League Cup 1985 1986 Oxford United Queen's Park Rangers Finale

 20 Avril 1986

Wembley Stadium

 

 

Lg.Cup.1985.1986.Final.Oxford.Qpr.twb22.mp4
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The League Cup has a reputation for occasionally allowing unlikely sides to claim a slice of glory. So far 25% of its 54 finals have been won by teams that have never claimed either of England’s two other major honours, the FA Cup and First Division (though it will go down to 20% if three-times winners Leicester excuse themselves from that list by finishing top of this year’s Premier League). Five winners, as well as 12 beaten finalists, were not in the top flight at the time of their triumph. Five finalists, two of them victorious, weren’t in the second flight, either. In that context Oxford United’s victory 30 years ago as a First Division side might seem unexceptional. But in the context of that club’s history, the very fact that it was unremarkable is itself astonishing. This, after all, is a club 123 years old that have four significant pots in their trophy cabinet, all bar one of them won between 1984 and 1986. Between those years Oxford streaked towards the summit of English football as if rocket-propelled, and then paused briefly to enjoy the view before gravity started doing its thing. After the highs of 1986 a second visit to Wembley finally came 24 years later, in the Conference play-offs. They are currently preparing for a third, against Barnsley in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in April.

 

 

Jim Smith, the architect of Oxford’s successive league titles as they sprinted from Third Division to First over the previous two campaigns, must have experienced a particularly complex mix of emotions that afternoon, watching from the dugout as the side he had assembled produced one of their finest performances to dismantle a stage-struck QPR. Mainly because he was watching from the QPR dugout, having switched sides in the summer of 1985. “It was going to be a new happening for me any road, walking out at Wembley,” he said before the final, “but 10 of them players walking out for Oxford I probably know better than I know my own.”Oxford had quite a lot in common with that day’s opponents. In 1967 QPR had won the League Cup – when in the Third Division – and then became the first club since the war to win back-to-back promotions into the top flight, only for their chairman, Jim Gregory, to sack their manager once they got there. In 1985 Oxford became the second club since the war to win back-to-back promotions into the top flight, only for the QPR chairman, Jim Gregory, to hire their manager once they got there, and then they won the League Cup.

 

 

 

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That 1980s Sports Blog: 1986 League Cup final: Oxfor