Arsenal’s worst home league defeat under Wenger. But look at what then happened.

This is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day  files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society.

Our headline is taken from this day in 2001


Special feature:

Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.

Below are the Anniversaries from  November 4.

 


4 November 1893: FA Cup 2nd prelim round: Arsenal beat Clapton 6-2 in front of 2,500.  The club finally went out of the cup in the 1st round proper.

4 November 1901: Arsenal lost 0-5 to Tottenham in London League Premier Division in front of 3833 – not a bad crowd considering that the game was played on a working day in the afternoon.

4 November 1921: John Hardy Robson signed from Innerleithen (or Vale of Leithen according to some sources) as the third choice keeper.  He went on to play 86 league games for Arsenal before moving in 1926 to Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic.

4 November 1922: Henry White’s final game (a 0-1 away defeat to Everton).  He had two seasons at Blackpool (70 games, 18 goals), one at Fulham, then it was Walsall, Nelson, Walsall again, Stafford Rangers, and finally the short lived Thames Association

4 November 1931: Bill Dodgin born in County Durham, and was himself the son of a footballer (Bill Dodgin senior – 1909 to 1999) who played for Huddersfield Town, Lincoln, Charlton, Bristol Rovers, Clapton Orient and Southampton.

4 November 1937: Leslie Jones signed from Coventry.  Tottenham had made an offer of £7,000 for him, but were outbid by Arsenal.  He played his first game just two days later in the 2-1 defeat to Grimsby – so just like Reg Cumner in the following season, he scored on his debut.

4 November 1937: Bobby Davidson signed for Coventry.  He was transferred to Coventry City in exchange for Leslie Jones. We may wonder why such a promising player was transferred so readily: the answer may be in his personality as he was constantly in trouble with refs.  

4 November 1949: Jim Fotheringham joined as an amateur.  Arsenal was his first club.  He went on to play 87 games for Arsenal before moving onto Sunderland.

4 November 1955: Stan Charlton and Vic Groves signed from Leyton Orient for a combined fee of £30,000.

4 November 1972: Final appearance for George Graham; Arsenal 0 Coventry 2.  Graham then moved on to Man U.  He had made 219 league starts for Arsenal and scored 59 league goals across seven seasons.

4 November 1989: David O’Leary beat George Armstrong’s appearance record.  In the end he made 523 league starts and won the league twice, the FA Cup twice, and the League Cup twice.

4 November 1998: Dynamo Kyiv 3 Arsenal 1 in the Champions League during one of the seasons when Wembley was used as an experiment.  It left Arsenal with just one win in the group.

4 November 2000: Middlesbrough 0 Arsenal 1 made it five league wins in a row, Henry scoring a penalty.  In fact Henry scored in four of the five games.

4 November 2001: Arsenal went four down in 20 minutes in biggest home league defeat of Arsène Wenger years which ended  Arsenal 2 Charlton 4.  Yet despite the catastrophe this was nonetheless League match 11 of the third Double season.

4 November 2009: Arsenal beat AZ 4-1 on way to winning their Champions League group.

4 November 2011: Robin Van Persie was Barclays player of the month for October.  He scored eight goals in the three wins and one defeat during the month.

4 November 2015: Bayern Munich 5 Arsenal 1 meant that Arsenal had three defeats and one win in four in the Champions League, and seemingly the end of the run of consecutive qualifications to the group stages.


 

Elsewhere on this day: 

In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President.  Words fail me.  His words included, “When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.”

 

Yesterday’s anniversaries:

3 wins in the first 13 games of the season. But who was the Arsenal manager?


 

The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal

September 1917: Arsenal’s form definitely on the up.

A full index of the various series of articles on this site appears on the home page.

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