Playing Career
Despite being Scottish, Graham played exclusively in England and the United States. He signed for Aston Villa in 1961, on his 17th birthday. He spent three seasons at the Birmingham club, but only made eight appearances – though one of them was the club's 1963 League Cup final loss to Birmingham City. Chelsea signed him in July 1964 for £5000. Graham 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.
Bertie Mee's Arsenal were looking for a replacement for Joe Baker, and paid £75,000 plus Tommy Baldwin in 1966 to bring him 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 to inside forward with John Radford moving from the wing to up front.
With Arsenal, Graham was a runner-up in both the 1968 and 1969 League Cup finals, before finally winning a medal with the 1969–70 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. He followed it up with being an integral part of Arsenal's Double-winning side of 1970–71, and even had a claim to scoring Arsenal's equaliser in the FA Cup Final against Liverpool, although Eddie Kelly is officially credited with the goal.
Winning the Double brought the attention of Scotland and Graham was selected for the national side for the first time against Portugal on 13 October 1971. He would go on to win twelve caps over the next two years for Scotland, scoring three goals, his final one coming against Brazil on 30 June 1973. By then, however, Graham was no longer an Arsenal player.
The arrival of Alan Ball midway through 1971–72 had made his place in the Arsenal side less assured and he therefore moved for £120,000 to Manchester United in December 1972. In total, he played 308 matches for Arsenal, scoring 77 goals. He spent two years at United, and was relegated to Division Two, before seeing out his career in England at Portsmouth and Crystal Palace. He played the summer of 1978 in America for the California Surf.
Read more about this topic: George Graham (footballer)
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