Like thousands of others, my favourite Arsenal moment from the past 55 years was that last-minute goal by Michael Thomas at Anfield which clinched the league title for the Gunners in 1989 as well as wrenching it from Liverpool’s grasp. My favourite Arsenal moment from the past 55 years at Highbury was when the final whistle went to end a gripping European Fairs Cup final, second leg between Arsenal and those Belgian high-flyers Anderlecht. It is incredible to think that we are celebrating its 40th anniversary because the memories of that euphoric evening are still fresh. The Gunners had to overturn a 3-1 deficit from the first leg when they were outplayed. They accomplished it in real style, running out 3-0 winners to claim their first major trophy since 1953 - a gap of 17 years. It was the first major trophy I had seen them win, so the date on which it happened, April 28 1970, will always be special to me. It was one of those magical nights when you were thrilled to say, “I was there.”
After years of disappointments, anti-climaxes and living in the shadow of the great Tottenham team of the early Sixties, featuring famous names such as Danny Blanchflower, Dave Mackay, Jimmy Greaves, John White and Cliff Jones, it was as if a big black cloud had suddenly lifted from Highbury. Arsenal, managed by Bertie Mee and coached by Don Howe, were entitled to feel proud of themselves again and there was a feeling that the balance of power in north London was shifting from one end of the Seven Sisters Road to the other. This was confirmed the following season (1970-71) when Arsenal became only the second club in the 20th century to win the League and FA double. Spurs were the first 10 years earlier and it must have been gut-wrenching for their supporters to watch Arsenal clinch the first leg of their double before a packed house at White Hart Lane in the final league match of the season on a memorable Monday night in May. The FA Cup triumph over Bill Shankly’s Liverpool followed five days later.
The European Fairs Cup breakthrough made Arsenal players and supporters believe that the club could go on to greater triumphs. This is why it was one of the most important victories in Arsenal’s history. Before April 28 1970 Arsenal players were used to being compared unfavourably to the marvellous footballers of the Thirties when Arsenal won the League Championship five times and the FA Cup twice. This was hardly surprising because in 17 long, lean years between 1953 and 1970 Arsenal never finished higher than third in the old First Division and failed to progress beyond the sixth round of the FA Cup. But once the Fairs Cup had been won, the names of such Highbury legends as Alex James, Cliff Bastin, Eddie Hapgood, David Jack, Joe Hulme and Ted Drake weren’t heard quite so often from the club’s older supporters. Those players from 1970 had made their own history and the following year they achieved something which was even beyond the great Arsenal side of the Thirties - the Double.
Arsenal had begun catching up with Spurs by the late Sixties and reached consecutive League Cup finals at Wembley in 1968 and 1969. Leeds, one of the best teams of that era, beat them 1-0 in 1968. There was no disgrace in that, but it was a different story a year later when Swindon, then of the Third Division, beat the Gunners 3-1 in one of the biggest upsets of the decade. The strange thing is that Arsenal did not play badly. It was just their misfortune to come up against a goalkeeper, Peter Downsborough, who played out of his skin. Because of Downsborough’s heroics, the match went into extra time with the score at 1-1 and Arsenal, handicapped by a dreadful pitch and weakened by an outbreak of flu earlier in the week, succumbed to two goals by the highly rated Don Rogers.
It took a painfully long time for the Arsenal players and fans to get that result out of their system. The depression carried over into the next season (1969-70), which for the most part was undistinguished. There were four goalless draws at Highbury, the Gunners could finish no higher than 12th and suffered early exits in FA Cup and League Cup. Thankfully, the Fairs Cup results provided a relief from all the gloom. By the spring things were looking much more promising. Dinamo Bacau were beaten 9-1 on aggregate in the quarter-finals, and in the semi-finals Arsenal made surprisingly short work of Ajax, winning 3-1 on aggregate.
Anderlecht proved a major obstacle in the final, especially on their own ground where they were convincing 3-1 winners. Arsenal’s saviour in the first leg was a young Ray Kennedy, who came on for Charlie George towards the end with Anderlecht leading 3-0. Kennedy reduced the arrears with almost his first touch - a header from George Armstrong’s centre - to give Arsenal a fighting chance of rescuing the tie. With away goals counting double in the event of the scores being level on aggregate, Arsenal knew that 2-0 in the second leg at Highbury a week later would be sufficient to prevail. As it happened they went one better.
A crowd of 51,612 saw Arsenal make a tentative start, but the turning point was Eddie Kelly’s opening goal midway through the first half after Anderlecht had failed to clear an Armstrong corner. The Belgians were on the back foot after that and yielded to two Arsenal goals in the 70th and 71st minutes. From my vantage point in the North Bank I had a bird’s-eye view of both of them. John Radford thundered in an unstoppable header from a centre by Bob McNab for 2-0. The Arsenal fans were still jubilating when Jon Sammels scored the third with a shot that went in off the post. The final whistle brought the next wild celebrations. Supporters poured on to the pitch in their thousands as captain Frank McLintock, a winner at last after playing in four losing cup finals at Wembley, showed off the trophy to the adoring masses.
I often wonder what would have happened to Arsenal if they hadn’t risen to the occasion so gloriously that night, and instead lost their third consecutive cup final. How much longer would the players and supporters have had to wait for some silverware? The let-down of an aggregate defeat to Anderlecht would have been so huge that they would surely not have won the Double the season afterwards and those players responsible for the successes of the early Seventies would not be such household names today.
The 11 Arsenal heroes on that memorable April night were (in 4-4-2 formation): Bob Wilson, Peter Storey, Frank McLintock, Peter Simpson, Bob McNab, George Armstrong, Jon Sammels, Eddie Kelly, George Graham, John Radford and Charlie George.
Since 1970 Arsenal have added to their European silverware collection by winning the now defunct Cup Winners’ Cup in Copenhagen in 1994. Since the turn of the century the Gunners have enjoyed some outstanding results in Europe, including winning at Inter Milan, Real Madrid and AC Milan, but the greatest prize of all - the European Cup - eludes them.
There was no disgrace this season in going out at the quarter-final stage to last year’s winners, Barcelona, who have become a very special team featuring a very special player, Lionel Messi. Their first-half performance in the first leg at Ashburton Grove was the best I’ve seen from a visiting team in more than 50 years of attending Arsenal home matches. The word awesome is frequently overused these days but in this instance there was no other way to describe them. Barcelona were the side everybody wanted to avoid in the draw and it was rotten luck for Arsenal that they were handed the short straw. Even worse luck was the fact that Arsenal were away in the second leg. Let’s hope that if the Gunners play Barcelona in next season’s Champions League competition it won’t be before the final.
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