Forgotten Gunners: Igors Stepanovs

Following on in the series of ‘Forgotten Gunners’, today features a Latvian defender that will go down as one of the worst buys in the Arsene Wenger era – Igors Stepanovs.

Stepanovs arrived in England unknown by pretty well everybody except for Wenger and his scouts. He signed for £1m from Skonto Riga in 2000. The Latvian giant made the best possible start to life in England, scoring on his debut in a League Cup defeat against Ipswich in the 2000/01 season. That was his one and only goal for the club and I’d say his best moment in an Arsenal shirt.

He found getting into the Arsenal squad difficult with Tony Adams and Martin Keown at the heart of the Arsenal defence. There is one game that Stepanovs is remembered for by Arsenal fans and not fondly either.

In February 2001, Arsenal travelled to Old Trafford needing a win to stand any real chance of claiming the Premier League crown that year. Arsenal were thrashed 6-1 by a rampant Manchester United team and Stepanovs took a lot of the flak from the fans that day as he was particularly poor.

Arsenal’s defence that day was a young Ashley Cole at left-back, Igors Stepanovs and Gilles Grimandi at centre-back and Oleg Luzhny at right-back with David Seaman in goal of course. In honesty, the back four were all bad that day. It wasn’t just Stepanovs that played badly, they all did. The team in general had a shocker. Stepanovs played only once more in the league in 2000/01 following the Old Trafford humiliation.

Stepanovs is remembered for his display at Old Trafford because he didn’t really make up for it in later years. Cole developed into arguably the best left-back in the world, even if a lot of his years in the future would be spent at Chelsea. Luzhny and Grimandi were generally good backup players for the club. They came in and normally did a good job. Luzhny’s performance in the 2003 FA Cup Final win against Southampton will always be remembered by Arsenal fans. Grimandi prevented Edgar Davids (a Tottenham player at the time) from becoming the first player to score at the Emirates Stadium, for which he was always be loved.

Luzhny and Grimandi were both reliable players for the most part. Stepanovs looked shaky every time he wore the Arsenal shirt. You never felt comfortable with him in your team, no matter how good the 2001/02 Double winning side was. To his credit, he did play his part in the 2002 double winning side. He made 6 appearances in the league, normally not enough to earn you a medal at the end of the season. However, Stepanovs was on the bench for the game at Manchester United (ironic, right?) where Arsenal clinched the title, which was enough to earn him a Premier League winners medal in 2002.

Stepanovs didn’t erase the memory of Old Trafford in 2001 by any means, but I will say he improved after that. I know he couldn’t have got any worse, but he made up for it (slightly) by doing a job for us when called upon in that 01/02 season.

He was still around in 2002/03, by then he was restricted to pretty well just League Cup appearances. He spent the 2003/04 season on loan at Arsenal’s then feeder club Beveren and then he played for Latvia at Euro 2004. Stepanovs then moved all around Europe after Arsenal, playing for teams in Switzerland, Denmark, Russia as well as his native Latvia before retiring in 2011.

Overall, Stepanovs played 31 times in all competitions for Arsenal. Many would argue it was 31 too many, which is probably a fair comment in honesty. How Wenger and his scouts found him I’m not too sure, but his story is certainly an interesting one.

Stepanovs – A very poor signing by Wenger.

Picture: Arsenal.com