Mr Arsenal battled back from a drinking hell that landed him in prison to cement his name as one of the finest defenders of his generation
FORMER Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger once described Tony Adams as "a professor of defence".
And he was right.
As the captain of Arsenal in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Adams had a pivotal role at the heart of their legendary back four.
He helped steer the club to four league titles, two League and FA Cup doubles, as well as a couple of League Cups and the European Cup Winners' Cup.
In fact, Adams is the only player in the history of English football to have skippered a title-winning team in three different decades.
What made his stalwart performances all the more remarkable, however, was that he managed to play so well against a backdrop of chronic addiction and alcoholism.
Especially when he’d had a few.
After one lengthy session in 1993, Adams, along with Ray Parlour, his buddy in the notorious Arsenal drinking society the ‘Tuesday Club’ found himself being taunted by some Spurs fans at a Pizza Hut.
Adams snapped.
Picking up a fire extinguisher he sprayed the Tottenham supporters, covering them in foam before making a hasty exit.
It was yet another episode that only served to endear him still with the Gooners.
Once, the ‘Tuesday Club’ had one of their regular get-togethers at the Chequers pub in Romford on the same day that then-England skipper Adams was making the FA Cup draw live on TV, alongside his national team manager Terry Venables.
Having already been in the pub for hours, Adams was worse for wear when a car arrived to take him to the FA HQ at Lancaster Gate for the draw.
It went badly.
When it was his turn to pull out a ball, Adams picked one up, showed it to the camera and said, "Number 31".
The trouble was there weren’t 31 teams still in the competition.
Undeterred, Adams persevered and was back in the pub in no time.
But how did he do it?
Simple.
He wrote in his autobiography Addicted: "I would go into training on a Monday morning, put a plastic bag on my torso and under my shirt, and run around the pitch until I had sweated the beer out of my system ready for a Wednesday game."
Now there’s commitment for you.
While Adams’ battle with the booze has been much-documented, not least by himself in his autobiographies Addicted and its recent follow-up Sober, it also landed him in jail.
The England defender was driving his Ford Sierra while four times over the legal limit when he crashed into a wall in Essex in December 1990.
He was later jailed for four months and released having served half his sentence.
Less than three months after his release from prison, Adams was not only back in the Arsenal side but steering the Gunners to their second league title in three years.
While his performances often had opposition managers wishing they had such a commanding presence at the heart of their team’s defence, it was when Sir Alex Ferguson suggested that he was a “United player in the wrong shirt” that Adams delivered one of his best lines.
He replied: “I said he was an Arsenal manager in the wrong blazer.”
Not, perhaps, in terms of trophies won – his best performance was skippering England to the semi-finals of Euro 96 – but because of his consistency, reliability and undoubted commitment to the cause.
He retired from international football having played 66 times for his country, scoring five times.
He was also the last England player to score at the old Wembley Stadium when he grabbed the second goal in a 2-0 win over Ukraine in May 2000.
Adams remains the only England player in history to make tournament appearances in three separate decades.
His managerial career hasn’t really scaled the heights of his playing career – Adam has had short and unsuccessful spells at Wycombe, Portsmouth, Feyenoord and Azerbaijani side Gabala.
But it was his time at Spanish side Granada that left us totally buoyed by his enthusiasm.
It’s equal parts Pep Guardiola and David Brent.
Just ask Steve Morrow.
It’s the aftermath of the 1993 League Cup Final at Wembley and Arsenal have just beaten Sheffield Wednesday to claim their second win in the competition.
As the Arsenal players celebrate on the pitch, Adams attempts to congratulate the winning goalscorer Morrow by putting him on his shoulders.
But, instead, he drops him, breaking the midfielder’s arm in the process.
Adams went on to lift the trophy while Morrow went to hospital and didn’t pick up his winners’ medal until before the start of the FA Cup Final a month or so later.
And Mr Dependable.
If he was still drinking, then Adams would never need to buy a beer ever again at the Emirates - such is the esteem he’s held in by the North London club.
Indeed, the Gunners recognised the enormous contribution he had made in 2011 when they marked the club’s 125th anniversary by unveiling a statue of him outside the stadium.
Adams' statue sits alongside fellow Arsenal greats Thierry Henry and Herbert Chapman.
Now they didn't do that for Ray Parlour, did they?
