We had to get special dispensation for Alex to get a Premier League winners medal in 1998. Back then, you needed 10 appearances to get one – he had only made seven.<\/p>\n
Everyone at the club thought he fully deserved it, though, and the Arsenal fans took to Alex too, because of how brilliantly he played.<\/p>\n
They had a song for him, roughly to the tune of the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice.<\/p>\n
Alex Manninger, Alex Manninger<\/p>\n
Got a sore finger, got a sore finger<\/p>\n
Loves Arsene Wenger, loves Arsene Wenger<\/p>\n
We would sing it to him too, whenever he came into the room. He loved it. Alex was a shy guy initially, but that changed when he was part of the group.<\/p>\n
You always get to know some players better than others at any club you are at, but there was a real togetherness in our squad at the time. Everyone would mix together.<\/p>\n
I roomed with Stephen Hughes that season but Matt Upson and Alex would come to our room to play PlayStation games when we were in hotels for away matches. I was a few years older, so they kept me young really.<\/p>\n
Alex’s character was quite a contrast on and off the pitch – on it, he was fiercely competitive. He always trained incredibly hard and he was very driven.<\/p>\n
He could sometimes be very critical of himself if he made a mistake, but it was very clear he just did not want to be beaten. As a senior player, I loved that mentality.<\/p>\n
Off the pitch, he was a huge personality too. Someone who was great fun to be around but also very calm – unless he was playing on the PlayStation.<\/p>\n
Looking at photos of him now reminds me of how he was, and of those days, but it is something more than that. When I think of Alex, I can still picture the connection we had in my mind’s eye.<\/p>\n
He left Arsenal in 2002 and I had not seen him for a number of years before he passed away, but whenever you win things together, like we did – we went through some really big nights together – then there is a bond there that keeps you together forever.<\/p>\n
That 1997-98 season was the first in my career where I tasted real success – it was my first league title, and first FA Cup – and I will never forget he played a major part in that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We had to get special dispensation for Alex to get a Premier League winners medal in 1998. Back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-613617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}