After finishing fourth in the league and winning the
Football League Cup a year earlier, Arsenal slipped to finish sixth. They did reach the
League Cup final for the second year in a row. Although Arsenal took a 2–1 lead against Luton Town at
Wembley,
Nigel Winterburn missed a penalty which would have given them a 3–1 lead, and ended up losing the game 3–2. In the league, Arsenal got off to a slow start, winning just one of their first five games, before going top of the table with a 10-match winning run. They won 14 consecutive games between 12 September and 17 November 1987, in all competitions, a club record at the time. Smith finished as Arsenal's top scorer in his first season at the club, finding the net 16 times in all competitions. Charlie Nicholas, meanwhile, fell into Arsenal obscurity. After playing in the first three matches, he exclusively featured for the reserves before being sold to
Aberdeen in January 1988. Arsenal were in a great run of form when they travelled to
The Dell to face
Southampton on 9 April 1988. Arsenal were unbeaten in eight league games and, even though they were missing Tony Adams and
David O’Leary, Southampton won 4–2. All the talk was centred on Southampton's new star,
Alan Shearer who, at 17 years and 240 days, and broke
Jimmy Greaves’ record of the youngest player to score a hat-trick in the English top flight. It had also been 21 years since a player had scored a hat-trick on his full debut in English football. ==Squad==