While most football glory rests primarily with strikers or midfielders, every club’s history includes legendary defenders whose names are almost sacred to fans. Of course, there are such players in Arsenal’s 130-plus year history.
Leave aside the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries for now. Still, that leaves us with a long 100 years to focus on, and we have attempted to find the top ten defenders who have worn the London club’s jersey with the cannon in their emblem during that period.
If the footballer in question continued to play after 2000, it was essential to us that the more significant part of his career fell within the last century. You will find these memorable players in the following chapters.
Bob McNab (1966 – 1975)
Bob McNab went on to play 365 games in an Arsenal jersey over nine seasons. He arrived at the London club in 1966 from Huddersfield and soon became an important part of the team. He also appeared four times for the England national team.
He was banned from the club in 1975 at the age of 32 as an unprofitable player. He went free to Wolverhampton, where he then headed for a short stint in the United States, playing for the San Antonio Thunder.
Herbie Roberts (1926-1937)
Herbie Roberts played 335 games in eleven seasons at Arsenal, in which he scored five goals. He signed a professional contract for £200 in 1926 but played only a handful of games during his first two years at the club. However, in later years the incisive stopper became an indispensable part of the team.
A broken leg ended his playing career in 1937. He did not say goodbye to football. He served as coach of Arsenal’s reserve team. At the Second World War outbreak, he joined the army and was killed on 19 June 1944. He is the most famous of the club’s nine players who died in the war.
Sammy Nelson (1966-1981)
On the exact day he turned seventeen, Sammy Nelson signed for Arsenal. He initially played on the wing but later moved to the left side of the defence. As well as fifteen seasons at Highbury, he played twelve years with the Northern Ireland national team, amassing 51 starts. He played 339 games for Arsenal, scoring 12 goals.
However, more famous than his footballing skills was one particular moment when Nelson pulled down his shorts and stuck his bare bottom out to the packed stands. The spectators laughed, but members of the English Football Association didn’t find it very funny, so he was banned from playing for two weeks. After leaving Arsenal, he stayed at Brighton for two more seasons, where he also coached for a while, but finally said goodbye to football and threw himself into the insurance business.
Steve Bould (1988 – 1999)
Eleven years, 372 games – this is Steve Bould’s record at Arsenal. A Stoke City alumnus, Bould earned a reputation as one of the best defenders in the second division at his hometown club in his youth, and it was clear that he would not escape the attention of the rich squads in the top flight. Everton and Arsenal fought for his signature, Bould finally opted for the Gunners, where he transferred for £390,000.
In his debut season, Bould helped Arsenal win the championship. He repeated the feeling of winning the English league twice more. He has also won the FA Cup twice, the League Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup once.
In 1999 he left Bould for Highbury and spent his career’s last season at Sunderland. Since 2001 he has worked at Arsenal again, this time in the youth teams, becoming an assistant coach to Arsene Wenger in 2013 and now working as head coach of the Under-23 team.
Peter Storey (1961 – 1977)
Peter Storey appeared in 501 games for Arsenal over sixteen seasons. He was at the club from the age of sixteen and made his first-team debut in October 1965 when he was twenty, immediately securing a permanent place in the starting lineup.
Storey was renowned for his toughness and stubbornness. He also appeared in 19 matches with the England national team. When in 1977 he lost his place in the starting lineup under new coach Terry Neill, he left for Fulham for ten thousand pounds, spent one more season there and then quit football.
Nigel Winterburn (1987-2000)
In thirteen seasons, Nigel Winterburn played 584 games in an Arsenal jersey. He started out at Birmingham, from where he moved to Oxford and headed to Wimbledon in 1983. He was promoted to the top flight with the team in 1986. He was voted Player of the Year by the fans in each of his four seasons with the club.
Arsenal acquired Winterburn for £350,000 in the summer of 1987. The club never regretted it, as the dependable left-back was a crucial figure in a team that collected several valuable trophies. He left the club in 2000 and headed to West Ham for £250,000, where he would spend the last three seasons of his active playing career.
Eddie Hapgood (1927-1945)
Eddie Hapgood, a milkman by civilian occupation, began his football career in 1920 with an amateur team. He signed a professional contract with Arsenal seven years later for £950. Being a vegetarian, he became so thin and frail that the coach at the time, tom Whittaker, forced him to eat heaps of meat and instructed him in strength training.
He didn’t get many starts at first, but from 1929 he was a regular in the starting lineup. The contemporary press described him as an intelligent and discreet defender; thanks to these qualities, he made the England national team, where he played 30 matches. In most of these, he was captain, including a memorable match against Italy in November 1934, which was played at Highbury Stadium.
Italy arrived in London as fresh world champions. England did not take part in the championship at the time, so the clash was considered a “real World Cup match.” Spectators saw a fight full of vicious fouls in which many players suffered injuries, including Hagood, whose nose was broken. In the end, it was England who defeated the Italians, who played the rest of the match with ten men, 3-2.
When England played a match against Germany in Berlin before the war, Hapgood and the whole team, pressured by British diplomats, had to greet the stands with the Nazi salute before the game. The Island team then blasted the Germans 6-3.
After the war broke out, Hapgood served in the Royal Air Force while continuing to play for Arsenal. Eventually, he played 440 games for the club, in which he scored two goals. In 1945, he wrote his autobiography, one of the first footballers to do so. He passed away a poor man in 1973, aged 64.
Martin Keown (1981 – 2004)
Martin Keown joined Arsenal as a 15-year-old youngster in 1981. Although he left for Aston Villa for £200,000 as an “unprospect” five years later, he returned to the club via Everton. From 1993 to 2004, he was a mainstay of the Gunners.
He was also indispensable to the England national team, playing 43 games and scoring two goals. He did considerably more at Arsenal. By the time he parted company, he had 449 games played and had three English titles, three FA Cup trophies and a Cup Winners’ Cup victory to his name.
Tony Adams (1983 – 2002)
Tony Adams signed for Arsenal at the age of fourteen and made his first-team debut in 1983, just three weeks after celebrating his seventeenth birthday. He was given more and more opportunities in the following seasons, and by 1986 he was already a key player in the team. He became captain of the team in 1988 and remained captain until the last game he played fourteen years later in 2002.
He enjoyed a golden era at Arsenal, during which time he won four league titles, along with three FA Cup trophies and a Cup Winners’ Cup victory. However, ,he had a skeleton in his closet in the form of an alcohol habit all this time. This is why the tabloids were often filled with stories of his nightclub excesses, and reports of cars crashed while drunk. Four months he even spent in prison. He underwent successful treatment in 1996 and described his struggle with alcohol in his autobiography.
Adams is still the only player in the history of English football to win titles in three different decades as captain. It’s no coincidence that he earned the nickname “Mr Arsenal.” In 2004, he was invited into the English Football Hall of Fame.
Lee Dixon (1988 – 2002)
Lee Dixon played 619 games in a Gunners jersey over a period of 14 years. While still playing for Stoke City in the mid-1980s, Dixon’s performances caught the attention of Arsenal scouts enough for the club to sign the right-back. In the following years, he became the mainstay of the backline. He contributed greatly to the success the Gunners achieved in the 1990s.
Together with Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Nigel Winterburn and Steve Bould, they arguably formed the best defensive line in the world in their era. “As individuals, we were certainly not the best players in the world, but everyone’s shortcomings were offset by the strengths of the others. If one wasn’t doing well, others were playing for him,” Dixon, who has in his display case four gold medals for winning the English League, three in the FA Cup, two for the League Cup and one for winning the Cup Winners’ Cup, once said.
