The book is absolutely amazing, and altho it is a lot of money and without wantin to sound like a salesman, it took two years of research to put together and 'only' 2000 photos out of 2 million made it in to the book, and there's loads of fold outs to a metre and a half, like one of the back four and there's another one of Kolo, Gilberto, Rosicky and Cesc in that monochrome style, and so each pic is over 24" X 12" and the quality and detail in each print breathtaking!
I went for the Icons edition which has a section where the signatures of ex-player legends are done in gold ink in a dream team formation, one of the guys that I got to meet who was heavily involved in the project admitted to me that he tried to get his boss to bump up the price cos altho they've done books for Celtic and ManUre the Arsenal Icons was the best one they'd ever done and he reckoned that that part of the book alone was worth a fortune in it's own right!
As the evening progressed, and the drink flowed
Bob Wilson had the job of compere and spoke about Arsenal as a club, and his time there, and gave background and his thoughts on AW before welcoming the man himself onto the stage to rapturous applause, and the first cheer of the night followed Bob Wilson saying "I'm sure that I speak for everyone in this room and at this club when I say that it's great to see that you've signed a 3 yr extension to your contract keeping you here to at least 2011!"
After his initial chat with Le Boss, BW announced that he would open the floor for 4 questions and so when he gave me the nod I asked AW whether he thought the club was indeed moving in the right direction and once we got payback for the Highbury Development would we be able to compete financially with Real, ManUre and the Chavs, to build upon the youth that he'd provided???
he replied, that he thought our spending power was improving steadily, and would continue to, especially in relation to the other clubs as he is extremely dubious of the recent influx of investors' motives, and exactly how much they love their latest aquisitions would soon become apparent!
He also admitted that this was the biggest year of his tenure, and altho he was not afraid to spend money at the right time on the right player, he wanted to stay with this team until the end of the season to see where we are at, because he cannot tell whether or not they are winners yet until they are truly put to the test!
He went on to say that when he took over, the team was packed with experience and that they dragged themselves out of ruts thru that experience and sheer mental strength, but this squad is relatively young and he wants and see how they respond if and when they suffer a couple of defeats, and it was his job to help them and guide them as a unit to imitate their predecessors by picking themselves back up, to keep the length of any possible crisis to a minimum!
So he is basically teaching them how to look after, and in the process learn about - themselves, be a team who can mature to a point were they can stand on their own, so he can cut the apron strings so to speak!
I gotta be happy with that, honestly he spent a full five minutes answering my question, even my mate dug me in the ribs and said, Gary that was brilliant!
Wenger obviously has his own way of building a team, as above, and IMHO, compared to other managers he is on a completely different level and I freely admit I'm in awe of the man, which probably explains why my chest was poundin!
Three other people got to ask him a question as well, he was asked what was ambition for the club, I thought he was gonna say to make it the biggest club in the world, but he just replied without a moment's hesitation, "to win the European Cup for this club because even before I came it was one of the truly iconic clubs in world football, a club that had that something special, probably because of the history and tradition!"
When asked what his favourite memory was so far, he replied that it was winning the first Championship (didn't say double) because he'd made his mark and saw how much it meant to the fans, and it made him realise on the open top bus thru Islington how big a club we were - probably something similar to the first time we played at Wembley in the CL he couldn't believe that we sold it out and even thought it must be the Swedish away fans buyin them up!
So after all the adults asked all the serious questions, BW pointed to a kid who couldn't have been older than 12 who just said "who's your favourite player" which led to a chorus of laughter, which became full blown when AW came back with "whoever scores the winning goal against Spurs on Saturday"
I had to borrow a camera for the nite, as mine is back in Belfast as this was all done at pretty short notice!
It was just a fantastic nite with a great atmosphere, that'll live long in the memory, and as soon as get them downloaded onto a disc, photos will follow
then went on to meet Patsy Palmer and the All Saints, now don't laugh cos up until tonite I would've been hard pushed to think of a girl band who I hated more but they were absolutely brilliant, Melanie Blatt was absolutely fuckin stunnin and they hung off me and my mate for some photos and then to top it all off, got my photo taken with Mr. W himself and he signed my Highbury Years collage, which I hadn't got round to framing yet - to Gary, from Arsene Wenger, just got back and I'm still buzzin 
