Oxford U 1 Manchester U 0

Ox­ford Uni­ted 1 Man­chester Uni­ted 0, Man­or Gro­und, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Sec­ond Di­vi­sion, Feb­ruary 8, 1975. Sec­ond Di­vi­sion lead­ers Man­chester Uni­ted suf­fered a sur­prise de­feat away to mid-ta­ble Ox­ford Uni­ted. The win­ning goal was sco­red by for­mer Walsall and Wol­ves for­ward Derek Clarke, the bro­ther of Leeds Uni­ted fa­vour­ite Al­lan Clarke, who fou­nd the net for Ox­ford in the 35th min­ute of the tie.

Ta­ble top­ping Man­chester Uni­ted had beaten West Brom­wich Al­bion, Shef­field Wed­nesday, drawn ag­ainst Sun­der­land, and lost ag­ainst Old­ham Ath­let­ic and Bris­tol City in their pre­vi­ous five Sec­ond Di­vi­sion fix­tures, where­as Ox­ford Uni­ted had over­come Nor­wich City, and be­en de­feated by Nor­wich City, Hull City, As­ton Vil­la, and Ports­mouth. In the re­verse Sec­ond Di­vi­sion meet­ing be­tween Man­chester Uni­ted and Ox­ford Uni­ted at Old Traf­ford on the 2nd of Nov­ember 1974, The Reds had de­mol­ished Ger­ry Summers´s men by a com­pre­hens­ive 4-0 mar­gin cour­tesy of a hat-trick from sum­mer sign­ing Stu­art Pear­son and one goal from mid­field mo­tor Lou Ma­cari. On this oc­ca­sion, Tom­my Docherty´s Fir­st Di­vi­sion pro­mo­tion chal­lengers en­joyed a string of early scor­ing chances, but the vis­it­ors from Man­chester fou­nd in­form Ox­ford Uni­ted shot stop­per Roy Bur­ton in un­com­prom­ising mood. Then, com­pletely ag­ainst the flow of play, The U´s went in­to the lead as sev­en­teen-year-old mid­field de­butant Hugh­ie Mc­Grogan de­livered a thro­ugh pass to Derek Clarke who­se shot flew pa­st Man­chester Uni­ted and Re­pub­lic of Ire­land in­ter­na­tion­al goal­keeper Pad­dy Roche, who was also ma­king his Foot­ball Lea­gue de­but, and in­to the net ten min­utes be­fore the sound of the ha­lf-time signal.

Dur­ing the sec­ond pe­riod of the en­counter, Sam­my Mc­Ilroy and Lou Ma­cari com­pletely dom­in­ated the middle of the park and The Reds wor­ked hard to find an equal­iser, but the star stud­ded away te­am failed to cap­it­al­ise on their op­por­tun­it­ies and the mat­ch fin­ished wi­th an un­ex­pec­ted 1-0 vic­tory to the de­term­ined and well-or­gan­ised ho­me si­de. Des­pite los­ing to un­fan­cied Ox­ford Uni­ted, the Old Traf­ford club re­mained com­fort­ably at the top of the Sec­ond Di­vi­sion ta­ble wi­th forty points col­lec­ted from twenty-nine ga­mes played, three points ahead of sec­ond pla­ced Sun­der­land, five above third po­si­tioned Nor­wich City, and as much as sev­en more than As­ton Vil­la who fou­nd them­selves in fourth spot. Un­for­tu­nately, a rather large num­ber of trav­el­ling Man­chester Uni­ted sup­port­ers were denied ac­cess to the Man­or Gro­und Sta­dium be­cause of a new tick­et pre-pur­chase re­quire­ment. Ox­ford Uni­ted Te­am: Roy Bur­ton, Jim­my Light, John Shuker, Co­lin Clarke, Dave Ro­berts, Billy Jef­frey, Ste­ve Ay­lott, Hugh­ie Mc­Grogan, Derek Clarke, Co­lin Duncan, Andy Mc­Culloch. Sub­stitutes: No­ne. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Pad­dy Roche, Al­ex For­syth, Stu­art Hou­s­ton, Ste­ve Ja­mes, Mar­tin Bu­chan, Bri­an Green­hoff, Sam­my Mc­Ilroy, To­ny Young, Stu­art Pear­son, Lou Ma­cari, Wil­lie Mor­gan. Sub­sti­tute: Ron Davies.

Manchester United Quickfacts

Man­chester Uni­ted and Ox­ford Uni­ted met for the fir­st time time when the two clubs played out a 2-2 draw at Man­or Gro­und in the sec­ond ro­und of the Lea­gue Cup on the 6th of Septem­ber 1972.

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