Last major update of this file 3 October 2024
A note on sources and index to other months appears at the end.
October 1895 (exact date unknown): Royal Ordnance Factories FC (the club that split from Woolwich Arsenal in 1893) turned professional, suggesting that the split between ROFFC and Arsenal was not over professionalism, but rather that the management of ROFFC changed its mind on the subject, on seeing the success of Woolwich Arsenal after 1893.
1 October 1870: David Howat born in Preston. He played for Fishwick Ramblers, and Preston North End, before moving to Woolwich Arsenal for whom he played between 1889 and 1896.
1 October 1918: The Mayors of London hired the Palladium for a charity event for soldiers blinded during the war. Among the entertainers was the comedian, singer and actor George Robey, an acquaintance of Sir Henry Norris on the charity football matches circuit. Robey was particularly known for the song “If you were the only girl in the world,”
1 October 1913: Reginald Trim born this day in Portsmouth. He became the captain of England Schoolboys at left back, signing for Arsenal in April 1933 and remaining with the club until 1937 despite making just one first team appearance during all that time.
1 October 1925: The new tactics evolved at half time in response to the 7-0 defeat by Newcastle were tried out again just two days later in an away game at West Ham. Arsenal won 4-0. Buchan later wrote, “the novelty of Arsenal’s new methods took the other League clubs by surprise,” although results elsewhere suggest lots of experiments were going on, and erratic results were now the norm. But Arsenal’s approach was effective for by Christmas Arsenal were top of the league.
1 October 1930: 14 miners were killed in an explosion in the coal pit at Cannock. It is a tragic theme we find repeated throughout the 1930s.
1 October 1952: Arsenal and Racing Club de Paris continued their long series of friendlies. For the first time in the series Racing Club beat Arsenal, 2 – 0.
1 October 1953: Derek Tapscott joined Arsenal from Barry Town for somewhere between £2000 and £4000 (depending on the source one reads). He had earlier had a trial with Tottenham, but was signed by Tom Whittaker after Tottenham turned him down.
1 October 1957: Ian Allinson born in Stevenage. He started out with Colchester Utd and became Young Player of the Year, and then a professional in October 1975. At the end of the 1976/7 season he scored the winning goal in the final game to gain promotion for the club.
1 October 1966: George Graham’s Arsenal debut and he scored – but the game finished Arsenal 2 Leicester 4.
1 October 1966: Bob McNab signed from Huddersfield. He had played for them 68 times between 1963 and 1966 before being signed by Bertie Mee in October 1966 – two months into his reign.
1 October 1969: Geoff Barnett signed from Everton for £35,000. Bob Wilson had a broken arm, and Mee was not sure about Malcolm Webster who had come up through the youth system. Webster did however make 3 appearances in 1969/70.
1 October 1994: Arsenal 1 Crystal Palace 2 left Arsenal with only two wins in the first eight league games. Even worse in five of those games Arsenal had failed to score. Arsenal were 14th, 14 points off the leaders, only 3 points off relegation in what was to be Graham’s final season as manager.
1 October 1996: Arsène Wenger officially took up duties as Arsenal’s first non-British manager, and rumours soon began to be circulated suggesting that he had been forced to leave his previous job because of a scandal. This eventually led to the later infamous “What rumours?” confrontation with journalists on the steps of Highbury.
1 October 1988: With Frank McLintock as part of their coaching team Millwall went top of the 1st division.
1 October 2000: Arsenal beat Man U as Henry, with his back to goal flicked the ball up before pivoting to strike the ball over Barthez. It started a five game winning run for Arsenal and was Man U’s first defeat of the season. It was also part of a 15 match unbeaten run.
1 October 2013: Arsenal beat Napoli 2-0. It was the 10th successive win in league, league cup and Champions League.
1 October 2014: Arsenal beat Galatasary 4-1 in the Champions League with three goals from Welbeck and one from Alexis. It was one of just two wins in a run of nine games in all competitions.
1 October 2016: Alan Smith’s article “My complicated relationship with Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal” in the Telegraph sought to excuse his attack in that paper on the players of his ex-club. The attack related to the Man U game in the Invincibles season, an attack made while he was contracted to Arsenal and had privileged access to players for club interviews. It was an attack for which he has never felt it was right to apologise and was followed by many negative reports on Arsenal. Arsenal subsequently dismissed Smith as a writer for the club magazine.
1 October 2017: Arsenal beat Brighton 2-0 with goals from Monreal and Iwobi to make it three wins and a draw in the last four, after two earlier defeats to Stoke and Liverpool.
1 October 2020: Arsenal beat Liverpool away on penalties 5-4 in the league cup. Leno saved one Liverpool penalty, while Lacazette, Soares, Elneny, Maitland-Niles, Pepe and Willock all scored.
1 October 2023,Arsenal beat Tottenham 3-1 with Partey scoring from 25 yards after 20 minutes: his first goal from outside the box in 65 attempts. Tottenham got a penalty on 31 minutes, scored by Kane, but Jesus and Xhaka scored in the second half keeping Arsenal top of the league. with the first run of three consecutive home wins in 10 years.
2 October 1909: Playing with an injured keeper throughout, (Arsenal seemingly having no reserve keeper available) Arsenal lost 0-7 to Blackburn. It was one of four defeats by this score that Arsenal have suffered in the first division. The next time they conceded seven was October 1922.
2 October 1915: Arsenal beat Clapton Orient in the wartime league, with Andy Ducat from Aston Villa in the team. He had played 175 games for Arsenal before being transferred to Villa in 1912. He later ended his career with Fulham – obviously the connection with Henry Norris remained throughout.
2 October 1920: A sense of impending doom swept the club as Arsenal lost 2-1 to Middlesbrough, having been 1-0 up for much of the game. The crowd of 25,000 was a disappointment too as the weather was particularly clement.
2 October 1922: Arsenal lost 1-2 away to Sheffield United. As a result of this defeat Arsenal were 19th, just one point above the relegation places and with a worse goal average than the two clubs one point below them.
2 October 1922: Frank Townrow (who joined Arsenal in November 1920, signing as a professional in April 1921) made his debut for the club. He only played nine times for the first team in five years at Arsenal.
2 October 1924: Arsenal had made an offer to Preston of £4500 plus Bob Turnbull, for England forward Tom Roberts who had scored 118 goals in 199 games – another example of Knighton’s reported £1500 transfer fee limit being shown to be nonsense. But on this day Roberts signed for Burnley.
2 October 1926: One year on from the game against Newcastle when Arsenal went six down in the first half, and then changed tactics, it started again, as Arsenal went 0-2 down to Newcastle in 15 minutes. And again a tactical change occurred at half time and the game ended 2-2.
2 October 1937: George Hunt, the England international signed from Tottenham, made his debut for Arsenal against Manchester City on 2 October 1937. He went on to get a league winners’ medal, before moving on to Bolton for £4000.
2 October 1946: Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson played his first Arsenal match – a friendly against Sparta Prague, a 2-2 draw. He played throughout as an amateur, but the restrictive employment regime of the UK meant he had to leave the club shortly after.
2 October 1962: Barnet’s 75th anniversary match ended Barnet 2 Arsenal 5.
2 October 1971: Southampton 0 Arsenal 1 (23,738 being crammed into the Dell). The Observer called the Southampton tactics after Arsenal scored akin to a “pre-historic assault” rather than football.
2 October 1974: A testimonial match at Reading gave O’Leary, Ross and Rostron their first games.
2 October 1993: Liverpool 0 Arsenal 0. This was the first of four successive 0-0 draws in the league. The sequence ended on 6 November with a 1-2 home defeat to Aston Villa.
2 October 2005: Arsenal beat Birmingham 1-0, part of a run with just one defeat in 16 games.
2 October 2007: Arsenal beat Steaua Bucuresti 1-0 away in the Champions League. It was match 12 of a 21 game run without defeat in League or Cups.
2 October 2011: An away defeat to Tottenham 2-1 meant that after five league games with just one win, Arsenal were 17th, the lowest point in the table under Wenger of any season after more than three games.
2 October 2016. Away to Burnley Laurent Koscielny scored in the last minute to win the game. Burnley manager Sean Dyche questioned the referee’s competence after the game claiming the goal was both offside and handball. Although such attacks on refereeing competence by managers are prohibited by the PL no action was taken.
2 October 2020: The draw for the Europa league group matches was made with Arsenal paired with Molde, Rapid Vienna, and Dundalk. For the first time Arsenal won all six games in their qualifying group.
3 October 1896: Arsenal played their second game in the United League – a 2-2 home draw against Luton Town – with a not insignificant crowd of 8000 – very high for the United League.
3 October 1903: There was 20,000 in the crowd for the Man U home game on this date, compared with 1,000 for the next away game (at Glossop)! Arsenal won 4-0, making it 21 goals for and 0 against in the first five games of the season.
3 October 1914: Arsenal were away to Leeds City (managed by Herbert Chapman) and secured a 2-2 draw with 12,000 in the crowd. One of the earliest meetings between Chapman and Henry Norris.
3 October 1917: Eddie Carr born. At 17 he signed as an amateur for Arsenal, going first to the Margate nursery club, and turning professional in time for the start of the 1936/7 season.
3 October 1925: Arsenal lost 0-7 to Newcastle. 0-6 down at half time Chapman changed tactics – but the introduction of WM did not happen at this point as Buchan suggested in his autobiog. This was the third 0-7 defeat for Arsenal in the first division – and certainly the one with the most implications. Buchan’s 1st signing Transforming WM.
3 October 1931: Arsenal lost to Grimsby 3-1 – one of the shocks of the season – it was only the second time 1st division Grimsby had ever beaten Arsenal. Lambert got Arsenal’s goal and 17,840 turned up to witness the event. The only relief for Arsenal fans was that Tottenham lost 4-2 to Chesterfield.
3 October 1936: 79th and final league appearance of Pat Beasley v Man Utd. He was signed by Chapman but missed out on honours. However he played in the cup final of 1938 for Huddersfield, and guested for Arsenal during the war. See also here.
3 October 1958: Jackie Henderson signed from Wolverhampton for £17,500. Wolverhampton hardly used him as they became champions and soon sold him on at a profit.
3 October 1958: John Snedden joined as an amateur from Bonnyvale Star Juniors. Turning pro a few months after joining he started his career on 16 January 1960 in a game away to Tottenham, his only game of that season.
3 October 1970: On the way to the double Kennedy scored his first hattrick as Arsenal beat Nottm Forest 4-0 in match 11 of the first Double season. The start of a 14 match unbeaten run.
3 October 1972: John Roberts’ final game, in the league cup v Rotherham. He later featured for Wrexham and Hull City and finally for non-league Oswestry Town. He subsequently went on to work as a stationery salesman and as a driving instructor.
3 October 1979: Arsenal drew 0-0 away to Fenerbahce. Thousands spent the night shouting abuse in front of Arsenal’s hotel, fans ambushed Arsenal’s coach to stop Arsenal training on the pitch, armed troops faced the crowd, riot police protected the dug out during the game. Arsenal played it cool despite pitch invasions and everyone got out alive.
3 October 1989: Arsenal beat Plymouth 6-1 away in the League Cup in front of 17,360. Thomas (3), Smith, Groves and OG. Having beaten Plymouth 2-0 at Highbury, Arsenal went on to beat Liverpool before losing to Oldham.
3 October 1995: At this time league cup second round matches were played over two legs to help maximise income for lower league teams. Having beaten Harlepool 0-3 away Arsenal on this day beat them again 5-0. Wright got three, Bergkamp got two.
3 October 1999: The run of three victories through September was disrupted by an away defeat to WHU. Vieira confronted Ruddock and was subsequently charged, banned for six matches and fined a record £45,000 by the FA. He apologised in a very personal commentary about his family and his brother.
3 October 2012: Arsenal beat Olympiakos in the champions league 3-1.
3 October 2014: Brian Mcdermott returned to Arsenal after being sacked by Leeds as manager and joined the scouting team, as assistant to the chief scout. He later re-joined Reading as manager, and it is noted that shortly after being sacked as Reading manager in 2013, McDermott was filmed performing an acoustic version of Bob Dylan song Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door at a karaoke pub. He remained in the role as chief scout at Arsenal until the club announced a round of redundancies in August 2020.
3 October 2019: Having beaten Eintracht Frankfurt 0-3 away in the first game in the Europa league, Arsenal now went one better and beat Standard Liege 4-0 with goals from Martinelli (2), Ceballos, and Willock.
3 October 2023: Arsenal suffered the first defeat of the season, 2–1 away to Lens in the Champions League after being late arriving in due to a flight delay of over five hours due to bad weather
4 October 1894: Woolwich Arsenal beat Casuals 8-0 in a friendly. This is one of the matches that shows that the old story that Arsenal were banned by the regional FA from playing local amateur clubs after turning professional in 1893 was completely untrue.
4 October 1913: The first league defeat at Highbury. Arsenal 0 Bury 1. The two previous games at the new stadium had been a win and a draw. The next 8 games at Highbury were all home wins – the only other home defeat came against Huddersfield in February.
4 October 1936: The nation was appalled to receive the news of the Battle of Cable Street between Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists who dressed in uniforms that were based on those of the Blackshirts, and anti-fascist demonstrators.
4 October 1941: Arsenal beat Chelsea 3-0 in front of 7,747 spectators, as part of a 14 match run in which the club only lost one game in the London League (the wartime league for clubs in the south), which Arsenal eventually won.
4 October 1942: Terry Mancini born. He made little progress at first as a player but after a period in South Africa, returned to England to push his way up through the leagues with Orient and finally QPR before joining Arsenal.
4 October 1952: Arsenal 3 Blackpool 1. 66,682 turned up for the game despite Arsenal’s modest form at the time (only four of the first 10 games had been won). Roper got two and Logie the third.
4 October 1958: One day after signing, Jackie Henderson made his Arsenal debut v WBA where he scored twice as Arsenal won 4–3 at Highbury.
4 October 1961: Death of Horace Cope. After retiring from football he moved back to Treeton where his family had worked in the colliery, running Treeton Working Man’s Club, Rotherham, before running a Public House in Nottingham,
4 October 1969: Arsenal 0 Coventry City 1. Geoff Barnett and John Roberts made their league debut. The game came in a run of eight games without a victory. The crowd was 28,877.
4 October 1972: Jeff Blockley signed from Coventry City for £200,000. As Arsenal tried to maintain the momentum of the first European success and the first Double, he was signed by the club as a replacement for Frank McLintock.
4 October 1973: Wilf Rostron signed a professional contract with Arsenal and played 17 games with the club between this date and 1977, when he moved to Sunderland. He later played in Watford’s successful side in 1982.
4 October 1974: A month after sacking Brian Clough, Leeds United finally appointed Jimmy Armfield of Bolton Wanderers as their new manager. The following day Leeds celebrated by beating Arsenal.
4 October 1975 Arsenal lost at home 2-3 to Manchester City. It left Arsenal with just one home win in the first five games at Highbury in the season. In the face of such a record it made 24,928 seem a fairly decent crowd.
4 October 1977: Despite endlessly being lauded as the greatest team of all time Liverpool had in reality developed an approach of mass defensiveness away from home. The result on this day of Arsenal 0 Liverpool 0 in front of 47,110 consisted largely of the keepers kicking the ball to each other down the length of the pitch.
4 October 1986: The start of an 18 match unbeaten run which ended on 24 January 1987. Arsenal then went through a ten match run without winning a game including six consecutive games without scoring.
4 October 1997: Ian Wright’s last goal at Highbury in a 5-0 win over Barnsley as Arsenal remained unbeaten with a third of the season gone, and with Bergkamp was in his pomp and glory. 10th league game of the 2nd Double Season The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.
4 October 1998: Bergkamp scored his first league goal of the season in the defeat of Newcastle at the start of a six match unbeaten run in the League – an improvement after Arsenal had drawn four league matches in a row earlier in the campaign.
4 October 2003: Liverpool 1 Arsenal 2. The 8th league match of the unbeaten season including an utterly sensational goal from Pires.
4 October 2009: Having started the season so well, but then faltered, Arsenal had recovered beating Blackburn 6-2. Each goal was scored by a different player: Vermaelen, Van Persie, Arshavin, Fabregas, Walcott, Bendtner. It was the 6th game in a run of seven successive victories and 14 without defeat.
4 October 2015: Arsenal 3 Manchester Utd 0. Arsenal scored their goals in the first 19 minutes through Alexis (2) and Ozil. After a run of three defeats in the last five, this started a run of three successive victories.
4 October 2018: FK Qarabağ Agdam 0 Arsenal 3. Mkhitaryan did not go to the match because of the political tensions, and Uefa were made aware of this situation – a relevant point given that the final was to be held in the same country. Uefa assured Arsenal that all steps would be taken to overcome the problem should Arsenal play in the final. Arsenal did make the final but the assurances were mere words and Mkhitaryan did not travel.
4 October 2020: Arsenal made it three wins out of four in the covid delayed new season, with a 2-1 win over Sheffield United.
5 October 1889: First ever FA Cup match played by Arsenal, as Royal Arsenal beat Lyndhurst 11-0. There is some debate over which Lyndhurst it was, but the club of that name in Hampshire (which is still in existence and whose ground one can visit), claim the honour. See also here
5 October 1896: Rushden Town 5 Woolwich Arsenal 3, United League This was Arsenal’s first season in the league, in which they generally played their first team players. They continued in the league for three years after which they moved into the Southern District Combination.
5 October 1904: Reginald William Tricker (known as Reg) was born in Karachi and moved to England in 1908 with his family. Reg joined Arsenal from Charlton Athletic for £2,250 on 12 March 1927, before making his full debut just one week later in a 2-1 defeat at home to Everton.
5 October 1912: After starting the season with four successive defeats Arsenal recovered with three unbeaten including this 0-0 draw with Oldham. However the relief was short lived as Arsenal did not win again until March. Also on this day Aston villa beat The Wednesday 10-0.
5 October 1919: The rail strike was called off after the employers caved in to workers demands. Simultaneously the Met Police launched their first mobile patrol unit using horse drawn carriages.
5 October 1922: Sir Henry Norris, William Hall, Charles Crisp, John Humble, Leslie Knighton, and the Arsenal players involved in the match against Tottenham, plus the directors, managers and players of Tottenham, were summoned to an FA Commission of Inquiry into the game played at White Hart Lane on 23 September.
5 October 1923: Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson – the Arsenal player who became Icelandic Minister of Finance, was born.
5 October 1925: The new “WM plus zonal marking” high speed counter attack system played for the first time in a 4-0 victory over West Ham. It was gradually refined as players were found who could meet the exacting demands of the new system, but it did not lead to long term Arsenal success for several more years. See also here
5 October 1927: Samson Haden sold to Notts County for £1350. He went on to play 289 league games for Notts C, scoring 36 goals. Later he became player manager and manager of Peterborough, but after that we lose sight of him.
5 October 1929: Cliff Bastin league debut for Arsenal in a 1-1 away draw against Everton. He went on to play 21 games in his first season, scoring seven.
5 October 1936: Gerry Ward born in Stepney. He was signed by Tom Whittaker who was convinced he had a great future at the club, and who made him the youngest ever player to start a match for Arsenal.
5 October 1936: The Jarrow March began with 207 marching towards London in protest against poverty and unemployment.
5 October 1940: Having beaten Southend Utd away 7-1 in the first match of this wartime season’s South Regional League Arsenal went one better in the return match on this day beating them 7-0. Sadly only 1400 turned up at WHL to watch the fun.
5 October 1953: First game for Len Wills in the floodlight opening friendly at QPR which Arsenal won 3-1. He first played for Eton Manor FC, an amateur club formed by several well-to-do families to support young men and boys in the East End of London.
5 October 1954: Dynamo Moscow 0 Arsenal 5 making Arsenal the first English club to play in the Soviet Union. The attendance was 90,000
5 October 1964: Frank McLintock signed from Leicester for £80,000. He had played in two Leicester cup final sides (1961 losing to Tottenham, 1963 losing to Man U) but won the League cup final in 1964 beating Stoke over two legs.
5 October 1966: Debut for John Woodward v WHU, in the league cup. Arsenal lost 1-3 at Highbury, with David Jenkins scoring his only goal of the season. John made just two starts and came on once as a sub for Arsenal.
5 October 1970: Arsenal beat Tottenham at Highbury. Later they did it again at White Hart Lane in the last match of the season to win the league.
5 October 1970: The media went into shock-horror overdrive after Jackie Charlton admitted in an interview that there are two players who, if he ever got a chance to “kick them four yards over the touchline” he would. The Daily Express went wild condemning his “sickening comments”, the Guardian talking of “condoned thuggery”. The FA charged him with disrepute. Strangely the newspapers and FA forgot the incident when commenting on the “great man’s” passing in 2020.
5 October 1974: Last game for Jeff Blockley, having played 52 league games for Arsenal. He was dropped and placed on the transfer list and then sold in January 1975 to Leicester for half the fee Arsenal paid for him
5 October 1974: A month after sacking Brian Clough, Leeds United finally appointed Jimmy Armfield of Bolton Wanderers as their new manager on 4 October. On 5 October Leeds United celebrated by beating Arsenal.
5 October 1976: Arsenal played Blackpool (key exponents at the time of anti-football – an approach centred on total defence and endless fouling) at home in the League Cup for the third time and finally won 2-0, in front of 26,791 (who clearly thought this match couldn’t be as bad as the last two games). Stapleton and O’Leary broke the 11 man defence.
5 October 2020: Nikolaj Möller left Arsenal for Malmo, and was transferred to Ajax. Matteo Guendouzi went to Hertha Berlin on loan.
5 October 1991: Arsenal beat Chelsea 3-2. Dixon scored a penalty, Campbell and Wright got the other two – after Chelsea were 2-0 up in the first 19 minutes
5 October 1994: Arsenal beat Hartlepool United 2-0, having already won the first leg of this League cup round 5-0. However unlike later times, Arsenal did not rest any players, but put out their complete first team for the match.
5 October 2004: The name “The Emirates Stadium” was announced, with naming rights granted for 15 years alongside an eight year shirt sponsorship deal. The price was about £100m. Although the name did not leak out in advance, Arsenal did start buying web sites with EmiratesStadium in them although they missed EmiratesStadium.info which Untold Arsenal used when it opened in 2007.
5 October 2014: Arsenal lost their first league game of the season 0-2 to Chelsea. Much was made of the fact that Arsène Wenger had not beaten José Mourinho in 12 games, and that Arsenal had dropped to 8th in the league.
5 October 2020: Arsenal signed Atlético Madrid’s Ghanaian central midfielder Thomas Partey.
6 October 1888: Preston beat Stoke 7-0, with Jimmy Ross scoring four. When in December 1935 Ted Drake created the all time 1st division record of scoring seven in one game the story was put about that Drake’s achievement was not a first and that Ross had done the same on this day. It was a complete fabrication. How strange that someone should bother to make it up just to knock Arsenal!
6 October 1894: Henry Boyd scored in the 5-2 win over Lincoln to continue his all time record breaking run, and exactly reversed the score between the clubs on 1 September 1894.
6 October 1894: Luton’s first match in the Southern League. They have claimed to have been a professional team before Arsenal, and thus the first in the south of England, but records suggest only two or at most three of their players were professional in 1891, by which time Arsenal had a fully professional first team.
6 October 1900: Archie Cross league debut: a 1-1 away draw with Blackpool. He played just three games at right back that season, but started out the following season as a first choice player in that position.
6 October 1906: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 1 took Arsenal to the top of the league for the very first time ever, and this despite a 4-1 defeat to Bury in the second match of the season.
6 October 1910: Having played in the Scottish Cup Final in the spring, Jackie Chalmers was signed by Woolwich Arsenal on this day and made his debut just two days later on the 8th for the away game with Bradford City.
6 October 1916: As the horrors of trench warfare unfolded an Army Order was issued removing the requirement for soldiers to wear moustaches, reputedly as some men were shaving their upper lips in order to avoid being sent to the trenches.
6 October 1919: Tommy Lawton was born in Farnworth, Lancashire. He signed for his first club, Burnley in 1935. In 1937 at the age of 17 he moved on to Everton for £6500 playing next to Dixie Dean. He quickly made it into the England team.
6 October 1922: Sir Henry Norris wrote in the Fulham Chronicle on his withdrawal from politics explaining he was not willing to accede to the demands of his local party. This event is helpful to note, in that his attitude was always to walk away when he felt he was wronged; exactly as he subsequently did from Arsenal and from football.
6 October 1934: Stoke City 2 Arsenal 2 with Bowden and Hapgood returning for the game. Stoke were fifth in the league, just one point behind Arsenal, having won all three home games thus far, scoring 12 and conceding one. Arsenal had not yet won away from home; Bastin got both the goals taking his league total to seven in ten.
6 October 1945: In the final season of the wartime Football League South Arsenal had a very up and down season including a run of seven games in which they lost six and won one, on this day beating Swansea 4-1. During the run Arsenal conceded 27 goals.
6 October 1948: Arsenal 4 Manchester United 3. Charity Shield match played at Highbury with a crowd of 31,000. Lewis got two, Rooke and Jones one each.
6 October 1956: Cliff Holton became the first player since Jack Lambert to score more than three goals for Arsenal in a single game. The result was Arsenal 7 Manchester City 3. Holton (4), Evans Bloomfield and Haverty got the goals.
6 October 1962: Tommy Caton born in Liverpool. He started out with Man City in 1978 and played in the cup final aged 18. By the time he was 19 he had played 100 first division games, and although obviously not a goal scorer by trade he did score two against Arsenal on 4 December 1982.
6 October 1962: Tottenham 4 Arsenal 4 (Court 2, McLeod and Strong). 61,749 attended the game. The week before, Tottenham had beaten Nottingham Forest 9-2, and in this game went three up in 26 minutes. Arsenal eventually went 4-2 down but battled back to get the point.
6 October 1964: Debut for Frank McLintock – a 0-3 home defeat to Nottingham Forest in a run of four defeats in five matches. McLintock however was not blamed for the problems and took over the No 4 shirt from Geoff Strong for most of the rest of the season.
6 October 1966: Niall Quinn born. He played first for Manortown United and after an unsuccessful trial at Fulham he signed professional forms with Arsenal in 1983.
6 October 1970: Arsenal 1 Luton 0 in League Cup. David Court played for Luton. Arsenal went out to Crystal Palace in the next round after a replay. But when thinking of 1970/71, no one thinks of the league cup!
6 October 1971: Arsenal 4 Newcastle 0, in the league cup, 34,071 in the crowd. Wilson had nothing to do other than contemplate going back into teaching. Radford scored to celebrate his recall to the England squad, Kennedy, Graham and Simpson scored the others.
6 October 1973: Liam Brady played his first match for Arsenal as a sub in a 1-0 victory against Birmingham City. Kennedy scored Arsenal’s goal. See also here
6 October 1979: Arsenal 0 Manchester City 0. 34,688 in the crowd. In the subsequent press conference Allison praised Rix and said he should be in the England squad. No one talked about the game: it was too poor to mention.
6 October 1981: Arsenal lost 0-1 to Sheffield United in the League Cup. Fortunately there was a second leg to come, which Arsenal won 2-0 in extra time.
6 October 1984: Arsenal returned to the top of the league with a 1-0 win over Everton, Charlie Nicholas scoring a penalty. It was one of five consecutive wins.
6 October 2002: Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-1 to make it 7 wins and 2 draws in 9 – and 30 consecutive unbeaten in all – a new Premier League record. It was the last game of the sequence – Arsenal lost the next match.
6 October 2012: Olivier Giroud scored his first Arsenal goal in 3-1 away win against WHU. He also set up the second goal for Walcott. Santi Cazorla got the third.
6 October 2013: The Arsenal History Society presented a 10 year comparative analysis of the first six games of the season in order to overcome the hype about best and worst starts to a season, which was the chatter of the day. After a mass of negative publicity at the start of the 2019/20 season it was felt necessary to return to the issue yet again. On the pitch, after 10 consecutive wins Arsenal drew 1-1 away to WBA.
6 October 2019: Arsenal beat Bournemouth 1-0 to make it one defeat in the first eight league games of the season, along with two straight wins in the Europa league, and a 5-0 victory in the League Cup. Arsenal were third in the Premier League, and yet within 35 days Unai Emery, the manager, was sacked.
6 October 2020: in a ludicrous PR blunder Arsenal announced that Gunnersauraus was being made redundant. Mesut Ozil offered to pay his wages. Eventually the dinosaur was reinstated.
7 October 1908: Debut of Angus McKinnon in a game against Rest of Kent. (Woolwich Arsenal won 3-0). Having signed from Petershill he went on to play 211 league games for Arsenal.
7 October 1909: Having lost the previous game 7-1 with the injured McDonald in goal, Fisher took over, but despite being fit was little improvement as Arsenal lost 5-1 to mid-table Notts County.
7 October 1916: Dicky Roose, Arsenal goalkeeper, and one of the most flamboyant players of the era was tragically killed in action in the Battle of the Somme serving his country in the first world war. See also here.
7 October 1920: Knighton purchased Harold Walden – Bradford City’s top scorer in their 1911/12 campaign. In many ways this was a publicity stunt as the man was also famous as a music hall entertainer. It’s a fascinating but rarely told story and (in my opinion) well worth following the link to read the detail.
7 October 1922: The Prince of Wales was the first member of the royal family to do a radio broadcast. Meanwhile Arsenal beat West Bromwich Albion, 3-1 which lifted the club from 20th to 16th.
7 October 1931: Arsenal beat WBA to win the Charity Shield at Villa Park.
7 October 1933: Final match for Alf Haynes. He moved to Crystal Palace two months later, where he played for three seasons before suffering a very serious injury.
7 October 1944: Arsenal beat Brighton 6-3 in the wartime Football League South. It was the fifth win in a row, but Arsenal never regained this level of dominance and won only nine of the remaining 22 league games in the season.
7 October 1947: Birth of Patrick Howard near Barnsley. He played for Barnsley and Newcastle before being brought in as an emergency central defender for Arsenal by Terry Neill, during Neill’s first season as manager.
7 October 1972: Debut for Jeff Blockley in Sheffield United 1 Arsenal 0. He came in as a replacement to Simpson and Roberts who had been alternating at playing at 6. However later in the season he did move across to the number 5 shirt. See also here
7 October 1976: Gilberto Silva born. He started as a footballer in 1997 with a tiny local team, and by 2002 he was playing all of Brazil’s games in the World Cup finals. It was quite a rise to success in five years.
7 October 1986: Arsenal drew 1-1 away with Huddersfield in the league cup, Martin Hayes scoring. However Arsenal had already won the first leg 2-0 and so went through.
7 October 1992: Arsenal drew with Millwall in the league cup but went through on penalties, Campbell scoring the goal in open play. It was cup match 2 of Arsenal’s Cup Double season
7 October 2007: Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-2. It was part of a 21 match unbeaten run and of a run of 12 consecutive wins in league and cup.
7 October 2014: Brian McDermott returned to Arsenal as a scout and eventually became chief scout having managed Reading and Leeds Utd.
7 October 2018: Arsenal beat Fulham away 1-5. It was considered just about Arsenal’s most dominant game of the season, and was the only league game in which they got five during the campaign.
8 October 1891: Royal Arsenal beat Royal Engineers Training Battalion 8-0.
8 October 1910: A 0-3 away defeat to Bradford City meant Arsenal had not won any of their first seven league games and had scored just two goals in those seven matches.
8 October 1914: The Arsenal Football and Athletic Company Limited became The Arsenal Football Club Limited with the launch of the new share issue. The first public presentation of the name (other than on the new shares) was not seen however until 26 October when the programme for the Football League vs the Southern League representative match (played at Highbury) was put on sale with the club’s new name on the front.
8 October 1921: Sunderland 1 Arsenal 0. Having won the first game of the month Arsenal now lost four league matches in a row to stay bottom of the league and already looking relegation certainties.
8 October 1930: Arsenal won the Charity Shield for the first time beating Sheffield Wednesday in a match played at Stamford Bridge in front of 25,000. Arsenal were in the game having beaten Huddersfield Town in the FA Cup final the previous April.
8 October 1932: Final appearance of Tom Parker – the club’s first trophy winning captain. He became player manager of Norwich City and took them to the 3rd Division (south) championship in 1933/4. He played 172 consecutive league games for Arsenal (a record) and in all played 258 league games for the club in addition to 246 for Southampton. He later managed Southampton before returning to Norwich for a second spell. He died at the age of 89 in 1987.
8 October 1936: Pat Beasley sold to Huddersfield for £750. He later moved to Fulham with whom he won a second division champions medal, was player manager for Bristol City, and manager of Birmingham, from 1950 to 1958. See also here.
8 October 1960: Last senior game for Jimmy Bloomfield. He was transferred to Birmingham, where he spent four years; played in a second Fairs Cup final, again on the losing side, before winning the league cup with Birmingham in 1963 scoring a goal in the final.
8 October 1991: Jimmy Carter signed from Liverpool for £500,000. During the 3.5 years Carter spent with Arsenal the club won three different cups, but Carter managed only 25 games and two goals and did not play in any of the finals. On this day Arsenal beat Leicester 2-0 in the league cup.
8 October 1994: Wimbledon 1 Arsenal 3 in the Premier League. Because of the introduction of international breaks this was the last ever game Arsenal played on 8 October. Wright, Smith and Campbell got the goals with Vinne Jones scoring for Wimbledon.
8 October 1997: Ben White born.
8 October 2020: Dejan Iliev went on loan to Shrewsbury Town.
8 October 2021: Arteta named manager of the month, just six weeks after most of the media had called for his removal from the club.
8 October 2023: Arsenal beat Manchester City away 1–0; the first Arsenal victory over Manchester City in the Premier League since December 2015, losing each of the last twelve in a row.
9 October 1897: Arsenal boasted a crowd of 14,000 for the second time in the league, in a 3-0 win over Luton, perhaps reflecting anticipation among the crowd over the fact that Arsenal had beaten Luton 2-0 away the previous week.
9 October 1905: Arsenal beat West Ham 3-2 in the Southern Professional Charity Cup before going on to beat Tottenham and Reading to win the trophy.
9 October 1909: Arsenal 0 Nottingham Forest 1. It made three defeats in a row, but at least the goal avalanche against the club (12 in the last two games) had stopped and there was a slight hope for better times. G Fisher, the replacement keeper, played his second and last game for the club. .
9 October 1910: Jack Crayston born. He played over 200 games for Arsenal from 1934 to the outbreak of war winning the league twice and FA Cup once. He became assistant manager to Tom Whittaker in 1947 and then took over on Tom’s death. He was the first manager since Herbert Chapman (appointed 1925) not to win the league and cup in his spell in charge.
9 October 1914: The Arsenal Football And Athletic Co Ltd became The Arsenal Football Club Ltd – as Henry Norris launched a new share issue continuing to sell the club to local supporters.
9 October 1915: A crowd of just 2500 turned up at Watford to see the home team beat Arsenal 1-0. It was clear that the remorseless anti-football propaganda in the press was having an impact on supporters.
9 October 1919: The FA which had been investigating Leeds City FC (previously managed by Herbert Chapman) stated that the club could not play its game against South Shields the following Saturday because of “irregularities” during the war.
9 October 1920: Having played three games without a win, Arsenal got a goalless draw at home to Bolton in front of 38,000. The local paper now got ever more angry with the Arsenal forward line and didn’t appreciate the lack of goals.
9 October 1926: The extent of Chapman’s failure to maintain the club at the standard of his first season at Highbury was fully revealed as going into this game Arsenal still had not won away this season, and this continued against mid-table Newcastle, with Arsenal losing 0-2. Arsenal slipped down to 14th.
9 October 1943: Arsenal drew 1-1 away to Clapton Orient meaning that Arsenal had only won two of their first seven games in the Football League South, wartime league.
9 October 1971: After four league wins in a row Arsenal beat Newcastle 4-2 regaining the style and zest of last year’s Double team with Kennedy George, Radford, Graham and Armstrong all shining. Newcastle’s goals, both from Macdonald came in the last few minutes, and in fact he could have had a hat-trick at the very end but for Wilson’s fine save.
9 October 1976: Steve Gatting made his first appearance as substitute in Peter Simpson’s Testimonial. He had joined Arsenal as an apprentice in July 1975 and became a professional footballer two years later.
9 October 1979: Arsenal beat Ipswich Town 2-1 at Portman Road in front of 22,527. Rix and Brady ran the show but the highlight was the Ipswich keeper throwing the ball out only for it to hit the ref on the back. It rolled to Hollins who passed to Sunderland who chipped the keeper. A masterpiece.
9 October 1984: Bristol Rovers 1 Arsenal 1 in the League Cup, with their complete first team of Jennings, O’Leary, Sansom, Rix, Talbot, Nicholas, Mariner etc all playing. Arsenal won the tie overall 5-1. It was the last ever game Arsenal first team played on 9 October.
9 October 1996: Following a dispute about the kick off time Scotland turned up for a kick off for a world cup qualifier at 3pm in Talin. Their opponents, Estonia, turned up at 7pm. Fifa ordered the game to be replayed. It was, and was a 0-0 draw.
9 October 2001: Frank McLintock announced an auction of his medals, shirts and memorabilia. He said that he was not struggling for cash, but since the medals etc were in a bank vault he never saw them.
9 October 2009: Gavin Hoyte was loaned to Brighton for the season. (See also here) And here After leaving Arsenal for whom he only ever played one game, he played for Dagenham, Gillingham, Barnet and Eastleigh before moving to Maidstone United in 2019.
9 October 2023 Arsenal beat Liverpool for the first time since July 2020 and only the second time since 2015/16. Arsenal also got their first goals against Liverpool since 2015/16 in any competition. Martinelli scored in 58 seconds. Saka made it 2-1 but after a second equaliser made it 3-2 with a penalty.
10 October 1896: A 5-1 home defeat to Millwall Athletic showed that even after three years into their league career, Arsenal were not automatically the top club in the area.
10 October 1903: J G “Tim” Coleman set a club record in scoring in each of the first 6 league matches of the season – getting nine goals in all.
10 October 1910: Arsenal played away to Millwall in the London FA County Cup, almost certainly the last game at Millwall’s Isle of Dogs ground. But only 3000 were in attendance for a game which had on other occasions secured crowds of 20,000 plus. Arsenal found the same situation in 1913 when they left Woolwich. People did not turn up to say goodbye.
10 October 1914: Arsenal had their big local derby – the match against Clapton Orient with 30,000 present, the biggest in England on the day. Only one Highbury match had thus far recorded a higher crowd figure – and that was the equivalent game against the Os in the 1913/14 season when 35,000 were recorded as being in the ground. Arsenal won 2-1
10 October 1921: An unusual event at Highbury: England played Australasia at Highbury in a “Northern Union” match – what today we would call Rugby League. The New South Wales Rugby Football League had been formed in 1908 and this was their first tour.
10 October 1925: Arsenal 2 Bolton 3 – it was only Bolton’s second away win of the season with just nine goals in the previous five away games. What makes this so important is that Buchan claimed in his memoirs that he sat down with Chapman after the 7-0 defeat to Newcastle on 3 October and transformed Arsenal’s playing style and that this was an instant success. But here they were two games later, losing to a very modest opposition indeed. Yet he utterly fails to mention this game in his book.
10 October 1931: Blackpool 1 Arsenal 5, Blackpool having previously been undefeated at home so far this season. Bastin got a hat trick, Hulme and Lambert the other two. One of Bastin’s goals was a penalty – Arsenal’s first of the season. The result took them back to third.
10 October 1936: Drake scored his third goal of the season – but it was his eighth game and this was not the sort of return rate that had taken the club up the table in previous seasons. Indeed everything about the side was wrong. Arsenal were 17th in the league
10 October 1942: Bremner played for Scotland in the wartime international against England. Marks, Hapgood and Dennis Compton played for England. Meanwhile Arsenal beat Clapton Orient away 4-1 (Drake 2, Lewis 2) in the wartime league, to make it six wins and one draw inthe opening seven.
10 October 1950: Charlie George born. He played for Islington Schoolboys before joining Arsenal in May 1966. He turned professional in 1968 and made his first-team debut for the club on 9 August 1969.
10 October 1956: Arsenal continued their regular friendlies against Racing Club de Paris, this time winning 4-3.
10 October 1960: Arsenal played Northampton to celebrate the first floodlit match at the County Ground. Arsenal were selected as opponents as Northampton had ex-Arsenal man Dave Bowen as their manager. This was also a nod to the memory of Herbert Chapman who managed both clubs and who had arranged previous friendlies against the club.
10 October 1964: Arsenal lost 3-1 to Tottenham in Geoff Strong’s last game. Joe Baker scored. The score was exactly reversed in the return game the following February.
10 October 1966. Tony Adams born. He signed for Arsenal as a schoolboy in 1980 and made his first start for the first team on 5 November 1983 against Sunderland when he was just past his 17th birthday.
10 October 1970: Newcastle 1 Arsenal 1. League match 12 of the first Double season; George Graham got the goal. It meant Arsenal had won exactly half of their league games thus far.
10 October 1981: Swansea City 2 Arsenal 0. The result came as part of a series of one win in five, and it left Arsenal 18th in the league just two points above the relegation places.
10 October 1987: Arsenal 2 Oxford United 0. The third and last home league game against Oxford. Also the last ever league game played on 10 October because of the need for increasing numbers of international games at this time. Arsenal did play Oxford in the FA Cup in 2003 however.
10 October 2000: The hearing was held on the allegation that after the Arsenal Sunderland game Mr Wenger, who until that moment had an utterly unblemished record as a manager, had indulged in violent or threatening behaviour against Mr Taylor, the fourth official at Sunderland. Mr Wenger was banned for 12 matches.for “improper conduct”. It was eventually rescinded on appeal but was a clear indication of what PGMO had in store for Arsenal.
10 October 2013: Fans’ groups wrote to Mr Kroenke requesting he honour his pledge made in 2011 to meet Arsenal fans groups.
11 October 1880: Birth of Jimmy Sharp who played over 100 times for Arsenal between 1905 and 1908.
11 October 1890: First recorded appearance of Jack Humble as an “umpire” (ie ref) v 93rd Highlanders. Newspaper reports suggest that he should stick to administering the club, rather than try umpiring, which he did, becoming Woolwich Arsenal’s first chairman, launching the club into the League in 1893.
11 October 1899: The Second Boer War started. Overtime had been compulsory in most Woolwich Arsenal workshops from 1898 onwards and this, plus a rise in prices to watch matches had a serious negative effect on Arsenal’s crowds.
11 October 1902: Arsenal beat Bristol City 2-1 in front of highest league crowd thus far: 16000. Gooing and Hunt scored.
11 October 1913: Frederick Groves signed as a pro, having played for Barnet Albion and Glossop North End before signing as an amateur player in August 1912. On the same day Arsenal beat Huddersfield 2-1 away.
11 October 1913: After the Man U v Burnley match on this day there were allegations of a betting scam, and ultimately one Man U player was jailed. But for several years the FA ignored both the complaints from Norris over the Liverpool match he witnessed and they were only forced to act in 1915 by the refusal of betting companies to pay up due to match fixing.
11 October 1919: Joseph Toner made his league début against Everton which Arsenal won 3-2. He appeared at number 11, replacing FW Groves who moved to inside right. He got a run of 10 games at outside left before losing his place to CH Lewis. See also here.
11 October 1924: Arsenal lost away to Huddersfield 4-0: an opportunity for Sir Henry Norris to meet Herbert Chapman and see his work in progress.
11 October 1930: In the pre-floodlight days, matches kicked off at 3.30pm up to this day, and then the starting time retreated until from November to January it was 2.30pm. The 1930 Arsenal handbook gave the times for 1930/31 – one of the few places to print out the full details of kick off times.
11 October 1941. 1941/2 was the season Arsenal won the wartime London League, having won the short-term League South A Division in 1939/40. After losing their opening game at Brentford, Arsenal went on a seven match winning streak, scoring 31 goals, of which Lewis got 16. On this day it was Charlton 1 Arsenal 3.
11 October 1952: Arsenal 2 Sheffield Wednesday 2. Arsenal were yet to show the form that ultimately won the title on the last day of the season, but the supporters clearly saw something positive happening, as 55,678 turned up.
11 October 1972: Jeff Blockley won his one England cap. Unfortunately with the team starting to decline he failed to blossom as an Arsenal player and he left for Leicester in 1975.
11 October 1972: John Roberts transferred to Birmingham, having played 59 league games for Arsenal, scoring five goals. After Birmingham he moved on to Wrexham for whom he played 145 times.
11 October 1975: After six without a win Arsenal beat Coventry 5-0 in the league. The scorers were Cropley 2, Kidd 2 and Ball. Although it was a very poor season Arsenal did once exceed this score beating WHU 6-1 at home on March 20.
11 October 1976: John Devine signed as a professional. By the time of the 1980 cup final he was chosen ahead of Sammy Nelson and was part of the Cup Winners Cup squad for the final, but his career was cut short by injury.
11 October 1986: Having lost two of their first three league games of the season, Arsenal went unbeaten in the next 23 games while progressing in the League Cup to the final. Indeed it was only the famous 1-0 down, 2-1 up semi-final with Tottenham that brought the run to an end as the team clearly focussed on ending the years without a trophy. On this day it was Arsenal 3 Watford 1.
12 October 1893: Arsenal beat London Caledonians in a friendly 10-3 with the Chairman of Woolwich Arsenal Jack Humble in the side. Although Humble was highly rated as an administrator of the club and became a central part in the financial rescue of Arsenal in 1910 he was not rated on the pitch either as a player or a referee.
12 October 1884: Jock Rutherford was born. He won three league titles and an FA Cup winners medal with Newcastle, before moving to Arsenal in 1906.
12 October 1912: Arsenal 0 Chelsea 1 in front of 20,000. The result left Arsenal with only one win from the first eight, and the press report made particular mention of the jubilation of the visiting fans. But it was Arsenal who now started a run of 23 without a win. It was the first time Chelsea had beaten Arsenal since the very first match between the two.
12 October 1915: Patriotic fever grew as the news was released that British nurse Edith Cavell had been executed by a German firing squad for helping British soldiers escape from Belgium.
12 October 1918: With German forces in retreat US President Woodrow Wilson, began his efforts to broker a ceasefire in World War 1.
12 October 1919: Arsenal had an attendance of 30,000 for the game against Tottenham – the first post-war attendance to reach this figure.
12 October 1923: The Arsenal squad, manager and directors, went to the Alhambra theatre, in Charing Cross Road for a special showing of a movie which contained footage of Arsenal playing a match. The story got large press coverage and Arsenal were portrayed as the team of today’s new technology. A clever, piece of PR from Sir Henry Norris who believed that the way to financial stability was constant publicity.
12 October 1925: Arsenal beat Fulham in the London FA Challenge Cup 4-0 with 3897 in the crowd at Highbury. This was the first game with Bob John playing at left back. While Male is the example of Chapman changing a player’s position most commonly quoted, John was the first such experiment, and a friendly on 14 October was also arranged to test this further.
12 October 1935 Don Howe born; one of the men who both played for Arsenal and managed the team.
12 October 1940: Dave Bacuzzi born in Islington. His Arsenal career took off with two promising seasons at right back, before he moved back to the Reserves with whom he won the Combination.
12 October 1940: Tottenham 2 Arsenal 3 in the South Regional (wartime) League. It meant Arsenal had now scored 29 goals in seven games.
12 October 1946: Arsenal drew 2-2 with Brentford. This meant that with 10 games played in the first post-war league season, Arsenal had won just two, lost six and drawn two.
12 October 1953: Arsenal 3 Blackpool 1 at Highbury in the Charity Shield – making it the 7th time Arsenal had won the trophy. It was however Arsenal’s last appearance in the Shield until 11 August 1979 (they didn’t play the 1971 game).
12 October 1965: Arsenal played Israel in a friendly. The result was a 2-2 draw.
12 October 1974: Having played 10 of the 12 opening games of the season John Matthews was made the fall guy for poor results and was dropped. The result was Arsenal 2 Queen’s Park Rangers 2, with a crowd of 29,690. Arsenal rose one place off the very foot of the table through this draw. See also here
12 October 1994: Northampton’s three sided ground was closed after this final match; with their new ground ultimately incorporating the Dave Bowen stand, named after the ex-Arsenal player who became the most successful Northampton manager in the club’s history.
12 October 1996: Arsène Wenger’s first match, a 0-2 victory at Blackburn. Up to this moment he had been seeing out his contract in Japan. Ian Wright scored the first Wenger goal.
12 October 1999: Only 15,239 turn up for the league cup game v Preston. Arsenal won 2-1. Kanu and Malz scored.
13 October 1894: Henry Boyd, Arsenal’s most prolific scorer ever, scored his 8th goal in five games. The result was Newton Heath 3 Woolwich Arsenal 3, part of a seven match unbeaten run.
13 October 1906: One of the first known press references to Arsenal supporters as “Gunners” appeared on this day. The name originally turns up in 1904, but this report in the Bristol Evening News also particularly mentioned the antics of the supporters who worked in the Torpedo Factory and the fireworks they made at work and let off in the games. It was most likely this group who popularised the name.
13 October 1917: In an attempt to divert discontent and improve the nation’s spirit in wartime the government took over Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge ground on this day to celebrate the (largely imaginary) life of the great English heroine Boadicea.
13 October 1919: Leeds City FC of the second division were expelled from the Football League and their directors and their wartime manager, Herbert Chapman, were banned from football for life.
13 October 1919: The conviction of Mr James Matthew Littleboy, a former mayor of Fulham, for annoying ladies in Hyde Park, was quashed. The ex-Mayor, who said he was troubled by noises in his head, was supported by Sir Henry Norris who vouched for his good character.
13 October 1923: Arsenal 1 Manchester City 2. The Times described Arsenal as “tame” with City playing an offside trap and a counter-attacking game that thus far had not been common in the first division. Arsenal’s defeat meant that after a run of three wins they had now scored one goal and got one point in the last three games.
13 October 1928: Arsenal smashed the world transfer record with the purchase of David Jack by Herbert Chapman for £10,890. The tale is that Chapman got the negotiators from Bolton drunk to get the deal done.
13 October 1934: 68,000 turned up for the home game with Man City. Arsenal won 3-0 (Bowden 2, Bastin). It was part of a run of 15 goals in four games.
13 October 1946: Arsenal 4 Swansea 1 in the Football League South. It was the second, and final, win for Arsenal in the first 13 games of the season during which the club let in 33 goals.
13 October 1959: First game for John Snedden in friendly v Grasshoppers. Arsenal won 8-2.
13 October 1960: Arsenal signed John McClelland from Glenavon for £7000. He had one major season with Arsenal – 1962/3 where he replaced McKechnie in goal and played 33 games.
13 October 1960: George Eastham was finally released by Newcastle who had previously refused to sell him. As a result of Newcastle’s obduracy Eastham went to court backed by the Professional Footballers Association and challenged the retain-and transfer system. He won which was an irony because it was a court case by Arsenal in 1883 which established the legality of the system in the first place
13 October 1971: Bob Wilson and George Graham played for Scotland for the first time. It was one of just two caps for Bob Wilson. Graham played 12 times for his country. See also here.
13 October 1979: The 11th league game of the season and the difficult reality was that Arsenal had only won three of the previous ten, and matters didn’t improve much with a 0-0 away draw at Bolton in front of 17,032.
13 October 1984: Leicester City 1 Arsenal 4. The result kept Arsenal to the top of the league, three points above Tottenham in second. Sadly our form declined and we finished 7th while Tottenham finished 3rd.
13 October 1990: Final game for Gus Caesar in the Graham Rix Testimonial match v Tottenham. Arsenal lost 2-5. He ended his career playing in Hong Kong in 2002, and has since worked in the finance industry in the Far East and the UK.
13 October 2001: Southampton 0 Arsenal 2. League match 8 of the third Double season. Pirès‘ scored in the 5th minute and Henry wrapped it up with the second on 74 minutes. Arsenal were second in the league, having won five, drawn 2 and lost one.
14 October 1893: Arsenal’s record FA Cup score of all time came in their first FA Cup match as a league club, beating Ashford 12-0. See also this article for the full cup run.
14 October 1903: Alex “Sandy” Main made his final appearance as a centre forward before on 1 November suddenly turning up as a centre half for a run of six games with Arsenal winning five of the run.
14 October 1913: Britain’s worst ever pit disaster. 439 miners died in the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster.
14 October 1915: British troops used poison gas on the battlefield for the first time.
14 October 1922: Arsenal lost 0-7 to West Bromwich, as Henry White faded away and Arsenal started a run of 8 without a win. It was the second time Arsenal lost 0-7 in the first division – the first being 2 October 1909.
14 October 1925: Arsenal played their third game in five days: a friendly away to Lincoln of the 3rd Division North; and lost 3-0 in front of 4,000 people. It was mostly Arsenal reserves but with Lewis in goal and John at left back, as Chapman seemed to be trying out a new formation to cope with the new offside rule
14 October 1933: Arsenal beat Newcastle 3-0 but injuries meant that only two players had played all 10 of the opening league games and now Jack sustained a long term injury and would not play again until 24 February. Birkett, Bowden and an OG gave Arsenal the win.
14 October 1964: Arsenal beat Corinthian Casuals in the Sheriff of London Shield 7-0
14 October 1972: Arsenal 1 Ipswich Town 0 with 34,196 in the ground, and George Graham scoring. Armstrong was injured (Marinello taking over) and Simpson was replaced Roberts. Next month Roberts was replaced by Blockley. Barnett was in goal with Wilson injured. The Double team was vanishing fast.
14 October 1978: Wolverhampton 1 Arsenal 0, 19,664 in the crowd. The team seemed to be made up of “almost” players: Devine, Harvey, Vaessen, Kosima, Heeley, Stead, and later McDermott, Brignall… the names came and went with only Walford looking like he might be there for the long haul.
14 October 1984: A Bob Wilson XI played St Albans in a friendly and drew 4-4
14 October 1997: Jason Crowe who played 3 times for England’s under 20s, came on as a sub and was sent off 33 seconds into his debut in a league cup which ended Arsenal 4 Birmingham 1. In the same game Jehad Muntasser came on two minutes before the end, and was transferred soon after, giving him the shortest ever Arsenal career. Crowe went on loan to Palace, moving on to Portsmouth, Grimsby, Northampton and other clubs before closing his career at Corby Town in 2013. Muntasser played in Serie B and C in Italy and became a major force in helping children affected by the 2011 Libyan revolution. Other débutantes in the game were Manninger, Upson, Vernazza, and Mendez.
14 October 2000: Arsenal 1 Aston Villa 0. Having lost the first game of the season away to Sunderland Arsenal went on a 15 match unbeaten run in the League and Champions League. This was match 11 of that run.
14 October 2001: Referee Taylor, the man who accused Mr Wenger of assault in the tunnel and had him banned for 12 matches earlier in the year (the ban later being overturned on appeal) was himself charged with misconduct for insulting comments to Notts County’s Sean Farrell during the game against Wigan
14 October 2006: Despite not playing for over 2 weeks because of international games Arsenal made it seven wins in a row by beating Watford 3-0.
14 October 2017: Returning from the interlull Arsenal were beaten 2-1 by Watford. It was the one defeat in a 12 match run which gave the club 10 wins, one draw and this one loss.
15 October 1894: Henry Boyd, Arsenal’s most prolific goalscorer had his amazing run stopped by a broken ankle.
15 October 1909: Ehud ‘Tim’ Rogers was born in Chirk. He played through a variety of local and lower league clubs before being brought in as a possible long term candidate for right winger in the championship winning squad.
15 October 1910: Arsenal 4 Blackburn 1. Arsenal’s first win of the season after eight games. Arsenal had failed to score in the previous five.
15 October 1914: HMS Hawke was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the North Sea and sank in less than 10 minutes with the loss of 524 lives.
15 October 1919: Sir Henry Norris chaired the last meeting of the London Borough of Fulham before the local elections. Sir Henry was now standing down after becoming the longest serving London mayor of all time; a record that he still holds.
15 October 1921: Arsenal 1 Sunderland 2, the second of four consecutive defeats in a run of 12 matches from the start of the season, in which Arsenal won 2, drew 1 and lost 9. Arsenal and Cardiff were classed as joint 21st in the league as they had the same points and goal average.
15 October 1932: George Male’s first appearance as a right back v Blackburn. The story is that Male didn’t believe he could play right back but a chat with Chapman convinced him he “was the best right back in the country”. And so he turned out to be.
15 October 1963: Arsenal drew 4-4 with Tottenham at Highbury. Eastham 2, Baker and Strong got the goals. It was part of a run that saw Arsenal score 17 goals in five games, but only gain three wins.
15 October 1966: Bob McNab made his debut v Leeds United in a 1-3 defeat. Despite the result he kept his place making 25 appearances in that first season. In 1967 Court regained his place but by October Bob was back, although this time at left back.
15 October 1971: Andrew Cole born. He signed for Arsenal in October 1989 but only made one appearance in the league and after a loan spell at Fulham went to Bristol City.
15 October 1972: English football was hit by a sensation, as Brian Clough and Peter Taylor left Derby County following a dispute with the club’s directors. Derby had won the league in 1971/2 and this episode was the start of a life-long tirade by Clough against club chairmen and directors. The Derby fans were mutinous.
15 October 1977: Arsenal 1 Queen’s Park Rangers 0, 36,290 in attendance. “We came here to frustrate them,” said Rangers’ manager Frank Sibley, “and to make them play badly.” Eight behind the ball was the minimum, rising to all 11 for much of the game. The goal came as a loose ball was punted in by Macdonald leaving QPR not the first team to realise how hard it is to go from mass defence into any form of attack once the opposition score.
15 October 1994: Arsenal 3 Chelsea 1. It was the third successive win in a run of ten undefeated, but a subsequent poor run meant that Arsenal finished the season in 12th. Three seasons later Arsenal won the league and have never been lower than 8th since then.
15 October 2005: Arsenal lost 1-2 to WBA. Senderos scored the Arsenal goal, one of two league goals he got all season in 19 starts.
15 October 2016: Arsenal 3 Swansea 2. Theo Walcott scored his fourth and fifth league goals in his last five games, as Xhaka was ludicrously sent off. Özil scored on his 28th birthday, as Arsenal moved joint top of the league with Man City- the result making this six wins in a row in all competitions.
16 October 1909: Arsenal lost away to Sunderland 6-2; goalkeeper Hugh MacDonald returned but was seemingly still not fit. However the keeper kept his place for the rest of the season and Arsenal won the next match 1-0.
16 October 1915: A surprisingly large crowd (for wartime) of 12,000 turned up at Highbury to see a 1-1 draw between Arsenal and Millwall Athletic of the Southern League. Millwall had been the local rivals to Arsenal during the Woolwich Arsenal days, and it is interesting to see that the rivalry (at least as reflected in the crowd numbers) was still there.
16 October 1919 Frederick Pagnam signed from Liverpool, after standing out against the match fixing scandal that besieged Liverpool and Man U. The transfer was one of the first episodes that disproved the “Knighton Thesis” that the manager had his scouting networks wound up by Sir Henry Norris. See also here.
16 October 1920: Arsenal drew 1-1 away to Bolton in front of 35,000 as neighbours Clapton Orient went to the top of the second division. But such matters were overshadowed by the start of a national coal miners strike.
16 October 1922: Occasionally, at this time, clubs would arrange friendlies in order to try out new players and new tactics and to allow the manager to see the reserves in action (since they normally played at the same time as the first team). On this day Arsenal reserves played Southampton who had won the 3rd Div South last season, Arsenal winning 5-3. The game also saw Bob John get a match, as he edged ever closer to the start of his magnificent first team career with Arsenal.
16 October 1926: Arsenal 2 WHU 2 leaving Arsenal with just one win in nine, with Lambert and Brain scoring. After coming second the season before there must have been some disappointment, but the crowds kept on growing. 35,534 turned up for this game.
16 October 1935: The owners of the Nine Mile Point Colliery in South Wales announced that the mine was closing indefinitely after a day of fighting between police and striking miners.
16 October 1937: Jimmy McGrory played his last match for Celtic. In playing this game he achieved a UK wide record of 550 goals scored during his senior career (395 in the league for Celtic plus another 13 league goals in the following season for Clydebank).
16 October 1954: Wally Barnes won his 22nd and final cap for Wales. Ralph Guthrie played his second and final game in goal for Arsenal, a 0-1 home defeat to Portsmouth.
16 October 1965: Arsenal lost away to Blackpool 3-5 – the last five goal defeat until the 70/71 Double season when Arsenal lost 5-0 to Stoke. Armstrong and Radford plus an o.g. gave Arsenal their goals.
16 October 1961: Paul Vaessan born. Arsenal was his only club, his sublime talent and promising career cut short by injury.
16 October 1971: Arsenal made it five in a row in the league with Chelsea 1 Arsenal 2 in front of 52,338. This was Arsenal’s first league win at Stamford Bridge in 10 seasons, and there was no doubt Arsenal could have had a lot, lot more goals in the game.
16 October 1973: Arsenal lost 1-0 to Barcelona in a game for the benefit of Johan Cruyff who had transferred to Barcelona, but was not yet registered to play for the club. No Spanish team would offer a game so Arsenal agreed, providing Barcelona would play a re-match at Highbury in March the following year, for George Armstrong’s testimonial.
16 October 1973: The board of Derby County accepted the resignations of Clough and Taylor having demanded that any further newspaper articles and TV interviews must first be approved by the board before being released – something which even if Clough and Taylor had agreed to could never have been accepted by broadcasters. By 1980 Clough had won the European Cup for the second time and Derby were in the second division. By this date in 2021 the club had been in administration for three weeks, unable to find a buyer.
16 October 1974: Manchester City 2 Arsenal 1, the crowd a paltry 26,658. At this moment Tottenham were 21st and Arsenal 22nd in the league. On the same night Tottenham recorded their lowest post war crowd (12,813). And all this just three years after Arsenal won the double.
16 October 1976: Arsenal 2 Stoke 0. The 353rd and final league game for John Radford v Stoke City. Rice and Macdonald scored to gain Arsenal’s 5th win in nine. See also here.
16 October 1976: The 1975 champions Derby County belatedly recorded their first League win of the season when they thrashed an awful Tottenham Hotspur side 8–2 at the Baseball Ground. For Arsenal fans it was rather a fine weekend (see above).
16 October 2004: The last of the great 49 unbeaten run, a 3-1 home win over Aston Villa. The victory made it eight wins and a draw so far in the season. Pires got two and Henry the other.
16 October 2010: Arsenal beat Birmingham City 2-1. This was a relief for having been undefeated in the first five league games Arsenal had just lost to WBA and Chelsea, but now followed this game up with four more straight wins.
16 October 2011: Arsenal beat Sunderland 2-1 with van Persie getting both goals. It was a relief for the club, which on 28 August had lost 8-2 to Manchester United. Since that match there had been two wins and two defeats in the League.
16 October 2012: Steve Gatting took over as under 18s coach having previously worked at Christ’s Hospital school in the same position.
16 October 2022 Arsenal beat Leeds United away to make it nine of the first ten league games for the first time ever. Arsenal were four points clear at the top of the league.
17 October 1902: Fergus Hunt rejoined Arsenal from WHU. However he only played three games before moving on to Fulham. Later he played for Burton United and Shildon Athletic and retired from football in 1907.
17 October 1914: Harry King made it 10 goals in nine games in Arsenal 2 Blackpool 0. He ended the season with 26 goals in 37 league games. See also here
17 October 1919: With Sir Henry Norris having declared that he had now retired from local politics there were signs that Fulham’s Municipal Reform Party that he had represented for so long was falling apart without his leadership. With elections about to happen there was no list of candidates, no propaganda posters, and no meetings. The value of having an administrative genius on the team was perhaps, at last, perceived.
17 October 1921: Arsenal played in the first round of the London FA County Cup against Barking Town, and with most of the first team playing were 0-2 down at half time in front of 4500 fans at a packed Vicarage Field. Arsenal eventually recovered to win 5-2 with goals scored by Butler, White (2) and Baker (2).
17 October 1922: The first hunger march set out from Glasgow heading for London – which had a major impact on politicians who seriously feared a civil uprising.
17 October 1924: Herbert Lawson was signed from Luton Clarence as an amateur. He turned professional on 26 November, and made his debut on 3 February 1926 as Chapman worked his way through every player on the club’s books as he tried to find a replacement for Sid Hoar, whose injuries at the end of the year had stopped his progression.
17 October 1925: Arsenal were at home to Cardiff who were 20th in the league and had a defence pretty much to match. Brain scored his second hattrick in three games, Neil and Blyth getting the other two as Arsenal won 5-0. The same XI as had played the previous four League games were played again as Arsenal embedded the new system to cope with the changed offside law.
17 October 1931: Bolton got their second away point of the season in a 1-1 draw with Arsenal at Highbury. But attention was elsewhere as news came through that Everton had beaten Sheffield Wednesday 9-3.
17 October 1936: Bob John played his 15th and final game for Wales.
17 October 1936: Arsenal scored their first away goals of the season beating Charlton 2-0, a win that lifted them to 14th. Davidson and Dennis Compton got the goals.
17 October 1942: Arsenal list 0-2 at home to Brentford in the Football League South. It was their only defeat in the first 10 games, and the run continued as by game 17 they had only lost twice and drawn once.
17 October 1947: Thomas Fitchie, the only man to be signed five times by Arsenal, died. He was a travelling salesman with Jacques & Co, a sports goods and games manufacturer. They encouraged his football career as an amateur as it allowed them access to the clubs and the players who were his team mates. See also here
17 October 1951: Arsenal’s 2nd match under floodlights. Arsenal 3 Rangers 2. 62,000 were present. See also here.
17 October 1953: A 2-5 home defeat to Burnley on this day followed a 4-1 away win at Tottenham, and this in turn was followed by a 5-1 away win at Chelsea.
17 October 1970: Arsenal 4 Everton 0. A hammering of the champions served notice that there was something special about this team. League match 13 of the first Double season. Arsenal up to second. See also here.
17 October 1972: Six months after injuring his knee, Bob Wilson came on as a substitute for the second half in a testimonial for former Arsenal and Plymouth keeper Bill Harper which ended 1-1. When Harper signed for Arsenal, Chapman broke the goalkeeper transfer record by paying £4000 for him. In December 1931 Harper was transferred to Plymouth, and upon his retirement stayed with the club as a trainer, groundsman and general helper.
17 October 2000: John Lukic became the oldest player to appear in the Champions League v Lazio. By drawing 1-1 Arsenal secured their place in the second phase after just four matches; Arsenal eventually topping the group. First and last appearance for Julian Gray and Brian McGovern
17 October 2006: After winning their opening two Champions League games Arsenal lost 1-0 to CSKA Moscow away. A 0-0 draw in the return game in London did not give high hopes for the series
17 October 2009: Arsenal beat Birmingham City 3-1 to make it seven wins in a row in all competitions and 11 wins in the first 13 games.
17 October 2015: Arsenal beat Watford 3-0 away, in front of 20,721, with goals from Ramsey, Sanchez and Giroud. It meant Arsenal had scored 11 goals in the last three league games, with Alexis Sanchez having scored seven goals in the last four games in all competitions. It also raised hopes (fulfilled as it turned out) of beating Bayern Munich in the next match.
17 October 2020: Having won three of the first four games of the season Arsenal lost 1-0 to Manchester City, starting a run of 10 in which only one game was won and dropped to 15th.. During this time Arsenal appeared to transform their playing style by reducing tackling greatly. The run ended on 19 December and was followed by seven games unbeaten, which marked the start of the final two thirds of the campaign in which Arsenal were the second best performing team.
18 October 1910: The trial of Dr Crippen opened at the Old Bailey amid massive public interest.
18 October 1919: First match for Stephen Dunn – a 1-1 home draw with Everton. He was a goalkeeper who also played for the first team as a full back when he injured his wrist. 30,000 were in the ground as Arsenal remained 10th.
18 October 1922: The BBC was formed, amidst a realisation of the need for independent news coverage at this time, not least because as the government was about to resign over the Chanak Crisis. Meanwhile Arsenal chairman and Fulham MP Sir Henry Norris informed his local party that he was not going to stand in the next election and that he suspected they would have difficulty finding anyone else as a candidate, given that the local political party was demanding that they be given half of the MP’s salary. It was a prediction which turned out to be true.
18 October 1924: Final game for Robert Turnbull; he became Arsenal’s most prolific league scorer thus far (with 22 goals in one season) after being switched from fullback to centre forward. After this last appearance he was put on the transfer list and sold to Charlton Athletic in November. See also here.
18 October 1930: First game for Joey Williams. He had played 82 games for Stoke before joining Arsenal in 1929, and played 22 games for the club, leaving in 1932. On this day Arsenal beat Man U away 1-2.
18 October 1933: Arsenal beat Everton 3-0 in the Charity Shield in front of 30,000 at Everton’s ground, with an unexpected appearance from Norman Sidey Birkett (2) and Bowden got the goals with Hill taking over the number 11 shirt. Norman Sidey subsequently continued his run at centre half.
18 October 1941: Joe Lievesley who had played for Arsenal from 1913 to 1915, died aged 58. Joe’s son Leslie was a coach for Torino in Italy and died in tragic circumstances in the Superga air disaster.
18 October 1941: Arsenal beat West Ham 4-1 in the wartime London League, to make it seven straight wins in which they scored 31 goals. Arsenal won the league winning 23 of their 30 games.
18 October 1948: Wally Barnes’ international début. He went on to play 22 games for his country and scored one goal.
18 October 1951: Lawrie Scott was transferred from Arsenal to become player manager at Crystal Palace. After Palace had to apply for re-election in 1954 he moved on to Hendon and later managed Hitchen Town.
18 October 1958: David Herd made his international debut. He went on to play five times for Scotland and scored three goals.
18 October 1968: Jimmy Robertson signed from Tottenham in exchange for David Jenkins. He eventually took over the number 7 shirt from John Radford on 31 March 1969 and got a run of games to the end of the season.
18 October 1969: Nelson Vivas born in Santa Fe, Argentina. He had a rare ability to play anywhere in midfield or defence and after seven years as a professional in South America he came to Europe and started with AC Lugano on loan, after which Arsenal signed him for £1.6m in August 1998.
18 October 1978: Hajduk Split 2 Arsenal 1 in the Uefa Cup, a capacity crowd of 25,000 looking on. Heeley and Kosmina were called up to fill in the gaps left by Sunderland and Walford.
18 October 1983: Peter Nicholas returned to Crystal Palace. A series of injuries in the 1982/3 season reduced his potential and he had been on loan since August. His return fee was £150,000, but then in 1985 he was on the move again, going to Luton Town, playing for them over 100 times.
18 October 1985: Bryn Jones died. After leaving Arsenal in 1949 having played 71 league games, he coached at Norwich from 1949-51 and then ran a newsagent shop near the Arsenal ground.
18 October 1989 Tottenham beat Arsenal 2-1 at WHL in front of 33,944. Thomas scored Arsenal’s goal, making it five goals for him in three consecutive games.
18 October 1997: Arsenal started a run of just two wins in eight matches with Crystal Palace 0 Arsenal 0. This was also Alberto Mendez’ league début. And it was the 11th league game of the 2nd Double Season The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.
18 October 2003: Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1 to make it seven wins and two draws in the 9th league match of the unbeaten season. Edu and Henry scored to make it three wins in a row.
18 October 2005: Thierry Henry beat Ian Wright’s scoring record with two against Sparta Prague in the Champions League in a 2-0 away win. Arsenal went on to win the first five group stage games, and then drew the sixth.
18 October 2008: Arsenal beat Everton 3-1 with goals from Van Persie, Nasri and Walcott. The match came within a run of nine games in which the club scored 29 goals.
18 October 2010: Vito Mannone loaned to Hull for the season. His loan was then continued until 2013, at which stage he left Hull having played 31 times for the club.
18 October 2011: Vermaelen signed a new contract with Arsenal. He stayed until 2014, but his career was seriously hampered by injury, playing 110 times all told.
18 October 2014: A 2-2 home draw with Hull meant that Arsenal had won 2, drawn 5 and lost 1 so far in the season and languished in 7th in the league. The totally untrue story that this was Arsenal’s worst start in 30 years circulated in the media in a vain but commonplace attempt to put pressure on the manager and whip up negativity. Sanchez and Welbeck scored.
19 October 1889: Arsenal beat Dartford Working Men’s Club 7-1 in the first round in the Kent Junior Cup starting their journey to the club’s first ever piece of silverware.
19 October 1910: James Quale rejoined Woolwich Arsenal after a period with Northfleet. He made just one appearance, as a deputy for Joe Shaw against The Wednesday on 12 November 1910. In the match, which Arsenal won 1-0, he was badly injured and had to leave the field of play. He did not play football again.
19 October 1912: Arsenal 1 Sunderland 3, in Arsenal’s relegation season. But the rumours were circulating that this would be Arsenal’s last season in Plumstead.
19 October 1918: Arsenal were top of the London Combination but on this day lost 1-4 away to Chelsea in front of 25,000. They were however still second, which was quite a change from most of the wartime league years.
19 October 1920: Arsenal’s annual report was issued, showing George Peachey as a director, and the club heavily in debt. Humphreys were still owed £10484 for building the grandstand; and others £5943. The club had an overdraft of £17000; £10,000 of which was personally guaranteed by Sir Henry Norris. (That’s about £500,000 today).
19 October 1922: The coalition government of the UK resigned over the Chanak Crisis in relation to Turkey thus heralding another general election.
19 October 1929: Arsenal beat Nottingham Forest 4-0 in a friendly with 3,340 in the crowd. These friendlies were arranged so that the manager could look at some of the reserve players – something that was hard to achieve since reserve games were normally played at the same time as first team matches.
19 October 1935: Male, Hapgood and Bowden were all selected to play for England away to Ireland leaving Arsenal patching together a team to play Portsmouth on the same day. As a result Compton played at right back and Bob John played his first game of the season at left back. England won 3-1. Arsenal lost 2-1.
19 October 1940: Arsenal beat Northampton Town 5-4 to make it seven wins in eight from the start of the season with 33 goals scored in those eight games.
19 October 1946 Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson played the first of two league matches for Arsenal. He was the first ever Icelandic professional footballer and later became Minister of Finance of his country.
19 October 1974: Arsenal (bottom of league) played Tottenham (one from bottom) in front of 36,194. Tottenham won 2-0. Arsenal remained at the foot of the table while the bottom six also included QPR and Chelsea.
19 October 1999: After a 1-1 draw in Barcelona, Arsenal lost the return game at Wembley 2-4; their first defeat in the series. Bergkamp and Overmars scored.
19 October 2002: The all-time away win sequence ended with a 2-1 defeat by Everton, the start of 3 defeats in a row, the worst run for 19 years. It was the first defeat of the season, Rooney scored his first goal, in the last minute. Arsène Wenger said, “At that age, Rooney is already a complete footballer. The guy can play. He’s the best English under-20 I’ve seen since I came here.” 13 years later he became England’s all time top scorer.
19 October 2010: Arsenal beat Shakhtar Donetsk 5-1. The goals came from Song, Nasri, Fabregas, Wilshere, Chamakh, meaning Arsenal had played three, won three and scored 14 goals.
19 October 2011: Arsenal beat Marseille 1-0 away in the Champions League, with a goal from Ramsey in the 92nd minute. Arsenal remained unbeaten in the group.
19 October 2013: Arsenal 4 Norwich 1 (Ozil 2, Wilshere, Ramsey). The result meant that Arsenal were unbeaten in 12 games since the bizarre opening home defeat to Aston Villa.
19 October 2016: a home win against Ludogorets Razgrad involved goals from Sánchez, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and a career first hat-trick for Özil.. This took Arsenal to seven wins in a row in all competitions.
19 October 2017: Arsenal beat Red Star Belgrade of Serbia 1-0 in front of 50,327 to make it three wins out of three in the Europa group stages. Arsenal eventually went out to Atletico Madrid in the semi-finals. Giroud got the goal.
20 October 1905: What we believe is the earliest history of Royal Arsenal and Woolwich Arsenal to have been written was published in the part-work, the Book of Football. It was written by the club’s vice-chairman, Arthur Kennedy.
20 October 1906: A 1-0 win over Notts C gave Arsenal seven wins in the first nine; the club’s best first division start thus far.
20 October 1915: Women in Britain were officially permitted for the first time to act as bus and tram conductors.
20 October 1917: Arsenal drew 2-2 at Highbury with West Ham with a crowd of just 6000. It meant that after their flying start to the season Arsenal had now gone four games without a win. Meanwhile the London Council Council accepted the new education system which would give free schooling to all children up to the age of 14.
20 October 1919: The replay of the London FA Cup 2nd round resulted in Fulham 3 Arsenal 1. The local paper bemoaned Arsenal’s lack of “firing power”, Arsenal having only scored 16 league goals so far – not ideal, but there were six clubs in the league which had scored less.
20 October 1920: Suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst was charged with sedition after calling upon workers to loot the London Docks.
20 October 1923: Arsenal were 20th in the league and for their away game against Bolton (who were 3rd) played, perhaps for the first time, an offside game, and surprisingly won won 2-1. According to reports the Bolton crowd got so fed up with Arsenal’s tactics they started chucking cinders from the track between the crowd and the pitch at Arsenal’s goalkeeper. The ref stopped the game and warned the crowd that he would abandon the match if this continued (which was pretty much what the crowd wanted) Arsenal moved up to 17th.
20 October 1927: Eddie Hapgood signed from Kettering for £1000. See also here. It was reported that Chapman’s interview of Hapgood included questions about smoking and drinking (he didn’t do either). After the interview he offered Kettering the fee plus performance bonuses and a friendly match in which Arsenal guaranteed to bring some of their star players.
20 October 1928: David Jack’s debut. Newcastle 0 Arsenal 3. (Thompson 2 and Brain scored).
20 October 1934: Arsenal had only won two of the last 13 games v Tottenham before this match in which Ted Drake became the first Arsenal player to score a hat trick against Tottenham. The crowd of 70,500 was a new Highbury record as Arsenal won 5-1. It was the third time Arsenal scored 5+ in Allison’s opening 11 games. See also here And again here
20 October 1936: The UK’s Prime minister Stanley Baldwin confronted King Edward VIII about his relationship with the married (but soon to be divorced) Wallis Simpson. The nation was agog.
20 October 1945: Arsenal 1 Charlton 2. The result meant that Arsenal had still only won two of the first 11 games of the final season of the wartime league.
20 October 1954: Arsenal beat Racing Club de Paris in the Armistice series of games originally instituted by Herbert Chapman.
20 October 1956: Manchester United were beaten on this day ending a run of 26 consecutive first division games without defeat. It was heralded for many years as a feat that could never be equalled.
20 October 1958: Cliff Holton sold to Watford for £10,000. Graham Taylor who was with Watford when Cliff Holton died, is quoted as saying, on hearing the news of Holton’s death, that “He looked younger [than his 67 years], fitter and there was so much to him…: an aura, a presence.”
20 October 1973: Arsenal drew 1-1 with Ipswich at Highbury, in front of 28,344. Nine of the Arsenal starting 11 were lads who joined the club from school.
20 October 1976: Arsenal lost 5-1 away to Aston Villa. Arsenal then went on and lost the next games 1-4 and 1-2. In the fourth game Arsenal beat Birmingham 4-0. See also here
20 October 1979: A pattern was emerging of lesser teams coming to Highbury with an 11 man defence. Bolton had recently done it and on this day Stoke copied the idea. As a result three of Arsenal’s last four league games had ended goalless. Since these teams bought virtually no away support, only the home crowd minded and it started to become the norm.
20 October 1984: Ian Allinson started a run of 8 goals in 9 games as Arsenal unveiled the first ever ‘big screen’ at an English ground. Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-2 to retain top position in the league.
20 October 1987: Steve Morrow played his first senior game for the “floodlight opening” match at Barnet. He went out on loan to Reading, Watford and Barnet, playing his first Arsenal game proper on 8 April 1992.
20 October 1990: Man U 0 Arsenal 1 – Arsenal deducted two points, after all the players except Seaman got involved in two minutes worth of pushing and shoving. For reasons that were never made clear Man U were only reduced one point, and the punishment was not used again for this type of “offence”.
20 October 1993: Arsenal 3 Standard Liege 0; CWC 2nd round. Wright (2) and Merson got the goals in front of 25,248.
20 October 2001: Arsenal 3 Blackburn 3. League match 9 of the third Double season. Pirès, Bergkamp and Henry scored. It was the seventh consecutive match unbeaten as Arsenal regained top position.
20 October 2007: Arsenal’s seventh straight win in the league beating Bolton 2-0. Rosicky and Toure scored. The unbeaten run lasted 15 games in all.
20 October 2009: AZ Alkmaar 1 Arsenal 1. The result ended a run of seven successive wins, and was part of a run of 11 wins and two draws.
20 October 2015: Arsenal 2 Bayern Munich 0 in a run of four successive league and Champions League victories. Unfortunately in the return match Arsenal lost 5-1 but still went through.
20 October 2016: Arsenal had a goalless draw with Middlesbrough, their second and last goalless draw of the season. Yet despite much moaning this was not a hopeless season for goalscoring, as Arsenal scored four goals five times, five goals three times, and six once. They also won the FA cup beating Chelsea.
20 October 2020: Arsenal revealed their 25 man squad for the Premier League which excluded Sokratis and Özil. Özil noted on social media “loyalty is hard to come by.”
21 October 1893: Arsenal lost 1-4 to Small Heath. It was the second in a run of three games in which they conceded 15 goals.
21 October 1912: Athletic News announced, wrongly, that Arsenal would move to Harringey Park the following summer. The most likely explanation for the false story in the magazine that was rarely wrong about such matters, was that Henry Norris had been spotted as he toured the area looking at possible sites, although it also is quite possible that Norris deliberately had his car parked at the site, in order to mislead trailing journalists, having had his driver drop him off earlier in Highbury.
21 October 1922: Arsenal were away to Newcastle who were 10th (Arsenal 18th) but with only one point between them. With Milne and Roe making their first appearances of the season and Hopkins his second, Arsenal got a 1-1 draw, Hopkins getting the goal.
21 October 1925: John Barley signed for Arsenal. He never really made progress at Highbury and on 3 May 1929 transferred to Reading after just eight first team games with Arsenal.
21 October 1939: At last the wartime league began, after the regular league programme had been abandoned following the outbreak of war, with just three fixtures played. That season was then played with the same fixture list in 1946/7. On this day Arsenal beat Charlton 8-4 in the newly formed Football League south “A”.
21 October 1961: Arsenal beat Manchester United 5-1; the biggest win over Man U at Highbury. Skirton (2) Eastham, Barnwell, Ward got the goals in front of 54,099
21 October 1967: Ian Ure won his final Scotland cap. He played 11 times for Scotland and four times for the Scottish League.
21 October 1970: Sturm Graz 1 Arsenal 0. With Arsenal playing in four competitions and using the first team throughout the media were full of the “too many games,” view and Arsenal’s immediate demise on all fronts was predicted. Curiously it didn’t happen like that.
21 October 1972: Although Bob Wilson was now fit after his long lay off, he didn’t come straight into the Arsenal team, but had to wait for five more games before regaining his place. The first of these “Wilson in waiting” games ended Crystal Palace 2 Arsenal 3. Playing without Ball, Arsenal moved into an end-to-end approach, attacking in numbers with the ball, withdrawing in numbers when the ball was lost.
21 October 1978: Arsenal 1 Southampton 0, Brady got the goal. With just one win in the last four this was a relief, but better it was the start of a 10 match unbeaten run including seven wins ending with Tottenham 0 Arsenal 5 when Brady scored a goal that is still (quite rightly) celebrated. See also here
21 October 1998. Arsenal drew 1-1 with Dynamo Kiev with the club’s 7th highest home crowd of all time. Bergkamp got the goal and Silvestre scored an own goal
21 October 2000: Arsenal beat Sparta Prague 4-2 in the Champions League to make it five games unbeaten, completing the double over the the Czech team. Having lost the opening match of the season it was now 14 unbeaten in the Premier League and Champions League.
21 October 2001: Death of Bertie Mee. In 1986 Bertie Mee had returned to football and become the general manager of Watford FC. He remained a director there until 1991.
21 October 2008: Fenerbahçe 2 Arsenal 5. Adebayor, Walcott, Diaby, Song and Ramsey scored. It meant Arsenal had nine goals in the last two champions league games but it was the only time they scored five in the season. Curiously for at least the next 11 years Arsenal did not play on 21 October again.
21 October 2019: A 1-0 away defeat to Sheffield Utd started the run that led ultimately to Unai Emery’s dismissal as manager, being the start of a run of one win in 12 league games, Mr Emery being dismissed after match number 10 in the sequence.
21 October 2023: In the 77th minute of the game away to Chelsea, Rice scored from 36.6 yards out; the longest range goal scored by an Arsenal player in the Premier League since 2006–07.
22 October 1902: Elijah Watkins, effectively Arsenal’s first chairman, writing in Football Chat magazine, suggested that a cat knocked over an ink bottle which made part of Arsenal’s minute book dealing with the early years of the club illegible, and so he tore the pages out. Hence the problem with knowing exactly how the club was formed.
22 October 1910: Millwall’s new ground at New Cross was opened by Lord Kinnaird, a friend of Henry Norris with whom he later went into business.. It was said that the ground was the most up to date in London, for although Chelsea’s sprawling terraces could cater for massive crowds, Millwall had evolved a new model which focused on having bigger stands and more seats. And they had moved across the river to find the right location, preceding Arsenal’s move in the opposite direction by three years.
22 October 1920: Dr Jimmy Paterson joined Arsenal as an amateur. He had won the league with Rangers, and been awarded the Military Cross in the war. Yet in his memoirs, Arsenal’s manager Knighton portrayed this situation as him being reduced to playing “the brother in law of the club doctor” while he was refused permission by the chairman of signing “real” players.
22 October 1921: Huddersfield Town 2 Arsenal 0. This was the third of four successive defeats for Arsenal. Despite two wins in early November, Arsenal were wedded to the foot of the League.
22 October 1932: Male returned to the team as Arsenal beat Liverpool 3-2 away. The 9th game in an unbeaten sequence, and the club were still just warming up. The next two games were won 8-2 and 7-1 as Arsenal moved to the top of the league.
22 October 1938: Reg Cumner’s international debut – his first of three caps. He certainly would have had more full caps had it not been for the war. He was one of a handful of players who came through the Margate nursery and went on to play for their country.
22 October 1938: Despite the internationals on the same day (see above) the league programme continued and Ernie Collett played his first game for Arsenal since April to fill in one of the gaps, as did Gordon Bremner. A depleted Arsenal team beat Preston 1-0.
22 October 1947: Cliff Holton joined as an amateur from Oxford City initially as a fullback, but by the time he made the first team in 1950 it was as a centre forward. His first game was on Boxing Day 1950, and he was in the team for our second post-war Cup Final in 1952.
22 October 1949: Arsène Wenger born. He became Arsenal’s first permanent non-British manager, the longest serving manager, the manager who won the most major trophies, the manager with the highest win rate for Arsenal, the record holder for FA Cup wins, and the man who delivered the Unbeaten Season. For our birthday quiz see here.
22 October 1949: After a reserve team match in Cardiff the South Wales Football Echo and Express reported that Arsenal players had been seen smoking after the match. In November Arsenal announced it was taking legal action against the paper, which immediately withdrew its accusations and apologised.
22 October 1952: Arsenal beat Hibs 7-1 in a friendly. It was the first ever Arsenal match under floodlights which was televised – floodlighting still being a novelty. Roper scored five and Lishman the other two.
22 October 1963: Alan Skirton scored Arsenal’s first goal in European competition as Arsenal lost 3-2 to Staevnet. John Barnwell got the other goal.
22 October 1977: Bristol City 0 Arsenal 2, with 25,497 at Ashton Gate. After the home side had been called the “Butchers of Bristol” following a dreadful display in the Anglo Scottish cup against Hibernian, the referee decided to make himself man of the match, but then got confused and booked Nelson, Young, and Brady, although he did also find time to book Gow of City as well.
22 October 1991: Arsenal drew 1-1 in Portugal with Benfica, but Benfica won the second leg to knock Arsenal out of Europe in the pilot year for the Champions League (which started fully next season). Arsenal were the first English team allowed back into Europe after the Liverpool fans rioted at Heysel, and to go out at the first hurdle showed how far behind Europe English football had slipped.
22 October 1997: Ian Selley transferred to Fulham for £500,000 (also quoted as 17 October in some sources). He had played 42 times for Arsenal, and after a period also with Wimbledon, and loans to Southend he moved into non-league football.
22 October 1999 Albert Sambi Lokonga born.
22 October 2001: Bertie Mee died. He managed Arsenal for 539 games – a number beaten only by Arsène Wenger. But his win percentage was below that of Wenger, Chapman, Allison, Whittaker, Graham, Howe and Neil. He won three major trophies – the same as Chapman – but fewer than Graham (6), and Wenger (10).
22 October 2002: Having lost to Everton on 19 October, Arsenal now lost to Auxerre, and then lost at home to Blackburn on 26 October making three defeats in senior competitions in a row – the worst run in 19 years.
22 October 2005: After only four wins in the first eight league games Arsenal started a run of four wins in five with the 1-0 defeat of Man City. Pires and Henry tried a trick penalty but failed to put in a shot; however Pires scored to secure the points.
22 October 2006: Arsenal made it six wins in a row with a 4-0 away defeat of Reading. Henry (2), Hleb and Van Persie got the goals.
22 October 2014: Anderlecht 1 Arsenal 2 in the Champions League on Arsène Wenger’s 65th birthday. Arsenal played Emiliano Martinez in goal having Szczęsny suspended and David Ospina injured. Six years later he moved to Aston Villa to £20m.
22 October 2017: Arsenal beat Everton away 5-2 with goals from Ozil, Monreal, Lacazette, Ramsey and Sanchez. During the season Arsenal also put five past Huddersfield, Everton (again, at home) and Burnley.
22 October 2018: A 3–1 victory against Leicester City saw Özil become the highest scoring German player of the Premier League era, with 30 goals. It was Arsenal’s 10th successive win after losing the first two games.
22 October 2020: Arsenal launched their Europa Group stage games with a 1-2 away win against Rapid Vienna. It was the start of a run of six straight wins in the group in which Arsenal, playing reserve and youth players, scored 20 goals.
23 October 1893: Woolwich Arsenal beat Roston Bourke’s XI 4-3. It was one of many friendlies played in the season, made particularly intriguing by the fact that Roston Bourke was a leading referee who also had his own team. Joseph Cooper: the most mysterious of all the mysterious Arsenal players made his debut.
23 October 1893: Stanley Briggs a centre half, born in Stamford Hill, north London was signed by Arsenal on 23 October 1893 as an amateur from Tottenham where he had been playing since 1892.
23 October 1896: Daniel Burgess born. He was signed from Goldenhill Wanderers and made his league debut on 1 September 1919 in a league match against Liverpool as an inside forward having started out with Port Vale, In 1922 he moved on to West Ham for the 1922/3 season, followed by Aberdare Athletic (1923), QPR and Sittingbourne.
23 October 1909: Woolwich Arsenal 1 Everton 0. After one win and one draw in the first nine, Arsenal secured their second victory, scoring their 10th goal but having conceded 34.
23 October 1915: Arsenal beat Croydon Common away 4-1. The Common were a Southern League club prior to the war, but they were in financial trouble at the time, and were the one club from the League that failed to reappear in the League when the war was over, Arsenal then picking up several of their released players.
23 October 1922: Arsenal v Tottenham following the battle of WHL three weeks before, in the London FA Challenge Cup. It was rough and tumble on the pitch but there are no reports of problems among the crowd of 11,000. Arsenal won 3-2.
23 October 1926: Arsenal were solidly mid-table and hopes of building on last year’s achievements were fading fast. So it was a surprise to the 27,846 who watched Arsenal v Sheffield Wednesday to see Arsenal win 6-2. Haden got two, and then Brain got four in the second half. It lifted Arsenal up to 10th.
23 October 1933: Peter Dougall was offered a trial at Arsenal before signing as a professional on 23 October. He made his first team debut on 10 February 1934 and went on to play eight times this season.
23 October 1935: Arsenal lost a Charity Shield match for the first time ever in a 1-0 home defeat to Sheffield Wednesday in front of 30,000.
23 October 1937: With Crayston injured Bastin dropped back into the right half position, as on occasion he had done before. Davidson took over at inside left in a 1-1 draw with Stoke. But what astonished people was the champions Man City being beaten 0-4 by Middlesbrough, thus taking them down to 13th. And far worse was to come as this was the season the champions of the previous campaign were relegated.
23 October 1943: Arsenal beat Watford 4-2 in the 9th match of the wartime league season. It was only Arsenal’s second win of the season, but it marked the return to form of Reg Lewis. He got a hat-trick in this match and including this game totted up 13 goals in six consecutive games.
23 October 1948: Bryn Jones scored on his 17th and last appearance for Wales. His transfer had been the British record, but he never lived up to the high standards expected of him. See also here
23 October 1957: Graham Rix born. He joined Arsenal in 1974 while Bertie Mee was manager, and turned pro in 1975. His first ever match for Arsenal was against Leicester on 2 April 1977. In 2018 Rix was accused by multiple Chelsea trainees of racism and physical assault.
23 October 1969: Estudiantes de la Plata beat AC Milan in the second leg of the intercontinental cup final. After the Nestor Combin of Milan was stretchered off having been hit in the face by Alberto Suarez of Estudiantes, Combin (an Argentine citizen) was arrested by attendant police for “avoiding military service”. After the match the Argentine president watching the match ordered the arrest of three other players, who then served a month in jail.
23 October 1976: Leicester 4 Arsenal 1 with 19,351 in the crowd. Stapleton got the goal playing alongside Ball, Brady, Macdonald, Stapleton, Armstrong. After, the Daily Mirror said Macdonald had “been threatened with the axe.” But Arsenal had just conceded nine in two games, and even a fully functional Macdonald could hardly be have expected to get ten.
23 October 1994: Freddie Ljungberg made his debut for Halmstads. He played 79 games for the team before moving to Arsenal in 1998.
23 October 1999: “With 15 minutes left they trailed 2-0 to a Chelsea team who hadn’t conceded at home all season. Arsène Wenger feared for his season, and what happened next aged him 10 years.” (Report on Kanu subsequently scoring 3 in the Observer, 24 Oct)
23 October 1999: Stuart Taylor who had joined Arsenal in 1997 as a youth player finished his first loan spell at Bristol Rovers. He graduated to being third choice keeper, and eventually won a league winners’ medal.
23 October 2007: Arsenal beat Slavia Prague 7-0 in Champs League. Eboue and Walcott each got two.
23 October 2007: Jens Lehmann made an infamous speech in which he spoke of “my dear manager” and detailed the “humiliation” he felt of being dropped. Mr Wenger said later that, “Jens always thought he was right about everything”.
23 October 2010: Mark Randall loaned to Rotherham. It was his third and final loan from Arsenal before he moved to Chesterfield in 2011. In 2019 he was playing for Larne in Northern Ireland
23 October 2011: Arsenal beat Stoke City 3-1 with two from Van Persie who came on as a substitute for the scorer of the first goal: Gervinho. It showed that Arsenal were slowly recovering from the 8-2 defeat by Manchester United and was part of a run of eight wins and a draw in nine consecutive games.
24 October 1883: George Allison born in County Durham. Bernard Joy said “he lacked the professional’s deep knowledge of the game”. But he still managed to win the FA Cup and the League twice and from 1910 onwards had a continuous and deep engagement with the club up to 1947.
24 October 1896: Arsenal beat Gainsborough Town 6-1 away (Boyd 2, Brock 2, Haywood, Russell). It was the biggest away win thus far for the club, and the club’s biggest in the 19th century.
24 October 1914: With the first battle of Ypres raging Arsenal lost 0-4 away to Derby – their heaviest defeat of the season.
24 October 1922: The Prorogation of Parliament meaning that this was the last day in his life in which Sir Henry Norris had any duties as an elected politician.
24 October 1924: The Daily Mail published the fake “Zinoviev letter” which ordered the British Communist Party to engage in sedition. As a result there was a major shift in power in the general election away from the left.
24 October 1925: Arsenal now fourth, two points behind the leaders, played Sheffield United (bottom of the league). During the match the Arsenal keeper, Baker was injured. With no subs Arsenal reshuffled and lost 4-0 to the bottom team in the league.
24 October 1931: Despite a series of drawn games, and a defeat to Grimsby, Chapman appeared certain that there was nothing wrong with his team and he stuck with the same XI for the game on this day and he was right; Arsenal beat Leicester away 2-1.
24 October 1931: Between this date and 1 January 1932 Jimmy Dunne scored in twelve successive games for Sheffield Utd and became a national phenomenon. Sheffield Utd ended up 15th in the league and only scored 78 all season (the season Arsenal got 127). He became Chapman’s last major signing.
24 October 1936: The East Stand, Highbury opened for the game against Grimsby. It cost £130,000. With the West Stand opened three years earlier, Chapman and Norris’ vision for the stadium neared completion, although sadly both had passed away and did not see their dream fulfilled.
24 October 1949: Len Wills signed as a professional. Arsenal was his one and only club as a professional.
24 October 1956: Tom Whittaker died while manager of Arsenal. In nine seasons as manager he won the league twice and the FA Cup once (exactly the same as Chapman and Allison, his predecessors). .
24 October 1970: Coventry 1 Arsenal 3. League match 14 of the first Double season. Kennedy Radford and Graham scored meaning Kennedy had nine goals in the last seven games.
24 October 1974: Terry Mancini bought from QPR. It was a surprise transfer, with Arsenal reportedly offering far more than it would have taken to prize Mancini out of west London
24 October 1979: Arsenal beat Magdeburg 2-1 in the CWC with 34,575 in the crowd. The team was Jennings, Rice, Nelson, Talbot, O’Leary, Young, Brady, Sunderland, Stapleton, Hollins, Rix.
24 October 1981 in a match that ended Ipswich 2 Arsenal 1, Willie Young bade farewell to the club.
24 October 1997: Glen Helder transferred to NEC Breda after 39 league games for Arsenal. However he didn’t settle at any of his seven subsequent clubs, never managing more than ten games for any of them.
24 October 2004. The 49 match run ended. After years of silence Wenger finally spoke out and accused ref Riley of bias in this match. He was fined £15k, but the silence could never be restored. Someone hit Man U’s Ferguson with a pizza
24 October 2006: Armand Traore made his first appearance as a substitute for Adebayor. Arsenal beat WBA 0-2 away in the League Cup. Aliadière scored both goals as Arsenal started the journey to the final.
24 October 2010: Arsenal beat Manchester City away 3-0 to move up to second. Nasri, Song and Bendtner scored. City’s Boyata was sent off on five minutes.
24 October 2012: Arsenal lost at home to Schalke 04 – first home defeat (and as it turned out, the only defeat) in the group stage this season.
24 October 2015: Arsenal beat Everton 2-1 to go top of the league for the first time in the season. It was the fourth successive win and achieved by goals from Giroud and Koscielny in a two minute spell in the first half.
24 October 2017: After being 1-0 down to Norwich City of the Championship at half time, Eddie Nketiah came on as the second substitute and scored two to take Arsenal through to the 5th round of the League Cup and eventually on to the final where Arsenal were beaten by Manchester City.
24 October 2019: Arsenal beat Vitória Guimarães 3-2 in the Europa League. It was Arsenal’s only win in a run of 12 games. Indeed as late as the 75th minute Arsenal were losing 1-2.
25 October 1919: Arsenal 1 Bradford C 2. League debut for Fred Pagnam, the man who refused to be corrupted by Liverpool’s match fixing exploits. Arsenal then went the next six games unbeaten.
25 October 1924: Debut for Jimmy Brain v Tottenham in front of 51,000 at Highbury. He scored when the ball hit his head and knocked him out. He later became a player and coach at Tottenham but eventually ended up as an Arsenal scout. This was the first post-war game in which Arsenal beat Tottenham.
25 October 1926: Denying the “WM” thesis that Charlie Buchan claimed he and Chapman invented in 1925, the Times looked back on the first year of the new offside rule and concluded it had brought about a “greater looseness in the constructive art of the game,” arguing that “all the fresh formations which were tried last season were unnecessary.” As a result “today every team is far more apprehensive in the matter of defence than used to be the case [with] a tendency to concentrate on defence by half backs and this has meant a weakening in attack.”
25 October 1930: Arsenal 1 West Ham 1 in Arsenal’s first title winning season. It was one of only two games all season at Highbury that kicked off at 3pm, thus giving the lie to the notion of 3pm being the traditional time for Saturday football.
25 October 1941: After a run of seven successive victories in the wartime league Arsenal unexpectedly lost 3-1 away to Watford on this day as wartime duties meant five of the regular team were unavailable. Three players made their debuts, but after this were hardly seen again.
25 October 1952: Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0. The crowd of 63,744 meant that 186,104 paying fans had seen Arsenal’s three home games in October. Of the 8 goals scored in the month Roper got five, Logie two and Lishman one.
25 October 1958: Mike Tiddy transferred to Brighton. It was at Brighton that he became known as a Methodist lay-preacher and apparently because of his role as a preacher, he never played Christmas and Easter fixtures.
25 October 1969: Sammy Nelson debut in a 0-0 draw with Ipswich. He went on to play 245 league games for the club plus 10 appearances as a sub, and scored 10 league goals
25 October 1975: Arsenal beat Middlesbrough 2-1 with just 23,591 in the crowd. The press called the visitors’ approach “organisation” – resulting in “a game so dull that it made potato picking seem like profound rapture.” 18 year old Stapleton however brought much needed relief.
25 October 1977: The third round of the League Cup and a surprising attendance of 40,749 witnessing Arsenal beat Southampton 2-0. Southampton used the 10 man defence tactic which worked until after 75 minutes of tedium Rix floated in a cross, Holmes handled in the penalty area for no reason at all, and Brady took the penalty.
25 October 1980: Pat Rice’s last game in a 1-1 away draw with Sunderland. In his time at Arsenal as a player he won the league and two FA Cups, plus further honours as subsequently he became assistant to Arsene Wenger.
25 October 1999: Bergkamp is reported as saying of Kanu, “The skills he has got, the moves he makes, are something you like to watch and learn from. I watch him in training and it is a joy.”
25 October 2011: Arshavin and Park scored in the 2-1 league cup win over Bolton. Muamba scored for Bolton. Arsenal lost in the next round to Manchester City.
25 October 2014: Arsenal beat Sunderland 0-2 away with two goals from Alexis. It was part of a run of 17 league and cup games between the clubs leading up to Sunderland’s relegation in 2017 in which Sunderland only won one game.
25 October 2016: A surprisingly large crowd of 59,865 saw Arsenal beat Reading in the League Cup 4th round 2-0 with both goals from Oxlade-Chamberlain. Up and coming players in the line up included Jenkinson, Maitland-Niles, Holding, Elneny, Perez, Iwobi and Reine Adelaide. Willock and Zelalem came off the bench.
25 October 2018: Sporting Clube Portugal 0 Arsenal 1 in the Europa League. It was Arsenal’s 11th consecutive win in the League, League Cup and Europa League.
25 October 2020: Arsenal were defeated 0-1 at home by Leicester with a very strange VAR decision ruling out an Arsenal goal for Xhaka’s offside, when he was clearly not interfering with play. It began to be clear that Arsenal were adopting a new approach which involved cutting back on tackling although it was taking time to make it work.
26 October 1863. Representatives of several football clubs met at the Freemasons Tavern, Holborn and formed the Football Association after Ebenezer Morley wrote to Bell’s Life newspaper, suggesting that football should have a set of rules.
26 October 1881: Tim Coleman born in Kettering. He played 196 times for the club before being sold in 1908 to help try and reduce the club’s debts.
26 October 1889: Arsenal played Thorpe (Norwich) and drew 2-2 in FA Cup. Thorpe declined the chance of a replay because of the cost of travelling to Plumstead so Arsenal went through.
26 October 1903. Arsenal won their 8th match in a row from the start of the season beating Leicester Fosse 8-0.
26 October 1914: ”The Arsenal Football Club Limited” was proclaimed for first time on the masthead of the programme for the Football League v The Southern League at Highbury
26 October 1915: Questionnaires requiring people to declare who in the house was liable for military service started to go out under the “Group and Canvas Scheme”. It was Fulham’s success in getting this organised (while most parts of the country struggled with the administration), that brought Henry Norris’ administrative abilities to the attention of the War Office and resulted in his being called up.
26 October 1918: Arsenal suggested that they might be following last year’s form, for after a very promising start they now lost their second match in a row: 1-2 against Crystal Palace. But now the Spanish Flu epidemic took hold and dominated most people’s thoughts, reducing the interest in football.
26 October 1925: Sheffield Utd 8 Manchester City 3. The result was notable not just for the score but because on 4 October Manchester City had beaten Burnley also by 8-3. High scoring continued through the season suggesting the Buchan’s WM tale didn’t really solve the problems of the new offside law. It is also interesting that a year later when the Times reviewed the effect of the offside law they ignored games like this, and claimed the new rule had resulted in more defensive play!
26 October 1929: Harold Peel’s last game (Man U 1 Arsenal 0). He re-signed for Bradford from whence he had come for £1,125 in December 1929
26 October 1932: Alex James’ final international match. He made eight appearances for Scotland and scored four goals and was one of the Scotland team that beat England 5-1 at Wembley in 1928. Meanwhile Arsenal played Islington Corinthians – a team that had been formed earlier in the year to raise money for local charities.
26 October 1938: England beat the Rest of Europe 3-0 at Highbury on a Wednesday afternoon. Early closing of the local shops allowed 40,185 to attend. Hapgood and Copping played. It was the second full match to be shown live on British TV.
26 October 1940: Brentford 3 Arsenal 3 in the wartime league meant that Arsenal’s run of seven wins in eight games (scoring 33 goals en route) was over, and this was the first of three successive draws. But the sequence ended on 23 November with a return to winning ways and an 8-1 away victory over Northampton.
26 October 1946: Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson played his final league match for Arsenal – a 2-1 away defeat to Chelsea. He was subsequently refused a work permit by the UK government.
26 October 1968: Jimmy Robertson made his first appearance of 1968/9 season becoming the 16th Arsenal player to be used that season. No other players were subsequently introduced that year – this being the first time ever Arsenal only used 16 players all season. The feat was repeated in 1970/1.
26 October 1974: Terry Mancini’s debut game.
26 October 1976: Arsenal beat Chelsea 2-1 in the League Cup with 52,285 in attendance, Ross and Stapleton getting the goals. Arsenal were given a boost when Chelsea’s Bason was carried off on the quarter hour with a double shin fracture following a collision with Sammy Nelson. Nelson went to apologise to the Chelsea team after the game. Eddie McCreadie admitted there was nothing to apologise for.
26 October 1997: Arsenal completed a 12 game unbeaten start to the season with a goalless home draw with Villa, 12th league game of the 2nd Double Season The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.
26 October 2002: After losing to Everton and Auxerre, Arsenal suffered their 3rd defeat in a row, 2-1 to Blackburn making this the worst run in 15 years. Edu scored for Arsenal and conceded an own goal.
26 October 2003: Charlton 1 Arsenal 1. The 10th league match of the unbeaten season; Henry scored the goal. The result meant Arsenal had won seven and drawn three, and remained top of the league one point above Chelsea and two above Man U. Arsenal were already the only unbeaten team in the league.
26 October 2005: George Swindin who played 271 league games in goal for Arsenal and had four years as manager, died in Kettering aged 90 after suffering for some years with Alzheimer’s disease. His last football job was as manager of Corby Town.
26 October 2006: The Duke of Edinburgh opened the Emirates Stadium. The Queen was unable to attend and so the team and Arsène Wenger were invited to the Palace on 15 February 2007, for tea, making Arsenal the first ever football club to be invited to the Palace for tea.
26 October 2008: Arsenal beat West Ham, away 0-2 to continue the run of just one defeat in 12 games in all competitions. And the run continued with a 4-4 draw at home to Tottenham in the next game. But after that it was an away game to the anti-football of Stoke, and Arsenal lost. Regular winning ways did not return until the end of December.
26 October 2013: Arsenal beat Crystal Palace away 0-2 with goals from Arteta and Giroud. The result left Arsenal top of the league with 7 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat (that on the first day of the season to Villa). Arsenal were two points ahead of Chelsea and Liverpool, and 8 ahead of Man U who languished in 8th.
27 October 1892: Royal Arsenal 0 Oxford University 4. This game was played after Arsenal had become a professional club and one year before it joined the League, showing that the university side of the game was very much a force to be reckoned with.
27 October 1913: Jock Rutherford signed from Newcastle for £800. He was regularly in the side up to the first world war, and despite being 35 when the league resumed in 1919 he returned to play for Arsenal in the first division – and continued to do so for four years.
27 October 1914 On this day the battleship HMS Audacious was sunk off the north-west of Ireland, by a minefield. Three days later the SS Rohilla, which was requisitioned as a military hospital ship, was wrecked in a storm on rocks off Whitby with the loss of 85 lives.
27 October 1919: Tom Whittaker joined Arsenal from the army. He went on to become a first team player, was the club trainer under Chapman, trainer of the England squad, Arsenal coach and ultimately manager in which role he equalled Chapman and Allison’s trophy record of two league titles and one FA Cup triumph.
27 October 1922: The local paper said that there were serious differences of opinion among the Conservatives in the Fulham East constituency, now that Sir Henry had moved on. But Sir Henry made it clear he had cut all ties with the party and was not interested in helping out – not least because of the way the local media had treated him during the war years.
27 October 1923: Despite having six defeats, four wins and two draws thus far Arsenal continued to attract 30,000+ to every home game. And this also despite Bolton being far from an attractive side, having drawn four of their seven away games scoring eight conceding seven. One might have put money on a 1-1 draw and lost the bet. It was goalless.
27 October 1931: A general election saw an overwhelming victory for the National Government. The Labour Party suffered its greatest defeat, losing 80% of the seats it held at the previous election. The people voted for austerity.
27 October 1933: Gilbert Biggs signed as an amateur player for Arsenal aged 18, having not been registered with any club before that point, and became a professional on 14 December 1933.
27 October 1936: It was announced that Wallis Simpson had divorced her husband, removing the legal barrier to her marrying King Edward VIII. It left the newspapers in a state of turmoil over whether it was permissible for the King to marry a divorced lady.
27 October 1948: Roger Davidson born. He won reserve team honours with Arsenal but only made one league appearance for the club. He later was part of Fulham’s 1971 promotion winning team.
27 October 1951 Arsenal 4 Fulham 3 – the first of three hat tricks in consecutive home games for Doug Lishman. Those three games involved 22 goals and were watched by a total crowd of 161,400.
27 October 1956: Everton 4 Arsenal 0. First match as manager for Jack Crayston. The team were clearly unsure of the new manager’s tactics, as they had just won their previous three games scoring 16 goals in total.
27 October 1965: Brian Clough, one of the most (if not the most) flamboyant managers of all time in the English game, gained his first managerial post in charge of Hartlepools United (they dropped the “s” three years later). When the club chairman (who had appointed Clough) dismissed him because of Clough’s desire for self-publicity, the rest of the board turned on the chairman and dismissed him instead.
27 October 1967: Don Howe became chief coach, 3 months after retiring as a player. He was central to the success in the following years which saw Arsenal’s first European trophy and first Double.
27 October 1973: Gordon Rahere Hoare died. In his football career he had played for 13 clubs and won a gold medal playing for England in the 1912 Olympics.
27 October 1973: With 29,115 present Arsenal were defeated 0-2 by QPR. Even the reserves were sinking fast and were now 19th in the Combination having mustered only nine goals from 11 games. The state of football in general was revealed by the fact that there were only 14 goals in 10 first division games. Alf Ramsey’s England tactics (which many managers copied) were universally blamed.
27 October 1979: Bristol City became the latest club to use the “smothering football” tactic aiming for a goalless draw, but Arsenal found a way through and got a 1-0 away victory with a crowd of 23,029. “Brilliant Brady” shouted the Express in the aftermath of the game ignoring the way City fouled him throughout.
27 October 1981: Arsenal 2 Sheffield Utd 0 (League Cup) Final game for Willie Young (who scored one of the goals; Sunderland got the other). He had played 170 league games for Arsenal, after which he played for Nottingham Forest, Norwich, Brighton and Darlington before becoming a publican, and running a kennelling business.
27 October 1984: A 3-1 defeat to West Ham was the start for Arsenal of a run in which they won just 12 league games out of 30 between this date and May 11 as they slipped from being top of the table and finished in sixth place.
27 October 1986: After a 0-1 defeat to top club Nottm Forest, Arsenal were 15th, with just two wins in the first eight games.
27 October 1999: Arsenal made it two home defeats in a row in the Champions League losing to Fiorentina at Wembley. They had proven the crowds would go to Wembley, but unfortunately the results didn’t follow.
27 October 2001: Sunderland 1 Arsenal 1. League match 10 of the third Double season. Kanu scored. The result left Arsenal third – and they were soon to slip to fifth.
27 October 2004: Almunia and Senderos made their debut in a league cup match which ended Man City 1 Arsenal 1.
27 October 2010: In the 4th round of the league cup (after an encouraging 4-1 away win to Tottenham in round 3), Arsenal beat Bolton away 4-0. Walcott (2), Bendtner and an own goal gave Arsenal victory. Arsenal reached the final scoring 15 in the run.
27 October 2012: Arsenal beat QPR 1-0 to bring slight relief after one win in the last four matches. Arteta scored the goal to take Arsenal up from 9th to 6th in the league.
27 October 2015: Sheffield Wednesday, 9th in the championship, beat Arsenal, second in the Premier League and equal at the top on points with Man City, 3-0 in the league cup, despite Arsenal putting out a strong team including Cech, Flamini, Mertesacker, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Giroud and Iwobi.
27 October 2019: Arsenal drew 2-2 with Crystal Palace at the start of a 10 match run in which Arsenal did not win a single game.
28 October 1893: Arsenal had conceded 15 goals in three consecutive games losing 0-5 at home to Liverpool on this day. It was Arsenal’s worst defeat at home equalled only in very particular circumstances on 14 February 1925 in the game against Huddersfield.
28 October 1899: Arsenal drew 1-1 at home with New Brompton in the 3rd preliminary round of the FA Cup. The game went to four replays before Arsenal finally lost 0-1 in the fifth game of the series played at Gravesend.
28 October 1911: Manchester City 3 Woolwich Arsenal 3, making it five without defeat. Ducat, Randall and Common scored.
28 October 1912: Arsenal reserves lost their 100% record, two of the reserve players were suspended by the FA for playing Sunday football, and the London press retreated on their suggestion that Arsenal was moving to Harringey.
28 October 1916: Edward “Ned” Liddell played his first game for Arsenal, at the time when Arsenal had played eight but had won just one game. When he was in the team from this point on, Arsenal won seven, lost three and drew one, a significant improvement. He ultimately returned to the reserves for the first post-war season, and then in 1920 was appointed manager of Southend taking them from the Southern League into the newly formed Third Division of the Football League.
28 October 1920: Sylvia Pankhurst jailed for six months for sedition, after calling upon workers to loot the London Docks.
28 October 1922, Bob John’s league debut: Arsenal 1 Newcastle 2. He went on to play 421 league games for Arsenal and won the FA Cup and three league titles with the club. See also here.
28 October 1926: There was an Army v Football League game at Highbury: both Buchan and Hulme playing. At this time Highbury was regularly used for representative games, and could draw reasonable crowds – as well as bringing in further income for the club. Highbury seemed to be preferred to Chelsea as a venue because of the ease of transport.
28 October 1933: In 1930/1 and 1932/3 Aston Villa had given Arsenal a strong challenge for the title, each year with Arsenal winning the trophy and Villa coming second. But as Villa slipped back Chapman’s ability to spot a player was proven to be majestic as Dunne scored two and Bastin the other in a 3-2 win over Villa. Having failed to score in his first three outings the new number nine had just got four goals in two.
28 October 1936: Sunderland 2 Arsenal 1 in the Charity Shield with a crowd of 30,000 at Roker Park.
28 October 1939: Clapton Orient 1 Arsenal 6, making it 14 goals in the opening two games of the wartime League South “A” Division, in front of 8000, following the abandonment of the Football League programme after three games. It meant that so far Leslie Compton had scored five and so had his brother. Arsenal went on to win the league.
28 October 1953: Racing Club de Paris 2 Arsenal 4, in the continuing series of matches to raise money for ex-servicemen, initiated by Herbert Chapman.
28 October 1970: A 0-0 away draw was played with Crystal Palace who were challenging Arsenal at the top of the league. The result left Arsenal second, two points behind Leeds at the top with Arsenal en route to the double.
28 October 1972: Arsenal had their third goalless draw of the season, at home to Manchester City in front of 45,536. In an extraordinary moment caught on TV, Marsh sent an overhead kick towards the Arsenal goal, Barnett palmed it against the post, the ball came to Lee who scored but with the ball inches over the line Blockley then got a fist to the ball and the ball came out. And the referee gave… play on.
28 October 1975: Graham Rix debut in a testimonial at Charlton, having been signed by Bertie Mee. However he had to wait until April 1977 to make his first league appearance.
28 October 1978: Arsenal beat Bristol City 3-1 at Ashton Gate. The game was so dominated by Brady that it looked like there was more than one Brady on the pitch. No one was going to say that Arsenal were setting the league alight, but at least we could reflect on three wins and two draws in the last six.
28 October 1992: Cup Match 3 of Arsenal’s Cup Double season. Derby 1 Arsenal 1 in the 3rd round of the League Cup. Campbell scored, just as he had scored the only open play goals in each of two games against Millwall
28 October 1997: First and last appearance for Isaiah Rankin in away game against Tottenham. His career took in 14 clubs with his most games played in a two year spell at Brentford. He finished his career at Hendon in 2014 after 394 games and 73 league goals.
28 October 1998. Remi Garde became the first non-UK/Ireland national to captain Arsenal in Derby 1 Arsenal 2 in the league cup. Vivas scored – the other was an own goal.
28 October 2000: Arsenal 5 Manchester City 0. It was the fourth of five consecutive wins. Cole, Bergkamp, Wiltord and Henry (2) got the goals. It was also the second of five games in the season in which Arsenal scored five or more in the league.
28 October 2003: Debut for Cesc Fabregas making him at the time Arsenal’s youngest player aged 16 years 177 days. The game ended 1-1 and Arsenal then beat Rotherham in the league cup 9-8 on penalties. Wiltord took the first (and missed) and the winning kick at the end.
28 October 2007: Arsenal drew 1-1 with Liverpool after seven straight league wins. Gerrard gave Liverpool the lead on seven minutes and Fabregas equalised on 80 minutes. In all Arsenal went 21 games undefeated from the start of the season.
28 October 2008: Freddie Ljungberg signed for Seattle Sounders after an unhappy time at WHU for whom he played 25 games. He retired in 2012, but returned in 2014 to play for Mumbai City before starting a coaching career at Arsenal.
28 October 2009: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 1, in the League Cup in a run of 13 games undefeated
28 October 2009: Arsenal reserves beat Liverpool 2-1 in the league cup. Merida and Bendtner got the goals.
28 October 2017: Arsenal beat Swansea City 2-1 to make it just one defeat in the last 12 games. Kolasinac and Ramsey scored. However the attendance stayed under 60,000 as it did all season.
28 October 2018: Crystal Palace 2 Arsenal 2. The result meant that Arsenal’s run of 12 consecutive wins in all competitions had come to an end.
28 October 2024: Arsenal v Sheffield Utd; Saka was captain for the first time. Nketiah scored three becoming the first Englishman to get three for since Theo Walcott in 2015. Vieira and Tomiyasu scored to become the first Asian player to score for Arsenal in the PL. The result extended their longest unbeaten start to a league campaign to ten games.
29 October 1892: Royal Arsenal almost emulated their FA cup record victory with a 10-1 defeat of City Ramblers. Booth, Elliott and Henderson all got hat tricks, with the other goal coming from George Alexander Davie.
29 October 1908: Alex Wilson born in Lancashire. He played for Overton Athletic and Greenock Morton winning promotion to the first division with them in 1929. He was signed by Chapman in May 1933.
29 October 1911: Bernard Joy born. He played university football and then went on to play for the amateur side Casuals and won the prestigious FA Amateur Cup in 1936 plus ten caps for England amateurs as well as playing for Arsenal.
29 October 1917: Arsenal chairman, Henry Norris, became the Director of the South-East Recruiting Region as well as being the military Deputy Director of recruiting in the region. This was part of the unification of a military and civilian roles as conscription was under the control of the Secretary of State for National Service in Parliament.
29 October 1921: Arsenal lost 1-3 at home to Huddersfield Town, making it four defeats in a row.
29 October 1923: Following allegations that Sir Henry Norris had allowed illegal payments to be made to the player Harry White, much of the press ran anti-Norris stories. But Athletic News was more measured, and ex-ref Arthur Bourke who reported on Arsenal for the Islington Gazette described Sir Henry as a “gallant gentleman and sportsman.” He did however point out that Sir Henry had brought much of this on himself by saying, “unkind things of the Press”.
29 October 1924: A general election was held, dominated by the fake Zinoviev Letter published by the Daily Mail, which suggested the left were forcibly about to attempt an overthrow of the state. Islington East which included Highbury moved from being a Liberal seat to that for the Conservatives.
29 October 1925: The long running court case between Arsenal’s Jock Rutherford and Turf Publishers ended with the court ruling that Turf had used Rutherford’s name and there was no evidence that they had had his permission. But despite this ruling the FA would not release Rutherford to play again until they had held their own enquiry!
29 October 1932: Arsenal 8 Leicester 2, continuing a run in which they had won 9, drawn 2 and lost 1 in the league. Hulme 3, Bastin 2, Coleman 2, Jack got the goals in front of 36714 and for the first time in the season hit the top of the league.
29 October 1965: Jimmy Magill transferred to Brighton after playing 116 games for Arsenal. He also played 26 times for N Ireland. In 1969 he moved to Denmark and had a successful career as a manager before stepping down for the last time in 1996.
29 October 1969: Sporting Lisbon 0 Arsenal 0 with a crowd of 32000 in attendance for this the Fairs Cup.
29 October 1973: Robert Pirès birthday. Robert had a Portuguese father and Spanish mother and initially found learning both French and English difficult. After he had left Arsenal to play for Villareal he did an interview in fluent Spanish and the UK journalists, not realising Spanish was his native tongue berated him for not having bothered to learn English properly. Among many other achievements he scored a hat trick in the first game of the “49”.
29 October 1977: Trevor Ross played his last game for Arsenal. His transfer to Everton took several weeks to complete, and during that period he had a major falling out with Terry Neill.
29 October 1983: Tony Woodcock scored five against Villa by the 48th minute. Final score 6-2. In all he scored eight in three consecutive matches.
29 October 1994: Everton 1 Arsenal 1. This was the start of an 18 match sequence in which Arsenal scored 16 goals, winning just four games. The problem with scoring was reflected in the end of season stats: Wright got 18, Hartson 7 and no one else more than four.
29 October 2005: A 1-1 draw with Tottenham was the only game in a run of 10 which Arsenal did not win in all competitions.
29 October 2008: Arsenal 4 Tottenham 4. Bentley scored against his old club – perhaps the highpoint of his career. Silvestre, Gallas, Adebayor, van Persie scored the goals for Arsenal.
29 October 2011. Chelsea 3 Arsenal 5. Van Persie scored three, to make it three wins in a row for Arsenal in a run that continued for eight games until 10 December and gave us just one defeat in 14 games in all competitions. It also meant we had scored 14 goals in the last four games!
29 October 2016: Arsenal beat Sunderland 4-1 away, with 2 each from Sanchez and Giroud. This made it 14 games unbeaten. Sunderland were relegated at the end of the season and again the next season to take them down to League One.
29 October 2019: Having beaten the two strong rivals in the Europa League by three and four goals, Arsenal almost lost to easily the weakest team in the group, ultimately beating Vitoria de Guimaraes 3-2.
29 October 2020: Arsenal beat Dundalk in the Europa League 3-0 and Pepe won goal of the month for his contribution.
30 October 1897: Woolwich Arsenal beat St Albans 9-0 in FA Cup. This time there was only one hat trick (Hunt) with the other goals coming from Brock, Haywood, Steven, McGeoch, Davis, and Farrell. The crowd was just 3,000.
30 October 1909: Man U 1 Arsenal 0; commentaries in the press focussed on the dangers of the pitch in terms of the health of players and spectators (it was placed beside a chemicals factory). It was the debut for Duncan McDonald. Man U moved to Old Trafford in 1910. See also here.
30 October 1915: Arsenal lost 1-3 to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. In the Chelsea team, and rather strangely playing midfield, was the ex-Arsenal player Charles Buchan, who would of course one day return to the fold. 12,500 were present for this war time league match.
30 October 1920: Debut of Dr James Paterson: Arsenal 2 Derby 0. This was the 12th league match of the season, but only Arsenal’s 3rd win. Dr Paterson achieved the rank of major in the war and was awarded the Military Cross. He joined Arsenal from Rangers (with whom he had won the league) sharing house with his brother in law, who was Arsenal’s club doctor. His arrival was warmly welcomed by the Islington Gazette saying it was exactly what Arsenal needed (which contrasts with what manager Knighton later said in his autobiography, writing that he “was reduced to playing the brother in law of the physio” because Henry Norris wouldn’t let him bring any players in.
30 October 1937: Arsenal 1 Middlesbrough 2 – a result that meant Arsenal had won only two of the last ten league games, despite winning the first three scoring 12 conceding two. As a result of the run, this game marked the final appearance of Ray Bowden and Bobby Davidson (see below). Also it was the final game for Herbie Roberts who broke his leg in this game. Despite two more games after this without a win, Arsenal recovered and went on to win the league.
30 October 1937: Ray Bowden’s final appearance. An ankle injury caused him to be sold to Second Division Newcastle United for £5,000. In all he played 138 matches for the Gunners, scoring 48 goals. Later playing for Newcastle he scored a hat-trick against Swansea on the day before England declared war on Germany in 1939.
30 October 1937: Bobby Davidson’s last appearance. The high point of his career at Arsenal was four goals in the 5-1 victory over Portsmouth in December 1936. He was transferred to Coventry City in exchange for Leslie Jones.
30 October 1937: Herbie Roberts last appearance, in a game in which he broke his leg. In all he made 335 starts for Arsenal including 297 in the league, and scored four league goals with one more in the FA Cup. But above all he is remembered as the centre half at the heart of Chapman’s revised WM system in 1925.
30 October 1941: Bob Wilson born. He went to Loughborough College (now university) to train as a teacher, played a few reserve games for Wolverhampton and made his début for Arsenal while still having the status of an amateur in 1963. It is said that the £6000 we paid for him was the first transfer fee paid for an amateur.
30 October 1971: Arsenal 2 Ipswich 1 in front of 39,065. The “professional foul” was the central attraction combined with a “no one shall pass” attitude from Ipswich which the ref seemed to find perfectly acceptable no matter what it entailed. Radford and George finally beat the Ipswich 10 man ruck.
30 October 1979: Brighton 0 Arsenal 0 (League cup round 4). It was the sixth goalless draw of the season – and there were still over six months to go!
30 October 1982: Arsenal 0 Birmingham 0, part of a run of just one win in seven. Danny O’Shea’s first game. He was born in Newington, came through the youth system at Arsenal and was captain of the youth team. The crowd was 20,699. By the end of the season crowds were down to 16,000.
30 October 1993: Arsenal 0 Norwich 0 – the fourth consecutive goalless draw. Arsenal only scored more than one goal in a league game at Highbury this season in six games.
30 October 1995: In 15 games from this date through to 3 February Arsenal gained just five wins – it was a major reason why Rioch had to go and a new manager had to be found.
30 October 2009: Possibly having been encouraged by Tottenham fans, or possibly just through an unwillingness to do proper research, The Guardian reprinted the story about Arsenal gaining promotion in 1919 through some corrupt means. As always there was no evidence presented to back up the case, and no serious presentation of the mass of evidence to the contrary. The series “100 years in the top division” gives a succinct review of what happened.
30 October 2012: Reading 5 Arsenal 7 in league cup. Arsenal went 4-0 down before fighting back to become the first team ever to score 6+ in consecutive league cup games. The goalscorers in order were Walcott, Giroud, Koscielny, Walcott, Chamakh, Walcott, Chamakh
30 October 2019: In one of the most enjoyable games of recent years (apart from those that won a trophy) Arsenal drew 5-5 away with Liverpool in the League Cup. Liverpool won on penalties, 5-4. Arsenal’s goals during the game came from Torreira, Martinelli (2), Maitland-Niles and Willock. Willock won the goal of the month award for his effort.
30 October 2021: Arsenal beat Leicester 0-2 away to make it nine games without defeat following the much-publicsed opening three league games which all ended in defeat. Of the nine games seven were wins, although the media did not seem to notice. Having been bottom after three games Arsenal were now sixth.
30 October 2022: Arsenal paid tribute to Pablo Mari who had been stabbed in Italy on 27 October before the game with Nottingham Forest. Reiss Nelson came on as a sub and scored twice, while Martinelli, Partey and Ødegaard also scored. Xhaka was announced as Arsenal’s Player of the Month for October.
31 October 1898: Arsenal 5 Brighton United 2 in the third and final season of the United League. Although Brighton Utd faded from history, they are better commemorated than many teams that have passed away, as one of their directors was a professional photographer. They also played in the Southern League.
31 October 1914: Arsenal drew 1-1 against Lincoln in front of 10,000 (compared with 15,000 last season. Newspaper reports of the day suggested there was crowd trouble, with the police moving into the terraces.
31 October 1918: The armistice with Turkey was declared as the Allies met at Versailles to discuss the conditions that would be imposed on Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war had come to an end.
31 October 1921: Arsenal won their second round match in the London FA Challenge Cup, away to QPR of Division III (South) 2-0 in front of 5000 fans. Also on this day there was a censure motion on the government claiming the government, elected as Unionists were breaking the union up by splitting Ireland into two. The government won, which was fortunate as the Irish Treaty Conference had opened on 11 October.
31 October 1925: So far Chapman’s first season at Arsenal had resulted among other things in a 7-0 defeat and victories of 4-0, 5-0, and 4-0, and on this day Arsenal beat Everton 4-1. See also here.
31 October 1932: Gillespie Road tube station became Arsenal (Highbury Hill). The Highbury Hill element of the name was later dropped as the station adopted its long term name of Arsenal. (see “Chapman’s achievements“). Many sources wrongly quote this as happening in November 1932.
31 October 1932: Racing Club de Paris 2 Arsenal 5 in the series of games to mark Armistice Day. Four goals from Cliff Bastin.
31 October 1942: Crystal Palace 1 Arsenal 7, in the wartime Football League South. Lewis scored five and Dennis Compton two. Reg Lewis in fact ended the league season playing 22 and scoring 33. The result also meant that of the first 10 games of the season they had won 8, drawn 1 and lost 1.
31 October 1970: Arsenal 2 Derby 0. Goals from Kelly and Radford. League match 15 of the first Double season in front of 43,013. It was one of four successive games in which Radford scored.
31 October 1981: Chris Whyte’s last game: a 1-0 home win against Coventry City; he moved to Nottingham Forest for £50,000 but injuries dogged the rest of his career
31 October 1984: Arsenal lost 2-3 to Oxford Utd in the Milk Cup 3rd round. Rix and Allinson scored in front of 14,393. It was sandwiched between league defeats to West Ham and Man U.
31 October 1998: Beating Coventry away 1-0 Arsenal started a run in which they scored just three goals in six games with all three scored by Anelka. The sequence yielded two wins, three draws and one defeat. Up to this point they had been unbeaten in 16 games since the start of the season.
31 October 2000, George Armstrong suffered a brain haemorrhage while running a training session. He did not recover and tragically died 1 November aged just 56.
31 October 2007: A 3-1 away win in the League Cup against Sheffield United kept Arsenal’s record of being unbeaten in all competitions running. In fact it went on for 21 League, League Cup and Champions League games before ending on 27 November in a match against Seville.
31 October 2009: Arsenal made it five league wins and a draw in the last six by beating Tottenham 3-0 at home with a record Emirates crowd (at the time) of 60,103. Van Persie (2) and Fabregas got the goals.
31 October 2015: A 3-0 victory over Swansea City in the league helped restore positive feelings which had been a little dented by a 3-0 away defeat to Sheffield Wednesday in the league cup in midweek. But with Arsenal having beaten Bayern just under two weeks before there were positive feelings before the next game: Bayern away. Koscielny, Giroud and Campbell got the goals.
Month by month guide:
- And for contemporary events: Untold Arsenal
The anniversaries file aims to be the biggest database of Arsenal events ever produced. However in trying to build it I always openly acknowledge that some of the details recorded here will be wrong, and facts will be inaccurate and will need correcting, not least because information may be taken from inaccurate sources, or (in my specialist way) I may have made copying and typing errors. So far over 250 people have contributed to the articles that make up the anniversary files, and if you can help us improve the data, please do either comment on an article (and I’ll correct the file itself), or write a new article for us. A correction and a citation of sources would be good however, rather than just saying “you’re wrong”. A special mention as always must go to Andy Kelly and Mark Andrews, who helped with the early development of this site. But whether you can add original research or corrections with the right data, or articles on people we have not yet covered, that will be very welcome indeed.
The dates in this file are being added to all the time, and come from a whole variety of sources including the internet and a variety of printed volumes. If you notice an error please write to Tony@schools.co.uk – ideally with a correction and a note of your source.
I would particularly like to mention Richard Lerman and David Brown, and their wonderful (but now tragically out of print) volume “The Gunners: Day to Day Life at Highbury”, which is a mine of information. Also to “Arsenal On This Day” by Paul Donnelley (Pitch Publishing). Also where would any of us be without “Arsenal a complete record” by Fred Ollier (Breedon Books), and “Arsenal the football facts” by Dean Hayes (John Blake). If I have missed another sourcebook, please do let me know and I will correct this at once.
If you know of any anniversary dates not yet listed, please do write in and add them. Not only are new dates being added at the rate of about half a dozen a day, but so are links being added to articles on this site. It is intended to produce a book based on this site in due course – but the date gets put back as I find more and more info.