As Arsenal wait to see our fate, let’s look at some football miracles that DID happen

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m predicting a Man City victory on Sunday. In fact, ever since we lost to Aston Villa, I thought it was unlikely the Champions would drop any points.
That’s my respect towards the standards that Pep Guardiola has set, where for years now his team put together a crazy winning sequence, not just dealing with must win conditions but doing it with a smile on their faces.
Yet it’s not a ‘miracle’ for them to draw with West Ham.
The Hammers are 9th in the table, have won at the Emirates, and can play with zero pressure against a team who in the past have made things hard for themselves on the final day of the season.
Maybe I’m protective of language at a time where words seems to lose their meaning?
I just think ‘miracle’ is the wrong word.
Arsenal are 8-1 to lift the Prem this weekend.
So put 10 pounds on the Gunners finishing above Man City, if correct your winnings are 90 pounds.
Those odds confirm we are outsiders, but those numbers are not as big as others on the list below.
A list put together to show you that stranger things have happened then a team having a day where they don’t convert their chances, or they make an individual mistake.
Maybe it’s to find a bit of hope?
Because if the below can happen, then David Moyes getting a result at the Etihad isn’t farfetched.

Here are other Footballing “Miracles’……

1988 FA Cup Final – Wimbledon 1-0 Liverpool

Liverpool had secured the title a month earlier, having lost only two League games all season.
Having dominated the sport in the 80’s they were expected to achieve their second domestic Double when they faced Wimbledon in the FA Cup Final.
While the Dons had finished a respectable 7th in the topflight, they had only been in the Football League for 11 years and there had been a 33-point gap between them and the Champions.
This was Footballing Royalty vs a club mostly dismissed for their long balls and physical tactics. Yet that was the difference this day in May.
Lawrie Sanchez’s headed goal and Dave Beasant’s penalty save (the first spot kick save on this stage) made them immortal.
The only regret is England’s ban in Europe meant we never got to see the Crazy Gang in the Cup Winners Cup.

1989 Liverpool 0-2 Arsenal

Mikel Arteta might be tempted to show his squad various documentaries of Anfield 89 before kick-off this Sunday.
What the current version of the Gunners need to do to be Champions this weekend seems easy compared to what their peers had to achieve over three decades ago.
Yes, our destiny was in our own hands, but we had to not just beat the Champions at their own ground, we had to do so by 2 clear goals, something that hadn’t happened to the hosts in three years.
In today’s era, Arsenal would have been accused of ‘bottling it’, at one point being 12 points ahead of our opponents and having failed to win their previous two matches making us drop to second place on goal difference.
George Graham set up defensively, famously preaching to his players it was important to not concede and stay in the game, that it takes a second to score a goal at which point the home crowd would go nervous.
That’s what happened when Alan Smith glanced in a header after 53 mins.
As we entered stoppage time there were ‘What If Moments’ that have become legendary.
Steve McMahon almost celebrating when reassuring his teammates that there was only one min left to play. While John Barnes could have taken the ball into the corner with seconds remaining. Instead, he crossed, which set up one last attack …. The greatest ending to a League season?

Denmark Euro 92

Denmark were 50-1 to win the European Championship. Even more of a fairy tale when you consider that two weeks before the tournament started, they were not a participant in the competition.
A war in their country meant Yugoslavia had to withdraw, with the Danes getting the late invite due to them being runners up to the Yugoslavians in their qualifying group.
Odds of being Champions of Europe jumped to 150-1 when they failed to score in their first two games, forcing their manager to be more positive.
Henrik Larsen was introduced, and they never looked back. He scored in the shock win over France and both goals in the 2-2 semi-Final with Holland (they won on pens).
Movies and documentaries have been made of this achievement. The story of how they were not prepared for the trip to Sweden, how they treated every day like a bonus.
Most of all Kim Vilfort became a national hero for one of the most beautiful stories in the sport.
Between games the midfielder would fly back home, something that wouldn’t have been practical had the event been held elsewhere.
The Danish FA tried to keep the reasons secret, but the media would reveal it was to visit his ill daughter who’s health was deteriorating due to leukaemia. His family had to convince him to return to Gothenburg where he scored the goals to earn his country’s greatest honour.
Line Vilfort died shortly after the Championship.
She was 7 years old.

Man United 2-1 Bayern Munich

It’s not that this was United’s second European Cup or even that it confirmed them as the first ever Treble Winners in English Football.
It was how it happened ….
Solskjaer scored the winner in the 93rd minute. 2 minutes previously they were losing.
Bayern Munich had dominated and hit the woodwork twice in 90 mins but like so many moments in that season, it seemed written in the stars for Man United

South Korea 2002 World Cup

In 2002 South Korea became the first non-European or South American nation to get to the last 4 of the World Cup.
How much you view that as a miracle depends on how much you believe in conspiracy theories.
Ask those who are Italian and Spanish, and they will tell you the officials were corrupt in favour of the hosts.
This remains my favourite international tournament based on how many underdogs won. That includes South Korea who prior to this had never won a game at a World Cup.
Suddenly they were beating Poland, Portugal, Italy and Spain.
Yet they benefitted from decisions that never would have stood had VAR been around.
Portugal had 2 players sent off against South Korea, Italy had a player red carded and a goal wrongly disallowed for offside, then Spain had two goals disallowed for no obvious reasons.
So, 3 red cards and 3 disallowed goals all went in the favour of South Korea

Euro 2004

Greece had the biggest odds to win Euro 2004 after being drawn in the Group of death, 150-1.
A country without a win at a major tournament beat hosts Portugal, drew with Spain, knocked out European Champions France, Czech Republic before defeating Portugal one more time.
What was beautiful was the simplicity of how they did it. No one pretended that Otto Rehhagel’s team were great to watch.
Yet he showed what could be achieved if you organised a group of players where everyone knew their jobs and who were well drilled at set pieces.
A team who had only ever scored one goal in any international competition had shocked the world.

Istanbul

At halftime time in the 2005 Champions League Final Liverpool were 100-1 to lift their 5 th European Cup.
They were already the underdogs against AC Milan and had been outplayed in the first half with Milan running into a 3-0 lead.
The Reds scored 3 goals in a 6 mins spell in the second half to set up extra time, an incredible Dudek save against Shevchenko and then a penalty shootout.
The greatest CL Final of all time?

Man City 3-2 QPR

In a potential omen for this weekend Man City were even bigger favourites to win the title on the last day of the 2012 season then they are now.
On Sunday they have to beat a team 9th in the table, for their first championship in 44 years they only had to defeat a club flirting with relegation.
Then after an hour they only had to overcome a club flirting with relegation down to 10 men.
Yet City fans had warned us all, in their history they didn’t do things the easy way!
As the final whistle went at the Stadium of Light, the score was 1-2 at the Etihad. Man, United waited for confirmation that their 1-0 win was enough. They couldn’t believe what they were about to hear .2 goals had been scored in 90 seconds.

2013 FA Cup Final – Wigan 1-0 Man City

In what should give Gooners hope for this Sunday, here was an example of the champions simply not showing up, guilty in believing they were the favourites so this would be straightforward.
Mancini woke up to serval media outlets reporting he would be sacked no matter the outcome at Wembley.
While several Man City players went missing, many of the Wigan players had the best game of their lives, in particular Callum McManaman who terrorised the city defence to the point Zabaleta got sent off.
By the time Ben Watson headed in the only goal in stoppage time it was long deserved…
The Latics would be relegated days later but most connected at the club claim they wouldn’t have swapped survival for the only major trophy in their history.

Leicester 2016 Champions

You won’t find many other sporting upsets where the winner start the competition at odds of 5,000-1.
Yet this fairytale is so much more then Claudio Raneri taking relegation candidates to their only topflight title.
That in itself is magical but go even further back.
As recently as 2009 they were competing in League Two.
They only regained their Premiership stats in 2014, two years before they lifted the actual thing. What odds would they have been given then?
What about a year later when with 9 fixtures remaining, they were 7 points off safety?
In an era where people use allot of language to over emphasise their point, we might truly never see that kind of miracle again in our lifetime.

Barcelona 6-1 PSG – 2017

It remains debated to this day if this goes down as the greatest ever comeback in Champions League history or simply a bottle job?
For all his impressive resume in the Europa League Unai Emery still can’t shake the stigma of throwing away a 4-0 first leg advantage, a mental blow that PSG still haven’t gotten over at the head of UEFA table.
Barcelona were still only 8-1 to become the first side to overturn such a deficit due to their famous front three.
When the Spaniards scored three times, their odds of winning on aggregate jumped to 88-1 once Cavani got an away goal, essentially meaning their efforts had been a waste of time.
Now the Catalans had to score another three goals. Which was still the case as the clock ticked 88 mins at which point you could get 200-1 for Barac to make the quarter Finals.
A Neymar free kick was seen as consolation although brought the odds down to 100-1.
It was reduced to 66-1 when Barca were awarded a pen with seconds to go.
Then time for one more chance…..

Roma 3-0 Barcelona -2018

The Spaniards though would get a taste of their own medicine a year later.
Having dominated the first leg no one could have envisaged how crucial Dzeko’s consolation goal would prove to be in a 4-1 humbling.
Some had Roma at 66-1 to advance after the tie at the Nou Camp and in Rome Barca played like a team who believed they were already through.
These two legs were the perfect case study in no matter how good you are, you can’t turn intensity on and off.
Once Roma got the early goal, and with the fans loud, the visitors didn’t know how to respond.
One of Roma’s most famous European nights of all time

Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona – 2019

I remember last year trying to stress to some Gooners how hard it is to win at Anfield no matter how well Liverpool are actually doing.
It’s one of the few grounds in the world which has an atmosphere which can influence a result, drawing on the history of previous scenes from the stadium.
If ever that was evident it was this Champions League tie with Klopp’s men only believing they could overturn a 3-0 first leg defeat because of previous famous European nights at the venue.
You could get 9-1 for Liverpool to get to the Final, 50-1 for predicting the 4-0 scoreline.
It was the second season running where Barcelona threw away a massive aggregate lead from that Nou Camp.

To clarify I have only included ‘Miracles’ I have been alive to witness.

So, any Gooners that are older, feel free to give us more examples in the comments.