Scottish Cup 1988 1989 "The Old Firm" Celtic Rangers

Final
20 May 1989
Hampden Park Glasgow

Attendance: 72,069
Referee: Bob Valentine


 Big Billy had taken us away and we were short on numbers as Andy Walker got injured up at Aberdeen and had damaged his eye after taking a kick. That opened up the space for me to play centre-forward as it just left Mark McGhee up front himself. So big Billy shifted things about and I went up front with Mark McGhee for the last three games of the season which was Hibernian and St Mirren and then the cup final. Going into the game we were confident anyway. There were a lot of other things happening in the background with the Maurice Johnston signing and everything – he was coming to the club at that time – so all the pressure was being taken off us regarding how we were going to play, it was all about who we were going to sign. We were all pretty relaxed and confident anyway. We were hitting a bit of form and I had scored in both games against St Mirren and Hibs too.

Premier League First Year ; Season 1992 1993

  The idea had been mooted for some years but during 1991 action began to take the place of rhetoric. A year later, as the new season kicked off on August 15th 1992, the old first division became the Premier League. The Premier League was really about money and television. The satellite broadcaster BSkyB who had paid a phenomenal £304 million for a five year deal involving live coverage of two league games a week, was only interested in matches involving the top clubs. BSkyB were most defintely not interested in any obligation to televise second and third division games. What they wanted was a diet of Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham, Arsenal, Leeds and Everton - the clubs that would bring in viewers and subscribers to their channel. No way were the majority of Football League members going to allow that kind of deal. Not surprisingly it was the top clubs who saw the immediate financial benefit and were quickly tempted by the prospect. Most of these clubs were about to face huge bills from redeveloping their grounds into all-seater stadiums to comply with the Taylor Report. It was going to be expensive and the money would have to come from somewhere.

C2 1977 1978 RSC Anderlecht Austria Wien

Final
03 May 1978
Paris, Parc des Princes  

Attendance 48679
Referee: Heinz Aldinger 

Anderlecht, qui ne parvient pas à briser en championnat l'hégémonie brugeoise, est viscéralement une équipe de Coupe souvent soumise au rayonnement de son Robby Rensenbrink, mais toujours menée par une puissance collective impressionnante. 

Focus On : Shearer On Shearer


Alan Shearer has justified the status he once held as the world's most expensive footballer by scoring more goals than anyone else since the launch of the Premier League in 1992. Shearer is the first player since the 1930s, the heyday of the bustling, robust English centre-forward, to score more than 30 goals in the top division in three successive seasons.
His tally of 34 goals in 1994-95, the middle season of his outstanding run, helped Blackburn Rovers win the championship title for the first time in 81 years. 'Alan is a player in a class of his own,' Kenny Dalglish, the then Blackburn manager, said. 'He lifts the whole team and turns draws into victories. In a word: priceless.' John Barnes, the England winger, described Shearer's value to his team as 'incalculable'. Shea
rer stands alone as the leading goalscorer in the history of Premier League. Between 1992-93 and the end of 2004-05, he scored 250 league goals for Blackburn and Newcastle United. His outstanding form during the mid-1990s had raised his value in the transfer market seven-fold in the space of five years: from £2.2 million, the fee Dalglish paid Southampton in 1992, to the £15.6 million fee Newcastle United invested in 1996. Shearer has been transferred twice in his career: the first of his transfer fees was a British record; the second was a world record sum for a footballer. It was widely reported that Blackburn refused to sell Shearer to Manchester United earlier in 1997 for fear that his arrival at Old Trafford would make Alex Ferguson's side unbeatable. Jack Walker, the millionaire benefactor at Ewood Park, even offered to make Shearer the player-manager of Rovers, at the age of just 25, in a last-ditch effort to keep him at the club, but the lure of Newcastle United proved too strong for a player who had supported the club as a boy.

Focus on : Arsenal's Robin Van Persie 100 Goals

Robin van Persie has given his biggest hint yet that he wants to stay at Arsenal when his contract ends in 2013. The Arsenal captain, who Saturday finished one shy of equalling Alan Shearer's 36-goal tally for a calendar year, has yet to sit down with Arsenal to talk about extending his deal. It has encouraged Manchester City, who hope to sign him in a £30million deal at the end of the season. And, though Arsenal are ready to offer Van Persie a club-best £150,000-a-week deal to keep him, Van Persie will not hold contract talks with chief executive Ivan Gazidis until the summer, and he has previously spoken about his frustration at the club's failure to win major trophies. But the Holland striker, who has two young children with his wife Bouchra, has revealed that his ideal future would be to remain in London. He said: 'We love the life in London and I enjoy watching my kids grow up here. They grow up like the English kids with good manners and values of England. The place where we live, just outside the city, is fantastic. We have everything we want. 'The English people are so incredibly polite where I live. People are nice here. That makes life a real pleasure. 'My children have become more English than Dutch. They have taken up the culture and values of England. 'It makes me melt at times when I see how well my children are doing here. When Shaqueel has half-term with school, he does not want to go back to the Netherlands any more.' Van Persie has also paid tribute to Arsenal fans in an interview with a Dutch newspaper, saying that listening to them chanting his name is among his biggest thrills. 'That is the biggest compliment I could wish for,' he said. 'Arsenal fans are real lovers of the game. 'They don't miss a thing. I like the banners, everything they do.