The Times Sport - UK (2020-08-01)

Sport FA Cup final

6 2GS Saturday August 1 2020 | the times

Lacazette says Arsenal are desperate

to save something from their season

It is one year since Arsenal were
blown away in the Europa League
final, leaving scars on everyone at the
club. They needed to beat Chelsea to
qualify for the Champions League but
lost 4-1 and were left with memories
of an eerie silence and despair during
a seven-hour flight home from Baku.
Alexandre Lacazette, the forward,
said: “Nobody was talking, it was
maybe the worst flight I have ever
had,” he said. “When you lose a final
it is really hard to try to talk with
someone or laugh. Everybody was
disappointed.”

Lacazette wants revenge for Europa League final loss

Players often use good and bad

memories as motivation and the

stakes for Arsenal are comparable

when they meet Chelsea in the FA

Cup final today. Arsenal must win to

qualify for the Europa League, which

is normally a competition that is

derided but has gained importance

this time because it could provide a

cash boost to offset some of the

impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

About ten of the Arsenal match-

day squad from the game in

Azerbaijan have a chance to play at

Wembley as well as David Luiz,

who played for Chelsea that night.

“Hopefully the ones who played

will not forget,” Lacazette said.

“Everybody has to find their own

motivation, whether the past, future,

or they [only] want to win. I don’t

really care why they want to win.

It would save our season.”

Chelsea do not have anywhere near

the same pressure having qualified for

the Champions League next season

and they were in an identical

position in the final in May last

year. Lacazette, 29, feels being

relaxed helped Chelsea

perform better while

Arsenal may have been

tense.

“That was their

strength as they

had nothing to

play for and no

pressure,” the

Frenchman said.

“We have to not

put pressure on

ourselves. I didn’t really see

some weird behaviour by my

team-mates [that night]. But in

the end maybe it was.”

Roll forward to January and

Mikel Arteta’s seventh match in

charge of Arsenal, at Stamford

Bridge. They were reduced to ten

men when Luiz was sent off

after 26 minutes and they

twice came from behind

to draw 2-2. “We

created a bit of strength

that day because we stayed

together,” Lacazette said.

The extra money from playing

in Europe would help Arsenal

meet Pierre-Emerick

Aubameyang’s wage demands,

thought to be more than

£250,000 a week including

bonuses, to sign a new contract.

Aubameyang has scored 22

Premier League goals in each of

the past two seasons, making

him top scorer last year and

second to Jamie Vardy this time.

Aubameyang has described his

relationship with Lacazette as “love

at first sight”. They are strike

partners and close friends. “It is

obvious Arsenal should keep him

but this is a conversation between

him and the club,” Lacazette said.

“Everybody likes him. He has love

from the fans. I used to talk with him

a lot [about his situation] when we

came back from lockdown. I know he

will say something to me before the

press knows.”

Lacazette’s time at Arsenal has

probably not gone quite as well as he

had hoped after he arrived for

£46 million from Lyons in 2017. He

suffered an ankle injury against his

old side in pre-season and found

himself out of the starting XI this

winter, losing out to Eddie Nketiah.

That fuelled suggestions that he could

leave with two years left on his deal.

Arteta has praised Lacazette, who

has never sought a reason for being

dropped. “What he said was really

nice,” Lacazette said. “It was maybe

the most difficult season of my career.

I learnt a lot mentally and thought

more about the team than scoring

goals. The players understand more

what the manager wants and in time

it will be easier.”

French striker says that

the wounds from last

year’s defeat by Chelsea

in Baku remain raw,

Gary Jacob writes

they’d stay until one in the morning,

hoping Reg would offer a ticket.”

Win and Reg met at Derby

Racecourse in 1941. It wasn’t love at

first sight but a few weeks later they

met again at the River Gardens and

Reg asked Win on a date. He took her

to the local cinema in Chaddesden

and they soon fell in love.

This was two years into the Second

World War and Reg was called up to

the army. He’d wanted to be in the

Royal Artillery like his father, Fred,

a moulder who worked for Rolls-

Royce and fought in the Battle of the

Somme, but his decorating skills

meant he was sent to

Northumberland with the Royal

Engineers.

Reg had left school at 14 and learnt

to be a painter and decorator. “He was

In the living room of Reg Harrison’s
bungalow in Derby, framed
photographs of the 1946 FA Cup final
hang on the wall. They were put up a
few years back by his daughter, Pat,
and her husband, Bill. “We wanted to
create a memory wall,” Pat says. “He’s
not been diagnosed but me dad’s got a
bit of dementia. He’s a bit forgetful.”
For Reg, who turned 97 in May and
spent part of lockdown in hospital
with pneumonia, the memories of
that day 74 years ago may have faded
but his status as the oldest living FA
Cup winner remains.
It is one that will fill
his family with pride
when another final
takes place today, yet
Reg takes little notice.
“I don’t think he can
believe he’s as old as
he is,” Pat says, talking
over the phone from
their home just round
the corner from Reg’s
bungalow, which he
bought in 1966.
Since Jim Bullions
died six years ago at the
age of 90, Reg has held
the honour. Jim and
Reg were the youngest
in the Derby County
team that beat Charlton
Athletic in 1946, and up
until Jim’s death in 2014
the two would recount
their stories in the
directors’ lounge before
games at Pride Park.
It was a different era. Reg would
make his way to training at a field a
mile and a half from the Baseball
Ground, where Derby used to play,
and change in an abandoned railway
carriage. He carried his boots in a
brown paper bag.

Training

consisted of

running back and

forth to a village

chosen by the

manager, Stuart

McMillan, and for

the parade marking

their FA Cup

victory Reg and his

team-mates sat in

deck chairs on the

back of an Offilers’

beer lorry as the

crowds welcomed them home.

“Coming up to the cup final, Reg

was everybody’s friend,” Bill says. “He

got about 100 tickets and people used

to come round to the house at 10

o’clock at night. ‘Just popping in to

see you, Reg.’ Win [Reg’s wife] said

going to be a joiner

but after a week he

decided against it: the

boss’s son was lazy and

Reg didn’t put up with

lazy people,” Bill says. “He

changed to become a painter

and decorator because his dad

insisted he get a trade because

‘football was not for ever’.”

Training for the war was in Newark.

At weekends Win would make the

80-mile round trip on a tandem with

Reg’s eldest sister, also Win, to spend

a few hours with him.

Reg and Win married at St

Andrew’s Church on London Road in

Derby on March 17, 1945. War wasn’t

officially over and the guests used

their rationing coupons for the

reception.

Meet the oldest living FA Cup winner

SPORTING HERO

OF THE WEEK

Reg Harrison, 97, was

part of the Derby team

who won at Wembley

in 1946. Tom Roddy

talks to his family

Pat was their second child. In 1947,

Win gave birth to a baby boy called

Michael but he died at the age of

seven from leukaemia. “We went to

the grave every Sunday and took

flowers,” Pat says. “It affected my

mum and dad a lot and, consequently,

I didn’t ask about him.”

Pat has vague memories of Reg

playing for Boston United, the

Midland League club. He had joined

them in the summer of 1955 after

leaving Derby with 281 appearances

and 59 goals. Five months later, the

two teams met in the second round

of the FA Cup and Boston pulled off

a shock with a 6-1 win at the Baseball

Ground.

Reg stopped playing in 1962 at

Long Eaton United, a Midlands club

he also managed. “I remember him

coming home and if they’d not won,

my mum would look at him and say,

‘Oh, we’re in for a bad night,’ ”

Pat recalls.

Reg’s final working

days were spent setting

up community

centres for the

council. He retired

at 63 but carried on

working into his

mid-70s and, in

February 2019, was

awarded the Freedom

of the City by Derby city

council for services to the

community.

Up until last year, Reg would go to

watch Derby with Pat, Bill and his

great-grandson, Michael. “My mum

died two years ago,” Pat says. “She

was 92, and up until then they would

sit in the living room in adjacent

chairs holding hands. They were

devoted to each other, so these last

few years haven’t been brilliant for

me dad.

“I love to remember him as happy

and singing all the time. They had a

simple life and my dad did what he

wanted to do, which was football.”

Harrison’s team-mates carry captain Jack Nicholas on their shoulders after Derby’s 1946

FA Cup victory — Harrison was 22, left, and is now the oldest living winner at 97, right

STROUD/EXPRESS/GETTY IMAGES

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