George Graham: ‘People say Mourinho is like me. I always thought sport was about winning’

As a new documentary, 89, is released the former Arsenal manager recalls that night the destiny of the league title changed in the last seconds of the season, and bemoans the decline in the art of defending in today’s Premier League

“Everything changed in a second,” George Graham says as he remembers the sweetest moment of his life bursting into life at Anfield on a Friday night in May 1989. Twenty-eight years later, on a November morning in a brasserie on Hampstead High Street, Graham’s bacon sandwich lies half-eaten on his plate amid flickering memories of the goal Michael Thomas scored for Arsenal in the last minute of the final match of the 1988-89 season.

It was a season scarred forever by the tragedy of Hillsborough, when 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death on 23 April 1989. Forty-one days later the title decider between Liverpool and Arsenal was played at Anfield. Liverpool had made their usual surge to the top of the table and could even afford to lose. To win the league Arsenal had to beat Liverpool 2-0 – a seemingly impossible task at Anfield.

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