Capital Gold

With the first of the duels to be duked out by the Premier League’s prize fighters almost upon us, we look back at a classic Manchester United v Chelsea contest from yesteryear:

Manchester United 1-2 Chelsea Premier League Old Trafford Sat 2 Nov, 1996

Blues line-up: Hitchcock, Petrescu, Leboeuf, Clarke, Duberry, Minto, Wise, Burley, Di Matteo, Vialli, Hughes

The parading of Michael Duberry, 37, now of Ryman Premier League club Hendon, across the Stamford Bridge surface last Saturday evoked memories of what will likely go down as, if not one of, then the big centre-half’s finest contribution in a Chelsea shirt.

Ahead of hostilities being resumed between these two giants of the English game on Monday night, Duberry’s presence took the Blues faithful back to a time when their side was rarely seen as the Red Devils’ equal, despite boasting a record that was, even then, as good as any, against their now fierce title rivals.

As usual, there will be one manager new to this unique fixture on Monday, with Jose Mourinho back on a relatively happy hunting ground and David Moyes still feeling his way into the biggest follow-on job in football. Back in 1996, it was the turn of Ruud Gullit, who was just over three months into his Blues tenure, who dared to take on the might of Sir Alex Ferguson at the centre of his fiefdom.

United were coming into the fixture off the back of one of their worst runs in recent times; a sequence that was to be extrapolated by the Dutch coach’s side - made up of a healthy blend of experienced internationals, including Mark Hughes and Frank Leboeuf and honest home-grown professionals, such as ‘Doobs’ and left-back Scott Minto, who invariably took their lead from chief antagonist and orchestrator Dennis Wise when it came to their application of the English ethos – by way of an impressive away performance that heaped pressure onto Ferguson, who was by now facing among the toughest times endured during his reign.

The Theatre of Dreams had witnessed the club’s first ever home loss in Europe to Fenerbahce of Turkey just three days earlier, exacerbating an already uneasy situation created by reversals against Southampton, where they unthinkably conceded six times, and Newcastle United, at whose hands they fell to an even more humbling 0-5 defeat.

The Champions and Double holders must, therefore, have feared the worst when Duberry struck just after the half-hour mark to give Chelsea a shock lead with a thumping header from a corner to notch his third and, as it turned out, final goal for the club.

Ferguson had ordered a half-time change of kit at the Dell, claiming that players were unable to pick one another out from the crowd in their drab first-half number (the grey of which was then never seen again, leaving those who had forked out short-changed) but with a new home strip not an option, his side fell further behind after the interval.

Legendary goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel had been beaten by glorious lobs from both Matt Le Tissier and, most extraordinarily, Philippe Albert in recent weeks. So, once bitten twice shy, when the ‘Great Dane’ this time stayed at home, wily fox Gianluca Vialli calmly picked his moment and tucked the ball through his legs for number two, giving rise to the Chelsea chant in his honour:

(To the tune of That’s Amore) “When the ball hits the back of the Old Trafford net, that’s Vialli!”

The Italian had finally broken the hosts’ widely acclaimed spirit and, even though Karel Poborsky was to come off the bench and pull one back nine minutes before the end, United were beaten and faced talk of a crisis, both in the press and in the stands.

Chelsea ended their campaign by winning their first major silverware for 26 years with a 2-0 FA Cup Final win over Middlesbrough at Wembley, while United did go on to retain the title in a season that had begun with David Beckham’s strike from the Selhurst Park half-way line and taken in a number of peaks and troughs en route to finally defying the critics who had claimed that they would ‘win nothing with kids’.