January 29 – Dixon of Highbury | On This Football Day

January 29 – Dixon of Highbury

WHAT could £350,000 buy you today? A pretty decent house in the south of England? A pretty decent street in the north?

In the late 1980s it could buy you a Lee Dixon, for that is how much George Graham paid Stoke City to bring the right back to Highbury on this day in 1988.

While Dixon is now seen as something of a one club man, his early career was actually a bit hither and thither as he started out at Burnley where he combined his football apprenticeship with sweeping the floor in his dad’s meat factory for £25 a week.

He then moved on to Chester City where he was part of the team that finished bottom of the whole football league in the 1983/84 season – we can’t think of another player who has finished both top and bottom of the league structure in their playing career but if you know of one then leave a comment below.

After Chester Dixon played for Bury and then Stoke before getting his big break and joining the Gunners.

1988 was a good time to be a defender at Arsenal under George Graham who must have some Italian ancestry somewhere, so obsessed was he with the art of defending and winning matches 1-0.

Boring boring Arsenal they may have been but Graham’s famous defence that included Dixon, Tony Adams, Nigel Winterburn, Steve Bould and later Martin Keown with David Seamen behind them was formidable and was the basis for the Gunners success over the next ten years.

Dixon didn’t have to wait long for his first medal, when Arsenal won the league title after a thrilling match at Anfield when the Gunners had to win by two goals to deprive Liverpool of the championship.

Dixon himself was involved in the league-winning goal in injury time when his long pass picked out Alan Smith who fed Michael Thomas who duly scored to take the title to Highbury.

Dixon would play on at Highbury until 2002 when he and Tony Adams both hung up their boots after clinching another league and cup double.

Lee now spends his days playing golf and cosying up to Adrian Chiles on the Match of the Day 2 sofa offering slightly better insight into the game than his former Arsenal colleague Martin “Simeon” Keown.

Despite being part of the most well-drilled defensive unit in the land, here is Lee proving that everyone is human by lobbing his old mate David Seamen with a peach of a shot. Enjoy that and then come back tomorrow to remember a player who will forever be a hero on the south coast.