On this day in 1985, Sunderland progressed to their first ever League Cup Final by defeating Chelsea 3-2 in the semi-final second leg, making it 5-2 on aggregate.
Our League Cup campaign had begun in late September, as we beat Crystal Palace 2-1 at
Roker Park in the second round first leg courtesy of a brace within four minutes by Roger Wylde. We booked a spot in the next round via a 0-0 draw at Selhurst Park in October.
After this we travelled away to Nottingham Forest, a goal from David Hodgson gave us the lead but the Reds were able to find an equaliser. In the replay it would take us until the 111th minute of extra time to score and win the game 1-0, Howard Gayle the goalscorer on that occasion.
In the fourth round Tottenham Hotspur travelled up to Wearside in a game that ended 0-0. This time around the replay was settled in regular time. Despite us going behind within the first 10 minutes, we orchestrated a fight back to win 2-1 with the goals coming from Clive Walker and Gordon Chisholm.
Walker would get on the scoresheet again in the quarter final, with us beating Watford away from home 1-0. That setup this semi-final two-legged clash between Sunderland and Chelsea.
At Roker, the hapless Jason Gavin made our job easier by giving away a penalty in each half. Westy put the first away nicely, then had to rely on netting the rebound for the second in front of a joyous Fulwell, to give us a two-goal cushion for the trip to the Bridge. Talk was not so much of the football that would be played, but how the travelling supporters would get home in one piece. If hooliganism was a general football malaise in the seventies, then it was a Chelsea speciality in the eighties.
The starting XI from the first leg would remain unchanged as we lined up like this:
Chris Turner
Barry Venison
Nick Pickering
Gary Bennett
Gordon Chisholm
Shaun Elliott
David Hodgson
Steve Berry
Colin West
Peter Daniel
Clive Walker
(as well as Ian Wallace on the bench)
Benno's pal David Speedie halved the deficit on aggregate in the 6th minute by putting away a penalty. It would take us half an hour to reestablish a two goal lead. Walker dribbled well into the box and blasted the ball into the bottom left corner of the net.
They’d already smashed their seats out of the Posh Stand at Roker, and seemed to exercise their perceived God-given right to violence every week. The word was that they’d stop Sunderland winning if their team couldn’t, and they almost managed to.
Former Chelsea favourite Clive Walker then ignored his history and scored twice against his old mates, but the defining moment, not for its importance to the result, which was virtually decided in our favour anyway, but for the bizarre image it provided, was of Westy. With Chelsea’s delightful fans charging across the pitch towards the visitors, the mounted police trotted onto the field of play. Westy collected a ball from Walker, evaded one of the horses, and calmly scored our third goal. No matter that Nevin added a Chelsea second or that Speedie tried to cripple Shaun Elliott and was sent off, we'd endured all that Chelsea, fans and team, could throw at us.
Violence dominated any talk of the game but Sunderland had still gotten to their first ever League Cup final by beating a team far higher up the league than them, breezing past them 5-2 on aggregate.
Sunderland 3, Chelsea 2, Shed End nil, and the small matter of a trip to Wembley. For some reason, Len Ashurst left Colin West out of the Wembley team, and sold him to Watford where he promptly scored more goals in the rest of the season than Sunderland did. How very Sunderland.
Norwich beat us later on in the month in front of a crowd of 100,000 and the season took a turn for the worse towards the end as our already poor form dipped even further and we suffered relegation to the second tier.
