The Wenger years
A captain in full flight
Arsène Wenger's first Double ended with Tony Adams running through on goal and finishing like a striker. The red Nike shirt of 1997–98 was the costume for a revolution.
1997–98 · The JVC Years · 6 minute read
Arsène who?
When Arsène Wenger arrived in the autumn of 1996, much of English football did not know his name. Within two years he had changed what players ate, how they trained and how the team played. The red shirt with white sleeves stayed the same in outline, but the football inside it became quicker, more fluid and more continental. Dennis Bergkamp, already at the club, flourished. Marc Overmars and Emmanuel Petit arrived. Patrick Vieira ran midfield. Arsenal began to look less like the old fortress and more like a team that could score from anywhere.
The chase
For much of 1997–98 Manchester United looked likely to win the league. Arsenal trailed by a wide margin at one stage before a long winning run in the spring turned the season. Overmars's goal at Old Trafford in March is often remembered as the moment belief arrived. From then on Arsenal kept winning, and the title was decided at Highbury against Everton on 3 May 1998.
The goal everyone remembers
Arsenal were already comfortably ahead when Steve Bould, the old centre-back, lifted a pass over the top for his partner Tony Adams. Adams, the captain who had rebuilt his life during those years, ran on and lashed the ball in with his left foot. Then he stood still, arms outstretched, letting the noise wash over him. The image of him in that red shirt, mouth open, is one of the great Highbury photographs. It says something about Wenger's team that even its defenders were now scoring like forwards.
Wembley completes it
Two weeks later Arsenal beat Newcastle United 2–0 in the FA Cup final, with goals from Overmars and Nicolas Anelka. It was the club's second Double, twenty-seven years after the first. The cup final shirt was yellow, again, but the league had been won in red.
The collector's view
Shirts from this Nike period carry the JVC sponsor and a relatively generous cut typical of the late nineties. Name-and-number printing from the period used the Premier League lettering of the time, and that is worth checking carefully if you are buying a printed shirt: an Adams 6 should look like the 1990s, not a modern reprint. Our Printings page lists who wore which number that season.