Manchester U 1 Liverpool 0

Frank Stapleton

Man­chester Uni­ted 1 Liver­pool 0, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, Septem­ber 24, 1983. Fol­low­ing a hu­mi­li­at­ing 3-0 de­feat ag­ainst sur­prise si­de South­ampton at The Dell the pre­vi­ous week, FA Cup hold­ers Man­chester Uni­ted edged out reign­ing Fir­st Di­vi­sion Cham­pi­ons Liver­pool by 1-0 at Old Traf­ford thanks to a sec­ond ha­lf goal from Re­pub­lic of Ire­land in­ter­na­tion­al Frank Stapleton.

Man­chester Uni­ted had beaten Liver­pool 2-0 in the Char­ity Shield at Wemb­ley Sta­dium the pre­vi­ous month and were mar­gin­al fa­vour­ites to over­come The An­field­ers at ho­me. Bo­th te­ams had sev­er­al op­por­tun­it­ies in the fir­st pe­riod, but no­ne of them ma­naged to find the net be­fore the sound of the ha­lf-time sig­nal. Man­chester Uni­ted ul­ti­mately broke the de­fens­ive dead­lock eight min­utes in­to the sec­ond ha­lf when new­ly sig­ned wing­er Ar­thur Gra­ham sent a fine cross to Frank Stapleton who struck the ball pa­st Liver­pool and Zi­m­b­ab­we goal­keeper Bru­ce Grobe­laar and in­to the net from clo­se ran­ge. The Mer­sey­siders tried des­per­ately for an equal­iser as the clock ticked to­wards full time, but the Man­chester Uni­ted si­de held firm to se­cure a 1-0 win. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Ga­ry Bai­ley, Ar­thur Al­bis­ton, Kev­in Mor­an, Mi­chael Dux­bury, Gor­don Mc­Queen, Ar­nold Muh­ren, Butch Wil­kins, Bry­an Rob­son, Frank Stapleton, Nor­man White­side, Ar­thur Gra­ham. Sub­stitutes: No­ne. Liver­pool Te­am: Bru­ce Grob­be­laar, Alan Ken­nedy, Ma­rk Lawren­son, Alan Han­sen, Phil Neal, Graeme Soun­ess, Craig John­ston, Sam­my Lee, Ian Rush, Ken­ny Dalg­lish , Mi­chael Robin­son. Sub­sti­tute: Ste­ve Nicol.

 

Frank Stapleton Quickfacts

Af­ter hit­ting his fir­st goal for Man­chester Uni­ted in a 2-1 ho­me loss to Ips­wich To­wn on the 5th of Septem­ber 1981, Frank Stapleton went on to net 78 goals in 288 ap­pear­ances for the club.

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