George Graham

Aston Villa

Graham received offers from Aston Villa, Chelsea and Newcastle United aged 15, in 1959, and visited all three clubs to see their facilities. He chose Aston Villa mainly as he and his family liked manager Joe Mercer, initially playing for their youth side, he signed professionally in 1961, on his 17th birthday. He spent five seasons at the Birmingham club, but only made ten appearances – though one of them was the club's 1963 League Cup final loss to Birmingham City.

Chelsea

Chelsea signed Graham in July 1964 for £5,000. He scored 35 goals in 72 league games for the club and won a League Cup medal in 1965 but he, along with several other Chelsea players, increasingly clashed with their volatile manager Tommy Docherty. This culminated in Graham and seven others being sent home and disciplined by Docherty for breaking a pre-match curfew in 1965.

Arsenal

Bertie Mee's Arsenal were looking for a replacement for Joe Baker, and paid £50,000 plus Tommy Baldwin in 1966 to bring Graham to Highbury. He made his debut on 1 October 1966 at home to Leicester City, and although the result was a 4–2 defeat he immediately became a regular in the Arsenal side. He was Arsenal's top scorer in both 1966–67 and 1967–68, having started out as a centre forward for the club, but later moved back into midfield as an inside forward with John Radford moving from the wing to central striker. With Arsenal, Graham was a runner-up in both the 1968 and 1969 League Cup…

Millwall

After retiring from playing in 1978, Graham became the youth team coach at Crystal Palace and then from October 1980 Queens Park Rangers. On 6 December 1982, he was appointed manager of Millwall, who were then bottom of the old Third Division. Graham turned the side around in a short period of time—they avoided relegation that season on the final match of the season with a 1–0 win at Chesterfield. The following season they finished 9th and in 1984–85 they were promoted to the old Second Division. After Graham left the club in 1986 when Millwall finished mid table, they went on to win the Second Division and win promotion to the First in 1987–88.

Arsenal

Graham's achievements at Millwall attracted attention from First Division clubs, and with the resignation of Don Howe as Arsenal manager in March 1986, their directors first offered the job to FC Barcelona coach Terry Venables, but he rejected their offer and Arsenal switched their attention to Alex Ferguson, the Aberdeen manager, as their new manager with Graham as his assistant. However, Ferguson (then in temporary charge of the Scotland national football team following the death of Jock Stein the previous September, and still in charge of Aberdeen) had decided to wait until after the World Cup that summer before deciding on his future. Graham himself had never even applied for the Arsenal position but on 12 May 1986 his chairman at Millwall, Alan Thorne, told him that Arsenal wanted to speak to…

The youngest of seven children, Graham was born at Dykehead Road, Bargeddie, near Coatbridge on Thursday 30 November 1944. He grew up in poverty and was raised by his mother, Janet (26 April 1908 – 27 March 1977), after his father, Robert Young Graham (born 22 June 1900), died of tuberculosis and heart failure on Christmas Day 1944, when George was not yet a month old. His elder sister also died of tuberculosis on 22 February 1950. While growing up, Graham showed considerable promise as a footballer, and Newcastle United, Chelsea and Aston Villa displayed an interest in signing him.

On 16 September 1967, Graham married model Marie Zia at Marylebone Register Office; his close friend Terry Venables acted as his best man and the two players took to the field the same afternoon for opposing teams in a North London derby; the groom's team won 4–0. The couple had two children. The marriage ended in 1988. Graham married Susan Schmidt on 13 December 1998 in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and live in Hampstead, London. Graham revealed in 2009 that he has arthritis. "I love my golf but because of my arthritis, I've not played much in the last two years, if any. When I was a player, when I had a lot of time on my hands, I got down to an eight handicap. But when I was manager, I went back to 12. I've just taken up tennis and have to say I'm not very good."