Below we have each of the Premier League programme covers for the games played on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th December 2019 – the final set of games in the year and, indeed, the decade.
It was a weekend when clubs remembered the late Martin Peters, who had died at the age of 76 on 21st December. Two of Peters’ former clubs – West Ham United and Norwich City – both included his picture on their programme covers. The Hammers issue was beautifully presented, with a simple image of a young Peters, who joined the club as an apprentice in 1959. He signed his first professional contract with the East London club in 1960 and would go on to make 364 appearances for West Ham, scoring exactly 100 goals. Along the way of course, he helped England to win the World Cup in 1966 and he becomes the fifth member of the team to pass away – following Alan Ball, Ray Wilson, Gordon Banks, and fellow Hammers legend Bobby Moore. The Hammers’ website published this tribute to Peters.
Following a successful spell at Tottenham Hotspur between 1970 and 1975, where he picked up several winners medals, Peters moved to Norwich City. When Tottenham visited Carrow Road on 28th December, the Canaries once again used the tribute cover that had previously marked the deaths of Duncan Forbes and Ron Saunders earlier in the season, with a picture of Peters in the club’s familiar yellow and green colours. Peters was 31 by the time he joined Norwich and his experience was an important factor in the club establishing themselves as a fixture in Division One in the second half of the 1970s. Regarded as one of the finest, if not the very best, players to have appeared for Norwich, Peters was the club’s Player of the Season in both 1976 and 1977 and scored 50 goals in 232 appearances. An excellent tribute to Peters was posted on the Canaries website, which you can read here.
In terms of the weekend’s other issues, the cover for Burnley’s match against Manchester United once again stood out with its excellent design work, featuring the colours of the home and away teams and their respective club crests. Arsenal meanwhile marked the first home game in charge for new boss Mikel Arteta with a ‘welcome home’ message.