But we had beaten United on penalties in the FA Cup final in the previous season, so we were not totally without hope, and Wenger still fielded a strong line-up even without Henry.
Here is the starting XI for the Gunners that day….
1 J. Lehmann
20 J. Djourou
27 E. Eboué
5 K. Touré
10 W. Gallas
19 Gilberto Silva
8 F. Ljungberg
7 T. Rosický
4 Fàbregas
13 A. Hleb
25 E. Adebayor
United, who were top of the League at the time, and went on to finish 21 points ahead of Arsenal in the final table, also had a great team out as usual, including Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo, Paul Scholes and with Louis Saha leading the line, And in fact Ole Gunnar Solksjaer came on in the second half to replace Rooney.
But we managed to shock everyone by holding United off for 85 minutes, and ten a brilliant piece of play from Cesc Fabregas ended up with him slipping a lovely short ball to Adebayor in the box and he made no mistake sliding the ball past Kuszczak to score the winner. Wenger quickly took off Adebayor and added Flamini to help keep Fergie’s team out for the last few minutes.
It was a great win, and here is an excellent short video to commemorate our brilliant win.
Enjoy!