Adrian Clarke on Ian Wright’s nickname for him, brilliant Bergkamp and his journey from pitch to punditry

Adrian Clarke’s Arsenal career didn’t work out exactly the way he wanted, but how many footballers can say they earned a unique nickname from Ian Wright?

Clarke spent six years at Arsenal during the early 1990s, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Wright, Dennis Bergkamp and Martin Keown before several spells lower down the English football pyramid.

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He has since forged a highly successful punditry career, working for the likes of UK radio station TalkSport, BT Sport and, more recently, here at The Athletic on the dedicated Arsenal podcast Handbrake Off.

Clarke sat down with Jay Harris to discuss his journey from pitch to punditry and the ‘remarkable’ progress of the current Arsenal team under Mikel Arteta.

Check out Adrian alongside The Athletic’s Arsenal writers James McNicholas, Amy Lawrence and Art de Roche twice a week on Handbrake Off, free to listen on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

You started your playing career in Arsenal’s academy and went on to make nine appearances for the first team. What’s your favourite memory from your time at the club?

I have wonderful memories of my full debut. We beat Queens Park Rangers on Boxing Day. We had our own individual baths in the marble dressing rooms at Highbury and, after the game, I was next to Martin Keown. He said, “Clarkey, you should feel really proud of yourself today. That’s your debut in the Premier League and you’ve ripped apart David Bardsley, who is one of the best right-backs in the division. That’s a brilliant start.” I will never forget that. It’s just a shame I never managed to top it.

Why did you decide to leave Arsenal?

I fell down the pecking order when Arsene Wenger came in. I was a winger but I was being used as a wing-back and I wasn’t very good at defending! It made me nervous playing in that position and Wenger never got to see the best of me. At the end of my contract, I joined Southend United.

That was probably a move I made out of convenience (just 35 miles east of Arsenal’s north London home). I had been there on loan, I liked the players and the manager, and it was a fun place to be. But it was a club on the slide. I agreed to permanently sign for Southend when Ronnie Whelan was manager. By the time I actually signed my contract, he had resigned. I had an option: do I still sign the contract or look around for another team? There were other teams who invited me to go on trial, but I just took the easy option and signed it.

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Which player did you enjoy playing with the most at Arsenal?

There was only one player that really stands out above the rest and that is Dennis Bergkamp. I still pinch myself now that I was his team-mate once upon a time. He was just a beautiful footballer in every aspect. I don’t think I’ve seen a player in the Premier League with a silkier touch than him. His vision was outstanding, and so were his quick feet in tight areas. He also had the ability to finish from all sorts of different positions. He was pure class and a real inspiration to all of the players at Arsenal. There was no ego with Dennis, he was very grounded.

As a young player, I was easily star-struck, but even established players, like Paul Merson, Ian Wright and Tony Adams, realised and have since confessed that when Dennis turned up they thought, “Hang on a second, I thought I was good, but this is a really good player”. It was like the Dennis Bergkamp Appreciation Society in training sometimes. Everybody loved him.

From a personal point of view, it was also an absolute delight to be Ian Wright’s team-mate. He was so encouraging to me and made me feel like I belonged in the first team, which is really important for a kid coming out of the youth team and the reserves. You are a little bit on edge and don’t quite know how to behave, but Wrighty treated me like he would treat any of the other guys. Such a great personality and a brilliant footballer, too. His finishing was on a different level.

Have you ever interviewed Bergkamp or Wright since, and if so did they remember you?

I probably met Dennis again five years ago, so there had been a long gap. A friend of mine runs a memorabilia company and asked me if I wanted to come along to Amsterdam and reconnect with Dennis. As soon as I walked in the room, he did a double take. I was chuffed he remembered me. We reminisced about the old times.

With Wrighty, I probably saw him 10 or 12 years after I left Arsenal, at TalkSport’s studios. I went down there to interview some presenters who had played in a five-a-side game and Wrighty was one of them. As soon as he saw me, his big grin came out and he shouted: “REVEREND! I can’t believe it’s you. The Rev. I love it.”

He had nicknamed me “The Reverend” at Arsenal because I was a bit of a goody two shoes. I didn’t booze, I didn’t swear, I came from the sticks in Suffolk, I wasn’t a ‘lad’. So because of my clean-cut image, he nicknamed me The Rev, which I absolutely hated. I bumped into Wrighty on the opening day of the Women’s Super League at Arsenal and straight away he goes, “Alright, Rev? How are you doing, Rev?” He’s the only one still doing it, but because it’s Wrighty I’m fine with it.

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When did you first start thinking about working in the media?

When I was frozen out of the team by Alan Little at Southend, he would often take me to away games as the spare man. So I would travel but wouldn’t be on the bench, as in those days you only had three subs. The guys at BBC Radio Essex would ask me to co-commentate on our matches. I ended up doing that for a few months and it was so much fun. I began to enjoy it more than playing. It gave me a taste for what it was like to work in the media.

I was fed up and frustrated. I was training all week and, in my mind, was doing well enough to have a place in the team, but it didn’t matter what I did. I was never going to play for that manager. It was brutal. Psychologically brutal and damaging. At the end of the week, when you’re supposed to have fun, go out and play a game, earn your money, try to play for three points, for the fans and create great memories, I would sit in the stands and at the final whistle go down and get changed into some kit and run up and down the pitch for half an hour to keep my fitness levels up. Mind-numbing stuff. I was over it, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a professional anymore. That’s where my head was starting to turn.

What happened after you left Southend?

I left on a free transfer and there were a few clubs looking at me. Stevenage came in for me and Paul Fairclough was a brilliant manager and a great motivator. He was very persuasive.

I agreed to sign, and then the Southend Evening Echo interviewed me about joining Stevenage and asked me what I would do for a job, because they were part-time. I said I’ve always wanted to be a football journalist and they said, “Come here! Come and do some work experience and see if you like it.”

I did it and they reported back to the editor and said I was better than the graduates they got from university. But the editor wasn’t having it! He stuck me on news (rather than sport) and said, “If he is serious about being a journalist, he will do news.” So I worked unpaid for three months and then they offered me a traineeship on news. I was the Canvey Island (area) correspondent for the Southend Evening Echo.

It was both wonderful and terrifying at the same time. I was completely out of my comfort zone. The previous season I had been a professional footballer and I suddenly had to speak to local politicians and families that had been involved in unfortunate accidents and tragedies. Any newsworthy event, I had to be there. It was a valuable experience. I lasted a year before I got offered a job in football journalism in London. But I do look back on that year and it was a very special time. It was a welcome to the real world and I needed it. Footballers, even in League One and League Two, are kept in a bubble and I learnt a lot about life. It made me grow up big time.

What was the most difficult part of transitioning from playing football to becoming a reporter?

First and foremost, it was the time! As a footballer, you train for a couple of hours a day and then go home and rest. This was a full-time job, where you have to get up very early and work until 5pm and then you’re off to training. It was incredibly difficult in my first season at Stevenage, combining it with a work life. My body wasn’t used to it. I was exhausted. The concentration of having that job, the travelling, the late nights, not eating as well as you should, it was really difficult. Once my body acclimatised to it, I absolutely loved it.

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Did you have to miss any games because they clashed with work?

No, I would always prioritise football! Wherever I would work, they knew the football came first, so I was allowed to leave early when I had to.

When did you decide to retire from football and fully focus on a career in journalism?

After Stevenage, I played for Margate and for Welling United. I then picked up a chronic pelvic injury. Every time I kicked the ball, I had shooting pain in my groin. I took time out of the game to get it fixed and found a surgeon from Australia who lived in London and knew this injury very well. It’s a very common injury with Aussie Rules footballers, where they lash balls across their body.

I got it fixed and have metal plates and screws in my body but I’m fine now. The year I was out injured I became a freelancer and, when I was fit again, I didn’t want to play. My passion had become football journalism. So I decided to walk away from playing football.

What was it like playing in the Premier League and then finishing your career in non-League?

If I had done it the other way round and built my way up to the Premier League, I think playing in all of the different divisions would be a real source of pride and you could see it as more of an achievement than it was. But because I tumbled down the divisions it doesn’t feel quite as good. When I look back on my career, the first thing I think of is frustration that I didn’t stick around at a higher level for longer.

I don’t have any real issues about not being able to stay at Arsenal long-term because you have to be a real special talent. But I was good enough to maybe ply my trade at another Premier League club, certainly in the Championship. I look back and think, “Could I have done some more double sessions? Could I have analysed my game more thoroughly in my spare time?”. I think the answer to that is yes, but it wasn’t the culture of the club at the time. Everybody did their training and went home and had a bit of fun and just turned up the next day. I look back and regret that.

I also let disappointment affect me too much. I think the very best players are able to shrug off disappointment and retain that confidence in their own ability. Sometimes I let an indifferent performance or being a sub affect me and my confidence. That can be a slippery slope. There are a lot of things in my career I would do differently. But I got to play for Arsenal in the Premier League.

How has your understanding of the game changed since you retired?

I have learned an incredible amount. As a footballer in the ’90s, the information you were given was very basic. Some of the coaches I worked under would barely scratch the surface when it came to tactics.

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I remember, and I don’t mean this disrespectfully to Ronnie Whelan, my debut for Southend (on loan) in the Championship in 1997, the buzzer went for us to go down to the tunnel for the match at Tranmere Rovers. It dawned on me that we hadn’t spoken about set pieces. I said, “Ronnie, what is happening with corners and free kicks?”

He said, “Urm… you can have them.”

I said, “Near post? Far post? What have you been working on?”

Ronnie said, “Just swing it in there!”

This was in the Championship in the late 1990s!

Everything has evolved hugely since then. There were no statistics available, video analysis was rare. The only way you could educate yourself as a footballer was by listening and talking to coaches and doing extra training. There was nothing else. Nowadays, footballers have lots of different information available to them.

I really enjoy watching football from a neutral perspective and trying to work out what the story of the match is. What are the intricacies affecting the game? I have enjoyed it ever since the first time I was asked to do it. I love marrying factual stuff, via stats, with what I can see with my eyes and draw upon from my own experience of playing. To be able to talk and write about football for a living and get so much enjoyment out of it is a total privilege.

What have you made of Arsenal’s progress under Mikel Arteta over the last 12 months?

The team has made remarkable progress. From the word go, Arteta showed he is a good coach. He brought different habits to the team and players started popping up in different positions. It took a long time for the players to become comfortable with his instructions and with the movements and rotations he was asking for. Because of that, there were a lot of mistakes along the way. He also didn’t have the players to suit that style of play. He had a vision in his own head and just needed time to ship out the players that didn’t fit that style and bring in quality players who fit it like a glove.

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What we are seeing now is Arteta’s team — full of young, hungry players who will listen to him and want to learn. They are playing some scintillating football. The rotational movement is pretty sophisticated. In defence and attack, they have made some huge strides. They are top of the league for good reason. In attack, they are creating bundles of opportunities, they have had more shots in open play than any other team this season, and at the back, only one team has faced fewer shots than Arsenal from open play and that is Manchester City. Everything is heading in a great direction.

What stood out to you in last week’s 3-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur in the north London derby?

The thing that impressed me the most about that performance was Arsenal’s mindset. Right from kick-off, they attacked it and played with real positivity. They went at Tottenham to score goals. In derby games, where it is hectic and there is so much aggression and hype about it, you can tighten up. But what we saw from Arsenal’s players was the opposite. They were so loose with their play. One and two-touch football, intricate passing triangles. They were really free. I think that is a wonderful sign for the team that they can produce that football in a high-stakes clash like that.

There was so much to like about it. Lots of stellar individual performances, too, from William Saliba at the back with his unbelievable defending and then you’ve got Granit Xhaka in front, who is a player reborn. Gabriel Jesus’ movement and slipperiness inside the final third is so much fun to watch. Then you have two wide players in Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli who just want to run forward and cause damage.

It is a really exciting time to be following Arsenal and the mood inside the Emirates Stadium is the happiest it has been since they moved to that ground. The fans are more united than they have ever been.

What do you think Arsenal can achieve this season?

They can win a trophy, no doubt about that. I still don’t think they are ready to win the league — City remain miles ahead of everybody else. If Arsenal can finish within 15 points of them, that will be a positive campaign. The gap has been double that in recent seasons (in 2020-21, Arsenal finished 25 points behind champions City. Last season, they ended up 24 adrift as Pep Guardiola’s men retained the title).

I’m hoping, secretly, people still want to ask me this question with eight league games to go because the answer could be very different! If they can put themselves into a position like this for the run-in, maybe we can start to talk about Arsenal winning a bigger trophy. But for now, I think we are all keeping our feet on the ground despite really enjoying what we are seeing.

(Top photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)