1) Liverpool 0-2 Arsenal, Division One, 26 May 1989
It's a bizarre coincidence that the two most dramatic finishes in English football history occurred on 26 May in 1989 and 1999. There are many similarities between Arsenal's title win at Anfield and Manchester United's European Cup victory over
Bayern Munich – not least the instant realisation for fans of each club that it would, could and should never get any better than this. There was also one big difference: the reaction of the managers.
Sir Alex Ferguson was miles away, lost in the pure joy of achieving his lifetime's ambition, able only to utter the brilliant phrase "Football? Bloody hell". If he was emotionally naked, then George Graham was hiding under about 15 layers at Anfield a decade earlier. He was eerily placid. When the final whistle went at Anfield, he shook Kenny Dalglish's hand, briefly clenched his fist and then even tried to calm the celebrations around him. When he was
interviewed on the field by ITV's Mark Austin a few minutes later, he sounded like a man doing small talk with his newsagent about whether the local paper was as good as it used to be.
It was an extraordinary and fascinating reaction, not least because everybody else had pretty much lost it. Lee Dixon burst into tears after Michael Thomas's goal, and was wiping his eyes while the match continued. David O'Leary broke down in tears after the game. Even ITN lost it. The first bong of News at Ten was followed by Sandy Gall saying, "
The League Cup goes to Highbury".
We might conclude that Graham overdid the decorum, worried about causing offence in the aftermath of Hillsborough. Except he was the same in the privacy of the team coach on the journey home. "'We call upon George to sing us a song,' we demanded, but he wouldn't," remembered Tony Adams in his autobiography. "He just sat at the front with his own thoughts, savouring the achievement."
He had been equally tranquil before the game.
Look at his pre-match interview. Long before Arsène Wenger was around, George knew. George knew all week. He knew exactly how Arsenal could win the title. Clearly there was a degree of bluff – there had to be with a task this formidable – but it was still a staggering managerial performance, not just during but also before the match.
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He decided that the team would not stay overnight before the game, preferring his beloved John Wayne method of getting in, getting the job done and getting the hell out of there. In the build-up to the game, with
Arsenal appearing to have blown the title after losing at home to Derby and drawing at home to Wimbledon, he decided to give the players a couple of days off to assuage their nerves. He knew full well that, for many of his players, the only thing up for grabs now would be a succession of pint glasses, but it was worth it to take their mind off things. The players didn't disappoint: Adams, Niall Quinn, Steve Bould and Paul Merson kickstarted a bender by spending the Monday night at Windsor races. Afterwards they went on a Thames cruise, during which Adams and Quinn chatted up the wrong women and ended up having a full and frank debate with a couple of bruisers over the binding nature of matrimony.
Adams was still going strong 30 hours later, back at Quinn's flat. "There was half of north London fretting about the title race and me, the team's captain, on a bender," he said. He was still living with his parents at the time and finally called them on the Wednesday to confirm that, yes Mum, he was OK. Two days later, on the day of the match, Adams played his part in soothing his team-mates' nerves, setting himself up to be the butt of various jokes by inventing a story about a date with the Page 3 girl Suzanne Mizzi.
To most, Arsenal winning 2-0 at Anfield was an even unlikelier story than Adams having a date with a Page 3 girl. Liverpool hadn't lost for nearly five months and had reeled in Arsenal, who led them by 18 points at the end of February. It felt like a re-assertion of the natural order:
Liverpool top, the rest scrapping for second. Few people bothered to even pay lip service to Arsenal's chances. The Daily Mirror headline two days before the match captured the mood: "YOU DON'T HAVE A PRAYER ARSENAL."
Graham may not have had a prayer, but he did have a plan. He knew all the momentum was with Liverpool, so he settled on the counter-intuitive tactic of bringing in an extra centre-back, Steve Bould. "If we concede an early goal we're [Poor language removed]," is how Perry Groves recalls Graham's teamtalk. "What I want to do is go in at half-time at 0-0, then I'll be happy."
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The plan was to score one after half-time, allow Liverpool to think the unthinkable and see where the chips fell thereafter. Alan Smith scored early in the second half; you know the rest. Thomas missed a sitter in the 75th minute and then, from an almost identical position in injury-time, achieved immortality with one unfathomably calm stab of his right foot. It was, said Thomas, "an out-of-body experience".
In a sense Graham was out of body too, in a zone of rare serenity, as he had been all week. Afterwards Groves sat with Bould, Merson and the Championship trophy in the dressing room. "Do you realise," said Groves, "that everything he said came true?" They knew. George had known all along.
TY 
Better call up Eddie Murphy and tell him that his brother in law is in London. 
