Manchester U 4 Coventry 1

Man­chester Uni­ted 4 Cov­entry City 1 Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, April 21, 1984. Fol­low­ing an un­event­ful goal­less draw ag­ainst Wat­ford at Vicar­age Road just four days earli­er, Man­chester Uni­ted bounced back wi­th an em­phat­ic 4-1 vic­tory over Cov­entry City at Old Trafford. 

Fir­st Di­vi­sion title con­tenders Man­chester Uni­ted al­most went in­to the lead early on as a right-sided cross from Ray Wil­kins was head­ed in­ches wide of the post by Frank Stapleton. And  mo­ments la­ter, the men wear­ing red shirts came clo­se ag­ain when a dan­ger­ous left-footed shot from Wil­kins for­ced Cov­entry City goal­keeper Perry Suck­ling in­to a spec­tac­u­lar diving save. Wi­th the ga­me ap­proach­ing ha­lf-time at Old Traf­ford, Man­chester Uni­ted fi­nally broke the de­fens­ive dead­lock thanks to Ma­rk Hug­hes who took full ad­vant­age of some slack de­fend­ing by the vis­it­ors to ham­mer ho­me in the 41st min­ute of play. The Reds re­sumed their dom­in­a­tion af­ter the break and went 3-0 up wi­th two goals in quick suc­ces­sion from Paul Mc­Grath and Wil­kins in the 52nd and 60th min­utes of ac­tion re­spect­ively. The Sky Blues re­fused to give in and re­duced the ar­rears thro­ugh a goal by ex-Man­chester Uni­ted mid­fielder Ger­ry Da­ly in the 73rd min­ute, but when Hug­hes fou­nd the net for a sec­ond time wi­th a fe­ro­cious low shot from in­side the area four min­utes la­ter the mat­ch was more or less over. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Ga­ry Bai­ley, Ar­thur Al­bis­ton, Kev­in Mor­an,  Ray Wil­kins, Paul Mc­Grath, Graeme Hogg, Mi­ke Dux­bury, Remi Moses, Frank Stapleton, Ma­rk Hug­hes, Ar­thur Gra­ham. Sub­sti­tute: Nor­man White­side. Cov­entry City Te­am: Perry Suck­ling, Micky Adams, Ste­ve Jac­obs, Ian But­ter­worth, Sam Al­lardyce, Nicky Plat­nauer, Ash­ley Gri­mes, Ger­ry Da­ly, Mick Fer­guson, Micky Gynn, Da­vid Ben­nett. Sub­sti­tute: Terry Gibson.

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