could have got more inclusion too – I remember watching him in a knock about pre-season game in Austria, in the days when Mr Wenger was allowed to choose his own pre-season training without having to take the team off to Greenland or Fiji or where ever the money men dictate.   His (Coquelin’s not Wenger’s) gait was extraordinary, and his style was only just this side of eccentric – and yet it worked so well.  As I said at the time to anyone who would listen (which I think, beyond my cat, was no one) this guy is one that is really going to make it.

But we only get a little of Coquelin, and no real flavour of the young man and what the future might hold in store.

And yet, and yet, this is nevertheless a book to have. 23 French players are investigated at different levels.  From Cygan to Henry, from Pires to Diarra, from Sunu to Koscielny, they are all covered, and unless you really are involved in a detailed analysis of the French influence in Arsenal yourself, you are bound to find out a lot you didn’t know.

So Arsenal, the French Connection is now on my shelf along with about a dozen other books that I use as reference material as I write, and if you really want some interesting insights, and a record of the men who were part of the French Revolution at Arsenal, then here it is, all in one volume.

If you want to know how Remi Garde is doing in his job as manager at Lyon, then you will still have to drop over to the regular Arsenal History Blog, but if you want to know about Remi’s playing career and how he came to be the first signing of Arsene Wenger, then this is the volume you need.

I’d have written it differently – but then all authors say that.  That’s why by and large we are such a pain in the neck.

Arsenal – The French Connection by Fred Atkins is available from GCR Books Ltd at www.gcrbooks.co.uk

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