Today I'm going back 43 years to 1979. Yes it's another day and another Leeds United Cup-tie, this time the League Cup Semi-Final 1st Leg against Southampton at Elland Road in front of an attendance of 33,415.
You might just recall me covering the Leeds against Saints League Division 1 game from earlier in the same season. Leeds absolutely took Southampton to the cleaners that day, winning by 4-0 and so it would have been understandable for the club and its supporters to have been rubbing their hands together at the thought of a trip to Wembley for the first time since 1974. Leeds had disposed of West Bromwich Albion, Sheffield United, QPR and Luton en route to the Semi-Final and were red hot favourites to reach the Final itself. Of course, football has a habit of being notoriously unpredictable which is probably why we all love the game so much and, on this occasion, things didn't go the way of the Whites as Southampton forced a 2-2 draw to take back to the Dell for the 2nd Leg six days later. Leeds had taken the lead through Tony Currie and were winning at halftime but were pegged back by Saints goals from Nick Holmes and Steve Williams. Ray Hankin got the other Leeds goal.
Two legged Cup ties are thought to reduce the number of Cup "shocks" because the underdog team tends not to be able to raise themselves to overcome the favourites twice. That may often be true but, in this instance, Southampton finished the job at home winning 1-0 and 3-2 on aggregate to take their place in the League Cup Final against holders Nottingham Forest. In the Final Southampton's luck finally ran out as they lost 3-2 and Forest retained the trophy.
The programme cover star is of course Leeds and Scotland's Arthur Graham in action against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. Graham, born in the tenements of Glasgow made his professional debut for Aberdeen as early as 1970 aged 17 and appeared in the Aberdeen's victorious Scottish FA Cup Final that season when beating Celtic. Left winger Graham remained at Aberdeen until 1977 and made 220 League appearances in all for the Dons scoring 34 goals before being transferred South to Leeds United. He would remain at Elland Road until 1983 but never managed a trophy whilst at Leeds despite 223 League appearances and 37 goals. In August 1983, following Leeds demotion and then failure to immediately return to the top flight, Graham crossed over to "the dark side" joining Manchester United where he would remain for two seasons making 52 appearances and scoring 7 goals in all competitions. He ended his career at Bradford City in 1987. Arthur Graham earned just 11 Scottish international caps scoring 2 goals but was something of a late starter for his country having been part of an incident in Copenhagen in 1975 where he and others, including Billy Bremner, were banned from playing for Scotland "for life". Amusingly and for reasons unknown, Arthur Graham is regularly touted for a variety of non-footballing job opportunities in the pages of Viz. These include a host of unlikely positions, such as taking over from Jeremy Clarkson as host of Top Gear, mediating peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, taking the editor's position at the London Evening Standard (ahead of George Osborne) and presenting TV's The Great British Bake Off!
CRB Match No. 34
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