February 13 – Wenger Ensures Football is the Winner

WHEN Emmanuel Eboue was red carded in last weekend’s north London derby, the usual headlines about the number of red cards during Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal tenure came out. Today in 1999 the mercurial Frenchman proved that he’s not all bad, as he offered to replay Arsenal’s FA Cup fifth-round tie against Sheffield United after the Gunners had scored their winner in controversial circumstances.

A 2-1 win over their First Division opponents was the sort of result that expect Arsenal to canter to, but as Motty will tell you until the cows come home, that doesn’t legislate for the magic of the cup.

The offending incident occurred with 15 minutes left in a deadlocked encounter when a foul on United’s Lee Morris went unpunished but left him injured in the Arsneal area. David Seaman attempted to get the referee’s attention but failed and play went on.

When the ball fell to Blades’ goalie Alan Kelly, he kicked it out of play, expecting the usual unwritten ‘fair play’ rule to be used and the ball returned. Arsneal’s new signing from Internazionale, Kanu wasn’t reading from the same hymnsheet however, intercepting Ray Parlour’s throw-in and slotting home.

The Yorkshire side were not impressed, standing bewildered for a minute before taking their case up with the ref, who had to consult his linesman before giving the goal, as he had no reason not to.

For a while it looked like Steve Bruce was ready to take his team off the pitch in protest. After the game he complained: “The one thing I can’t understand is that maybe after all the hoo-hah, when the Arsenal players don’t want the goal and are all apologising, why the referee didn’t use a little bit of common sense and rule it out for ungentlemanly conduct. Common sense has got to prevail.”

Common sense in football? Good luck with that Brucey. His counterpart in the Arsenal dugout showed his charitable side though, as Wenger immediately offered a replay, saying: “It wasn’t right to win that way – it wasn’t Arsenal. We want to win all our games but nobody cheated on purpose.”

The FA agreed to the replay and Arsenal ground out a legitimate 2-1 win as they would make their ways to the semi-finals where a rather famous Ryan Giggs goal dumped them out of the cup.

If you’re not too busy buying over-priced bunches of roses tomorrow and fancy your daily fix of football history make sure you’re back here for more of the same, but until then see what one of our favourite football personalities was up to today here. Otherwise, see what happened last time these two sides met, as Wenger’s youngsters put on a much better show that the old-timers have managed for a fair few weeks.