What it takes to win the league and FA Cup double - six legends reveal their secrets

That season, we knew we were the team to follow, we put bums on seats. We not only entertained, we were effective. But as regards the Double, that only entered our thoughts after we’d won the league. Seriously it was only when we went to Wembley that it dawned on us we really were in with a shout.

We’d had a couple of wobbles along the way, too. We were lucky to get a draw at Sunderland in the quarter final, very lucky. The replay at White Hart Lane was pandemonium. Tottenham High Road was grid-locked. I had to park about a mile away and sprint through the crowd there. I didn’t get into the ground until 20 minutes before kick off. I tell everyone it was part of my pre-match warm up. But we did them 5-0. And from then on, we were flying. It was a good cup run for me, I scored in the fourth, fifth and sixth rounds and the semi-final against Burnley.

We’d won the league by a pretty healthy eight points (this was the days of two points for a win) and obviously, ahead of the Cup final the papers were full of talk of the Double. Bill Nick was very shrewd in the build-up, his approach was to make us feel as comfortable as possible. The night before we all went to Odeon Leicester Square. He played it down, didn’t even mention the Double in the team talk. He just made us aware of our responsibility to the fans.

In the first half I had a goal disallowed for offside (who was that linesman?). But it didn’t matter. We beat Leicester in the end. The odd thing looking back is we took it in our stride. It was like: 'Yeah, we’ve done it, what next?' As time goes on you realise more and more what it meant to be part of the first team to win the Double in that century. That is such a source of pride and satisfaction.

Bob Wilson, Arsenal 1971

Our victory was rooted in missing out. Arsenal were the Bank of England club, yet we had gone 17 years without winning a trophy. Then we lost two League Cup finals. 

When we were beaten by Swindon in 1969, we took a lot of stick. One paper ran the headline “The Shame of London,” I still have it. It gave us an urgent need to prove everyone wrong. Frank McClintock, the skipper, set the tone. That was his fourth losing final. I remember we got tankards for being runners-up and he hurled his right into the marching band.

Then we won the Inter Cities Fairs Cup in 1970 and the 17-year torture ended. More importantly it made us believe in ourselves. After that victory, Bertie Mee, the manager, was very good with his words. He said this was only the beginning. Plus, in Don Howe we had the greatest coach of his era. What the two of them built was not a side as beautiful to watch as that Spurs team who won the Double. But we were the perfect jigsaw and in Charlie George we had the rough diamond.

Every side who wins the Double has a really strong rival to push them all the way. Ours was Leeds. We were 12 points behind them in the league in March. We didn’t overhaul them until the last game of the season, at White Hart Lane. What a place to do it. To be crowned champions against Spurs at their home, to do it against the last club who wanted us to emulate what they had done: you cannot imagine the satisfaction.

To a degree, after that we relaxed in the Cup final. Bertie and Don prepared us brilliantly: I remember they had a pitch at the training ground with exactly the same length of grass as Wembley. Going to the final, confirmed as the best team in England, we were flying. I’m not saying there were no nerves on the day, but we should definitely have been winners in 90 minutes. Sadly, I conceded a dodgy goal against Steve Heighway to let Liverpool back in. Frank McClintock was standing over me with this look on his face that said: ‘You stupid ….. Now I’m going to be a Wembley loser again.’ When Charlie got the winner in extra time no-one was more relieved than me.

You behave like idiots when you win the Double. That night we had a huge banquet, and then we went to Danny La Rue’s club till some ridiculous hour. We had to be at Highbury at 10 the next morning for the bus tour of Islington. I remember Frank fell asleep on the balcony of the town hall.

In a game that has changed in every respect, the achievement of winning the league and then finishing the season by winning the Cup is the one constant. For me it was the pinnacle, nothing could touch that feeling. Mind you, whenever I tell David Seaman I was in the Arsenal team that won the Double, he always comes back with: yeah but I won two of them.

Jim Beglin, Liverpool 1986

Last year, to mark the 30^th anniversary, LFCTV did a documentary about the '86 Double. Personally I only had a small haul of medals, but watching that I was amazed when guys who won everything at Liverpool were saying it was their favourite season. Winning the Double means everything.

I admit it would have been harder had we been in Europe. But it was the year after Heysel and we were banned. Kenny Dalglish was appointed manager and the first thing he said to us was we cannot use that dreadful night as an excuse to flounder, we have to move on and we have to do it as we have always done it and that’s win. Kenny demanded more, you could feel the intensity rise.

At Liverpool the standards were high as were the expectations. You set out to win a trophy a season. And the league was in the air until the last moment. We were in the race with Everton. We had to go to Chelsea on final day, when we knew we were in the Cup final. We were on a wonderful run, winning 11 and drawing one of our last 12 league games. There was a steeliness in that team; we were never going to allow ourselves to be deflected.

That said the Cup run was anything but straightforward. We had difficult replays against York and Watford and went to extra time against Southampton in the semi. And the Tuesday before the final we played Norwich in the Screensports Super Cup final, which was a nonsense competition they had brought in for the teams that had been banned from Europe. I was hoping Kenny might rest me for that, but he didn’t. There wasn’t much squad rotation in those days. I think we only used 16 players all season. No such thing then as playing the kids in the early rounds of the Cup.

Once we got to Wembley, I remember looking round the dressing room and thinking: no way will we lose. There was such experience in that team. There was a lot of talk beforehand of the way they had blown the Double in 1977 so everyone was really up for it. But if I’m honest, we weren’t great for an hour, Everton out-played us. At half-time Roy Evans and Ronnie Moran were scurrying around saying play your football, you haven’t played yet. I think in the end we did it through belief. Once we equalised we could all feel it was ours.

Looking back, though, I still get a little annoyed that we blew the treble when we lost to QPR in the League Cup semi. The following Saturday we played them in the league and won 4-1. As a player you look for those unique accolades. And that would have been the only domestic treble.

Paul Parker, Manchester United 1994

Sir Alex Ferguson said to us immediately after we’d won the league the previous season, you only become a proper champion once you retain it. So that was absolutely our priority: become proper champions.

We didn’t get far in Europe that season – the three-foreigner rule that was then in place killed us. After we were knocked out of the Champions League, we became even more determined to do it domestically.

As the season progressed, as the games came flying at you, that’s when the buzz started. It’s rubbish to think you’d be knackered, players would much rather play than train. Besides, even if I was knackered, the last thing I’d say to Sir Alex was ‘I’m tired’. Imagine.

But I remember, we went through a bit of a dip at a real critical moment of the season. We blew the League Cup final, then we were behind in the FA Cup semi against Oldham. I really did think we were going out, until Mark Hughes struck one hell of a goal. Looking back on it now, I’d have been bitter as anything to have blown the Double.

We won the replay very comfortably. Once we got to the final, the Double really became a big thing. Even the boss talked about it and he was brilliant at distancing himself from everything except what is in front of you. Well, the Double was now in front of us. And he sent us out there saying: you’ve got the chance to create history. He said, go and win United’s first Double. Which we did. Me personally, I was well content with that. But once was never enough for Sir Alex, he was chasing more Doubles straight away.

I don’t really follow why clubs put the FA Cup on the back burner these days. Ask any English fan and they’d want to follow their team to an FA Cup final at Wembley. Besides, you should be able to chase more than one scenario. All this ‘players haven’t got the energy’ nonsense, it grates on people. It’s the reason people get fed up with footballers. Everyone should be chasing Doubles.

Ryan Giggs, Manchester United 1999

We never talked about the Treble in 1999 because we knew the odds were against it happening. There was so much that could go wrong: the semi-final of the FA Cup against Arsenal, the Champions League semi-final against Juventus. At any point we could have tripped up and then it came down to those three games in 10 days and we ticked the competitions off one-by-one.

First we beat Tottenham at Old Trafford to win the Premier League. Then we beat Newcastle United at Wembley six days later to win the FA Cup. And four days after that we were at the Nou Camp for the biggest one of all.

The best feeling I have ever had on a football pitch was the moment that the whistle went at the Nou Camp. Nothing comes close. I didn’t know what to do. How can I best describe it? A few minutes earlier, when we had been trailing 1-0, a thought flashed into my head. That thought was that I would be so devastated when the whistle went and the biggest game of my life had ended in defeat.

When we won it the switch in emotion was almost too big to compute. I could hardly process it. I just let it take me along for a bit.

The first Premier League and FA Cup Double in 1994 meant a lot too. I can remember Sir Alex telling us that season that Manchester United had never won a league and Cup Double. It came as a shock to me. I was a United fan, if not an expert on all their history, and I had always assumed that at some point over the previous 100-odd years the club had won a Double. Actually before 1994 the club had never won more than one major trophy in a single season.

We signed Roy Keane in the summer of 1993 and having won the league, his arrival was such a major boost. We were the best team in the league and then we had the most expensive footballer in British history. We felt unstoppable.

Ray Wilkins, Chelsea coach 2010

There was a rash of Doubles in the nineties, five in seven years, which I put down to playing surfaces getting better. In the old days, pitches were wrecked by the time the third round of the Cup started. From the nineties you’re playing on bowling greens, which really reduces the chance of an upset.

But then clubs started prioritising the Champions League, because of the money involved, and resting players in the early rounds of the FA Cup. As a result, Doubles became rarer. I have to admit we never set out with it on our agenda. Carlo [Ancelotti, the Chelsea manager] wanted to get into the latter stages of the Champions League, so at the beginning, although we were holders, the FA Cup was not at the top of our list.

It wasn’t until we got to the semi that we really thought it was on. At the semi, you’re on tenterhooks, you’re sitting there thinking there is so much at stake, so much you could lose. That’s when your gut starts telling you what it means. 

We were most cosmopolitan side on the planet, but when we won and you saw the elation displayed by every nationality, you knew that the FA Cup was the first game they saw as a kid in their country. I stood by the dressing room door and watched the celebration - they really understood the meaning of the Double. 

The big advantage this Chelsea side have over us is they have gone through this season with no European football. If I’m honest with you, I just don’t see Arsenal having enough. I think Chelsea could win big.

And I tell you if they do do the Double, the elation will be immense. The FA Cup still has such meaning. I had the privilege of playing in France and Italy, and their cup competitions are nothing compared to it. Ours is the oldest in the world. The history is absolutely massive. Once guys buy into it, once they play in the semi at Wembley and see the importance for fans, it really kicks in. Modern footballers, even if they are from abroad, they want the Double just as much as ever.