After two games into the 2001-02 season, FA chief executive Adam Crozier had already had enough of Arsenal and Leeds United.
Crozier had just witnessed Leeds win 2-1 at Highbury in yet another heated clash between the two sides. Four visiting players were booked within the first 17 minutes and Lee Bowyer and Danny Mills were both later sent off. Mills’ second yellow came after playing a one-two off the back of Ashley Cole while the left-back lay injured on the floor.
“The Arsenal-Leeds game has developed an edge that isn’t entirely desirable,” Crozier said while urging David Dein and Peter Ridsdale to meet for peace talks. “It is something the two clubs have to do a little bit of work on – it is not healthy to have that kind of rivalry going on.”
That game had been the third consecutive fixture between the two teams to be followed by an investigation from the FA. Their previous seven encounters had involved four red cards and over 50 yellows.
A history of violence
To neutrals, Arsenal vs Leeds may not be the most obvious rivalry, but there is plenty of history between the two clubs. Under the management of Don Revie, Leeds beat the Gunners in the finals of the 1968 League Cup and 1972 FA Cup but were pipped to the Division One title by the north Londoners with only a single point separating the two teams in 1971.
In Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby wrote of Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat in the FA Cup final: “The game itself was as dismal as all the other Arsenal-Leeds games had been: the two teams had developed something of a History, and their meetings were usually violent and low-scoring. My friend Bob McNab was booked in the first two minutes, and from that moment there was a procession of free-kicks and squabbles, ankle taps and pointing fingers, and snarls.”
Arsenal fan Paul DeBruler was rather more to the point when writing for SB Nation in 2011: “Leeds United are the embodiment of all that is ugly and wrong with soccer and parents should steer their kids away from being Leeds fans just like they steer their kids away from talking to balding old men who lurk at the edge of the playground in a windowless white van.”
The rivalry had somewhat dissipated as Leeds struggled in the post-Revie years. Before ultimately succumbing to relegation in 1982, the Yorkshire outfit’s fall from grace was emphasised by losing 7-0 and 5-0 to the club with whom they had previously fought for honours.
Seven years passed without a meeting between the old…
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