Tribute - Sir Chips Keswick | News

After your season on loan to Beveren, did you feel you were ready to make the step up when you came back to the club?

Before I went away on loan, the conversation I had with the gaffer was about preparing myself for first-team football. I had a positive experience in Belgium – I didn’t want to go to a lower league team – and Arsenal had a partnership with Beveren. I went with some of my youth teammates too, and we had Yaya Toure and a few other good players. It was a good side.

We played against teams like Anderlecht, Bruges and Standard Liege and I established myself as the number one. It was a great learning curve for me. So when I came back I felt like I couldn’t have prepared myself much better, but did I think I was set up to have the sort of season I was going to have? No, not for one minute did I think it would pan out like it did.

You were promoted to the first-team squad that summer to take your place alongside Stuart Taylor, Rami Shaaban and Jens Lehmann. What was that like?

I almost saw myself as fourth choice, thinking maybe I would have another season out on loan somewhere, but pre-season went very well, I was in Austria with the team, and did well there. Then – as happens in football – there were injuries to Stuart and Rami, and then it became very real for me.

It’s so difficult to explain what it’s like when you move into the first-team dressing room for the first time. When I came back for that pre-season, my name was on the first-team dressing room door, and I saw that as a reward from the gaffer for having a good season in Belgium. But then actually playing with those guys and travelling to the games is a completely different animal and it came earlier than I thought.

In my mind I knew I was capable, I knew I had strengths that maybe Stuart and Rami didn’t, but I didn’t have their experience. But then my chance came earlier than I expected. When it did come, I knew I couldn’t let anyone down, not least myself.

I wore number 24, so I sat between Sol Campbell and Kanu in the dressing room – I was surrounded by absolute legends and world beaters, players I had watched from the Paddock at Arsenal. And now I was in and around that. It was an opportunity I didn’t want to lose, so I committed fully to it. Once I got that opportunity, as the record suggests, I worked tirelessly to keep that spot in the squad.