Arsenal title-winning squad ‘commandeered bendy bus’ in Sweden on boozy pre-season tour

If Arsenal’s title winning squads under George Graham weren’t celebrating their glories with an open-top bus parade, they were commandeering the vehicles on boozy pre-season tours.

Famed for their Tuesday Club, Arsenal’s sides of the 1990s somehow balanced success on the pitch with the endless distractions of alcohol and nights. Players like tough-tackling midfielder David Hillier enjoyed parties with page 3 models, but also won league and cup titles under George Graham.

Graham eventually departed the north London club in 1995, and Arsene Wenger was appointed just over a year later, ushering in a new era of professionalism within football by putting a stop to the team’s boozy antics.

READ MORE: Arsenal hero partied with 30 topless page 3 models – then got ‘told off’ by boss

With the sport’s friendly relationship with alcohol now long gone, Hillier spoke on the Under The Cosh podcast, where he reflected on the drinking culture that became routine under title-winning manager George Graham, giving one example where the squad let loose.

“He’d give you 50 quid to buy drinks and then he’d discipline you for getting drunk,” he revealed. “It’s carrot and stick, and it works… What we had was a good balance of players who accepted that as his rule.

This meant that, for instance, when the squad were taken on a pre-season tour of Sweden, they decided to have some fun with the locals after being informed by their gaffer that he was heading back to England early to attend his daughter’s wedding.

“So, first night out, they had bendy buses in Sweden years ago. We f***ing commandeered a bendy bus didn’t we?,” Hillier laughed.

“After a night on a boat, we got a bendy bus, we got every person we could find at a bus stop, got them on the bus, and took them all back to the hotel.

Asked by the podcast’s exasperated hosts who was driving the bus, Hillier said: “The bus driver, we got him as well.

“We made him drive all the way back to the hotel and 72 people got off the bus, it was only like 15 footballers, but we got everyone back into the hotel and we were partying.”

And, despite the potential for the event to have gone badly wrong, Hillier looked back fondly on a time before social media when footballers were able to party without the fear of viral videos of their antics being shared online.

“No one got done for that, everybody was nice in the morning and everyone was happy with what they ended up with and who they ended up with,” he reflected.

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“I think the lads were almost respectful in the way we did it. It wasn’t nasty, seedy, we’re going out being a***holes and being flash with money or anything like that.

“They just had a really good time and the gaffer was happy to [allow] that, but knowing the next morning, you put it in.”

Hillier eventually left Arsenal in 1996, shortly after Wenger joined the club, and went on to become a firefighter for a short spell before working with the Gunners’ communications team more recently.

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