4/14/2018 On Second Thoughts: why the 98-99 title race was one of the best ever | Sport | The

the best ever | Sport | The Guardian

On Second Thoughts: why the 98 99 title race was one of

the best ever
The 1998-99 season is largely remembered for Man Utd's treble, but their Premiership battle
with Arsenal and Chelsea had it all

Rob Smyth
Wed 20 May 2009 12.32 BST

Given its obvious moral, intellectual and even visceral desirability, the fair fight is surprisingly
rare. In playgrounds, sports fields and speed-dating venues up and down the land (you're not
flirting on a level playing field if the other person can hold eye contact for more than 0.02
seconds), we see millions of hopeless, desperate mismatches.

It's the same with title races: very rarely do all the challengers hurtle towards the line at full
pelt. One is usually saddled with the egg and spoon or third leg that is loss of form, nerve or
players through injury, and are overtaken at the last. In this country, that has happened in
1985-86, 1990-91, 1991-92, 1995-96, 1997-98 and 2002-03. Often, paradoxically, the team
who are struggling just manage to wriggle over the line ahead of a team in palpably better
form: that happened in England in 1988-89, 1994-95 and, to a lesser extent, in each of the last
two seasons.

If this situation is not necessarily a surprise, given the intrinsic difficulty of sustaining the
highest standards throughout a nine-month season, then it is peculiar that we do not laud the
exceptions. The most celebrated title races tend to be those with a dramatic final day. In a
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sense that is understandable, and it fits the race analogy that we recall that last, desperate
sprint, but perhaps the better contests are those notable for the incessant exhibition of
excellence over a sustained period of time. If you have both, as in 1998-99, so much the better.

That isn't often the case. In 1988-89, for example, Liverpool took 40 points from the 14 games
going into that final game at Anfield, whereas Arsenal, staggering like drunks in a rare example
of sport imitating life, took just 23. In 1994-95, Blackburn lost three of their last five games,
and it would have been four but for a superhuman performance from Tim Flowers against
Newcastle. That Arsenal and Blackburn won the title does not change the fact they lost their
way badly in the run-in. The form of the challengers tends to zip up and down like bars on a
graphic equaliser, but it is surely better when those bars are all right at the top.

Only two such examples spring to mind in England: 2001-02, when Arsenal needed to win 13
in a row to hold off Liverpool (who won 13 of their last 15) and Manchester United (who won
18 out of 21 going into the final week). It was magnificent stuff, worthy of an On Second
Thoughts itself, but that lacked the final-day drama on offer in the 1998-99 race, which was
arguably the best, and certainly the most unyielding, title race in this country in modern times.

Why 1998 99 was so special

The 1998-99 race had the best of all worlds. It went to the final day, like in 1988-89 and 1994-
95. It was a three-horse race, like in 1985-86 and 2001-02. It had more than one team finishing
in sensational form, like in 2001-02 and 2008-09. The top two, Manchester United and
Arsenal, were perhaps as evenly matched as any title challengers have ever been – so much so
that, had Dennis Bergkamp scored his last-minute penalty in the FA Cup semi-final replay
between the two, many feel Arsenal, rather than United, would have won the league. While
the majesty of this race was lost in United's subsequent Treble, like an insight during an
orgasm, it deserves to be celebrated.

The sides involved set such blisteringly high standards that, perhaps for the first time in an
English title race, you felt you could barely afford to draw a game, never mind lose one. The
winners, Manchester United, finished only a point ahead of Arsenal and four ahead of Chelsea,
who are often forgotten but who lost only three games in finishing third – a total bettered by
only three English champions in the 20th century.

Sceptics will point to the relatively low points total: United claimed 79, and no champion since
has failed to reach 80. But these were different times. For one, the Premier League was a much
more even competition than it has been since Champions League money allowed the Big Four
to become entrenched – John Gregory's Aston Villa were top at Christmas before winning only
one of the next 12 – and that made the sort of scorching winning runs that are commonplace
these days extremely difficult for one team, never mind three.

Also, Jose Mourinho had not yet made people realise that points earned before the festive
period counted just the same as those going into it. Absurd as it seems with hindsight, at that
stage teams were generally happy to stay in second gear until Christmas – a situation that was
exacerbated in 1998-99 by exposure to the Champions League for the first time in Arsenal's
case and to the Group of Death in United's. What is surely more relevant is that only twice
before or since (in 2001-02 and 2004-05) have the top two or three averaged so many points
per game after Christmas: 2.42 for the top two and 2.32 for the top three.

The post-Christmas table, which you need only three clicks to see thanks to this little piece of
nerdvana, confirms that their form was quite sensational. The top two would only lose one
more game between them, and the top three just three. Both are records in English football

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and – to put the latter statistic in context – in each of the previous 10 seasons the top three had
lost 10 or more games after Christmas. In the following season, 1999-2000, they lost 14.

The Irresistible Force vs The Immovable Object

This was marvellously obstinate stuff from teams full of brutally hard men, like Tony Adams,
Jaap Stam and Marcel Desailly, Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit, Gus Poyet and Roy Keane, the
toughest chaps you'll find outside a deviant's fantasies. The contest between United and
Arsenal, dripping enmity and unspoken respect in perfectly equal portions, was especially
compelling. United were sensational going forward, with Dwight Yorke and Andy Cole gelling
instantly, while Arsenal's legendary defence had their best season, statistically and actually.
That led to the rivalry being cutely dubbed 'The Irresistible Force vs The Immovable Object',
and the long-running series in the league produced a truly great spin-off movie, that FA Cup
semi-final replay, an epic that we should have seen coming after an outstanding 1-1 draw on a
primal, rain-sodden night at Old Trafford in February.

At that stage, Chelsea were still above Arsenal. They had been the bookies favourites in
December, when they went top of the league for the first time since 1989, and only fell away in
the penultimate furlong because of three consecutive draws in winnable April games against
Middlesbrough, Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday. Had they won all three they would have
been champions. Their form was outstanding, but in this season that was not enough.

Arsenal went on a preposterous run after Christmas, conceding only two goals in their next 14
games. And with Kanu, an inspired February signing, on fire, they won 15 and lost none out of
19 games until a decisive defeat at Leeds in their penultimate game. United won 14 and lost
none of their final 20. It was exquisitely tight; even when United held a decent advantage of
four points (or one point with a game in hand) over Arsenal for six weeks in March and April,
that was qualified by the fact they still had to contend with away games at their fiercest rivals,
Leeds and Liverpool – games in which they would indeed drop those four points.

From Christmas onwards, each side made some memorable statements of intent. United
started 1999 by putting 10 past West Ham and Leicester within a week, eight of them by Yorke
and Cole. When Arsenal returned to the Highbury dressing-room on January 31 after beating
the leaders Chelsea, they discovered that United had scored an injury-time winner at Charlton
to go top, where they would stay until late April. On the February day that Arsenal won 4-0 at
West Ham, United hammered Forest 8-1. On a Monday night in March, when Arsenal looked
set to drop points at home to Sheffield Wednesday, with the score 0-0 after 83 minutes, they
won 3-0.

When Chelsea lost at home to West Ham five days later, a shock defeat that most thought had
put them out of the race, they responded with three impressive away wins on the bounce to
move within two points of top spot. And, when Arsenal had the chance to go top for the first
time all season in April, they mangled a very decent Middlesbrough side 6-1 at the Riverside, a
victory which also – on the back of a 5-1 evisceration of Wimbledon a week later – wiped out
nine-tenths of United's goal-difference advantage.

Kanu's volleyed flick in that Middlesbrough game, was one of a number of memorable goals in
the run-in; he also scored a beauty against Spurs. Other nominees include David Beckham's
free-kick that gave a badly under-strength United a 2-1 win over Villa in their penultimate
home game, and Bjarne Goldbaek's vicious long-ranger at Tottenham.

There were also generous helpings of controversy, most notably in David Elleray's handling of
United's raucous 2-2 draw at Liverpool, a performance so controversial that even a very early
Fiver sympathised with United, and Dwight Yorke's vital winner at Middlesbrough, which
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could legitimately have been ruled offside by the standards of the day. (Keane, indeed, had a
goal disallowed in the first FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal for the same reason.)

That win at Middlesbrough meant the two sides went into the final week of the season with an
almost identical record. Both had 75 points from 36 games, both had a +42 goal difference,
with United ahead only on goals scored. The orgiastic prospect of a final day, like in Scotland in
2002-03, in which both sides had to not only win but outscore each other beckoned – but then
both sides failed to win their midweek game.

First, on the Tuesday, Arsenal lost 1-0 at Leeds in a stunning game that they could conceivably
have won 6-3, with the substitute Kaba Diawara missing a hat-trick of chances in between Ian
Harte's missed penalty and Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink's late winner. A day later United drew 0-
0 at Blackburn, with Alex Ferguson so lost in his own team's situation that he famously failed
to realise the result had relegated Blackburn, who were managed by his former assistant Brian
Kidd.

That left United a point clear and needing to beat Spurs at home on the final day. They did, but
only just. A relentless, long-distance race between two great teams and one very, very good
one had gone down to the final minute of the final game. You really can't say fairer than that.

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On Second Thoughts
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