Arsenal will feel the Kassam Stadium’s winter chill. It is open-cornered, lacks a stand at its west end and on a rough evening the cold can rattle the bones. Were Karl Robinson’s Oxford United not such a slick, highly principled outfit at their best, it would fit the cliche of an FA Cup leveller. But it has nothing on the rickety old Manor Ground and its slope where an earlier iteration of Monday night’s tie brought one of the side’s finest hours.
“We were the sort of team who would hunt you down,” says Steve Perryman, who arrived from Spurs to offer a calm, controlled head in Oxford’s midfield for the later part of the 1985-86 season.
