1989 wasn’t the first time Arsenal had played a Friday evening game needing a win to secure the League title. We take you back 36 years before that night at Anfield to an equally tense game at Highbury.
Programme for the game
Click on the cover to read the programme
In what was to become a landmark season for The Arsenal Football Club, they struggled to overcome a dogged Hull City team who were on their way to be being relegated from Division Two (that’s The Championship to our younger readers). We tell the story of a very feisty FA Cup semi-final replay.
Programme cover for the game
Courtesy of Leonard Evans
As Vic and Bob would say: Look at the size of that trophy !!!
Very recently the only one man still alive from the match, the Portuguese substitute Sanfins, currently aged 92, visited FC Porto’s museum to see the trophy he helped to win.
Littlewoods Cup semi-final replay
This match means so much to so many fans of a certain age (ie our own) that we felt it had to be the classic match. Spurs were undone on their own pitch after seemingly being so sure of qualification into the final.
Though there are others that could have been recorded most obviously the 1971 or 2004 League clinching performances at White Hart Lane, but they have recently been commemorated quite brilliantly by a hardy bunch of Arsenal chaps during this summer, on a stag do that looks like it was a lot of fun!
However, back to 1987! Read More →
No doubt many of you will know that in April 1980 Arsenal had a massive fixture pile up caused by progression to the semi-finals of the FA Cup and the Cup-Winners’ Cup which coincided with the traditional Easter football fest. The situation was exacerbated by the FA Cup semi-final taking four games to come to a conclusion. At the start of all this, Arsenal had to play Tottenham on Easter Monday before playing Juventus at home on the Wednesday. Arsenal asked Tottenham if they could move the fixture, Tottenham refused so Arsenal fielded a weakened team and won 2-1.
However, this wasn’t the first time that an understrength Arsenal team had beaten an allegedly strong Tottenham team.
A City player really did come onto the pitch with a Monty Python Mr Gumby style handkerchief on his head in a top flight English game.
This season we’ve been asked to write a regular page in the official Arsenal programme based on a classic match featuring the opponents for each game we play in. Programme editor Andy Exley has kindly given us permission to reproduce the match reports on our blog. We will also be including additional material that didn’t make the final edit of the programme. If you can’t get to The Emirates, the programme is available on iPad and iPod for a bargain 69 pence per issue.
For the Champions League qualifier, we were somewhat restricted with our options. Not having played Besiktas in a competitive game before this season we had to choose from one of three friendlies, and we opted for the game in 2003. Read More →
This season we’ve been asked to write a regular page in the official Arsenal programme based on a classic match featuring the opponents for each game we play in. Programme editor Andy Exley has kindly given us permission to reproduce the match reports on our blog. We will also be including additional material that didn’t make the final edit of the programme.
Our first game is the first leg of the semi-final of the Coca-Cola Cup in the year that Arsenal became the first English team to complete the domestic cup double.
Back in the good old days (i.e. before 1992), the London Evening Standard and Evening News used to publish a special edition for the FA Cup final. This one is for the 1979 final between Arsenal and Manchester United. Read More →
by Andy Kelly
We thought it would be a good idea to put together a compendium of information relating to all of Arsenal’s FA Cup final appearances on one page so you don’t have to trawl all over the internet to find out the answers to all of those nagging questions.
Weekly Illustrated 25 April 1936. This image was supplied by @alsnotnutz – twitter hashtag – #operationarsenalart