William Gallas moves to Tottenham - a new trend?

With what seems the almost certain signing of William Gallas this weekend, i was trying to remember the last time an Arsenal player crossed the divide to the Lillywhites. The most recent was in 2002 in the diminutive figure of Rohan Ricketts, although he had at the time only played once for arsenal and in fact only managed thirty six appearances for Spurs, the most notable occasion scoring a cracking goal in a 2-1 win over Leeds.

The next most recent player to move from Arsenal was David Jenkins who was part of a swap deal for Jimmy Robertson in 1968. David Jenkins was not a regular though and only featured in 17 games for Spurs.

Before Jenkins was Laurie Brown who came to Tottenham in 1964. His first match was against Arsenal in which Spurs won 3-1.

The only other notable player was Jimmy Brain who moved to Spurs in 1931 and made 47 appearances scoring ten goals.

There have also been a number going the other way. The first was George Hunt in 1937 who played 21 times for Arsenal scoring 3 goals.

Freddie Cox moved from Spurs in 1949 playing 94 times and scoring 16 times for Arsenal.

As mentioned before Jimmy Robertson moved to Arsenal in 1968 playing 46 times and scoring 7 goals.

Relegation cost Spurs 3 players in 1977. Steve Walford who who featured in 98 games for Arsenal, Willie Young who played 237 games and the most notable and most lamentable loss was Pat Jennings our legendary goalkeeper who went on to play another 327 times for the Arsenal.

I have left the worse to last and frankly cannot mention his name. The man who captained Spurs to a league cup triumph in 1999 and who said he would not sign for Arsenal, went on to move to the Gooners in 2001 playing a total of 207 games.

Of course in our current squad we have David Bentley, Jamie O'Hara and Anton Blackwood who have at least trained and in David Bentley's case played for Arsenal. Not to mention former managers George Graham and Terry Neill who have been in charge of both clubs.

So along with William Gallas we are also being linked with Alexander Hleb and last season we attempted to sign Patrick Viera and a few years ago we were allegedly trying to sign Silvain Wiltord. This begs the question, do our clubs take a more pragmatic view of transfers these days, and there are no longer any no go's? Only time will tell.