‘That’s still my biggest regret, not scything Michael Thomas down in 1989’s Anfield title decider. You don’t want to be the bad guy, but it rankles with me’ Ray Houghton on his role in one of English football’s most historic moments

More than 35 years on, it remains one of the most dramatic evenings in English football history.

When Arsenal headed up to Anfield on May 26, 1989, for a match that had been pushed back a month following the Hillsborough disaster, they knew that if they beat Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool by two clear goals, they would end an 18-year title drought.

As the clock moved past the 90-minute mark with Arsenal 1-0 up, Alan Smith flicked on a long ball from Lee Dixon and found Michael Thomas, who was surging through the midfield. Thomas would slip the ball past Bruce Grobbelaar to score a dramatic injury-time, title-winning goal.

Ray Houghton’s big Michael Thomas regret

One of the closest players to Thomas as he bore down on the Liverpool goal that night was Reds midfielder Ray Houghton, who admits that he could have taken drastic measures to stop his opposite number from scoring.

“I remember John Barnes going down the right and trying to take on Tony Adams rather than keeping the ball down by the corner,’ he tells FourFourTwo.

“If he’d done that, that probably would have been it. It’s still my biggest regret, not scything Thomas down that night. You don’t want to be the bad guy, but it rankles with me.”

Liverpool would end up finishing second in the old First Division on goal scored to Arsenal that season and would reclaim the title 12 months later, their 11th success in 15 seasons.

That remains one of the most dominant runs in English football history, but how did Houghton rank the late ‘80s side against the club’s best-ever sides?

“It was the only club I’ve played at where it wasn’t if we were going to win, but by how many,” he adds. “But I don’t like generational comparisons.

“I laugh as when I played for Aston Villa, they’d throw sand on the pitch and paint it green to look like grass. To the naked eye you wouldn’t know any different, but as players we knew that we couldn’t pass the ball through that.

“It was a different era.”