He’s been dubbed “George Graham’s greatest mistake,” but the former Arsenal manager’s 1992 error of judgment over Andy Cole resulted in financial gain for Bristol City.
George Graham, the manager who brought the Football League Championship back to Arsenal for the first time in 18 years on an incredible night at Anfield in 1989, deserves a spot in the Gunners’ hall of Fame. However, this does not imply that he made every correct call, because in the case of one particular striker, he made several errors.
Andy Cole, born in Nottingham in 1971, earned a professional contract with Arsenal shortly after the 1989 title win, a year after joining their development program. He went on to make his League debut for them in December of that year, coming on as a substitute during a 4-1 victory over Sheffield United at Highbury.
However, Cole was unable to break into Arsenal’s first team. He only appeared once more for them, as a substitute in the 1991 Charity Shield against Spurs at Wembley, and was loaned out to Fulham for the first half of the 1991-92 season, where he scored three goals in 13 games in the Third Division (now League One) before returning to Highbury.
George Graham sold Andy Cole due to a notion of “arrogance”.
Cole was still considered excess to requirements by George Graham. After all, they had Ian Wright, Kevin Campbell, and Alan Smith at the time. So, in March 1992, the striker was loaned out to Bristol City, a second-tier club.
The Robins had been promoted back to Division Two the previous season and were striving to stay there, and Cole’s goals helped them do so. He scored eight goals in 12 games for them late in the season, and by the summer, Bristol City had seen enough of him to pay a then-club record fee of £500,000 to bring him to Ashton Gate.
Knowing where Cole’s career ended, it is evident that the decision to sell him was a tremendous mistake on the part of the then-Arsenal manager, and the player would subsequently describe how things went wrong for him at Highbury.
Cole said on The Overlap podcast in 2024 that Graham and other Arsenal backroom staff members refused to give him opportunities because they thought he was too arrogant. “I wouldn’t say I was lazy,” he responded. “I believe they did not have much respect for the younger generation in general back then. They’d just like to mug you off.
“It’s just the way people would disregard you,” he added. “Their opinion was that you’re not working hard enough, or ‘he’s arrogant, he’s got an attitude,’ and so on. It’s not as if they want to get to know the person; it’s just that the perception is ‘this is what we think’.”
Andy Cole went on to achieve nearly inconceivable success with Manchester United.
Andy Cole went on to show Arsenal what they were missing the next season. He scored Bristol City’s third goal in a 3-3 draw against Portsmouth on the first day of the season, and then scored their second in a 3-0 triumph over Luton Town in their second match.
Despite the fact that Bristol City remained in what was then known as Division One – now the Championship – Cole continued to score, including a run of six consecutive league goals between the middle of October and the middle of November.
This was still before the transfer window, and by the following spring, Cole’s form had piqued the interest of larger clubs. In March 1993, just before the transfer deadline, he was moved to Newcastle United for £1.75 million, a record for both clubs at the time.
He would pay back his transfer fee practically instantly. Newcastle were in a three-way competition with West Ham United and Portsmouth for a lucrative Premier League spot, and Cole scored 12 goals in 12 games as Kevin Keegan’s squad won the title.
Cole continued his hot streak the next season, scoring 34 goals in 40 appearances, setting a Premier League goal-scoring record that stood until Erling Haaland of Manchester City broke it with 36 in 2022-23. Newcastle concluded the season in third place on the table. On the final day of the 1993-94 season, Cole scored the first goal in Newcastle’s 2-0 victory over Arsenal, the team that let him go. The Gunners finished one spot behind Newcastle that season.
Records continued to fall the next season. Manchester United stunned football in January 1995 by spending a UK transfer record sum of £7 million to sign Andy Cole to Old Trafford. Cole became the first player to score five goals in a Premier League match less than two months after joining United, as the club defeated Ipswich Town 9-0.
Cole went on to achieve almost inconceivable success at Manchester United, creating a lethal strike partnership with Dwight Yorke and winning the Premier League six times, the FA Cup twice, and the Champions League before leaving for Blackburn Rovers at the end of 2001.
He went on to play for Fulham, Manchester City, Portsmouth, Birmingham City, Sunderland, and Burnley before retiring in 2008 from Nottingham Forest, his hometown club. He was inducted into the Premier League Hall of Fame in 2024.
Cole scored 187 Premier League goals in total, ranking fifth on the all-time goalscorers list. The only aspect of his playing career that was not successful was with the England national team, where he earned only 15 caps and scored once.
Arsenal would go on to achieve glory with the arrival of Arsene Wenger in 1996, but the first half of the 1990s were relatively quiet for the club. They won the League for the second time in three years in 1991 and the FA Cup in 1993, but it wasn’t until Wenger’s arrival and rebuilding that Arsenal became the Premier League’s dominant team alongside Manchester United until the mid-2000s.
George Graham was fired by them less than a fortnight after Andy Cole made his record-breaking move from Newcastle to Manchester United, a move that would help limit Wenger’s team’s trophy haul later in the decade.
Selling such a player to an EFL team for half a million pounds may have been a club record for Bristol City, but they more than tripled their money by selling him to Newcastle, and Arsenal may always regret letting such a great player go for what was a very little sum of money. He might have been “George Graham’s greatest mistake.”
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