‘I was 19 getting annoyed with Charlie Nicholas for changing into leather trousers on the team bus home – I should have been wondering where I could get a pair of leather trousers from!’ Martin Keown on standing up to Arsenal’s famous drinking culture

Martin Keown has revealed that some sage advice his father gave him on the eve of his move to London, to begin a football apprenticeship with Arsenal in 1984, saved him from the pitfalls of the club’s drinking culture.

Arsenal enjoyed significant success in the late 80s and early 90s, but their work-hard-play-hard attitude during this era is famous. Perhaps Keown’s father was aware of this.

“My dad sat me down before I went to London and told me in no uncertain terms not to waste the opportunity,” Keown explains, speaking exclusively to FourFourTwo. “The message was to steer clear of alcohol and gambling. I found it easy to avoid both.

‘I lost respect for certain players’

“I’d gone to the club to give my absolute best, and when I saw people drinking excessively I lost some respect for them. I was very much in the minority at Arsenal.”

Keown cites one example being the time he watched a fellow apprentice lose big money in the Arsenal card school. Keown pulled him up on it.

“He said, “It’s money well spent” because he was getting in with the seniors. I lost a lot of respect for him. That’s judgemental of me, but I didn’t like that mindset.”

Incredibly, Keown recalls sitting in front of then-manager George Graham – not one of the most approachable bosses of the time – and telling him that the culture at the club needed to change.

“It’s funny looking back on it now,” admits Keown. “I was this young pro of 19, getting annoyed with Charlie Nicholas for changing into his leather trousers on the bus home, while all of us had to make a detour into the West End so we could drop him off at a nightclub.

“Are you taking the piss? I was a teenager – I should have been wondering where I could get a pair of leather trousers from, and if I could get into the club!”

Regrettably, some of Keown’s Arsenal teammates didn’t share his attitude and ran into serious personal issues that were aggravated by the culture at the club. Tony Adams, ranked at No.8 in FourFourTwo's list of the best Premier League defenders of all time, crashed his car and was sentenced to four months in prison for being four times over the legal limit.

Paul Merson was forced to put his promising career on hold in 1994 when he admitted addictions to alcohol, cocaine and gambling. After a three-month rehabilitation programme he returned to football and enjoyed a successful career, but gambling problems remained a large part of his life in the decade that followed.

Adams recovered and in 2000 founded the Sporting Chance Clinic, a charitable foundation that treats sports men and women suffering from addiction. Keown recalls the former England and Arsenal captain speaking in admiration of Keown’s principles at the time.

“Tony Adams later said that he admired me and how I stood up to the culture at the club, and that he wished they’d all had the same principles as mine. Looking back, maybe I got too emotional about it, but that was just me. It all came from my dad.”