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Arsenal legend Lehmann opens up on how Manchester United spoil the party, and doesn’t let Arsenal go 50 premier league unbeaten match.
Arsenal spent the whole 2003/04 premier league season without recording any defeat even to Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson.
Arsene Wenger, still the only manager to achieve that success.
Lehman speaking to “In Lockdown” podcast reveals the atmosphere at Highbury that day.
It was so obvious that Wayne Rooney went for a dive,” he said. “It was a little bit disappointing for myself. I wanted to go to the corner where Ruud van Nistelrooy put the penalty, but Patrick [Vieira] came to me and said, ‘You know where he’s going.’
“So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go to the [other] corner’ and obviously he scored. I should have gone with my first thought, then it probably would have been a draw.
“The year before, it was the same [controversy]. I thought, ‘Oh, every time it’s the same here. It belongs to the aftermath of the game that managers stand in front of each other and try to punch each other.’ The year before they were already having a fight, this year was ‘Pizzagate’.
“I mean a young player came into our dressing room and was hungry. He’d probably taken too much pizza and instead of eating it, he had thrown it on to Alex Ferguson’s… where was it? Chin? Forehead? I think it was half neck, half shoulder.
“I wasn’t really involved. The only thing I did… I was quite late and I saw the bunch of players in front of me, the two managers standing, confronting each other. I was spilling water from behind on to the whole crowd. It was like petrol onto a fire.
“I inflamed the situation a little bit but without getting involved. I saw security guys there, our players, the managers, it was just an accusation of betrayal and whatever, because of the penalty. Again, a penalty.”
