In the first fifteen years of post-war English football, the two clubs who came to define the era, Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers each came close to achieving the league championship/FA Cup ‘double’ – their efforts to complete this rare sporting feat coming to grief on either a single goal FA Cup Final defeat (1956-57, Manchester United) or goal average (1959-60, Wolves) in a season where the other part of the equation had been successfully solved.
Then in 1961 along came Spurs who proved that no matter how improbable the task appeared to look, it could be done. Simultaneous capture of the two big prizes in the domestic game, that had eluded many fine teams since last achieved in the late-Victorian-era (Preston North End 1889/Aston Villa 1897) was attained by a multi-talented Tottenham Hotspur team under the astute guidance of manager Bill Nicholson, an early-50s title winner during his career as a Spurs player.
Through the 1960-61 season they led Division One from first to last and gave short shrift to most of those encountered along the road to winning the FA Cup. Boasting individual brilliance and collective precision, Spurs revealed themselves as modernists. The first side of the 20th Century to win the double, they upgraded the notion of team-play like none since Herbert Chapman introduced the ‘third-back‘ method at nearby Highbury in the late-1920s, which resulted in Arsenal becoming the dominant force in England through the decade that followed.
In taking the league title and FA Cup to White Hart Lane in the space of three weeks (they clinched the championship with three games still to play in mid-April, before a comfortable Wembley win over Leicester City on the first May Saturday of 1961), Spurs appeared to create the necessary template for such attainment.
In becoming champions with eight points to spare and lifting the cup by scoring ten times without conceding at the business end of things, it was evident only an exceptional team, so obviously superior to the rest, were capable of scaling such heights.
This notion was reinforced during the next nine seasons, when some accomplished sides won the league championship, their cup hopes let slide in order to pursue the main prize, conversely FA Cup success was often achieved by those showing indifferent weekly form.
Yet in the season that straddled 1969 and 70, Leeds United seriously raised the possibility of the double once more being a realistic objective. The blend of force and finesse boss Don Revie instilled into his side set them on a course that at one stage had the league, FA Cup and European Cup in their sights, only to succumb on each front due to a welter of fixtures in the final weeks of the campaign.
If looking for contenders to repeat what in the first full season of the new decade Spurs had managed ten years before, attention would have immediately fallen upon Don Revie’s men and the Mersey pair of Everton and Liverpool. This trio were a cut-above in terms of overall consistency, the blue side of Stanley Park having just celebrated the league title returning in stylish fashion to Goodison Park for the first time in seven years.
Of the rest there was plenty to admire about the way Chelsea, Manchester City, Spurs and West Bromwich Albion went about their business and while Manchester United still boasted the ‘holy trinity’ of Law, Best and Charlton a single, let alone a double looked beyond their current capabilities.
Arsenal meanwhile were just relieved a seventeen year trophy drought was finally over with the April 1970 capture of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.
Or so you would have thought.
At Highbury the first half of the 1960s had already been undistinguished when a 37-point return, 14th placed finish brought to an end the four year managerial reign of Billy Wright, the former Wolves and England captain replaced at the helm by the somewhat strange choice of club physio Bertie Mee.
Taking the reins at the age of 48 prior to start of the 1966-67 season, in making the transition from treatment room to tactics board, Mee inherited a squad at whose core was an ever-increasing number of young players for whom Arsenal had been their only club. When injury brought an end to the Highbury playing career of ex-England international Don Howe, he was quickly appointed to the position of first team coach, the two overseeing a gradual upturn in fortunes from roles in which they were best-suited.
‘Bertie was great at getting the right people around him,’ said skipper Frank McLintock when reflecting on the momentous 1970-71 season several years later. ‘Tactically he wasn’t the best, he’d been a physiotherapist most of his life and a very good one, but he was a great disciplinarian and organiser.’
An authoritarian, at times aloof figure, Mee was nevertheless respected by the players. In the same ‘Arsenal – The Double Year 1970-71‘ (2011) documentary that contained the above comments by McLintock (and all of those used in this article), goalkeeper Bob Wilson remarked:
‘Bertie was a little general. He could be sharp with you and I remember a number of clashes he had with Frank, but Don Howe was truly inspirational.’
In their first three seasons as a partnership, Mee and Howe achieved final league placings of seventh, ninth and fourth, 1967-68 and 1968-69 also bringing successive defeats in the League Cup Final, the single goal reversal against Leeds in March 1968 followed twelve months later by the embarrassment of losing 3-1 to third division Swindon Town. But that humbling on a quagmire Wembley pitch presaged an impressive run of league results that ultimately resulted in their highest league finish (4th) since the mid-50s and qualification for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.
While the 1969-70 season saw Arsenal meander along to finish twelfth, nobody underestimated just how important ending the near twenty-year trophy blight had been, particularly in light of a losing 3-1 in the Fairs Cup Final first-leg away to Anderlecht, the Belgians then overcome by a 3-0 margin on Tuesday 28 April 1970 – a night often cited as the greatest Highbury ever staged.
‘Winning the Fairs Cup gave us tremendous belief and hope we could go on from there,‘ remarked midfielder Jon Sammels, scorer of the third goal in the Fairs Cup Final second-leg, ‘and how we could take things on. But doing the double would have been beyond our expectations.’
As the 1970-71 season rolled around Arsenal would have been deemed a good outside bet for a cup triumph and based on being hard to beat were fancied for a respectable league showing – hopes of doing any better apparently dashed before they could become anything more as injuries threatened to spike their guns before a shot was fired in earnest.
Yet at their disposal Mee and Howe had a squad growing in reliability and resolve. Similar to England at the 1966 World Cup, Arsenal were not the best team around going into the 1970-71 season and neither did they appear so once another began – but in time between their spirit, sheer bloody-mindedness and no little skill had to be admired.
As Scottish midfield man George Graham, (who later went on to manage the club) remarked, ‘We weren’t the team who played the prettiest football, but for effort, enthusiasm, togetherness, whatever you want to call it, we had it in abundance.’
With Samuels and stalwart central defender Peter Simpson both placed on the injured list during pre-season and virtuoso attacking talent Charlie George side-lined for nearly five months after breaking his ankle while scoring in the opening day 2-2 draw at champions Everton, the management duo were forced reassign personnel. But as occasionally happens, from adversity came more than one key axis that over the course of the next nine months turned Arsenal from cup contenders to all-round silverware specialists.
Even so any talk of winning both the league and cup would have been classed fanciful in the extreme when an already reshaped team arrived at Goodison Park for the first game of the new season on Saturday 15 August 1970.
Welsh centre-half John Roberts partnered McLintock in central defence, a berth he would occupy until Simpson returned in mid-November, while 21 year-old Belfast-born Pat Rice, already a Northern Ireland international was drafted in at right-back. As a consequence the tough-tackling talents of Peter Storey were utilised in midfield and with his move from defence to the middle of the field Arsenal suddenly had a combative dimension in the engine room.
‘With Peter Storey in there we right away had a physical presence in midfield‘, recalled injured absentee Sammels, ‘and that brought balance and solidity to the team.’
Further up the field there was also the absence of George to contend with. The job of partnering centre-forward John Radford went to 19 year-old Ray Kennedy who like Rice would begin his first extended run in the side – one that lasted so long it would be a goal from teenager Kennedy in the final league game of the season that would take the league title to Highbury in dramatic style.
Following the draw at Everton, Arsenal picked up a point from the goalless midweek trip to West Ham, the first home game of the campaign bringing a visit from Manchester United, the fixture attracting a gate of over 54,000. Prior to kick-off the Arsenal players paraded the Fairs Cup trophy in a pre-match lap of honour, the contest itself something of a procession as a Radford hat-trick and header from Graham secured a handsome 4-0 victory – the match laying bare the current standing of each side, Arsenal singing from the same hymn sheet, United an orchestra unable to hit a right note between them.
It was an auspicious opening to their home programme, Arsenal setting out on a road that would see them go unbeaten through a league season at Highbury for the first time in their history. After Radford opened his account in the treatment meted out to Manchester United, four days later strike partner Kennedy did likewise with the goal that sank visiting Huddersfield Town.
They suffered defeat for the first time by going down by the odd-goal in three to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday 29 August and although it was followed by a stalemate against title favourites Leeds at Highbury (Arsenal playing for over an hour with ten men after Scottish midfielder Eddie Kelly was sent off following a clash with opposite number and fellow countryman Billy Bremner), it was followed by a trio of victories, culminating in a 6-2 whacking of visiting West Brom.
In scoring a bagful against the Baggies, the goals were shared between Graham (2), Kennedy (2), an own goal and one from winger George Armstrong. Two weeks before, Tyneside-born Armstrong, now into his seventh season as first team regular, had netted a brace in the 2-0 home success over Spurs in the North London derby – victory in the White Hart Lane return eight months later, the most significant they would ever record at the home of their local rivals.
‘George Armstrong was a special player for us,’ reflected Sammels. ‘He could play either side, cross the ball with either foot and his work rate was absolutely brilliant. He epitomised what that Arsenal team was all about.‘
Radford, who along with Kennedy was the beneficiary of many a pinpoint Arsmtrong cross, spoke in equally glowing terms of a team-mate who sadly passed away suddenly at the age of 56 while working as Arsenal reserve team coach in October 2000:
‘Geordie’ Armstrong was a fantastic little player, God knows what he’d be worth today.’
But seven days after what proved their biggest win of the season in putting West Brom to the sword, Arsenal were to suffer their heaviest defeat of 1970-71. On Saturday 26 September they were routed 5-0 at Stoke and with Freda Payne currently number one in the UK singles charts, in their yellow-shirted change strip the visitors looked more bitter lemon than ‘Band of Gold.’
Yet that pummelling in the Potteries was followed by a 4-0 hammering of Nottingham Forest (in which Kennedy scored a hat-trick), this hefty Highbury win setting in motion a fourteen match unbeaten league trot. Through this period the 4-0 demolition of Everton on October 17 was particularly noteworthy. Not only had they run-ragged the reigning champions and scored four or more for the third successive home game, two goals from Kennedy against the Toffees took his personal tally to eight in the last six matches – Arsenal the only side giving serious chase to top of the table Leeds as autumn leaves began to fall.
The sequence ended with a 2-1 defeat at Huddersfield on January 16 1971. By such time they had exited the League Cup, (losing 2-0 to Crystal Palace in a fourth round November replay, their only Highbury defeat of the entire campaign), but advanced to the fourth round of the FA Cup – defeating non-league Yeovil in round three – and the Fairs Cup quarter-finals.
When they suffered a fourth league reversal in losing 2-0 at Liverpool on January 30, second-placed Arsenal trailed leaders Leeds by five points, but with a game in hand having played 26 matches. The first day of February brought a 3-2 FA Cup fourth round replay success against second division Portsmouth, George marking his first start since the opening day with a goal – and before the month was out he would score twice in an impressive 2-1 FA Cup fifth round victory at Manchester City, current holders of the League and European Cup Winners’ Cups.
Through February the Maine Road side and Ipswich Town both lost league matches at Highbury, but when Arsenal lost for the third time in five Division One outings in going down 2-0 at Derby, it appeared that any double they had designs on would have to consist of the FA and Fairs Cup – the FA Cup field now without a clear frontrunner after Leeds had suffered a shock 3-2 fifth round defeat at fourth division Colchester United.
But as March dawned the Elland Road outfit held a comfortable seven point lead over Arsenal, who despite having two games in hand (in these days of two points for win), still needed the side above them to falter, while having little margin for error themselves if a three-pronged trophy pursuit was to continue.
| P | W | D | L | F | A | GAv | Pts | ||
| 1 | Leeds United | 31 | 21 | 7 | 3 | 55 | 22 | 2.50 | 49 |
| 2 | Arsenal | 29 | 18 | 6 | 5 | 51 | 25 | 2.04 | 42 |
They maintained a title challenge with wins against Wolves, Crystal Palace and Blackpool, each without conceding a goal, while they continued advancing in the FA Cup, although yet again things were done the hard way in accentuating their tenacity. In a sixth round Highbury replay over second division promotion chasers Leicester City (following a 0-0 draw at Filbert Street), they won through with a goal from George which would not be his last in the competition that season.
The March fixture schedule was further congested by return of the Fairs Cup, but after a 2-1 first-leg home win over FC Koln early in the month their hold on the trophy was lost in suffering a 1-0 reversal in the return on West German soil to go out on away goals. This exit from Europe, ending all hope of an unprecedented trophy treble, occurred on Tuesday 23 March just four days before an FA Cup Semi-Final showdown at Hillsborough against Stoke, off whom they had received a shellacking back in September.
Another looked in the offing as goals from central defender Dennis Smith and striker John Ritchie gave the Potters a 2-0 lead with only half an hour played, Stoke ultimately paying dearly for several missed opportunities to go further ahead before half-time and shortly after the restart.
When years later Graham referred to the ‘great belief‘ and ‘a refusal to give in‘ that Mee and Howe insisted upon, this was one fixture he might well have been alluding to. Storey reduced the deficit two minutes into the second half and despite pressing through the rest of the game, an equaliser continued to elude them.
Goalkeeper Bob Wilson whose consistency was another feature of the season, also played his part in keeping the contest on a knife-edge as Stoke attacked on the counter. Yet hopes that Arsenal would make their first appearance in the FA Cup Final since 1952 were all but extinguished before the tie ended in dramatic fashion – Storey levelling from the penalty spot with the last kick of the afternoon.
Not only had Arsenal survived to fight another day in the FA Cup, their sense of relief coming off the field given an added boost on reaching the dressing room to learn Leeds had lost 3-1 at Chelsea. Four days later they duly secured a Wembley date with Liverpool on the first Saturday in May (who the previous weekend had won through from an all-Merseyside semi-final), when goals from Graham and Kennedy saw them ease past Stoke in a Villa Park semi-final replay.
Being the final day of March Arsenal could reflect on a month when they had played four FA Cup ties, three league fixtures and a pair of European ties, the upshot of those nine games being they were out of the Fairs Cup, but through to the FA Cup Final and lay six points behind Leeds with three matches in hand, although now had a slightly superior goal average. While it was still five weeks away, the rearranged visit to Spurs – twice postponed due to the FA Cup Semi-Final and subsequent replay – now scheduled for Monday 3 May, began to loom as a date with destiny.
If the games had come along in unrelenting fashion through March, then April brought no let-up. The first of eight matches in thirty days was a 2-0 home win over Chelsea, two goals from Kennedy ensured the outcome in front of the biggest Highbury crowd of the season, a mammoth 62,087 attending this fiercely contested London derby.
During the next two and a half weeks Arsenal overcame Coventry, Southampton, Nottingham Forest, Newcastle and Burnley in quick succession. George scored vital goals in each of the last three games, his rocket shot into the North Bank that allowed them to edge past Newcastle reminiscent of Bobby Charlton in his prime.
Indeed, that 71st minute match winning strike took on increased significance as news filtered through that Leeds, (enduring a fixture pile-up themselves due involvement in a two-leg Fairs Cup semi-final against Liverpool), had lost 2-1 at home to West Brom, whose winning goal by Jeff Astle came shrouded in an offside controversy.
Not that anyone at Highbury was complaining – as they went top of the table on goal average with the luxury of having two matches in hand.
The midweek 1-0 victory over Burnley that followed, achieved by another goal from George – a result that condemned the Turf Moor side to relegation – was attained without the services of Storey and full-back Bob McNab who were in the England squad contesting a Wembley European Championship qualifier against Greece. Their absence was not unduly felt as Arsenal registered a ninth straight league win during which time they had only conceded once.
Both players were back in harness the following Saturday for a visit to The Hawthorns, when it would be the turn of West Brom to do Leeds a favour as they held Arsenal to a 2-2 draw, this while Southampton were being swept aside at Elland Road – which was the next port of call for the current league leaders, Tuesday 26 April bringing a championship showdown of huge proportion to West Yorkshire.
For Arsenal the portents looked good. They had recorded five wins and a draw in their last six league outings while Leeds over the same period had returned two wins, two draws and two defeats. They had also lost three times at home to boot, so with a one point lead and game in hand – this being Leeds penultimate league fixture – Arsenal returning to N5 with even a draw would be a significant step in their title quest.
When a fractious encounter approached the final minute, it indeed appeared the spoils would be shared. But an injury time Jack Charlton goal, vehemently disputed by the visitors who claimed the World Cup winning centre-back was standing offside when he scored, enabled the hosts to take both points and return to the top of the table.
On the final Saturday of the 1970-71 league season (April 28), Leeds completed their league programme with a 2-0 home win over Nottingham Forest while Arsenal thanks to a goal from Kelly, on as a substitute for Storey, overcame visiting Stoke. These results left the Gunners a point behind Leeds but with one match still to play, a slight advantage in goal average meaning Arsenal would make the short trip to White Hart Lane needing a win or goalless draw to become league champions for the first time since Coronation year.
But a goalless draw would give Leeds the better goal average and with it a second title in three seasons.
Given the magnitude of the Tottenham fixture, leaving aside for a moment obvious sub-plots of North London derby and the visitors out to emulate what their rivals did ten years before, it remains a mystery why the match was not made an all-ticket affair. From the end of March it became increasingly apparent Arsenal could arrive in N17 with the title within their grasp, or already celebrating its capture.
At the turnstiles however, first come, first served was the order of things, the official attendance of 51,992 believed to be at least ten thousand short on the number of spectators actually in the ground. Even then there were estimates as many as 50,000 were locked out when the gates eventually closed.
As for the match itself, Arsenal for the most part controlled a suitably cagey encounter and while the clean sheet they needed rarely came under threat, it seemed glory would come on the strength of a stalemate. But with three minutes remaining Armstrong delivered another of the telling crosses that had long since been his forte, this one met by Kennedy who netted from eight yards with a firm header.
Had Spurs levelled in the brief time remaining it would have denied Arsenal the championship, yet such a prospect never looked likely and as the visitors clinched victory on the night, the league title, along with advancing their double ambitions, they also denied Leeds any chance of a trophy double of their own. In having to settle for the runners-up spot, Don Revie’s side switched their attention to a forthcoming two-leg Fairs Cup Final against Juventus, Leeds through to this stage by virtue of a semi-final success against Liverpool – who in five days’ time would be out stop Arsenal clinching the double with victory in the FA Cup Final.
| 1 | Arsenal | P 42 | W 29 | D 7 | L 6 | F 71 | A 29 | GA 2.45 | Pts 65 |
| 2 | Leeds United | P 42 | W 27 | D 10 | L 5 | F 72 | A 30 | GA 2.40 | Pts 64 |
On Saturday 8 May 1971 on a sweltering afternoon at Wembley, there was little to separate the sides over 90 minutes, the effects of a long season apparent in several spells of laboured play – the deadlock finally broken two minutes into extra time when winger Steve Heighway fired Liverpool ahead.
In the face of heat and fatigue there was evidence to suggest Arsenal may not be able to muster a response, but that would be to disregard the collective will of a redoubtable team, who summoned their renowned sense of purpose to scramble an equaliser ten minutes later. The goal was credited to substitute Kelly, whose name did not appear in the twelve Arsenal players listed in the match programme (on not making the bench Sammels submitted a transfer request and joined Leicester a few weeks later).
As the second half of extra time unfolded it is unlikely either side would have turned up their nose at a replay, but after six further minutes Radford slipped a pass to George who from the edge of the box struck a thunderous shot past Liverpool ‘keeper Ray Clemence – the goal that ultimately clinched the double the best seen at that end of Wembley since Bobby Charlton scored with equal aplomb for England in a 1966 World Cup group game against Mexico.
George celebrated by laying on his back to take the congratulation of his yellow shirted team-mates and while from some sections of the press Arsenal, like England in becoming World Champions five years before, were disparaged for being functional rather than flamboyant, few could dispute this latter-day assertion made by George Graham:
‘We had the right blend and were a good unit. Bertie Mee and Don Howe instilled a work ethic into us as a team rather than individuals.’
Also hard to contest was the fact Arsenal had seized their moment, moments to be exact, through an epic season in English football. They came first in a gruelling, right to the wire championship race (their 65 point title-winning haul the third highest of the past ten years), taken an arduous route to lifting the FA Cup, while beyond that Chelsea (Cup Winners’ Cup) and Leeds (Fairs Cup) brought European trophies to England.
But in every shape and form this was Arsenal’s shining hour. Unsurprisingly skipper McLintock, who played in all 42 league games and the nine FA Cup-ties, was named Footballer of the Year and neither did it came as a shock when Mee won the Manager of the Year award. Alongside McLintock, Wilson and Armstrong were also ever-presents, while Rice, Radford and Kennedy only missed one league game each. Indeed, of the sixteen players Arsenal used through such a demanding the season, Scottish winger Peter Marinello made just one league start and Northern Ireland defender Sammy Nelson only two.
In the goal scoring stakes Arsenal upped their total by twenty from the previous season (while conceding twenty less), top scorer Kennedy (19), Radford (15) and Graham (11) all reaching double figures in the league. The emergence of Kennedy was particularly eye-catching as prior to 1970-71 he made just two first team league appearances, although had scored a vital late goal when coming on as substitute in the 3-1 first-leg Fairs Cup defeat against Anderlecht the previous season.
The opening day injury sustained by George at Everton, while denying them his prodigious talent until early the following year was offset by inadvertent creation of the Radford-Kennedy strike force, a partnership that became a foundation stone on which their season of resounding success was built. In fact it proved a nine month period when Arsenal were triumphant at virtually every level, a ‘treble‘ of sorts completed when the Highbury youngsters lifted the FA Youth Cup, with the reserves just pipped to the Football Combination crown by Spurs – who also had the consolation of winning the League Cup prior to their neighbours making off with the two main prizes.
But by the time the all-conquering Arsenal ensemble gathered to be photographed with their trophy haul prior to the 1971-72 campaign, some of the league and cup winning lustre had begun to fade. Howe was absent from the squad photo after departing to manage West Brom earlier in the summer, his exit clearly felt as Arsenal made a sluggish start to the new season.
Following a run of indifferent results through the autumn Mee was prompted to break the British transfer record in signing Alan Ball from Everton, the World Cup winning midfielder setting Arsenal back £220,000 when he switched clubs in December 1971.
His arrival brought a stuttering season to life and although they were never able to mount a convincing defence of the title (while exiting the European Cup at the quarter-final stage to eventual winners Ajax), they rallied through the spring and displayed customary doggedness in reaching a second FA Cup Final in twelve months.
On this occasion, however, they suffered a 1-0 defeat to Leeds, who by way of irony missed out on securing the double 48 hours later in losing at Wolves, their 2-1 defeat confirming Derby County as league champions – the perseverance and consistency required to win both honours not seen again until Liverpool completed the task in the mid-80s.
All of which served to make what Arsenal achieved in the first full season of the 1970s look even more remarkable as with a smaller squad they played more matches – coming through such an unrelenting fixture programme as the campaign built to a climax to win the league and cup, an extraordinary feat of football endurance.
‘Under Bertie Mee and Don Howe, standards were a big thing at Arsenal‘, recalled Graham, ‘they were always saying, “keep your standards high, never let them drop”‘.
Rarely have a team have carried out such instructions to the letter – high standards at Highbury an epitaph for the 1970-71 season if ever there was one.
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