'When Arsenal came calling, Fabregas, at first, had his doubts'

Sammy Nelson, a future first-team colleague, remembers seeing him for the first time — tall, thin and sporting a skinhead haircut. 'He looked like a tadpole with his head shaved,' said the Irishman, gifted in the gab department.

Apprentices picked up dirty kit in the locker room, cleaned the boots and swept the terraces.

They earned, in those days, £4 7shillings and sixpence. He always spent his money in a day, if not in hours. Quite some achievement when it only cost 10p for a pint of light and bitter, often imbibed at a friend's dad's pub, the Royal Arms in Kentish Town.

He bought his first suit at Burton. 'It was about £15, I think. Armani didn't exist in those days.' When finances were running a little low, he would nip the suit into the local pawn shop. 'Pawn shop?' said Fabregas.

'What is that?' It was something he would never need to know. When Arsenal came calling, Fabregas, at first, had his doubts. 'At Barca we played Arsenal a few months before in a youth tournament and we beat them 5-1. I scored two goals and I was like, "I don't want to go because we are better".

But then they made me the proposal and I saw that Arsenal was a great club. I came here to see the training ground and to talk to Mr Wenger. Imagine, you are playing under 16s at Barcelona and then you are talking to a person like Arsene Wenger who is so important in this world of football.

It impressed me a lot. I had something in my mind saying, "Go on, you have to sign because everything is going to be fine".'

In 1966, George volunteered to set up the chairs for the heavyweight title fight at Highbury between Muhammad Ali and Henry Cooper. By 1969, he was a little more important than that.

He made his first-team debut against Everton at Highbury and Arsenal, with the vast ranks of the George family among the spectators, lost 1-0.

They paid him £80 per week and he was sick before the match, due to nerves, as he was before every single subsequent game he played for Arsenal. When he was transferred to Derby in 1975, the sickness miraculously ceased and never came back. 'I honest to God don't know why I was sick before games.

Probably because I was playing for my local team. It stopped when I went to Derby. I relaxed.'

'My very first match for Arsenal was against Coventry, away, in the under 17s,' recalled Fabregas. 'My family came and it was freezing cold. My dad came, my grandparents, two uncles and two aunts and they were freezing as well. But I felt good the way I played so they were happy.'

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