Fever Pitch And The 1988-89 Season

I picked up a copy of Fever Pitch at a boot sale recently for 10p (one of those ones they give away with the Sun) and despite the fact that I have never have or will be an Arseanl fan it brought back some great memories of "that" match, the league decider between Liverpool and Arsenal in May 1989.
I remember the week well Arsenal had managed to blow the lead in the championship and if Liverpool could beat West Ham on the Tuesday night they would go top by 3 points, if West ham had managed an unlikely win we would have stayed up.
As it turned out it was a disaster and 3 goals in the last 10 minutes gave Liverpool a undeserved 5-1 win leading to our relegation and the unfair sacking of long serving manager John Lyall (which was the beginning of West Ham joining all the other teams who sacked managers on a regular basis).
That 5-1 win also meant that the Friday night decider would need Arsenal to win 2-0 at Anfield to overtake Liverpool.
1989 was of course the season of the Hillsborough tragedy so a lot of people were hoping for a league and cup double for Liverpool, they had won the cup the week before.
I have a long standing dislike of Liverpool so I was happy to cheer on the Gooners for this one, and as the match turned out it was one of the greatest matches ever.
Liverpool's style at the time was usually to pass the ball around the back four then kick it back to the goalie for most of the match (the backpass rule didn't exist at the time) and when the other team had fallen asleep they would hit them on the break, so the chances of Arsenal winning by 2 were slim.
Arsenal pressed them for most of the match never allowing them to settle on the ball, impressive tactics by George Graham.
Alan Smith put Arsenal in front midway through the second half but as 90 minutes came up it looked Liverpool had done enough then in the last minute of injury time Arsenal broke and Michael Thomas grabbed the second goal, brilliant stuff.
The film captures that moment brilliantly, I've been at West Ham matches where we've snatched a last minute winner and that feeling of it's like slow motion and you hold your breath as the ball goes over the line.

Interesting to look at the league table for that season, these were the days when leagues had sensible names like division 1 to 4.
Luton and Wimbledon were in the first division which was funny considering they played in the conference play off yesterday (yeah I know it's a different Wimbledon).
Only 8 of this seasons Premier league teams were in the top division then -
1 Arsenal 2 Liverpool 6 Tottenham 8 Everton 11 Manchester United 17 Aston Villa 19 West Ham United 20 Newcastle United.
Chelsea, Man City, Blackburn, West Brom, Sunderland, Stoke and Birmingham were all in division 2.
Wolves, Fulham, Bolton, Wigan and Blackpool were in Division 3