Back in 1987, we capped our centenary season celebrations with our first-ever League Cup success.
George Graham, in his first season as manager, masterminded our route to Wembley, and then plotted the downfall of 1986 Double winners Liverpool in the final.
Arguably, the highlight of the season had come in the semi-final. After losing the home leg 1-0 to Tottenham, our arch-rivals looked to be heading to Wembley whe they netted in the first half of the second leg.
But with the words of the Spurs PA announcer giving ticket details for Wembley at half-time ringing in their ears, Viv Anderson and Niall Quinn netted to take the game to a replay, also at White Hart Lane. After falling behind again, goals from Ian Allinson and David Rocastle gave us a 2-1 victory and sent us through.
That set up our first appearance in a Wembley final since the 1980 FA Cup final, but we got off to a poor start when Ian Rush put Kenny Dalglish’s Reds ahead after 23 minutes. It had been 144 matches since Liverpool had lost when the Welsh hitman scored, but this sequence was shortly to end thanks to the exploits of our own forward – Charlie Nicholas.
“We reached the League Cup final in April and I was determined to be fit, even though I had been struggling with a knee injury first picked up at Nottingham Forest earlier in the season,” he told us in 2017.
“I really worked hard to make that game, with real intensive training. It was touch and go but I made the team. I’d been used to winning trophies at Celtic and hadn’t expected it to take so long to have a chance of silverware at Arsenal.”
The man known as Champagne Charlie equalised by stabbing the ball home on the half-hour and with seven minutes remaining, substitute Perry Groves left a trail of defenders in his wake before teeing up Nicholas for his second of the afternoon.
“It was mine and Arsenal’s day,” he reflected. “I was in the right place after hitting the post to tuck away a second chance to level. Then I scored with a wild deflection that totally wrong-footed Bruce Grobbelaar.
“I remember Bob Wilson behind the goal jumping higher than anyone else. I was going to hug him but thought better of it – after all, he was working as an unbiased journalist!”
Kenny Sansom went up to lift the trophy, his only honour as Arsenal captain. It was a suitable way to mark our first 100 years, having celebrated our centenary on Christmas Day 1986, proudly on top of the First Division and still in both cup competitions.
“What I really remember was going to Islington Town Hall with the trophy,” Nicholas added. “There were thousands and thousands of people out. Well over 100,000 – probably many more. It was at that moment I realised how big the club was. I had been there for three years but hadn’t appreciated it. Many had stayed away because the football had not always been great.
“But that was a truly defining moment because I understood the sheer scale of Arsenal Football Club. When I was at Celtic we never did trophy tours around Glasgow, but that day in Islington blew me away.”
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
