Peter Le Beau
(Ed’s note – To mark the passing of the former Arsenal player, coach and manager Don Howe, we are re-publishing a piece on the great man that first appeared in issue 151 of The Gooner back in late 2004)
I recently realised that I had become the sort of old codger that I used to talk to when I first went to Highbury. Old codgers have a purpose, you know, beyond trying to get people to sit down in the North Bank Upper. I see looks of despair come across the faces of some of my more wizened colleagues as they wrestle with astonishment that anyone would spontaneously rise to their feet after Thierry Henry has just beaten eight men on a mazy 50-yard run and slipped the ball into the corner. You see them mouthing to each other “Young lads nowadays - no self-control!”
Well, I am still young enough myself to get excited but old enough to have seen a lot of history at Highbury. That is what old codgers do. They pass on myths, legends and dreams from one generation to the other. Their excitement comes in recounting the deeds of the “Double” side in ’71 (if you saw them play you’re officially a codger), Sunderland’s winner in 1979, Mickey Thomas FIFTEEN years ago now (would you believe it?) and all sorts of great moments like Tony Adams scoring against Everton and Limpar chipping the Liverpool goalkeeper from the halfway line. We, the next generation of codgers, will be just as irritating and captivating as the ones who used to tell me about Alex James, Cliff Bastin, Jimmy Logie and Ted Drake. Boy have we got a story to tell.
I want to revert to codger-mode to pay tribute to one of the most important men in Arsenal’s history - and that’s not a term I use lightly. His name is Don Howe and he first joined the club in 1964. He was a top international full-back but I remember him for gifting a high-flying Chelsea team a goal at Highbury with an incredibly unnecessary overhead kick (believe me, you had to be there) then breaking his leg in an awful game against Blackpool.
He never played again but was in pole position to take over as Arsenal coach when Dave Sexton went off to coach Chelsea. Frank McLintock and George Graham both told me how sad they were when Sexton left, but they were also full of praise for Howe and his methods and tactical awareness. I suspect that most of the first “Double’ team really regard Don Howe, not Bertie Mee as the architect of their success. In an era when football was bone-crunchingly hard (watch Bremner, Hunter and Giles in the Leeds team of that era if you want confirmation), Howe made Arsenal as tough and resilient as anybody. That Arsenal didn’t go on to greater things with that team was almost certainly because Howe left to manage his original club, West Bromwich Albion. West Brom were a big team then but, unfortunately for Don, he found out for the first but not the last time, that he was a much better coach than manager.
He reappeared on the Highbury scene in 1977 after spells in Turkey and at Leeds. He was again probably the man we should really be thanking for the success we had then. Terry Neill was the frontman, but everybody knew who drove Arsenal to four Cup Finals in three years. He was to relinquish coaching to go into management again but this time it was at ArsenaL. He was never as good at this part of the job, but I do remember some great football played for a brief period with Nicholas, Woodcock and Mariner in the side. It seems crazy now but he resigned on a point of principle at a time when Arsenal had a theoretical chance of the title, because news leaked out that Arsenal had approached Terry Venables. Don, always a man of integrity, told Peter Hill-Wood very publicly where to shove his job and continued successfully coaching England and, among others, Wimbledon when they won the cup in 1988. As this last reference proves, not all Don’s teams played great football - but if he had great players, he was able to make them play far more entertainingly than history would have you believe.
His final incarnation as a Highbury employee was as Head Coach of the youth teams who won back-to-back FA Youth Cups. Ironically, no players from those teams look as if they will make it at Highbury but this was probably why Liam Brady (another player who had benefited greatly under his coaching) brought him back. He was someone whose teams were often greater than the sum of the parts. He retired a couple of years back - I think he has a history of heart trouble. This was never a problem the teams he coached ever had.
So why, apart from a degree of success, was Howe so important? I think the penny dropped for me and for several others that famous night in May 1970 when we defeated Anderlecht at Highbury (beware codger-moment coming on). Everybody knows the story; 3-1 down, outclassed in the first leg, we still found a way to win our first trophy in 17 years. I suspect the motivational powers of Don Howe were very much behind that glorious recovery. They reversed a period when Arsenal felt they couldn’t win trophies again (they had lost agonisingly to Swindon at Wembley the year before and against Leeds the year before that). From those foundations came the Double triumph but more than that there came the feeling that it wasn’t possible to beat Arsenal just by being better. You had to have a belief that superseded theirs - and that was close to impossible.
Labels - sometimes silly - get attached to teams. Spurs have a tradition for classy football when many of its sides over the past thirty years have played anything but. Even Arsenal’s greatest detractors have to admit that Arsenal sides muster a great spirit. I contend that the man who forged that spirit was Don Howe. He lit a bonfire under George Graham which turned a dilettante man-about-town (“Stroller”) into one of the most driven competitors in football. Anyone in Copenhagen in 1994 knows all about how a patently inferior team can overcome a better one almost by sheer will. Until recent times, what has often differentiated Arsenal teams from the rest was the depth of their team spirit. Examine the evidence of most of our triumphs and this is the case.
If you remember the club that Don Howe joined forty years ago, that manifestly wasn’t the case. We were a soft-centred team with class but little substance. He played a huge part in changing that culture, moulding some of the most important people in the history of the club - McLintock, Adams, Rice, Brady, O’Leary, Armstrong and Graham, Highbury legends all, but no more so than the man from the Black Country - Don Howe. Codgers everywhere salute you, Don!
