Marathon seasons: Arsenal 1979/80

Looking back at Arsenal's marathon 1979/80 season; 70 matches, triumph and despair, fixture congestion, fatigue, and desolation.

May 12, 1979: as Graham Rix prepares to strike the ball, Arsenal’s season hangs in the balance. Playing their 59th match in nine months, the team are in danger of falling at the last, with nothing to show for all their efforts. Rix pulls his left foot back.

Fast forward 368 days. May 14, 1980: as Graham Rix prepares to strike the ball, he finds himself in an even more precarious situation. Playing their 68th match in nine months, the team are in danger of heaping more pain upon despair, a heavy sprinkling of salt into their gaping wound. Rix pulls his left foot back.

Two different seasons with two very different outcomes. Arsenal’s 1979 FA Cup triumph was a joyous occasion, a therapeutic experience after the horror show against Ipswich in 1978, even if the players decided to put their supporters through the wringer once again. But in 1980 there would be no such happy ending. 

The club would embark on a 70-match emotional rollercoaster involving players, supporters and club officials that hit so many highs but would end in crushing lows. You don’t always get what you deserve in life, and sport unfortunately is no different.

The summer of 1979 had seen clubs splashing the cash as chairman got dragged into a crazy spending spree, Manchester City’s £1,437,500 investment in Wolves midfielder Steve Daley a prime example of this. Arsenal chose not to get involved in such nonsense; their sole summer signing, the £75,000 purchase of QPR midfielder John Hollins, an archetypal club transaction.

The Charity Shield curtain raiser gave an early indication, if any was needed, that finishing above Liverpool in Division One would be a tall order for Arsenal or any other club. The 3-1 Wembley defeat may have been followed up with an emphatic 4-0 opening day league win at newly promoted Brighton, but too many draws – 16 in 42 matches – put paid to any faint chances of title success.

It proved to be the cup competitions that provided the thrills and spills during Arsenal’s eventful season. A shock quarter final defeat to Swindon Town in the League Cup blocked one possible route to Wembley, but Terry Neill’s team did reach the FA Cup final. The fact that they took ten matches to achieve this added to the fixture congestion as the season neared its conclusion.

A replay win over Cardiff in the third round got the ball rolling, followed by wins over Brighton, Bolton (after another replay) and Watford, setting up the frightening prospect of Liverpool in the semi-final. The inaugural London Marathon may have been a year away; the London-Liverpool version was about to commence in April 1980.

With the might of Liverpool on the horizon in one semi-final, another giant blocked the path to European glory in the last four of the Cup Winners’ Cup. Victories over Fenerbahce, Magdeburg and Gothenburg had set up a mouth-watering tie against Giovanni Trapattoni’s Juventus, resplendent with stars such as Zoff, Cabrini, Gentile, Scirea, Causio, Tardelli and Bettega.

To get an idea of the fixture chaos surrounding Arsenal’s season, look no further than the April and May of 1980. In total, the club would play a whopping 17 matches from April 2 to May 19, with bone-juddering semi-finals, heart-breaking finals, and exhaustion served up along the way.

Such was the fixture congestion Arsenal tried unsuccessfully to get their North London derby against Tottenham rearranged. With league matches on April 2 and 5, the match with Tottenham on April 7 was far from ideal, especially with Juventus visiting Highbury two days later. When Tottenham refused to play ball, Neill risked the wrath of the FA by fielding an under-strength team; beating the Spurs with six reserves was delicious, as attentions then switched to cup football.

April 9: despite a late equaliser at Highbury, the 1-1 draw against Juventus saw the Italians installed as firm favourites to progress, after all, no British team had won at the Stadio Comunale. April 12: a drab 0-0 against Liverpool in the FA Cup at Hillsborough. April 16: the teams cannot be separated at Villa Park, drawing 1-1.

Meeting Liverpool again at Anfield for a league fixture on April 19 (another 1-1 draw), Arsenal then faced the daunting trip to Turin on April 23 for a match that few gave them a chance of winning. Yet the underdog spirit shone through once more, 18-year-old Paul Vaessen headingan 88th minute winner in a stunning triumph.

Squeezing in a league match against West Brom on April 26, the FA Cup saga with Liverpool moved back to Villa Park on April 28. Taking the lead in the first minute through Alan Sunderland, Arsenal were seconds away from Wembley before Kenny Dalglish equalised. It may have been too much for most teams to take, but this set of players were made of strong stuff.

May 1: just 9 days before the scheduled final, Arsenal delivered the knockout blow against Liverpool, a Brian Talbot goal at Coventry finally separating the teams. With Second Division West Ham and unfancied Valencia awaiting in the two finals, surely the hard work had been done in toppling two European forces? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The season was about to come crashing down in a nine-day period of hurt that left Arsenal empty-handed, punch drunk, and open-mouthed in astonishment at what had happened. A 1-0 defeat against West Ham at Wembley provided part one of the pain sequence. David O’Leary explained the problems facing the players in My Story.

“At half-time, Don [Howe] came into the dressing-room and ordered ‘Get yourselves under the showers. For God’s sake wake yourselves up.’ It was no good. We were gone.” Midfielder Talbot, who played in all 70 matches that season, highlighted the state of the affairs when he collapsed with exhaustion on the coach after the defeat.

Arsenal had very little time to lick their wounds, though. Just four days later the team took on Valencia at Heysel, with O’Leary, playing after a pain-killing injection, keeping Mario Kempes quiet throughout. Unable to force a breakthrough, the match drifted towards a penalty shootout, a relatively new concept in 1980.

Star men Kempes and Liam Brady both missed from the spot as inevitably the shootout limped into sudden death. Trailing 5-4, Rix moved forwards, socks rolled down around his ankles, knowing he had to score to keep Arsenal in it. He failed, bending over to put his hands on his knees, his tired body language neatly summing up the feeling amongst players and supporters at that very moment.

There were a couple of hits still to come. Winning 2-1 at Wolves in a rearranged league match two days after Brussels – Neill admitting “I had no idea how we had achieved it, nor did the players” – Arsenal then travelled to Middlesbrough on May 19 knowing that a win would see the club qualify for the UEFA Cup. But it was a bridge too far.

Losing 5-0, the team simply had nothing left to give. “We had to crack-up some time, but I was pleased we held out right to the end,” Neill wrote in Revelations of a Football Manager. The misery of Arsenal fans was completed in the close season, when the world-class talent of Brady moved to Juventus.

The heady days of 1979/80 proved to be the beginning of the end for Neill, as post-Brady and Frank Stapleton (who left in 1981), the club went through a period of relative decline. But what memories Arsenal provided to their fans in 1979/80, even without a pot to show for it. Defeating Liverpool and Juventus in semi-finals isn’t to be sniffed at, even if losing to West Ham and Valencia was enough to drive some Arsenal fans to tears.