Wolves’ sparse joy at Arsenal, from Jimenez trauma to the Molineux class of 1979 | OneFootball

Wolves head to Premier League leaders Arsenal on Saturday night, and north London has seldom been kind to them.

According to ExpressAndStar.com, Wolves have only one win in their last 16 visits to Arsenal, with four draws and 11 defeats. The exception came in November 2020, a Covid-affected match without supporters, when Raul Jimenez suffered a sickening head clash with David Luiz and was treated on the pitch for ten minutes before being taken to hospital.

Despite the shock, Wolves won 2-1 through Pedro Neto and Daniel Podence. Jimenez later made a full recovery and returned to score for Wolves, Mexico and now Fulham, still playing at 34.

That result lifted Wolves to seventh with five wins from their first 10, while Arsenal were 14th amid questions over Mikel Arteta in his first year, their worst start since 1981. Arsenal now lead the Premier League, with Wolves bottom. It remains 46 years since Wolves last beat Arsenal away in front of supporters.

The class of 1979 offers the reference point. Earlier in the decade, Wolves’ only win at Arsenal came in an FA Cup third-place play-off at Highbury at the start of 1973/74 after both had lost the previous season’s semi-finals. That game marked Geoff Palmer’s debut before he joined John Richards, Kenny Hibbitt and Derek Parkin in winning the 1974 and 1980 League Cups.

Richards says he still has the small winners’ tankard from that play-off, while he and Hibbitt recall Arsenal’s strength, citing Peter Storey, Liam Brady and Pat Jennings. Home form was little better, Mel Eves’ 1978 winner preceded 10 winless Molineux meetings, only one drawn, before a 3-1 victory in 2019. Eves remembered meeting Joao Moutinho after that long-awaited success and called him a lovely guy.

Source: ExpressAndStar.com