Season 1982/83 was one of the most perplexing I have seen following the Lads. Alan Durban had assembled a squad of youth and experience, and at times we played some very good football. We kept giving points away at home, with ten draws recorded in the season and four defeats, often in gutting circumstances, having played well.
Away from home, we had won four and drawn four up to this point in the season, and only the top five had better form on the road.
Ian Atkins’ arrival from Shrewsbury for £30,000 plus Alan Brown had been a shrewd bit of business. He was a very good defender and leader, as well as a cultured passer of the ball out of defence. He had a thunderous dead-ball shot and scored four goals in this season.
Alan Durban had also captured the signing of Mark Proctor from Nottingham Forest after a loan period for £115,000. Infamously, Brian Clough had tried to barter the fee up by declaring he was one of the best young players in the Football League; once sold, Clough declared, “He could not trap a bag of cement.” Clough was allegedly annoyed that, having paid £425,000 for him from Middlesbrough, he was having to sell at a cut price. Nonetheless, Proctor was a cultured, effective addition to the squad.
Unfortunately, Proctor picked up an injury and was absent from the team sheet for this game.
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Another quality addition to the team by Durban was the signing of Leighton James in mid-January. He was a player who regularly raised the temperature of the Roker crowd in opposition but quickly endeared himself to the Roker faithful with his skill and effort upon signing for us. Unfortunately, he too had picked up an injury in the previous game and would have to sit this one out; home-grown youngster John Cooke would deputise for his tenth game (including substitute appearances) of this campaign.
Twenty-year-old Colin West was putting a good degree of pressure on Frank Worthington for a starting role up front, and he started his fourth game in a row, with Worthington on the bench.
We had been well served by goalkeeper Chris Turner all season; he had been fantastic but had fractured his skull in a game against Norwich in mid-April. Nineteen-year-old Mark Prudhoe, a youth-team product, had stepped up, and whilst nine goals had been conceded in four games, his performances were very encouraging.
Arsenal possessed a wealth of talent, as well as some highly regarded Sunderland connections in their squad. A young John Kay was just starting to make his way in the big league. Lee Chapman and John Hawley represented what had been and what was to come up front for Sunderland.
I always wanted us to buy the fiery forward Alan Sunderland, just to listen to commentators struggle with the verbal conundrum!
Other notable stars included Pat Jennings in goal, the cultured centre-half David O’Leary, Kenny Sansom, and Chris Whyte in defence. In midfield, they had an abundance of good players: Graham Rix, Brian Talbot, Vladimir Petrovic, and Paul Davis, to name a few.
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Tony Woodcock had signed from FC Köln for a fee of £500,000 (having been transferred to the West German team from Forest three years earlier for £600,000 - a cracking fee at the time for a youngster brought through at Forest, so Clough was quite calm about that one)!
Arsenal arrived at this game in mid-table; their season had been disappointing by their standards, and the support was, to a degree, voting with their feet, with around 18,000 in the ground at kick-off, including about 2,000 Sunderland fans.
Alan Durban was allegedly furious at the state of the Highbury surface, which had been ploughed up by a London Boys’ Club cup final directly before this game. Irrespective of the paddy-field surface, it was Sunderland who went on the attack in the opening section of this game.
In the very first minute, Ally McCoist robbed Colin Hill to put John Cooke in on goal with just Jennings to beat; his control let him down as Jennings raced out to clear the danger.
Shortly after this, Iain Munro fed a long throw to McCoist, who laid it on to West and then to Cummins; with defenders in attendance, the ball just whizzed past Jennings’ post.
Ian Atkins then stepped up to hammer a thirty-five-yard free kick that Jennings just managed to hold on to.
Arsenal had hardly been in the game when Munro, again with a long throw, found McCoist, West, and Cummins looking lively again as the shot flew past the post.
Arsenal got a toehold in the game, and for the rest of the half, Sunderland were under pressure but coped reasonably well, with Atkins to the fore.
McDermott and Nicholas both went close, with Prudhoe pulling out a smashing one-handed save and a catch.
Munro then cleared a Talbot header off the line and would repeat this feat in the second half.
The second half arrived with much the same pattern: Arsenal dominating possession, but by and large, Sunderland coping with the pressure.
Just after the hour, a bizarre occurrence almost broke the deadlock. Mark Prudhoe had cleared the ball up to the halfway line, where it was met with a powerful header from Chris Whyte. The ball caught in the wind and bounced over the young Sunderland goalkeeper, who, at the very last moment, recovered to punch the ball over the bar as it was heading into the goal!
Ten minutes or so later came the crucial moment.
Ally McCoist won the ball and fed John Cooke, who quickly moved it to Colin West, standing about twenty-five yards out with his back to goal. He turned on a sixpence and smashed a rip-snorter past a stationary and startled Pat Jennings, high into the corner of his goal.
It was the youngster’s second goal in three games, and, just like the previous season, he was coming up with crucial goals at the business end of the season.
Arsenal sent ex-Sunderland forward John Hawley on to try to rescue the game, but to no avail; in fact, we might have scored again on the break, as two chances went begging. Stan Cummins blazed a left-foot shot over the bar when very well placed.
Sunderland saw the game out to get their fifth away win of the season. The victory left them in fifteenth place, going into their last game of the season at Roker Park against mid-table West Brom, needing only a point to stay up.
Best for Sunderland were Ian Atkins and the lively McCoist, as well as the young goalkeeper Mark Prudhoe, who must have impressed Pat Jennings, who had a word with him as he left the pitch.
> _Division One; Date: 7 May 1983; Venue: Highbury Stadium; Attendance: 18,053_
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> _Arsenal 0–1 Sunderland_
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> _Goalscorer: Colin West, 71 minutes_
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> _Arsenal: Jennings; Devine (Hawley, 73 mins); Sansom; Whyte; O’Leary; Talbot; Davis; Petrovic; Nicholas; McDermott; Hill._