This is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society.
Here are the stories from this day in history…
24 December 1894: New Brompton 5 Arsenal 0. Despite playing 30 league games in the season, Arsenal also played 31 friendly games. New Brompton played in Gillingham, and with the grounds just 28 miles apart this was something of a local derby between two Kent teams. The crowd was 5,000, similar to many league game crowds at the time.
24 December 1904. A 1-0 win over Sheffield U gave Arsenal three wins in a row in the first division for the first time, with the club playing five games in seven days. The result left Arsenal in a very satisfactory 9th position in the league.
24 December 1927: Cliff Bastin’s first ever game, Exeter Reserves v Bath City in the Southern League. He went on to play 17 times for Exeter’s first team in 1928/9 before moving on to Arsenal.
24 December 1932: Arsenal 9 Sheffield Wed 2. This meant that thus far in the season Arsenal had in different games scored 6, 7, 8 and 9 goals. (Lambert scored 5 – which turned out to be his final hatrick (plus 2!) It was his 12th hat trick – more than any other player in the club’s history).
24 December 1938: John Barnwell born. After playing as an amateur for Bishop Auckland he moved to Arsenal in 1955 turned pro in 1956 and started playing for the first team in the match against Sunderland on 13 April 1957.
24 December 1949: Arsenal 5 Sunderland 0. Amazingly it was Arsenal’s only league win in a run of nine games. Despite this poor run Arsenal ended the year in fourth position, but more importantly went on to win the FA Cup.
24 December 1955: Chelsea 2 Arsenal 0. This was the last league game Arsenal played on Christmas eve. 43,022 turned up.
24 December 1958: Stan Charlton sold back to Leyton O from whence he had come. It was Arsenal’s only ever transfer on Xmas Eve! He became the captain and was still there when they made their one and only appearance in the first division. Orient’s first match that season was at home to Arsenal and the editor of the Anniversary files was there to see it with his dad.
The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal
Arsenal in January 1919: rioting in the streets and the question of promotion
Yesterday’s anniversaries:
“We so very rarely score two in a match…” You’ll never guess who was in the squad!
Special feature:
Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.
What’s on the Arsenal History Society site
An index to the various series that contain over 1,700 articles on this site concerning the history of Arsenal appears on our home page. Our current series is “Henry Norris at the Arsenal”
