Thierry Henry was told to pull his socks down.
Most underachievers are instructed to pull them up.
But Henry, newly arrived at Highbury a year after winning the World Cup, was a dedicated follower of fashion.
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He had also been an expensive flop at Juventus - scorer of three goals in Turin - a long way shy of the Arsenal legend he would become.
“Socks above my knees, some of the guys were looking at me,” Henry recalled. “Why are you going with that? Are you a ballet dancer?
“I always say they kicked me into understanding what Arsenal Football Club was. It’s a heavy shirt. Once you know your shoulders are OK to wear it then you can go on to do some amazing stuff.”
Henry tells this story in 89, Amy Lawrence’s new book about the club, but it’s that last sentence, about carrying the weight of the shirt that resonated with two of Ireland’s leading managers, Shamrock Rovers’ Stephen Bradley and Dundalk’s Steven O’Donnell.
Bradley is old enough to remember Henry getting tested each day in training by the Famous Five: Lee Dixon, Martin Keown, Tony Adams, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn.
He also recalls featuring in Ireland v England and Ireland v France five-a-sides along with Graham Barrett, Graham Stack and later O’Donnell and his assistant at Dundalk, Patrick Cregg.
It sounded like the best job in the world.
And with a contract worth a reported €500,000 spread over four years - it was.
Arsenal treated him well. And then one day, when he was 19, he was due to make his debut against Rotherham in the Worthington Cup. Instead Arsene Wenger pulled him aside.
"Sylvain Wiltold has come back from injury," said Wenger. "I have to play him. I'm sorry, but you're on the bench.”
In one sense, that was the end of Bradley’s Arsenal career.
Yet in another, it wasn’t.
The Arsenal way, those life lessons installed years ago, the tactical education he received from Wenger, Liam Brady and his cohort of coaches including Don Howe and Neil Banfield has travelled through the decades.
“Arsenal will always be part of you,” he told me in a 2013 interview.
O’Donnell agrees: “My time there was around the era of the Invincibles. Consistent, classy, smooth, slick - those are the words I’d use to describe that club.
“As a teenager, I wasn’t studying their tactics that closely - Pires coming in off the left touchline, Ashley Cole bombing around him - with a view to becoming a manager one day.
“But subconsciously it seeped into my head. I can see that now, looking back. I can see how fortunate I was. I learned a lot.”
Banfield - later first-team coach under Wenger, briefly No2 with the Irish U21s and now assistant manager at Rangers - was their tutor.
He tells a story about sitting down with his English and Irish born academy players in the club canteen and teasing them.
“I’m going to make myself a cup of tea,” he began. “And I’m going to put this fiver in my pocket. Bet you none of you will know how to get it out of there.”
One by one they tried. “The English lads you could see coming at you a mile off.
“But the Irish boys,” he smiles, “they were cleverer. They came as a three, Paddy (Cregg, O’Donnell’s assistant at Dundalk), Stephen (Bradley) and Stevie (O’Donnell).”
He laughs at the memory, remembering the ‘sparkle in their eye’, the streetwise traits they carried with them from Ireland’s cities onto the Arsenal training field.
He knew they’d make it, if not with Arsenal, then somewhere.
Now, as a man who is moving into the autumn of his life, he speaks with genuine pride that the scholars he taught are still in love with the game and still making a living from it, managing the two most successful clubs in League of Ireland history.
“To have played a small part in their development as a player and as a man, it’s something you couldn’t put a price on,” Banfield says.
“I get a real buzz from it. Actually buzz is too light a word. It’s way stronger than that.
“They had a bit of spirit, a bit of character, they weren’t cardboard cut-outs that you were dealing with. They had personality and that’s one thing you need if you are going to be successful in this game of ours.
“They all knew how to work things out for themselves. The lads from the UK were nowhere near as grown up as Stephen or Paddy. Those boys had to grow up fast, learn how to fend for themselves away from their parents.
“They were tactically astute on the pitch. Am I surprised they ended up in management? No, not at all, because once you’ve a passion for something, that’s there. That’s not something you get taught. That’s in you.”
But Arsenal is also in them, nearly two decades after they left.
Here is Bradley in that 2013 interview: “If you want the best education you go to Oxford University or Cambridge; if you want the best football schooling, you go to Arsenal. Their values, their coaching, you take it all in.”
Now he and O’Donnell are the ones dishing it out.
“Of course it shaped you,” the Dundalk boss says. “Those were your formative years and think about it, you were taught by one of the greatest managers that ever lived (Wenger) and were around one of English football’s greatest ever teams (The Invincibles). The Arsenal way was a special way of doing things.”
This is Banfield: “We had this saying, who you are, where you are, and what you represent.
“That was foremost in everything we tried to do.
“On the field the Arsenal way was a technical, fast, fluid game, that was where we focused our training on.
“The boys, Patrick, Stephen and Stevie were all good players but were a bit unlucky in the sense the first team was such a strong side at the time and it was hard to dislodge so many world class players.
“Cesc Fabregas and Jack Wilshire were coming through. Patrick Vieira was established. Look it was tough on the boys to not get a chance but when you are going for titles, the decision to give untested teenagers an opportunity will always be a hard one.
“On one hand you want to give young players that chance. On the other hand you have to win the league. Stephen and Stevie understand that dilemma, now they are the ones in charge going for titles.
“I’ve followed their pathway closely and I’ll say this, they’re really good coaches.
“The Southampton job came up there recently and really someone like Brads, Stevie or any number of good young British and Irish coaches should have been considered for it, or for any number of jobs that come up. Give them a chance.”
That’s Arsenal.
They may all live in different countries now; their hair may have flecks of grey in it, the candles on their birthday cake may have multiplied since they last worked together but deep down, they’ll always be Banfield’s boys.
Twenty years on, he’s still looking out for them.
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