Sam Wallace is the first journalist I’ve come across who manages to deal with this whole Arsenal ‘hippy crack’ story with some notion of proportion.

1Talking sense

via The S*n

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Sam Wallace highlights how the ‘hippy crack’ party that was attended by a few Arsenal stars was nothing in comparison to what the team used to get up to under Tony Adams & co.

“Dipping into Tony Adams’ seminal autobiography Addicted, you can start to feel a little woozy just keeping up with the sheer volume of booze,” writes Wallace.

“After that championship-clinching win at Anfield in 1989 he and Steve Bould punched out the polystyrene ceiling in the away dressing room, drank or sprayed all the champagne Liverpool had kept chilled for themselves and headed back to the magnificently low-rent nightclub “Winners” in Southgate, north London. “I was an alcoholic in development,” wrote Adams. Fans threw cans of beer up to him on the victory parade bus.

tony adms addicted

“By comparison the Arsenal laughing gas party in August in Mayfair was tame. It was certainly more expensive in their Hanover Square VIP area than “Winners” – now sadly gone, it seems – but a lot less likely to develop any alcoholics. Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s greatest indulgence appears to have been a lollipop.

“Having seen so many fractured, uninterested Arsenal sides over the years, my first reaction was that it was good to see a side out bonding together. They probably drank less combined than some of the thirstiest members of that great 1980s team would manage individually.”

Sunday Telegraph, 9 December 2018
Sunday Telegraph, 9 December 2018

It’s a point I made on Saturday.

Here are a few others as we break down what is mostly just another hatchet job from the S*n. As Kevin Campbell put it:

https://twitter.com/1kevincampbell/status/1070961217777340416

Arsenal stars enjoyed hippy crack! It’s enough to start a scandal – if you try hard enough.

That’s what the S*n, who are the experts at this sort of thing, wants but in case you find yourself getting worked up over this nothing story, allow me to take a few minutes to highlight a few points that you might have missed….

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