Written by Adam Gold Wednesday, 27 October 2010 00:53

GunnerTalk Blog

It’s Newcastle away tonight in the Carling Cup. I think we all want the Arsenal to take this competition a little more seriously than we have done in previous seasons under Le Boss. We believe it to be, firstly, a trophy (and let’s be honest any one will do to start) and secondly, but of more importance, a stepping stone to bigger and better trophies! Anyway let’s look at a few memorable League Cup campaigns from yester years with our friend Adam Gold.

Divine Intervention

Arsenal’s crushing 6-2 defeat at home to United in a 1992 League Cup tie left many fans asking soul-searching questions. Prominent among them was to wonder if the thrashing meant there was no God. 

Fortunately, none other than Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Professor Sir Jonathan Sacks, was on hand to offer solace in this time of need. Having attended the game with a fellow Gooner – the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr John Carey – the Chief Rabbi explained: “What it proves is that God exists. It’s just that He supports Manchester United”

Not on their way to Wembley

According to Arsenal winger Perry ‘The Ginger Genius’ Groves, the Gunners’ glory era of the late 1980s was inadvertently kick-started by the tannoy operator at White Hart Lane.

With the Gunners 2-0 down on aggregate at half time in the 1987 League Cup semi-final at the Lane, new manager George Graham desperately needed a way to motivate his team.  Then something amazing happened – something that got Arsenal’s adrenaline flowing, and helped the team fight back to level the tie. The Gunners went on to win the replay and the final against Liverpool, heralding the dawn of a successful new Arsenal age under George Graham.  So what was the spur against Spurs?

“Tottenham’s PA announcer did two things at half-time,” Groves said. “He set out the ticket arrangements for the final, and they played the ‘Ossie’s On His Way To Wembley’ song.

I was in the stands because I was injured, and while I though the song was quite funny, it wound me up. God knows how the players felt when they heard.

Someone went into the dressing room to tell them, and you don’t need to give anyone more of an incentive than that – it would have added an extra yard to their efforts.

At the time I thought it could come back to slap them in the face.... and it did!”

The Snarling Cup Final

The Gunners broke more records with their League Cup Final appearance at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium on February 25^th 2007.

Arsenal went into the 2006/2007 final against Chelsea with nothing to lose. Arsene Wenger had played a combination of youth and reserve players in the tournament, and to his delight – and the nation’s surprise – this makeshift team of youngsters had knocked out full-strength Everton, Liverpool and Spurs sides on route to the final.

The Gunners coach chose to stick with these young guns in the final rather than field his senior side against champions Chelsea, who had experienced world stars Andriy Shevchenko and Michael Ballack in their line-up. Arsenal’s team included 17-year olds Arman Traore and Theo Walcott, and with an average age of just under 21, were the youngest side ever to play in a League Cup final.

After Walcott’s goal made him the second youngest scorer ever in this fixture, it looked like Arsenal would pull off a shock win. But then Chelsea’s top scorer Didier Drogba struck twice to win the Cup for the West Londoners, and the League Cup sponsored by Carling turned into the ‘Snarling Cup Final.’ Disappointed and frustrated, some of the Arsenal youngsters became involved in a mass brawl with the Chelsea players near the final whistle, resulting in a record three sendings-off - Captain Kolo Toure and substitute Emmanuel Adebayor for Arsenal, and John Obi Mikel for Chelsea. Three previous League Cup finals has seen one player each shown the red card – but this was the first triple tunnel trudge.

League Cup Boycott

Along with a number of other leading clubs, Arsenal boycotted the League Cup for a number of years after its inception in 1960. Believing that the new competition was an unwarranted addition to an already crowded fixture list, the Gunners didn’t enter the League cup until the 1966/67 season when they were knocked out by West Ham third round.  The change of heart was prompted by the award of a European place to the winners of the competition and by the fact that the original two-legged final was replaced by a one off game at Wembley.  

The following season, 1967/68, the Gunners reached the final of the League Cup for the first time, beating Coventry, Reading, Blackburn, Burnley and Huddersfield on the way to Wembley, where they lost to Leeds in a dour match.