Which was the first match that you ever saw live?
It was a cup game against Birmingham City. My dad’s attitude was, ‘This is our local team and this is the team you’re going to support’. It came with a sense of value. You’d get to meet the players in the area where we lived – they were just like locals to us – and that was the environment I grew up in. My head is still in that place watching them today. It was in the Arsenal pubs where you learned manners – in culture you need rules, and when you disobey them you kill the culture. I’d be squeezing out electric soup [cheap home-made booze]
