It won’t have passed you by that today is a significant anniversary.

That’s right, it’s eighteen years and three days since Gilles Grimandi joined Arsenal, a signing that heralded in mops of curly hair and, erm, mops of curly hair. As someone with a mop of curly hair, I mark this seminal moment every year by wearing my Grimandi 18 shirt – possibly the only one ever sold – bouffanting my hair up à la Gilles, then heading outside and needlessly getting in someone’s face with a ‘bof’ and a shrug of the shoulders.

It’s also 20 years since a bloke called Dennis joined. I’ve got used to the years zipping by, but twenty years! Oh Dennis, you beauty. You glorious, joy-bringing bugger. You silky-footed tease.

I wrote this about him for the Arsenal Magazine in 2014, just as his statue was unveiled:

“I was driving across London when I heard on the radio that Arsenal had signed Dennis Bergkamp. Dennis Bergkamp! At Arsenal! I pulled over at the nearest shop and bought every single newspaper I could get my hands on. I was at Highbury later that summer to see him score his first two goals against Southampton, and can remember the ecstasy like it was yesterday. Such calmness, power, precision and skill. Wow. That was the effect Bergkamp had on the club and the fans – he brought some much-needed stardust to a team that had grown tired. He was a world class player who was signed in his prime for a huge fee and his arrival took Arsenal off in a different direction. We didn’t know it at the time, but Bergkamp’s arrival was to herald a new era in which the football Arsenal had been synonymous with for years (sometimes a little unfairly) was swept away by a more technical, stylish approach. We’re still playing that way today, and while Bergkamp can’t take all the credit, he has written himself – effortlessly, of course – into Arsenal folklore.”

The word legend is bandied around fairly carelessly these days, but Bergkamp is a bona fide, card-carrying legend.

World class brilliance.

Twenty years!

Come back, Dennis!

(By train, obviously.)