Having disposed of one Yorkshire club in the last round Arsenal will be favourites to add another to the list when Huddersfield Town visit the Emirates on Sunday lunchtime in the 4th round of the FA Cup.
Lee Clark's League One promotion chasers overcame non-league Dover Athletic in the 3rd round and will travel to London looking for what would be one of the biggest upsets in recent FA Cup history.
This will be the first meeting between the sides in the FA Cup since 1932, where an early goal from Herbie Roberts settled the quarter final tie at Highbury as then League Champions Arsenal went on to the a final meeting with Newcastle United.
The last competitive meeting between the clubs was a two-legged League Cup second round tie back in 1993. Arsenal were the holders of the competition and the first game, at the Terriers old London Road ground, was a stroll in the park as a hat-trick from Ian Wright and further goals from Kevin Campbell and Paul Merson gave them a comfortable 5-0 victory. The second leg at Highbury was a much closer affair though as a weakened Arsenal side were held to a 1-1 draw, but they still progressed to a third round meeting with Norwich City.
Prior to that the clubs had met in the same competition in 1986, again over two legs. This time it was a much closer contest as Arsenal only took a 2-0 first leg lead up to Yorkshire and the Terriers sensed an upset as a goal from Duncan Shearer halved the arrears. But substitute Martin Hayes came off the bench to grab the equaliser on the night and set the Gunners on the road to the final, where they beat Liverpool to lift the trophy for the first time.
So while the clubs paths may not have crossed much in recent years they do have a long history going back over 80 years. Back in the 1920's Huddersfield were the top side in the country and they became the first club to win the league title three seasons in a row in 1924/25/26. The architect of that side was the great Herbert Chapman but he left Yorkshire after the second of those titles to take over at Highbury in 1925. At the time Arsenal were just a run-of-the-mill club who had never won a major trophy but over the next nine years he transformed them into the greatest club in the country.
It was with some irony that the first trophy Chapman won for Arsenal was the 1930 FA Cup where they beat Huddersfield in the final at Wembley, the great Alex James among the scorers in a 2-0 success for the Londoners.
That led to a decade of success not matched by the club until the arrival of Arsene Wenger some 60 years later. Under Chapman the Gunners were league champions for the first time in 1931, the first London club to land the prize, and they went on to equal Huddersfield record of three successive titles in 1933/34/35. Unfortunately Chapman was not around to see it as he sadly passed away in January 1934. The club continued to have success under George Allison and Tom Whittaker until the 1950's but it was off the field that the Chapman legacy lived on.
It was his idea to change the name of the Tube station next to the ground at Highbury from Gillespie Road to Arsenal, it was his idea to introduce white sleeves to the red shirts and it was his idea to have numbers on the players shirts to make them more easily identified. These were just some of the forward thinking ideas of the man that made Arsenal what it is today.
Unfortunately his magic did not have the same lasting effect on Huddersfield. Their title success in 1926 still remains the last major trophy they have won but under Clark the club are looking to finally turn their fortunes around. Victory at the Emirates on Saunday may seem unlikely, and with the club in a strong position for a return to the Championship after a ten year hiatus their focus could be elsewhere, but then in the FA Cup you just never know...
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