Wembley 2025 - A Short History of "Not Turning Up"

Death, taxes, and United not turning up at Wembley. Few things are more certain in life.

To not turn up – verb phrase (figurative, colloquial): to perform woefully on a big occasion as if wearing black and white stripes; to be utterly anonymous; to disappoint desperately

No sooner had we gloriously, effortlessly disposed of the Islington Library First XI – Fab’s pickpocketing of England’s “best” midfielder is a moment I’ll be able to watch again and again until my dying day – than did discussion turn to the most pressing question for any cup final involving NUFC: will we actually “turn up”?

Because, as you won’t need me to remind you, not turning up is very much our thing. It’s not just that we haven’t won a domestic trophy in 70 years, it’s also that in four out of five of our finals in that time, we’ve put up about as much resistance as France’s much vaunted back line against the Germans’ high press in May 1940. For heaven’s sake, it’s almost fifty years since we even managed a goal in a final (no, the Sela and Intertoto definitely don’t count).

Like so much in the peculiar language of football, it’s an odd use of the expression and one you wouldn’t find in any other context in life.

If you remark after your latest sophisticated soiree that Ken and Barbara “didn’t turn up”, then you mean they found something better to do or couldn’t face another excruciating night in your company. What you don’t mean is that they came but gave a distinctly lacklustre social performance, barely engaging in chit-chat over the canapés, being anonymous over the vol-au-vents, and leaving without anyone even noticing that they’d ever been there in the first place. “Yeah, Gabby, so disappointing from the perennial party wallflowers there. If I’m honest, Dave and Sheila wanted it more. Ken and Babs just didn’t turn up”.

Of course, our absolute trademark not turning-ups were the two consecutive FA Cup Final defeats to Arsenal and Man Utd in the late 90s. Textbook examples of the genre, you might say, with every feature present and correct.

A big one-off occasion? The biggest – old school twin towers, proper shiny trophy, not even had a sniff in 25 years. Formidable opponents to ensure that only a proper performance would give us a chance? Both times, league champions and inevitable double winners, given they were playing us. Not a hammering, just a lame, limp surrender? God, yes, the lamest and limpest. On each occasion, a damp squib of a 0-2, where the opposition barely had to get out of second gear. Positively insipid.

In fact, I would argue that 0-2 is the absolute not-turning-upiest scoreline you can possibly have. Not a goal for us to celebrate or to give us a momentary whiff of hope or excitement. That’s obviously an essential element in truly not turning up.

But also in both of those late 90s finals we conceded a goal neatly and symmetrically in each half – Overmars after 23 and Anelka after 69 minutes against Arsenal; Sheringham after 11 and Scholes 53 minutes against Man U. God, even the goalscorers had a whiff of weary, quality inevitability. The timing is crucial – first half kills any initial heady optimism, second half clinically extinguishes any residual hope that might have been in danger of re-igniting.

Mind you, at least last time round in 2023, we mixed things up by conceding both goals in the first half, just to get things over and done with nice and early. As Carly Simon once said (never let it be said we don’t do cutting-edge musical references here), nobody does it better.

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Personally, my own introduction to our unique ability to go missing in big matches came early. It might seem small beer now, but in 1988 a fifth round FA Cup tie at home to Wimbledon was a big deal, or at least it was to me. We’d lost at Spurs at the same stage the previous year, but otherwise the FA Cup had offered little for more than a decade - don't even think about the League Cup! More importantly, it was my first full season going to the match, and I was utterly convinced that Wembley was on the horizon. It was a rare all-ticket sellout in an era of general gloom – we even had to collect tokens from programmes to guarantee a ticket.

We needn’t have bothered. A goal from the odious goblin Terry Gibson after 6 minutes and another from Brian Gayle after 56 set the tone for the next 40 years of personal disappointment. We got a penalty back, but never looked like equalising and John Fashanu’s goal to make it 1-3 was tiresomely inevitable.

If I thought that was bad enough, I hadn’t reckoned on what was to come two years later. Still in with a chance of automatic promotion on the last day of the season, an away trip to relegation-threatened Middlesbrough was the cue for our worst performance of the season – if like me, you were at St James’ to “watch” on the “big” screen, you’ll know as little as me about what actually happened at Ayresome. Not turn up? We were comatose, tied to a lamppost, and in a different timezone.

And so ten days later it was Sunderland at home in the second leg of the play-offs after a glorious 0-0 at the dark place, crowned by Budgie’s last-minute penalty save, Hardyman’s red card, and the general ensuing aggro. Optimism crackled. Unfortunately, PTSD prevents me from recounting the details of the second leg, but you know the deal by now – the standard goal in each half, a complete non-performance, zero prospect of a result, and a limp 0-2 defeat.

Let’s face it, over the years we’ve found a whole variety of ways to lose the matches that matter, from the heroic failures to the shameful drubbings. But there’s something special about our ability to go down 0-2 on the big occasion without the merest of whimpers.

Sunderland in 1990, Arsenal in 1998, Man Utd in 1999, and Man Utd again in 2023. The four biggest one-off matches in my supporting lifetime – three Wembley finals and a promotion-deciding derby back when the world was smaller and everything seemed impossibly important – and all of them lost with barely a shot fired in anger.

We might lose on Sunday because of agonising bad luck, we might miss out in a thriller, or we might not be able to keep pace with an outstanding Liverpool team. That’ll be shit.

But not as shit as simply not turning up. Again.

Matthew Philpotts