Bernard Dowling and Tony Porter 
Ed’s Note - The current issue of The Gooner features a free 2014 ‘Wow Signings’ calendar. For balance, the issue itself carries a feature in which various contributors have named ‘A Signing That Made Me Groan’. There are a couple over which we are running here today. One because the writer sent in two different entries, and the other because the writer did not stick to the script and wrote about a player that signed for another club from Arsenal! Still, in the name of efficiency, nothing is wasted. More significantly, it’s a plug for issue 239 of The Gooner – and tomorrow v Spurs is the final home game at which this will be available from our street sellers. They have got very wet at the last two matches, so we are hoping it dries up a bit tomorrow for their sake as well as sales. Please support The Gooner by buying a copy if you have not yet done so. Next issue will be out v Fulham on January 18th.
John Hawley (by Bernard Dowling)
Hawley, a lanky striker of over six foot, joined Arsenal in September 1981 for £50,000 from Sunderland. Before Sunderland he’d played for Leeds United and Hull City. Whilst Hull weren’t a top division team in those days I’d seen enough of Hawley at Sunderland and Leeds to convince me we were buying the proverbial ‘donkey’. £50,000 wasn’t a big transfer fee even back then. Yet Sunderland must have been thrilled to get it when our manager at the time, Terry Neill, decided to pay them that amount.
He played only 21 first team games for Arsenal (21 too many in my view), fifteen of which were starts. He scored three goals; one against each of Notts County, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton. Whilst with us Hawley had a couple of loan spells at Leyton Orient and his first professional club Hull before Arsenal released him on a free transfer at the end of the 1982/83 season. He then signed for Bradford City, staying there for a couple of years before going to Scunthorpe United where he spent the last year of his playing career before retiring from the game.
I saw Hawley interviewed after his retirement. He admitted to never being good enough to play for Arsenal but couldn’t turn down the chance of joining a club of that stature. I considered this a reasonable attitude for him to take as his spell at Scunthorpe undoubtedly would’ve seen him playing at a level more akin to his abilities.
Paul Merson (by Tony Porter)
I was most unhappy when Paul Merson signed for Middlesbrough. Merson: whose debut I’d watched; who established himself with his gap-toothed smile in our team; whose sublime chip was Arsenal’s sixth in a 7-1 thrashing of Sheffield Wednesday; whose swerving shot helped win us the 1993 League Cup final against the same team… Merson was going to be sold?
It’s the only time I’ve written to Arsène Wenger. I said that this was a player, Arsenal-through-and-through, who was being sent to distant parts to work for a (then) inexperienced manager. Mr Wenger replied, which doesn’t always happen when one writes to a senior official in a business. He tried to reassure me that the deal was a good one for the player and for the club. He suggested that a fresh start was what Paul Merson needed and predicted a happy future for him.
Of course, despite the courtesy, I do not know the reality of the transfer, but I think what followed suggests I was right and the manager was wrong, certainly if what is written in “How Not to Be a Professional Footballer” is to be believed. Merson reckons he literally nearly died through Middlesbrough’s arrangement for him to share a house with Paul Gascoigne! His career as a player did not move upwards after leaving us. What remains of course is his undying love for our club, and he’s not a bad pundit either.
If you are not going to the game tomorrow, issue 239 of The Gooner can also be bought online here.
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