“I mean it happened out of nothing,” recalled Hackett, the latest guest on UTD Podcast, which is released today [Monday]. “The game was going okay. I was staying out of it. I had this approach of let them play. That’s what spectators want. They don’t want to see me.
“It suddenly exploded and I’m in the middle of it. In that period of time, I’m thinking: which one do I send off? I was genuinely thinking someone has got to go. But who is it? I thought it’s him, it’s him, then it’s him and it could be him. We didn’t have a process then, we have one now.
“And I just thought it calmed down. I’m not going to lose my head if they lost a bit of theirs, and I went ‘get on with the game’. So there were no red cards.
“Then, of course, The FA said what’s gone off, they’ve seen it all. So I pushed through a report. So I’m sat there and The FA said: ‘What do you think? Who are you going to blame?’ It could be one, it could be all. I said for that one, someone said to me what about this incident, and I said: ‘Yeah, that’s a red card. No question. But how can I react when I’ve not seen it?’
“They said ‘thank you Mr Hackett, you can go home.'”
Arsenal went on to win the league and the rivalry would persist, particularly when Arsene Wenger took charge and both clubs competed for the top honours.
