Anniversaries 11: November

Note: The anniversary file pages have over time been split and split again as they have grown.  Please use the index at the end to find the month you want.  Sources are also at the end.

This file’s last major update 3 December 2020


 

November 1912 (exact day unknown).  Henry Norris, having explored various sites in North London, took the decision to move Arsenal from Plumstead to Highbury and negotiated a lease of the playing fields of a religious foundation near Highbury Hill station.

1 November 1890: Royal Arsenal 2 South Shore 2.  South Shore FC competed in the FA Cup during the 1880s and 1890s before merging into Blackpool FC in 1899.

1 November 1913: Jock Rutherford’s league debut.  However at the start of the season he fell into dispute with Newcastle over wages and was sold to Woolwich Arsenal for £800 – a great coup for Arsenal, and undoubtedly aided by the fact that the club had attracted huge publicity by just moving into its new Gillespie Road ground.

1 November 1913: Arsenal lost Angus McKinnon to injury and he did not come back as a regular player until well into the new year.  Immediately Arsenal’s results went into decline, winning just two of the next six.

1 November 1914: The war had reached the eastern Pacific where a Royal Navy squadron was defeated by superior German forces.  It was the first British naval defeat of the war, losing two ships.

1 November 1919: Voting for local councils, which had been postponed since 1915 due to the war now took place.  Sir Henry Norris stood down in Fulham having become the longest serving London mayor of all time (a record that still holds). But with him gone the Conservative vote collapsed, as Labour went from zero to 24 councillors becoming the main party in the Borough.  

1 November 1930: For the Huddersfield v Arsenal game goalkeeper Keyser was dropped after playing the opening 12 games of the season. Suspicions about his regular desire to fly back to the Netherlands and suggestions that he was involved in smuggling were raised and his subsequent life also raises such issues.   Bill Harper returned to Arsenal and took over in goal.

1 November 1936: Racing Club de Paris 0 Arsenal 5.  One of a series of matches initiated by Herbert Chapman and the president of Racing taking place as close to Armistice Day as possible each year.  The idea for the game may have emerged after Chapman and others heard about the Coupe des Nations which was held in 1930 – and played between the champions of ten countries.

1 November 1941: Arsenal beat Aldershot 3-2 to keep them top of the wartime London League.  Reg Lewis played centre forward and despite scoring 42 goals in 23 games in the season failed on this occasion to score against 3rd Division (South) opposition.

1 November 1948: Racing Club de Paris 3 Arsenal 3.  This year Bernard Levy added a little extra spice to the fixture by putting up a cup which would be awarded to either team if it won three of the contests in a row.

1 November 1949: Racing Club de Paris 1 Arsenal 2.  

1 November 1955: John Matthews born.  He joined Arsenal as an apprentice in 1971 turning professional in 1973.  He made his league début in the opening match of the 1974/5 season – a 1-0 away win against Leicester.

1 November 1960: Antwerp United 2 Arsenal 2.  The Antwerp team also known as Antwerp Entente played exhibition games and was formed by the best players of the 3 big teams in Antwerp, playing in the stadium of Antwerp FC.

1 November 1969: Crystal Palace 1 Arsenal 5.  Arsenal only scored more than three goals twice in the league this season (the second being the following saturday 4-0 v Derby) and ended up 12th – the worst since 1966 when the club finished 14th.

1 November 1975: Newcastle United 2 Arsenal 0, with 32,824 at St James Pk.   Arsenal had yet to record consecutive wins in the League and only one player stood out on the Arsenal team: Liam Brady, who looked as if he might as well have been playing on his own.  Arsenal hardly had a shot on target.

1 November 1982: Barnet 2 Arsenal 4, Richie Powling Testimonial.  He had made 50 league starts for Arsenal and appeared five times as a sub between 1973 and 1978.

1 November 1983: Tony Adams first team debut in a testimonial v Chelsea.  He had signed as a schoolboy in 1980.

1 November 1987 Following a match between Rangers and Celtic on 17 October Glasgow’s public prosecutor, on this day, charged four players with behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace.  One was found not guilty, one not proven, and two were found guilty and fined.

1 November 1996: David Hillier transferred to Portsmouth for £250,000.  He started 82 league games for Arsenal and came on 22 times as a sub.

1 November 1997: Derby 3 Arsenal 0, Wright missed a penalty, as Arsenal slipped to their second defeat of the season.  13th league game of the 2nd Double Season   The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.

1 November 2000: George Armstrong died after suffering a brain haemorrhage during a training session.  He made 621 first team appearances, coached the Kuwait national side, and was then appointed Arsenal reserve coach by George Graham.

1 November 2000: Lee Conoville’s first and last appearance, against Ipswich Town.  After a loan spell with Northampton he moved to Torquay where he played 112 league games, later playing for Notts County.

1 November 2003: Leeds 1 Arsenal 4.  The 11th league match of the Unbeaten season.  Henry got two, Pires one and Gilberto Silva finished it off on 50 minutes. The win was welcome as in the previous three games Arsenal had gone to penalties to beat Rotherham 9-8 in the League Cup,drawn 1-1 away with Charlton and lost 2-1 away to Dynamo Kiev.  No one even dreamed of going unbeaten in the league all season.

1 November 2010: Jack Wilshere signed a new “long-term” deal with Arsenal.  Jack came up through the youth academy and made his first team debut in 2008, becoming Arsenal’s youngest ever league debutant at the age of 16 years, 256 days

1 November 2014: Arsenal 3 Burnley 0.  Two goals from Alexis and one from Calum Chambers.  The win took Arsenal to sixth in the league, but 13 points behind Chelsea at the top of the table.  

1 November 2016: Arsenal played away to Ludogorets Razgrad in the Champions League, the home team taking a shock 2–0 lead early on, Arsenal eventually came back with goals through Granit Xhaka, Olivier Giroud and a late Mesut Özil goal to win 3–2 and qualify for the knockout stages.

2 November 1889: Royal Arsenal 4 Unity 1 (London Senior Cup).  This match was the start of Royal Arsenal’s journey to the LSC cup final (which was lost against Old Westminsters).  Meanwhile on the same day…

2 November 1889: Arsenal reserves beat Lewisham 9-1 on their way to Arsenal’s first ever silverware.

2 November 1895: W R Elcoat (Arsenal’s second manager) had a letter published in Los Angeles Sporting Life, as chairman of the Cleveland and South Durham Baseball Association.

2 November 1907: Arsenal 5 Sheffield U 1 (division 1) although some sources wrongly have the Woolwich Arsenal v Chelsea match on this day.  It was the fifth league game in a row without defeat for Arsenal.

2 November 1918: Arsenal returned to winning ways with a 1-0 home win against QPR.  6000 were present, in the wartime league.  Although not the same level of interest as against Tottenham and Chelsea in recent weeks it was double the crowd for the last QPR game.  Meanwhile however it became clear that in the last week 2,200 deaths from flu were recorded from flu in London alone. 

2 November 1924:  The Sunday Express became the first newspaper in the world to publish a crossword, complete with instructions on what one had to do.  At least for Arsenal fans it might have proved a diversion from the football: Arsenal had won just one of the last five games.

2 November 1928: Ray Daniel born.  He started at his local club Swansea Town and in 1946, as clubs prepared for the first post-war championship he was signed by Arsenal.   His elder brother had also played for Arsenal but died in the second world war aged 18.

2 November 1935: The result Brentford 2 Arsenal 1 left the three times consecutive champions with just five wins in the first 15 games.  It was Arsenal’s first ever game in the league against Brentford, last season’s champions of division 2.  They had only played each other in the 1902 preliminary rounds of the FA Cup.  It was Ray Parkin’s last game.

2 November 1936: The BBC launched the world’s first regular television service.

2 November 1946: Bernard Joy played his last league game; it ended Arsenal 2 Sheffield Utd 3.  It was Arsenal’s eighth defeat in 13 league games.

2 November 1974: Arsenal 0 Wolverhampton Wanderers 0, with a crowd of 27,572. Eddy Kelly asked for a transfer, Jimmy Rimmer asked for an assurance that Shilton wasn’t going to be signed, and Arsenal managed to avoid defeat for two matches running for the first time since getting a couple of draws in September.

2 November 1977: Trevor Ross sold to Everton for £170,000.  Of his last match (a reserve game) Ross claimed Terry Neill said, “You, Off. You don’t want to play for this club so get off.”  His comment thereafter was, “So me being me and the attitude I had took off my shirt and threw it in his face.”

2 November 1977: Alan Sunderland transferred to Arsenal for £220,000.  He made 23 appearances in the rest of the season and scored four goals, playing alongside Brady, Macdonald, Stapleton and Rix.

2 November 1983: Martin Hayes turned pro having joined Arsenal as an apprentice in 1982 playing centre forward and left wing.

2 November 1984: Man U 4 Arsenal 2 as Arsenal’s run at the top of the league ended and instead started a run of just two wins in six.   Allinson and Woodcock scored the goals.

2 November 1991: Arsenal 0 West Ham Utd 1.  Michael Thomas’ last game.  It started a run of one win in five.

2 November 1996: Wimbledon 2 Arsenal 2 .  A run of 10 games unbeaten left Arsenal top of the league.  Wright and Merson got the goals.  Yet this season, Arsenal failed to beat Wimbledon home or away, losing the home game 0-1 in February.

2 November 2005: Arsenal beat Birmingham 1-0 in the League in which they won 13, drew 2 and lost just one match in 16 games in all competitions.

2 November 2010: Benik Afobe went on loan to Huddersfield Town where he played 28 games and scored five goals before moving on to Reading.

2 November 2013: Goals from Ramsey and Cazorla gave Arsenal a 2-0 win in the league over Liverpool to make it nine league games without defeat since the highly questionable 1-3 defeat to Aston Villa at home on the opening day of the season.

2 November 2017: Arsenal drew 0-0 with Red Star Belgrade at home in the Europa League having won the previous three games.  Willock and Nelson both featured in the starting line up.  With the club already having lost to Stoke and Watford there were mumblings about Arsenal’s inability to beat smaller sides.

2 November 2019: Arsenal drew 1-1 with Wolverhampton.  It was the third game in a nine match run in which Arsenal did not win a single match in any competition (and that is not including a 1-1 draw in an FL Trophy game).

3 November 1888: Royal Arsenal 3 Phoenix 0; the first game of the season in the London Senior Cup.  Arsenal went on to the semi-final where they were beaten by Clapton.

3 November 1914: A German naval raid took place on Yarmouth.

3 November 1918: Austria-Hungary formally surrendered and newspapers started to report that Bavaria was trying to go it alone and sue for peace without the rest of Germany.  The German Parliament announced it was pushing through a Bill to remove Kaiser Wilhelm from power.

3 November 1919: In what had been Sir Henry Norris’ base, the first local elections since the war Labour moved from zero to 24 councillors overnight.  The Municipal Reform Party (Conservatives) dropped to  15, and thus lost control of the council for the first time.  Sir Henry Norris who had been mayor of Fulham for longer than any other London mayor before or since, had relinquished his seat and did not stand.

3 November 1928: Cardiff 1 Arsenal 1.  In Chapman’s 4th season Arsenal briefly flirted with relegation with just three wins in the first 13 league games of the season.

3 November 1945: Arsenal’s final season in the wartime Football League South was a sorry affair with the club ending up 11th.  On this day Arsenal lost 2-5 to Fulham having lost 2-6 to Charlton the week before.  Allison, who had worked virtually on his own running the club from a room at White Hart Lane was reported to be utterly exhausted.

3 November 1962: Blackburn 5 Arsenal 5.  Having beaten Wolverhampton 5-4 the previous week, Arsenal nearly repeated the feat of scoring five.  Across the two games five of the goals were scored by Joe Baker, three by Eastham and two by Skirton.

3 November 1963: Ian Wright born in Woolwich.  He started out with Greenwich Borough and then having been spotted was invited to have a trial at Crystal Palace who signed him in August 1985, when he was 21 – a late start in professionalism for a player.

3 November 1971:  Arsenal 3 Grasshoppers 0 in the European Cup, giving Arsenal a 5-0 win on aggregate

3 November 1971: While Arsenal were going through against Grasshoppers, (see above) Rangers in Scotland played Sporting Lisbon in the CWC and went through on away goals – except the referee lost count and ordered extra time and then penalties.  There was some rioting.

3 November 1981: Arsenal were knocked out in the second round of the Uefa Cup by Winterslag of Belgium.

3 November 1993: Standard Liège 0 Arsenal 7 in Cup Winners Cup.  Arsenal won 10-0 overall, the highest aggregate ever achieved by Arsenal.  Smith, Selley, Adams,, Campbell (2), Merson and McGoldrick got the goals

3 November 2002: After four successive 2-1 defeats (two in the League, two in the Champions League) Arsenal finally won a match beating Fulham 0-1 away.  Those four defeats had come after eight consecutive wins.

3 November 2007: The largest crowd thus far at the Emirates saw Arsenal v Man U (60,338).  It was televised live and ended 2-2.  Fàbregas and Gallas got the goals.

3 November 2010: Having beaten Shakhtar Donetsk 5-1 at the Emirates, Arsenal then proceeded to lose 2-1 in the return game.  Walcott scored for Arsenal and Eduardo got one of the Shakhtar goals.

3 November 2012: Manchester United 2 Arsenal 1. The result meant Arsenal had lost three of the last five, although they had just beaten Reading in the league cup 7-5.

3 November 2014: Francis Coquelin was loaned to Charlton in order for him to get some games (having thus far been a regular on the Arsenal bench).  He was recalled on 12 December after five games at Charlton.

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.  Cooper got two goals and so was retained at centre forward for the next game.

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 1916:  Arsenal beat Watford away 4-2 in front of 2500 in the wartime league.  It was the first time in the season Arsenal had won successive matches and only their third win of the season after playing ten games.  It was also the first time they had scored four goals in a match this season.

4 November 1919: The government produced a policy of two Home Rule parliaments in Ireland – one in Dublin and one in Belfast – with a Council of Ireland to provide a framework for possible unity.  The uprising however continued.

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.  See also here.

4 November 1922: Howard Carter the archaeologist found the entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. 

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 1933: Arsenal drew 1-1 with Portsmouth, with Bastin scoring his 7th in 13 games.  Unfortunately he then didn’t score again until a 1-0 win on Christmas Day – but the club kept on winning.

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 (see above). 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.  See also here

4 November 1939: With war having been declared in September the league had been abandoned after three matches.  Arsenal’s ground was unavailable, being taken over for the war effort, so after a series of six friendlies all away from home Arsenal had joined the wartime league and on this day beat Crystal Palace 5-0 to make it played three scored 19.

4 November 1944: Arsenal lost 1-3 to Reading in the wartime league to make it three defeats and a draw in the last four.

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 1970: Arsenal 2 Sturm Graz 0  in front of 37,667 in the second leg of the Fairs Cup match to take Arsenal through. Kennedy scored and Storey got a penalty to wrap it up.

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. See also here

4 November 1975: Arsenal played a friendly away to Fenerbahce winning 2-0 with goals from Powling and Ball

4 November 1978: Arsenal played Ipswich for the first time since the FA Cup final in May and beat them 4-1 in front of 35,269 fans. Arsenal missed an open goal in the first minute, went 0-1 down on 11 minutes, but Stapleton got a hattrick and Nelson the other. 

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. Arsenal were unbeaten in 16 games in the Premier League and Champions League.

4 November 2001: Arsenal went four down in 20 minutes in the 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 the way to winning their Champions League group.  It was part of a 13 match undefeated run including 11 wins in all competitions.  

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 2014: Arsenal drew 3-3 at home against Anderlecht in the Champions League – a result followed by two more defeats in the Premier League.

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 marked the end of the run of consecutive qualifications to the group stages.

5 November 1889: One of the earliest reports ever of a floodlit game.  Woolwich Arsenal was not involved but the club soon followed the idea of stringing gas lights across the pitch soon after –  and it quickly spread to other clubs.

5 November 1909: Frank Moss born in Leyland.  He is recorded as being registered first for Leyland Motors FC – a club which at the time just played friendlies rather than being in a league. 

5 November 1914: Britain annexed Cyprus and declared war on the Ottoman Empire.  As a result Cyprus still drives on the left while the rest of the region drives on the right.

5 November 1918: William Hayes Fisher, MP for Fulham, was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of Information, leaving his seat available for Sir Henry Norris to contest.  Meanwhile the Allies’ conditions for an armistice, and the proposals for demobilisation were set out as cease fire discussions were now under way.

5 November 1921: With Arsenal bottom of the league the Islington Daily Gazette reported it could not publish the letters it received about Arsenal because of the law of libel.  Meanwhile ex-ref Arthur Bourke, their regular football correspondent, reminded readers that “abuse of officials and players is not argument.”  But on this day the result gave some relief: Birmingham City 0 Arsenal 1.

5 November 1923:  Despite his relationship with his local political party having completely broken down, Sir Henry Norris attended the retirement celebration for Peter Lawson, who had worked for many years collecting the rates in the Borough.  It was a typical Henry Norris decision, and explains a lot about why the men in power disliked him so but why the regular workers thought he was a very sound boss.

5 November 1932: Following the 8-2 win one week before Arsenal beat Wolverhampton 7-1 away.   Arsenal thus scored 3+ goals for the fifth league match running – a feat not repeated under 2008/9.  This was also the first saturday after the underground station opposite Highbury had its name changed, but there was no game – not even a reserve game – to draw extra crowds to the newly named Arsenal (Highbury Hill).  That lack of a match was unusual, and may have been agreed to allow for more time to change the signs in and around the station over the weekend without crowd disruption as at this time reserve games could attract 15,000+.

5 November 1932: Vic Groves born.   Like Danny Clapton he started out at Leytonstone, before moving on to Walthamstow Avenue, a club that had a number of links with Arsenal.  

5 November 1935: Arsenal signed Ronnie Westcott, a centre forward from Banbury Spencer, the Oxfordshire amateur club playing in the Birmingham Combination. 

5 November 1937: Ray Bowden transferred to Newcastle for £5000 – an interesting profit for a player who was moving down a league and was starting to have injury problems with his ankle.   In all he played 138 matches for Arsenal and scored 43 goals.   See also here.

5 November 1952: Jimmy Logie’s sole appearance for Scotland.  However he was more valued by Arsenal, playing 296 league games and winning the league twice and the FA Cup once with the club.

5 November 1956: Arsenal played the British Olympic team, 20 years on from Bernard Joy captaining the British Olympic side.

5 November 1958: Last international appearance for Jackie Henderson.  He played seven times for Scotland but only scored one goal. 

5 November 1973: Arsenal played a friendly away to Portsmouth and lost 2-1 Radford getting the goal.   The match was to commemorate Portsmouth’s 75th season in the Football League.  8859 turned up.

5 November 1977: Alan Sunderland’s first match, a 2-1 away win against Manchester Utd.  Macdonald and Stapleton got the goals in a run of six league games without a defeat.

5 November 1983: Tony Adams league début v Sunderland.  (“Building of the Back Four“)  Arsenal 1 Sunderland 2.  Tony Woodcock scored – it was his eighth goal in three consecutive games.

5 November 1987: Tom Parker died aged 89.  After the war he worked as a ship’s surveyor for Lloyd’s in Southampton Docks.  He also managed Norwich during two separate spells, and worked as chief scout for Southampton, finally retiring in 1975.

5 November 2001: Arsenal 4 Man U 0 in the league cup;  Wiltord scored a hat trick. It was the first and last appearance for Rohan Rickets and Carlin Itonga.

5 November 2003: After a poor start in the Champions League, with two defeats and a draw in the first three, Arsenal finally got a win beating Dynamo Kiev 1-0

5 November 2005: Arsenal beat Sunderland 3-1 to go third despite suffering three defeats in first 8 games.  Van Persie scored the opener and Henry the other two.

5 November 2011: Arsenal beat WBA 3-0 with goals from Arteta, Vermaelen and van Persie, making it just one defeat in 11 consecutive games – a real improvement after a start to the season that included the 2-8 defeat to Manchester United.

6 November 1899: Woolwich Arsenal 2 New Brompton 2.  FA Cup 3rd qualifying round, 2nd replay.  The clubs eventually played each other five times before New Brompton won 1-0 in a match at Gravesend.

6 November 1907  Last game for Charlie Satterthwaite the man who scored Arsenal’s first ever league goal.  He made 141 appearances for the club of which 129 were in the league, and scored 48 goals (45 in the league).

6 November 1909: After playing 11, winning 2 drawing 1 and losing 8 Arsenal found themselves bottom of the league.  The result on this day in the 12th match of the season was Arsenal 0 Bradford City 1.   See also here

6 November 1912:  With Arsenal chairman Henry Norris having been elected mayor of Fulham for the fourth time the day before, Arsenal reserves tried out various possible first teamers in a game against Peterborough.  The result was a 2-2 draw.

6 November 1920: A 2-2 draw with Blackburn (Buckley and McKinnon getting the goals) meant four out of the last five league games had been drawn.  20,000 were in the crowd.  Arsenal remained 16th.

6 November 1937: Grimsby 2 Arsenal 1.  It was the début for Leslie Jones who scored the Arsenal goal and was the fifth consecutive league game without a win.

6 November 1954: Bolton 2 Arsenal 2.  The fourth game in a run of eight without a win, and the début for Jim Fotheringham.  Goring and Lishman scored.

6 November 1964: Stewart Robson born.  Arsenal was his first club, and he started playing for the first team in 1981 and was player of the year in 1985.  He later became notorious for his severe criticism of Arsene Wenger on Arsenal TV, from which post he was ultimately removed.

6 November 1965: Arsenal 6 Sheffield U 2. It was the first win in four and came just three weeks after losing 3-5 to Blackpool.  Baker, Skirton and Armstrong got two goals each.

6 November 1968: Bob McNab played the first of four games for England. He went on to be part of the double side of 1971 and the Fairs Cup winning team of the previous season.

6 November 1972: Liverpool 3 Arsenal 2 in front of 46,929.  After Lawler was booked for the 2nd time in 3 weeks Shankley said “You can tell he’s a bad one… he swore once.. about six years ago”.  The assembled media thought it funny.

6 November 1974: John Hollins Testimonial v Chelsea (1-1 draw).  As well as his 127 league games for Arsenal he had two stints at Chelsea playing 465 league games for them.

6 November 1976: 4-0 home victory over Birmingham City, Gary Jones being sent off on 37 minutes when he fouled Stapleton in the box. With Ball, the regular penalty taker, not on the pitch Brady and Ross had a row over who was going to take it, and Macdonald nicked the ball from both of them and took the kick.  He scored.

6 November 1980: Lionel Smith died (this is also quoted as 8 November in some sources).  After leaving Arsenal he moved to Watford,and then became player-manager at Gravesend & Northfleet where he won the 1957-58 Southern League title.  He retired from football in 1960.

6 November 1991: Arsenal lost to Benfica in extra time.  It proved to be the club’s last appearance in the European Cup until 1998. 

6 November 1997. Ray Daniel died.  In 1952-3 he played 41 league matches as Arsenal won the league under Tom Whittaker.  However he then left for Sunderland after they offered him payments far in excess of the maximum wage that was allowed.  Sadly Ray was tempted and succumbed.  He never won a trophy again.

6 November 2002:  Only 19,059 turned up for Arsenal v Sunderland in the league cup.  The figure is a reminder of just how quickly Arsenal moved from being a club which could still play to a half empty ground into a club in which every seat would be sold for every game in a 60,000 capacity stadium.  However maybe the crowd did know something in advance: Arsenal lost 2-3.

6 November 2013: Having lost 1-2 at home to Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League Arsenal won the return fixture away 1-0.

6 November 2016: Arsenal drew 1-1 with Tottenham.  That made it 16 unbeaten, since losing the first match of the season as we lost 3-4 at home to Liverpool.  Arsenal finished the season in a disappointing 5th, but did the FA Cup for a record number of times.

6 November 2019: No matter what Arsenal tried it was not working, as a 1-1 draw with unfancied Vitória Guimarães in the Europa League showed.  It was the fifth of ten games without a win just over a year after Arsene Wenger had been persuaded to leave before the end of his contract.

6 November 2022: Chelsea 0 Arsenal 1.  This was Arteta’s 150th game as manager – the same number he had played in.  Gabriel Magalhães scored for a 1-0 win, Arteta’s 87th victory as manager, which was more than any previous manager (including Wenger) in 150 games.

7 November 1896: Notts C 7 Arsenal 4.  Only 3000 witnessed Arsenal’s biggest league aggregate game thus far.  The game was part of an amazing 11 league game sequence in which 76 goals were scored – fractionally under 7 per game.  The run included the 0-8 defeat to Loughboro and two games in which Arsenal scored six.

7 November 1901: William Gooing signed from Chesterfield.  He played 25 games this season and 94 league games in all before being sold to Northampton in the 1904/5 season.

7 November 1913: Hugh McDonald sold to Fulham – possibly because Henry Norris was a director of both clubs at the time (as the rules did not prohibit this, and Norris wasn’t the only “two club” man.)  McDonald suffered from the effects of poison gas in the war, and after being a publican in the post-war period died from the after-effects of the gas in 1920.

7 November 1914: Arsenal lost 3-0 away to Birmingham in front of 15,000. The two stalwarts, wingers Rutherford and Winship, were now missing.  With Groves and Norman making their first appearances of the season the forward line posed far less threat than normal, and Birmingham were able to push their half backs and inside forwards further forward, with no fear of a counter attack.

7 November 1917: The third battle of Gaza was fought as finally the British forces captured Gaza from the Ottoman Empire.

7 November 1918: Sir Henry Norris, Arsenal chairman, was appointed Chairman of the Ministry of Labour’s Advisory Committee on demobilisation.   Throughout his time in this office he argued for pensions for all injured soldiers, but the government would not relent.

7 November 1925: Final first team game for John (Jock) Robson against Man City – the shortest ever Arsenal keeper at 5 feet 8 inches.  He played 101 times for Arsenal, including 9 games in Chapman’s first season in 1925/6,

7 November 1931: Arsenal lost to Newcastle 3-2; Parkin making a rare appearance stepping in for Jones. However both Roberts at centre half and Jones, playing at  right half, sustained injuries which totally disrupted the team. Lambert and Jack scored, but the result was a real blow to retaining the title as the club dropped to 5th in the league. 

7 November 1936:  Jackie Milne started a long run of games at outside left where Arsenal had already used Beasley and Compton.   He held the position until 13 February after which he got just one more game being replaced by Dennis Compton.

7 November 1964: Geoff Strong sold to Liverpool for just £40,000 – a ludicrous transfer if ever there was one.  He had scored 69 goals in 125 league games for Arsenal, and went on to become a legend at Liverpool where he is still remembered with much affection.

7 November 1970: Blackpool 0 Arsenal 1. This was League match 16 of the first Double season and Arsenal’s fourth consecutive win, but it still left Arsenal second, one point behind Leeds.  Radford scored in a game that was part of a sequence of four consecutive scoring matches for the centre forward. 

7 November 1992: The six game winning run from 28 September ended with a 3-0 victory over Coventry in front of 27,693..  However it was followed by eight games without a win in which Arsenal only scored three goals

7 November 2003: Arsenal youth player Marcus Artry was imprisoned for nine years for sex attacks.   He was never heard of again in football circles.

7 November 2009: Wolverhampton W 1 Arsenal 4.  This was the 13th and last game in an unbeaten run which included 11 wins.  Unfortunately Arsenal won only two of the following six matches.

7 November 2021: Arsenal beat Watford 1-0.  It meant that after losing the first three league games of the season Arsenal had now won six and drawn two of last eight league games and were now sixth in the league.

8 November 1913.  Fulham 6 Arsenal 1.  It was the final game for Matthew Thomson in what was easily the worst defeat for the club in the season.  It was also the largest away crowd of the season for Arsenal – 35,000.

8 November 1919: Arsenal drew 2-2 with Bolton leaving Arsenal 13th in the league  There were 30,000 in the crowd – a great relief to the management that in this first post war season the numbers were holding up well.

8 November 1920: Many of the senior members of the club attended a dinner given at the House of Commons hosted by Baldwin Raper, Arsenal’s local MP who was a regular at Highbury and an avid fan.  Sir Henry Norris’ speech reflected his view that Arsenal had to be seen as a business if it was to survive.

8 November 1924: Robert Turnbull, Arsenal’s record scorer of the era (with 20 goals in 35 league games in 1922/3), transferred to Charlton Athletic.  In all he played 59 league games and scored 26 goals.

8 November 1927: Len Wills born.  He first played for Eton Manor FC, an amateur club formed by well-to-do families to support young men and boys in the East End of London.  Len joined Arsenal as an amateur from Eton Manor in March 1946, but had to leave the club in 1948 to do his National Service in the RAF. He then returned to Arsenal in October 1949.

8 November 1930: Arsenal 5 Aston Villa 2.  This was the first of nine games during the season where Arsenal scored five or more.  Bastin and Jack got two each and Lambert one.  It was also the first match of the season where kick off was moved back to 2.30pm.

8 November 1932: Gordon Nutt born.  He played for Sheldon, Coventry City, Royal Artillery National Service British Army XI (during his National Service) and Cardiff City, before joining Arsenal.  

8 November 1971:  Sheffield United 2 Arsenal 0; Football League Cup 4th round replay. It looked like Stoke had passed the mantle of being Arsenal’s voodoo team to Sheffield United.

8 November 1980: Leeds United 0 Arsenal 5.  It was the only league game in the season in which Arsenal scored more than three goals. Hollins (2), Gatting, Talbot, Sunderland got them.

8 November 1998: Anelka scored for the fifth game running in a 1-0 home victory over Everton.  Arsenal won four and drew one of those five games.

8 November 1999: Arsenal 3 Real Madrid 1.  Lee Dixon’s testimonial.

8 November 2003: Arsenal beat Tottenham 2-1 in the 11th league match of the Unbeaten season.  The Observer in its review called it “another stuttering performance” from Arsenal.  It was, you may recall, the unbeaten season.

8 November 2006: Arsenal beat Everton 0-1 away in league cup round 4 only to find their reward in the next round was away to Liverpool in January.  (But it turned out ok as in that game Song scored his first goal as Arsenal beat Liverpool 6-3.).  Matt Poom made his Arsenal debut at half time and took on captaincy.  It was his only Arsenal appearance and at the end of the season he moved to Watford.

8 November 2008: After losing 2-1 to Stoke, Arsenal beat Man U by the same score with Nasri scoring both goals.

8 November 2018: Arsenal 0 Sporting 0, was the first point dropped by Arsenal in the Europa League group stages, but the club recovered to win the group.  However Welbeck was seriously injured in the game.

9 November 1888: Chris Buckley born in Manchester – although the date is quoted in some sources as 1886.  He played with Victoria Park, Manchester Ship Canal FC, Man City reserves, Xaverian Brothers College, WBA, Brighton and Aston Villa before joining Arsenal in 1914.  He later became Aston Villa vice-chair.

9 November 1889: Arsenal beat West Kent 10-1 in Kent Senior Cup – the competition Arsenal had been expelled from in the previous season for refusing to play extra time after the opposition had arrived late for a match.

9 November 1896: In one of the early games between the two, Arsenal beat Tottenham 2-1 in the United League – a midweek league played using first team players, for clubs in the south of the country.

9 November 1907: The first ever London derby in the first division ended Chelsea 2 Woolwich Arsenal 1, in front of 65,000 – the largest crowd yet to watch Woolwich Arsenal.

9 November 1909: Henry Norris was elected mayor of Fulham after just three years as a councillor.  He went on to be the longest serving mayor in England of all time – a record still held.

9 November 1914: Henry Norris continued his campaign to make Arsenal a club owned by its supporters.  The latest share issue was announced to have resulted in the sale of 276 new shares to individuals.  Not huge, but not bad given the prevailing situation.

9 November 1917:  Henry Norris was re-elected mayor of Fulham for his 9th year in the post.  In his speech of acceptance he called the conduct of the war “disastrous.”

9 November 1918: As a socialist government took over in Germany and the Kaiser abdicated, Arsenal played away at Millwall Athletic in a 3-3 draw in the London Combination in front of 4,000 

9 November 1925: William Harper joined from Hibs for £4000 – a world record fee for a keeper.  He only stayed for a couple of seasons before going to the USA, but then did return for a second stint as Chapman continued his endless quest to find the perfect keeper.

9 November 1925: Having beaten Millwall in the semi-final Arsenal lost 1-2 to West Ham United in the London FA Challenge Cup final played at Clapton Orient.   Arsenal used the same team as had played the weekend before in the first division.

9 November 1929: David Halliday started a run in the Arsenal first team, having been signed from Sunderland.  He scored eight goals in 15 games, but was then dropped.  He then scored 39 goals in 29 games in the reserves before being released on a free!!!

9 November 1935: Arsenal drew 1-1 with Derby in front of 54,027 with Drake scoring the goal.  Having scored 115 the season before it was becoming clear that Arsenal were not going to get anywhere near that total this season.  See also here

9 November 1938: Les Jones scored his only goal for Wales in his 11th and last appearance for the principality.

9 November 1946: First match for Wally Barnes – Preston 2 Arsenal 0.   It was the last game in a series of eight in which Arsenal won just one match.   It was also the last match for David Nelson and the first for Cyril Grant

9 November 1965: Jimmy Carter born in Hammersmith.  He spent two years at Palace, and two at QPR, with no senior games.  But then Millwall bought him for £15k and in four years he played over 100 games and was part of the team that gained their first ever promotion to the first division in 1988.

9 November 1970: Arsenal’s only home defeat all season: 0-2 to Crystal Palace in League Cup round 4 replay after a 0-0 away draw on 28 October.

9 November 1974: Arsenal had ended October 21st in the league and not won away, while Liverpool had won every home game thus far and were top with a game in hand..  Brady Kidd and Ball were all on song, Liverpool fans threw missiles onto the pitch including a bottle that hit a policeman, but as was their wont, where Liverpool were concerned the League took no action. Arsenal won 1-3.  

9 November 1981: Stewart Robson signed pro forms for Arsenal.  He went on to play 150 league games for Arsenal scoring 16 goals.  He also played 126 games for West Ham and Coventry, and managed Southend for three matches, winning one and losing two of his games.

9 November 1985: Everton beat Arsenal 6–1.   At the end of the season George Graham took over from Don Howe as manager; Don Howe having resigned in March.

9 November 1997: In a game against Manchester Utd Anelka scored the first goal, as Arsenal won 3-2 after only one victory in five.   Game 14 of the 2nd Double Season.  This win was one of only two wins in eight games.

9 November 2002: Arsenal beat Newcastle 1-0. The Guardian said of Patrick Vieira: a “demonstration of tackling, control, awareness and movement that was exceptional even by his standards.”

9 November 2004: Only 27,791 turn up at Highbury for League Cup match v Everton.

9 November 2014: Swansea 2 Arsenal 1.  Ten players (five from each side) were yellow carded during the game which Swansea won 2-1.  The Arsenal cards went to Ramsey, Mertesacker, Chambers, Alexis and Gibbs.  Alexis scored the Arsenal goal.

9 November 2019: Leicester 2 Arsenal 0.  It was the fifth game in a run of nine in which Arsenal did not get a single victory. 

10 November 1888: Horton Kirby (South Darenth) 2 Royal Arsenal 6, in the Kent Senior Cup – it was Arsenal’s first year in the competition.

10 November 1913: Arsenal played Tottenham in the London FA Challenge Cup. Arsenal had already beaten QPR and Chelsea, but this time they went out 1-2 at WHL.  Only 8,000 turned up.

10 November 1917:  Millwall v Arsenal generally brought out the largest wartime attendances due to the historic rivalry between the two teams, but now came down to just  6,000.  It was a 2-2 draw.

10 November 1917: Battle of Passchendaele which had begun in July finally ended.

10 November 1919: Sir Henry Norris handed the insignia of the office of Mayor of Fulham over to R M (Bob) Gentry, the trade unionist who had won the council for Labour for the first time.  Sir Henry had not stood in the elections.

10 November 1920: The body of The Unknown Warrior arrived from France aboard HMS Verdun for burial in Westminster Abbey.

10 November 1924:  Arsenal played in the London FA Challenge Cup, this time away to  West Ham with Tom Whittaker and G Colin getting a game (his only first team match). Arsenal lost 1-4.  

10 November 1927: Herbert Chapman wrote to Sir Henry Norris, stating that if Sir Henry wanted to see the minute books of the club he had run for 17 years he had to prove his legal right to look at the documents.  This small minded refusal to help the man who had brought him to Arsenal greatly hindered Sir Henry’s case against the FA in 1929 and reveals the total breakdown in Chapman’s relationship with the man who had stood by him as Arsenal struggled in the early years of Chapman’s reign.

10 November 1945: Arsenal 2 Fulham 0 in the Football League South.  This was a great relief after four successive defeats in which Arsenal had shipped 16 goals.  It was the 14th game of the season and only Arsenal’s 3rd win, in a season in which Arsenal used 67 different players in the 42 league games!

10 November 1948: Laurie Scott last appearance for England.  He won 17 caps between 1947 and 1949

10 November 1951: Arsenal 6 WBA 3.  Doug Lishman (3), Holton (2) and Logie were the scorers.  With this result Arsenal had scored 16 goals in four league games.

10 November 1957: Racing Club de Paris 1 Arsenal 1, in the series initiated by Herbert Chapman.  The series continued until 1962.

10 November 1958: Billy McCullough played his first Arsenal game – a friendly v Southampton.

10 November 1959: Peter Nicholas born.  He started out with Crystal Palace as a youth player, and was part of their second division title winning team in 1979.

10 November 1969: Jens Lehmann born.  He played for Schalke, Milan and Borussia Dortmund before becoming the only player ever to play in every single top division game in one season without once being on the losing side.

10 November 1973: Arsenal beat Man C away 1-2, Hornsby and Kelly scoring.  One report said only two things Man C tried went right.  They managed to kick off as per the laws of football,  and on 82 minutes Lee took a perfect free kick from 25 yards out and scored.

10 November 1979: Arsenal lost 0-1 to Palace away.   After the game Palace suggested they were going to emulate Forest in winning the second and the first division in consecutive seasons.  Some of the journalists took them seriously.

10 November 2010: Wolverhampton 0 Arsenal 2.  After defeats in the Champions League and Premier League it was a welcome return to form, but after a further win against Everton, the erratic performances continued.  The goal by Chamakh was the fastest Arsenal ever scored in the Premier League.

10 November 2014: Paul Merson unleashed a fierce attack on Arsène Wenger, claiming that Wenger had let the club down and should leave.  In the commentary Merson said Wenger begged him to stay in 1997 but Merson refused.  Other reports suggest otherwise.  Merson’s hatred of Wenger then expanded into a constant criticism of all things Arsenal.

11 November 1916: After four goals against Watford the previous week Arsenal showed that they really were starting to pull things around in the wartime league, with their third successive win: a 4-0 home victory over Clapton Orient. 

11 November 1921: The first ever Armistice Day arranged by the British Legion making this the first official “Poppy Day”. It had taken three years to formulate, since the end of the war, but this most moving of remembrances has continued ever since.

11 November 1922: Everton came to Highbury and won 2-1, making it four defeats and one draw for Arsenal in five games, and as a result Arsenal were now bottom of the table with by far the worst defence in the League.

11 November 1927: With the courts having ruled that the FA could not remove George Peachey (Arsenal’s financial adviser on the board) as a director, the FA informed Arsenal that if it did not remove him the FA would expel Arsenal from membership.  Thus on this day the anti-Norris faction on the board bought enough shares in the club to vote Peachey off the board, and thus kowtowed to the FA’s demands.

11 November 1930: Racing Club de Paris 2 Arsenal 7.  This was the first in the series of games to honour and raise money for those who gave their lives in the first world war, each game played on or close to Armistice Day.

11 November 1931: Having won the game against Racing so easily last year this time Chapman left Lambert, Roberts and John behind.  Arsenal still won but only by 3-2.

11 November 1933: Arsenal went to Wolverhampton who had slipped from their position at the top of the league, and gained a 1-0 away win.  Alex James dropped out and Bowden returned, and scored the goal.  But Tottenham once again edged beyond Arsenal with a 4-0 home win against Newcastle.

11 November 1935: Racing Club de Paris 2 Arsenal 2

11 November 1946: Racing Club de Paris 1 Arsenal 2 – the Arsenal side including Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson in his last match for the club as he was refused a work permit.  Racing then tried to sign him.

11 November 1947: Racing Club de Paris 4 Arsenal 3

11 November 1958: John Devine born in Dublin.  He played for Arsenal from 1974 to 1983 at a time when the Irishmen associated with Arsenal included Liam Brady, David O’Leary and Frank Stapleton.

11 November 1970: Gilles Grimandi born in Gap.  He played for his home town club from 1988 to 1991 and Monaco from 1991 to 1997 before playing his first Arsenal game on 9th August 1997 along with Overmars, and Petit.   In March 2019, Grimandi left Arsenal to become technical director at OGC Nice, to work with Patrick Vieira

11 November 1972: Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 Arsenal 3 before 25,988 fans. Wolverhampton dominated the first half but in the 47th minute Ball took the ball from Bailey, made a perfect long pass to George who crossed equally perfectly to Radford who scored.  Arsenal scored two more in the last five minutes.

11 November 1978: Leeds United 0 Arsenal 1, with 33,961 watching on in Elland Road as Arsenal made it four wins in a row.  Pat Rice put in one of his best performances ever, Brady was sublime, and with the certain knowledge that the defence was on its game, the midfield and forwards explored every blade of grass. 

11 November 1989.  Millwall 1 Arsenal 2.  This game came in a run of 15 games in which Arsenal did not draw a single match.

11 November 1998: Arsenal Reserves 0 Chelsea 5, league cup fourth round.  It was the last time that Arsenal charged full price for league cup tickets and included the league cup in the season ticket cup allocation.

11 November 2000: John Lukic played against Derby C aged 39 years 336 days and became Arsenal’s oldest player of the post-war era.

11 November 2001:  The BBC reported that Arsenal had barred Bin Laden from Highbury adding that he had been regularly seen at the Clock End.  Bin Laden’s support for Arsenal was subsequently noted in a North Bank song: He’s hiding in Kabul, He loves the Arsenal.  Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 2 May 2011. 

11 November 2010: Szczesny signed a five year deal.  He progressed to be the clear first choice keeper until early 2015 when a poor performance and disciplinary issues saw him replaced by David Ospina.  In the summer of 2015 he went out on loan.  On 30 June 2018 Szczesny’s wife gave birth to a boy, who was named “Liam”.

11 November 2018: Arsenal 1 Wolverhampton 1 made it ten undefeated, but the last three games had been draws.  However Arsenal did go on to get through four more games before a defeat was encountered.

12 November 1894.   David Howat’s benefit match against Roston Bourke’s XI.  Bourke was a leading referee and who had his own team; he was later football correspondent of the Islington Gazette.  Arsenal won 6-2 and the game was attended by 1200 people.

12 November 1917: Gordon Bremner born.  He started by playing for Cartha Athletic and joined in March 1937 where he started out in the Football Combination, scoring 15 times in 43 appearances.

12 November 1920: James Quayle played for Arsenal as a deputy for Joe Shaw, against The Wednesday. 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.  

12 November 1910: Matthew Shortt was signed by Arsenal from Dalbeattie Star in Dumfries.   He made his debut two weeks later but was on the losing side in all four games he played.

12 November 1918: The FA held a conference on the future of football and voted in favour of continuing with the currently-operating amateur leagues for the rest of the 1918/19 season. Because of his newly appointed role as Chairman of the Ministry of Labour’s Advisory Committee on Demobilisation Sir Henry was unable to attend this FA meeting to represent Arsenal. 

12 November 1921: Arsenal 5 Birmingham 2.  This was the first time Arsenal scored five in a league game in the post 1st World War era.  It was also the only game of the season in which Arsenal scored more than three goals.

12 November 1932: Arsenal made it 11 wins, two draws and one defeat from the start of the season  with a 1-0 win over Newcastle.  This was also the first time the new West Stand was used by the paying public.

12 November 1936: Alan Turing’s paper “On Computable Numbers” was formally presented to the London Mathematical Society, introducing the concept of the “Turing machine”, which ultimately led to digital technology.

12 November 1938: Arsenal drew 2-2 away to Liverpool.  Drake scored for the second game running; the first time this season that he had scored in consecutive matches.  It was the fourth draw in a row, and after the game Arsenal were 13th.

12 November 1963: Colin Hill born.  He played first for Hillingdon Borough before joining Arsenal as a schoolboy in 1977, becoming an apprentice in 1980, and then on 31 July 1981  Colin Hill signed professional terms.

12 November 1973: Arsenal’s final match in the London FA Challenge Cup – a semi-final, played away to Tottenham in which Arsenal lost 0-3.   Arsenal reached the final on 16 occasions, winning the competition eleven times.

12 November 1977: Arsenal 1 Coventry City 1, and just 31,653 in the crowd.  After just 3 minutes Arsenal were a goal down as the defence were caught flatfooted.  Worse, on seven minutes Macdonald was sent off for throwing a punch at Yorath after a horrific tackle.  Rix, Brady and Price then played as if each was making up for being one man down.  Arsenal’s equaliser came from a fierce cross from Rice.  

12 November 1998: Arsenal beat Newcastle away 1-0 to take them to second in the league, two points behind league leaders Aston Villa.

12 November 2005: Death of Joe Wade aged 84  After playing 91 games for Arsenal he left in 1956 he returned to Hereford (then in the Southern League) as player-manager.  At Hereford he picked up some notable cup victories against league sides and won the Southern League and Cup double.  He left in 1962 to develop his sports shop business, but returned briefly in 1971 after John Charles left the club. 

12 November 2006: Arsenal 3 Liverpool 0.  The result left Arsenal in 3rd and Liverpool in 9th in the Premier League.

12 November 2007.   The game at Reading included Arsenal’s 1,000th Premier League goal, scored by Adebayor.  Flamini and Hleb got the other two in a 3-1 victory.  It was the 20th game unbeaten in all competitions from the start of the season.

12 November 2012: Jenkinson signed a long term contract and subsequently went on loan to West Ham for 2014/15 and continued in 2015/16 to some considerable acclaim as a new settled defensive unit was forged by Arsene Wenger at Arsenal.  On 7 August 2019, Jenkinson signed a three-year deal with Nottingham Forest .

12 November 2022: Arsenal beat Wolverhampton away 0-2 in the last game before the stopped for the Winter World Cup.  It meant that after 16 league games Arsenal had won 14 and lost and drawn 1.

13 November 1893: Stanley Briggs made his debut against Rotherham Town in the 3-0 home win in front of 3000 fans in the league game, and kept his place in the following game – a 2-6 away defeat to Burton Swifts – in both cases playing at centre half.   

13 November 1909: Sheffield W 1 Arsenal 1.   It was the first Arsenal goal in three games in a run in which the club scored just five goals in eight games while conceding 22.  Lawrence scored for Arsenal.

13 November 1915: Arsenal played Tottenham away in the wartime amateur league, and despite having gone 2-0 down at half time Arsenal rallied and the match ended 3-3.  The crowd however was a modest 7000.  What was notable however was that King got another hattrick.

13 November 1920: Arsenal 2 Blackburn Rovers 0 was seen by many football writers as indicative of their improvement since August: a good win on a pitch made treacherous by morning rain.  A shortage of first team players meant that the club’s injured regular goalkeeper played at full back. Clem Voysey broke his leg in this game – which proved to be the end of his career. The programme for the game spoke of no club ever having such an injury list as Arsenal and was probably the start of the journalists’ eternal story that Arsenal get the most injuries – a tale that lasted until the 21st century.

13 November 1937: Arsenal 1 WBA 1 – Arsenal’s sixth without a win with just five goals scored in the last five games; somewhat unusual for a League winning season!    Leslie Compton scored in front of 24,324. It was also the final game for Arthur Biggs.

13 November 1943: Arsenal 5 QPR 0 in the Football League South, having beaten Chelsea 6-0 the week before. It meant Lewis had scored seven goals, scoring one or more in each of the last four games.

13 November 1971:  Arsenal 1 Manchester City 2 with 47,443 in Highbury. Nelson scored the opening goal, but Arsenal were nervous after recent defeats to Sheffield and Liverpool, and poor header from McLintock let Mellor through to beat Wilson in a one on one.  Bell scored the winner near the end.

13 November 1979: The last of three games against Brighton played in the space of two weeks, twice in the league cup, once in the league.  After two goalless draws, this was a 4-0 win in the league cup with two from Stapleton and two from Vaessen

13 November 2004: Tottenham 4 Arsenal 5.  The highest scoring game between the two sides – although it was 1-1 at half time.  Every goal was scored by a different player – and Tottenham actually took the lead at the start. 

13 November 2007: Arsenal 2 Man U 2.  Game 16 of a 19 game unbeaten run.

14 November 1886: “The Referee” newspaper published an advert by Eastern Wanderers asking for opponents.  It almost certainly caused workers in the Dial Square factory to decide to create a team and offer to play them.

14 November 1900: Arsenal lost to New Brompton in the fourth replay of 3rd qualifying round FA Cup game.  It was the longest run of Cup replays in Arsenal’s entire history.

14 November 1914: Arsenal scored six at Highbury for the first time beating Grimsby 6-0.   Harry King got his first hat trick on his way to becoming top hat trick scorer for the club. A welcome boost after heavy defeats to Derby and Birmingham.  See also here.

14 November 1916: Henry Norris, chairman of Arsenal, was sworn in as a member of the London County Council.  He used the position particularly to argue for equal pay for women teachers, but this was heavily defeated in the all-male chamber.

14 November 1918:  It was announced that a general election would take place on 14 December and the Coalition government would fight the election as a Coalition.  Sir Henry Norris started to search for a seat to contest.

14 November 1922: The BBC began radio broadcasts from Radio Station 2LO in London – the station that eventually became the Home Service and then later still Radio 4.

14 November 1925.  Arsenal 6 Bury 1, a result that meant Arsenal had scored 15 in the last three games.  (For more on Bury see here).  Considering the club had only scored 46 goals in the entire 42 games of the previous season it was a remarkable turnaround.  See also here.

14 November 1931: Arsenal beat West Ham at Highbury 4-1 win in front of 41,028.   Haynes and Male came in at 5 and 6 replacing  Roberts and John.  Jack got a hattrick and Hulme the other.  But the press were unimpressed saying that as West Ham had just lost their last two games 5-1 (away to Derby and at home to West Brom) and were 18th, 4-1 was hardly of note.

14 November 1934: George Male and Eddie Hapgood made their international debuts at Highbury for England (Hapgood as captain) in England 3 Italy 2.  George Allison did the radio commentary, Tom Whittaker was England’s physio, and seven Arsenal players were in the team.

14 November 1935: The UK had a General Election.  Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was returned to office at the head of a National Government led by the Conservative Party with a large but reduced majority.

14 November 1949.  The tragically early death of Jimmy Dunne was recorded following a heart attack.  After playing for Arsenal he played for Southampton, and then became a successful club manager in Ireland.

14 November 1970: Arsenal 1 Crystal Palace 1.  League match 17 of the first Double season.  Radford scored for the fourth consecutive game, making it seven without defeat since the 0-5 defeat against Stoke.  This was the end of a run of 12 matches in which the club throughout used exactly the same players in each game.  

14 November 1972: Arsenal played a Paris XI in France, beating them 1-0 with a goal from Rice.  It marked Bob Wilson’s return in goal.  Unusually for the era, three substitutes were used: Batson, Hornsby and George Armstrong, who had not been seen since September 2.

14 November 1987: Arsenal 4 Norwich 2.  The last of a run of 10 straight wins which began on 12 September 1987 

14 November 2007: “Arsenal are my favourite team right now and I think they are the best performing team in the Premier League.”  Pele

14 November 2009: Robin van Persie suffered ankle ligament damage during an international friendly.  It was announced that he was expected to miss four to five months while recovering from ligament reconstruction surgery.

14 November 2010: Arsenal beat Everton away 2-1 to bring a little hope that a new winning run could be put together after two defeats at the start of the month.  However Arsenal’s topsy turvy season continued with four straight wins after that with just two defeats in the next 22 games in all competitions.

15 November 1912: Writing in the West London and Fulham Times Henry Norris had to admit that things were not going well for Woolwich Arsenal.  Maybe he admitted it because not even Fulham could provide him with any relief as they were near the foot of the second division.

15 November 1918: The first released British prisoners of war reached Calais.

15 November 1919: Jack Butler made his debut in a 2-2 away draw with Bolton..  He signed for Arsenal from Fulham Thursday in 1914, and served in France in the Royal Artillery in the war.  Subsequently he played over 250 league games.

15 November 1922:  The Conservatives won an easy victory in the general election, with the Liberals replaced by Labour as the official opposition in the Commons. 

15 November 1924: First game for Dan Lewis:  Everton 2 Arsenal 3.  In a Fifa commentary on the change of rules to allow goals to be scored direct from corners it is suggested that this game was the first in which this then happened but this not the whole truth.  The rules had been ambiguously written allowing players to take a corner and then touch the ball again and this happened on this day.  James Howie Ramsay scored two of Arsenal’s goals. The rule was subsequently changed.

15 November 1941: Arsenal beat Clapton Orient 5-2 in the wartime London League, starting a ten match run in which Arsenal won nine and lost just one.

15 November 1950: Leslie Compton won his first full cap for England, having won 12 war time caps.  He was the oldest player ever to win his first full cap – at the age of 38.

15 November 1951: Lionel Smith debut for England.  In all he won six caps – the last being in 1953.

15 November 1952: Liverpool 1 Arsenal 5 – as Arsenal continued en route for the title.  Cliff Holton got a hat trick, Ben Marden got two.  It was the second game in a seven match unbeaten run.

15 November 1975: Birmingham 3 Arsenal 1, 21,652 in the crowd.  It was Arsenal’s third successive defeat and it saw the club slip down to 16th in the league.

15 November 1976:  Refusing to cease football just because of an international break, Arsenal arranged two friendlies.  The second was played on this day with the result Dubai National Civil Service 0 Arsenal 3. (Macdonald, Rostron 2) 

15 November 2000: Rhys Weston sold to Cardiff for £50,000.  He only played once for Arsenal but went on to play 182 times for Cardiff, and later had a long spell with Walsall.  He also won seven caps for Wales.

15 November 2008: The first part of the 2008/9 season had been awash with Arsenal goals. 11 had been scored without reply in three consecutive games in late August / early September, there was a 6-0 win over Sheffield Utd, a 5-2 win over Fenerbache and a 4-4 draw with Tottenham.  Then it stopped and in seven games starting on this date with Arsenal 0 Aston Villa 2, Arsenal scored just four.

16 November 1895: Harry Storer (Arsenal’s first representative player and their best keeper thus far), played his last match for Arsenal: it ended Woolwich Arsenal 0 Liverpool 2.     In the game Storer was involved in an altercation with Arsenal  fans behind the goal, and he claimed that the home spectators had behaved in a “disgraceful” manner.  The club first suspended, and then sold him.  

16 November 1917: British troops occupied Tel Aviv.

16 November 1918:  Arsenal played Fulham at Highbury but lost 1-3.  8000 were in the crowd including Sir Henry Norris along with William Hall and Hall’s brother-in-law George Davis.  It was just like old times.

16 November 1927: Sir Henry Norris’ legal representatives wrote to Arsenal reminding them that the FA Commission of Inquiry was not a legal body and that Sir Henry was not accused of receiving any money illicitly.   On the same day the case of Peachey against Arsenal was found in Peachey’s favour, the high court ruling that the FA had no power to remove him as a director of a company that was a member of the FA.  

16 November 1934: It was noted in the press that Alice Hargreaves, who, as Alice Liddell, was the inspiration for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, had passed away.

16 November 1936: King Edward VIII informed the Prime Minister of his intention to marry the divorced Wallis Simpson. Baldwin dutifully told the King that any woman he married would have to become Queen, and the British public would not accept Wallis Simpson as Queen, what with her being divorced and not English.

16 November 1940.  Tottenham 1 Arsenal 1.  Ted Drake scored in front of just 1,477 at WHL.  After seven wins out of eight games in the wartime South Regional League this made it three draws in a row.  Although in 11 games Arsenal (playing all their games at Tottenham’s ground) had used 3 different keepers, reflecting the problem with war time selection. 

16 November 1946: Arsenal beat Leeds 4-2 at home with Ted Platt making his first team debut.  However he never made it as the first choice keeper, playing only when Swindin was injured, and was eventually replaced by Jack Kelsey

16 November 1952: Roddy McEachrane – the original “Mr Arsenal” died.  He played under Bradshaw, Kelso and Morrell, the three key managers in the whole of the Woolwich Arsenal period, and his two final games placed him on the wall of honour at the Emirates as one of the Arsenal Highbury elite.  

16 November 1962: Steve Bould born. He started out at his local club Stoke, went on loan to Torquay United during which time the manager was Bruce Rioch, who later had one season with Arsenal as manager. He then returned to Stoke and moved to Arsenal in June 1988

16 November 1965: Arsenal v Brazil – part of the world champions’ warm up for the 1966 world cup in England.  Jon Sammels scored in each half as Arsenal won 2-0.

16 November 1974: Arsenal 3 Derby County 1. Arsenal had two wins and a draw in the last three, which was the best form of the season.   Ball scored a stunner but most praise went to Mancini who now in his fourth game looked solid and consistent at number 5. 

16 November 1991: China 4 Norway 0; the first match in the first ever women’s world cup finals, played in the USA.  To their eternal shame and discredit the FA in England had stopped women’s football in the country, by declaring in 1921 that any club that allowed its ground to be used for a women’s match would be jettisoned from the FA.  Even more shamefully that ban remained in place until 1971.

16 November 1991: Oldham 1 Arsenal 1 in Division One.  Arsenal (the champions just six months earlier) had now lost three successive matches, and won just one of the last six.  The run continued so that they won just two in ten.

16 November 1996: Man U 1 Arsenal 0.  Arsène Wenger’s first defeat at the end of a ten match unbeaten run.  After the game he said, “Obviously, the way we lost was difficult to accept, but I’m happy with the way we played. Our organisation was excellent, we kept fighting and I am very optimistic for the future.”  The following season he won the Double.

16 November 2002: Arsenal beat Tottenham 3-0 to go back to top of the league. The game included the Premiership Goal of the Season by Henry.  He took the ball from inside his own half, beat all of the Tottenham defence, beat them a second time, scored from about two miles out and ran all the way back to the other end.  (Note: some of the details of this report may be slightly exaggerated).

16 November 2013: Wojciech Szczesny signed a new long term-contract with Arsenal.  However some poor performances in 2014/15 and allegations that he had been smoking led to him being replaced first by David Ospina and then by Petr Cech.

17 November 1902: Woolwich Arsenal 2 Tottenham 1.  London League Premier Division.  The result saw Arsenal firmly in place at the top of the league after five straight victories.

17 November 1914: Ernie Collett was born on 17 November 1914 in Sheffield.  He joined Arsenal in April 1933 and won the Football Combination six times with the team in the 1930s, as well as playing 20 league games from 1933 onwards.   

17 November 1917: Arsenal’s severe wartime decline in form was further confirmed with the home defeat to Tottenham by a single goal to nil.  The only respite from the gloom was that the crowd was slightly up, at 9000.

17 November 1919: The Arsenal Football and Athletic Company Limited published its annual report for its AGM.  Loans to the club from Henry Norris and William Hall: £17264 (getting on for £1m today) while owing to Humphreys Ltd for building the stand: £16,918 – which was guaranteed by Henry Norris.

17 November 1923: The away game to Tottenham in the previous season had led to an FA enquiry.  With the clubs just 2 points apart this time 50,000 turned up at Highbury but the fireworks were now missing, and the game ended 1-1, Townrow scoring.  

17 November 1961: Eddie Clamp signed from Wolverhampton for £34,500.  He lasted for less than one season being transferred to Stoke in 1962 having played 22 league games and two FA Cup games.

17 November 1969: Arsenal beat Wimbledon 2-0 to win the London Challenge Cup.  Arsenal appeared in the final 16 times, winning the competition 11 times.  This was Arsenal’s last appearance in the final.

17 November 1973: Only 38,677 came to Highbury to see a goalless draw with Chelsea; a general admission that the glory days at the start of the decade were over.  

17 November 1979: Arsenal, beat Everton 2-0 with a crowd of 33,450.  Vaessen kept his place, as did Devine and Price.  Stapleton volleyed home the first and Brady produced an astonishing killer pass for Stapleton to score again and finish the match.

17 November 1980: Pat Rice moved to Watford for £8000 after 391 league games, six appearances as a sub and 12 goals.  According to Wiki “After making a recovery from cancer in March 2014 he returned to The Emirates at half-time during an FA Cup game against Everton, making a joke about Spurs. The Gunners went on to win the game 2–0.”

17 November 1984: Arsenal 1 QPR 0.  Tony Adams started his first long series of games as Arsenal gained their first win in five attempts.

17 November 1990: The deduction of two points from Arsenal following the Man U game appeared in the league table for the first time.

17 November 1993: Ian Wright scored four goals for England in a World Cup match v San Marino.  The evening was not helped by the fact after nine seconds San Marino had scored.

17 November 2001: Tottenham 1 Arsenal 1.  League match 12 of the third Double season.  Pirès put Arsenal ahead on 81 minutes but Tottenham equalised in the fourth minute of injury time.  It meant Arsenal had failed to win in any of three league games in a row.

17 November 2004: George Curtis died.  Having played for Arsenal, he went to Southampton in 1947 and gained the nickname “Twinkletoes”.  He then followed up his wartime Indian connections by coaching the Indian Olympic squad of 1948 before moving to be Chelmsford City’s player-coach, later coaching Sunderland, Brighton, Cambridge University, Hastings, Stevenage Town, Hull City, San Diego Toros, and Rosenborg in Norway, the Norwegian national team and finally in Qatar.

17 November 2009 Jay Emmanuel-Thomas’ loan to Blackpool ended.  It was his first of three loans while at Arsenal, after which he played for Ipswich, Bristol City and QPR, for whom he scored three goals in his first six games in 2015.

17 November 2012: After defeat to Man U and home draw with Fulham, Arsenal beat Tottenham 5-2.   The goals came from Mertesacker, Podolski, Giroud, Cazorla and Walcott.

 

18 November 1893: Burton Swifts 6 Arsenal 2 – the first time 8 goals were scored in an Arsenal game.

18 November 1895: Andrew Neill born in Kilmarnock.  He played for Kilmarnock, Galston, Stevenston United, and Brighton and Hove Albion before moving to Arsenal on March 13 1924.

18 November 1910: George Leavey had an article published in the Kentish Independent to say that Arsenal would not be leaving the area at the end of the season, in accordance with the agreement he had with Henry Norris.  In fact Norris kept Arsenal in Plumstead for three seasons.

18 November 1911: Arsenal 3 Sunderland 0.  It meant Arsenal had only lost one of the last eight, which certainly was a cause for celebration.

18 November 1913: Robert Benson joined from Sheffield Utd.  He played at left back through this and the final league season before the league was suspended, when he went to work at the Royal Arsenal.  On 19 February 1916 he went to a wartime match between Arsenal and Reading at Highbury and when Joe Shaw did not make it to the game, Benson took his place, although he had not been playing or training for a year.  He collapsed on the pitch in the second half and died in the changing rooms a little later of a burst blood vessel.  He was just 33.

18 November 1914: Arsenal drew 1-1 away to Nottingham Forest in Division 2 in front of just 3000 fans.  Quite a contrast from the previous home game against Grimsby which Arsenal won 6-0 in front of 15,000.

18 November 1920: Freddie Cox born in Reading.  Aged 18 he signed for second division Tottenham and moved to Arsenal for £12,000 after the war in September 1949.

18 November 1922: Sunderland 3 Arsenal 3.  Voysey played not at centre half, but as inside right and scored two.  The left back Turnbull played at centre forward and scored.  It was the first point after three consecutive defeats, with Arsenal scoring three goals in one game, whereas it had previously taken them five games to get this many.  But then five of the team were dropped for the return game and Arsenal lost 0-3 at home.   This was also the last game for Arthur Hutchins.  

18 November 1931: Cliff Bastin’s England debut, the first of 21 England caps.

18 November 1933:  With Arsenal and Tottenham neck and neck at the top of the League Arsenal beat Stoke at home 3-0 (Hulme, Dunne and John getting the goals) while Tottenham could only manage a goalless draw with Leeds away.   For Hulme who played at outside right it was only his second game of the season having been injured in the first match of the campaign.

18 November 1934: Racing Club de Paris 0 Arsenal 3.  See also here

18 November 1944: Arsenal 4 Watford 0 in the wartime Football League South in front of 7910, played at WHL.  Arsenal lost the next game 1-2 to Chelsea but then beat Luton 9-3.  Curiously none of the players who scored in the Watford match also scored in the defeat of Luton.

18 November 1949: Death of James Sharp.   He moved into coaching after finishing his playing career, first with Fulham and later with Walsall of the Third Division North, and the N Ireland (then amateur) side Cliftonville who claim to have founded football in Ireland in 1879.  He died aged 69. 

18 November 1954: Joe Toner died.  After leaving Arsenal he moved to St Johnstone but a broken leg forced him out of the game.  He then coached Coleraine in Northern Ireland for whom he did turn out once owing to injuries to other players.  He also played hurling and Gaelic football for Castlewellan GAC.

18 November 1960: George Eastham signed from Newcastle for £47,500.  Eastham made a breakthrough for players’ rights as great if not greater than that of Bosman by ending the awful “retain and transfer” system.

18 November 1961: Last league game for Jackie Henderson v Nottingham F.  A powerful forward, his misfortune was to play in a declining Arsenal team.  After 103 Arsenal league games he played for Fulham and later turned out for Poole Town in the Southern League.

18 November 1989: Arsenal 3 QPR 0 – a result which left Arsenal one point clear of Chelsea at the top of the table, and three clear of Villa in third.  Liverpool who were currently fifth, went on to win the league at the end of the season.

18 November 1995: Tottenham 2 Arsenal 1 – during a period in which Arsenal won four games in 15.  Bergkamp scored, in the second of a run of three consecutive games in which he got a goal.

18 November 2000: Arsenal lost 2-0 to Everton, part of a run of only one win in seven games in all competitions.

18 November 2004: Stuart Taylor who had won a champions medal in 2002, started his fourth and final loan spell – at Leicester City.  It lasted until 23 January 2005.  In June 2005 he moved onto Villa as second choice keeper 

18 November 2009: Eduardo signed a new “long-term” contract with Arsenal. He was really coming into his game at Arsenal when Martin Taylor’s wild and appalling tackle almost ended Eduardo’s career in 2008.  There were hopes he would recover his old form, but he ultimately was sold to Shakhtar Donetsk after just 41 league starts.

18 November 2011: Luke Freeman loaned to Stevenage.  He never played for Arsenal but later signed for Stevenage and played 109 league games for them.

18 November 2017: Arsenal beat Tottenham 2-0 with goals from Mustafi and Alexis Sánchez, this being Arsenal’s first win over Tottenham in the league since 2014.

18 November 2022: Edu becomes first ever Arsenal Sporting Director

 

19 November 1886:  The Kentish Mercury published a letter confirming there was a Steamboat crossing from Greenwich to Isle of Dogs, thus allowing us to confirm over 125 years later how the Dial Square players got to their first ever game, playing against Eastern Wanderers the following month.

19 November 1887: First ever game between Arsenal and Tottenham.  Poor light stopped play with Tottenham leading 2-1 and about 15 minutes to go.  It is alleged on some Tottenham sites that the problem was caused by Royal Arsenal players arriving late, but no supporting evidence is provided with these claims.

19 November 1892: George Davie’s last game as the result of an injury.  He then sued Arsenal for his wages for the rest of the season, but lost, thus changing the way football contracts were written and creating the introduction of the notorious “retain and transfer” rule which was itself overturned by another Arsenal player, George Eastham.

19 November 1897: Tom Parker born.  He joined his local club playing his first season in the war leagues that carried on until 1919, then played with Southampton  in the Southern League and after that in the newly created third division.

19 November 1914: The FA issued another appeal to encourage players and fans to volunteer for the armed forces while almost all the media continued its hostility against the league, running an anti-football campaign while arguing that keeping horse racing going was perfectly ok.  The Times announced it would send their man to an Arsenal match – with hilarious consequences.

19 November 1921: Bolton Wanderers 1 Arsenal 0.  It meant five defeats and two victories in the last seven games leaving Arsenal at the bottom of the league, three points from safety with a game in hand.

19 November 1927: Eddie Hapgood made his debut in a 1-1 draw against Birmingham.  He played 3 games that season but by 1929/30 was a permanent fixture in the side.See also here  

19 November 1929 – Jack Kelsey was born in Llansamlet, near Swansea.  Jack joined Arsenal in 1949 from Winch Wen – his only other club (playing in the Swansea and District League side).  

19 November 1932: Aston Villa 5 Arsenal 3  Jack, Lambert and Bastin scored.  It was part of a run in which Arsenal scored 40 goals in nine games, 12 of which came from Bastin.

19 November 1933: Racing Club de Paris 0 Arsenal 1 and curiously against on 19 November 1958: Racing Club de Paris 0 Arsenal 1

19 November 1960: Jimmy Bloomfield sold to Birmingham City for £30,000.  He spent four years there, played in a Fairs Cup final, winning the league cup and scoring in the final.  He later played for Brentford, West Ham, Plymouth Argyle and Leyton Orient,  where he was player manager, winning Division 3 in his second season.

19 November 1977: Newcastle United 1 Arsenal 2, with a crowd of just 22,880.  Newcastle went ahead, Stapleton got the equaliser before Sunderland got the winner on 75 minutes.  It left Newcastle five points away from safety, while Macdonald who wasn’t playing for Newcastle, said the Geordie fans deserved better.  McGarry (Newcastle’s manager) criticised his own team in public for playing too many short balls, and then said he would not criticise his team.  He was that sort of guy.

19 November 2011:  Having been 15th in the league (with Tottenham 17th) Arsenal scored their fifth win in a row with a 2-1 away win to Norwich, scoring 15 goals.  They ended the season in 3rd; Tottenham came in fourth.

19 November 2012: Frimpong went on loan to Charlton; the second of three loans before moving on to Barnsley and then Ufa.  (Ufa was created by the President of the  Republic of Bashkortostan, to represent the republic in the Russian league).

19 November 2016: Arsenal drew 1-1 away to Man U.  This made it 17 games unbeaten since losing the first game of the season.  Giroud got the goal which left Arsenal 4th, two points behind the leaders, Liverpool.

20 November 1909: A 2-2 draw concluded a terrible opening to the season with just two wins and three draws in the first 14 games.  The result left Arsenal bottom of the 1st division, but with slightly better recent results than Tottenham and Bolton who were just above them.

20 November 1918: U-boats started to arrive off the coast at Harwich and were handed over to the Royal Navy.  German warships started to be escorted to Scapa Flow.

20 November 1920: Arsenal scored 4 for the first time after the 1st world war beating Huddersfield 4-0 away from home.  Pagnam got two, within a run that gave him seven goals in four games.

20 November 1925:  Queen Alexandra of Denmark, Queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress of India,  the wife of King Edward VII, died at Sandringham.

20 November 1926 saw the start of a run in which Tottenham lost 10, drew 3, won 2 and codeded 33 goals in 14 league games.  Senior staff were sacked and new men, including George Hardy from Arsenal were put in to steady the ship.

20 November 1929: Dan Lewis won his final cap for Wales.  He was one of seven first team goalkeepers that Chapman bought, played and sold during his time at the club.

20 November 1931: Frank Moss signed from Oldham for £3000  Frank took over from Charlie Preedy and was nearly ever present for four years playing in the title winning teams of the “triple” years (1932/3, 1933/4, 1934/5).

20 November 1940: Tim Coleman died.   He left Arsenal when football stopped at the end of the 1914-15 season but later played non-league for Tunbridge Wells Rangers.  He finally retired as a player in 1921 and then worked as a coach and manager for Maidstone Utd., before moving to the Netherlands.  

20 November 1954: Jimmy Logie’s final game, (Manchester Utd 2 Arsenal 1) in a sequence of eight league games without a win.

20 November 1968.  Arsenal 1 Tottenham 0; League Cup Semi Final.  John Radford scored, as he did in the return leg which was a 1-1 draw, taking Arsenal through to their second consecutive final in the competition.

20 November 1971: Arsenal’s habit of letting in five continued in 5-1 away defeat to Wolverhampton.  It was Arsenal’s third successive defeat just six months after winning the Double. 

20 November 1973: Arsenal played a mid-season friendly against Mechelen of Belgium –  a 2-2 draw, with Hornsby getting both goals.  The reason for the game is unclear but it may have been to help the finances (which is why Arsenal had played such games in earlier eras).

20 November 1984: Justin Raymond Hoyte born.  He joined Arsenal in 1993, and went on to play 34 games for the club before later making his name with Middlesbrough.  In 2015 he finally dropped out of the league and joined Dagenham and Redbridge. In March 2017, Hoyte signed for FC Cincinnati of the United Soccer League. Cincinnati declined his contract option at the end of the 2019 season, and we have no further news of him.  He played 18 internationals for Trinidad and Tobago.

20 November 1991: Pål Lydersen joined Arsenal  from I K Start for £500,000.  He played 16 games for Arsenal and made 20 appearances for Norway before returning to IK Start.  He ended his career in 2000 playing for Molde FK, in Norway.

20 November 1999: Arsenal beat Middlesbrough 5-1.  Overmars got three and Berkgamp two, to make it four wins and a draw in the last five.  In the next match, (a league cup game) Thierry Henry scored for Arsenal for the first time.

20 November 2004: Ex-Brazil captain Socrates, now aged 50, came on as a sub for Garforth in their match against Tadcaster for the last 12 minutes of the game.  A record crowd of 1385 turned up to see the event, but Sorcrates declined the chance to repeat the event saying it was too cold.

20 November 2009: Wojciech Szczęsny loaned to Brentford.  He played 28 times for Brentford before returning to Arsenal.

20 November 2010: Arsenal lost 2-3 to Tottenham (Nasri and Chamakh scoring) making it two home defeats out of two in the month.  However away from home Arsenal won three in a row.

20 November 2017.  Sven Mislintat was appointed head of recruitment.  He left in February 2019 and joined Stuggart as sporting director.

20 November 2022: Football ceased as the world cup was played in Qatar.

21 November 1888: Despite the first League season being underway since 8 September, the notion of two points for a win, one for a draw, as a way of working out who stood where in the table, was not agreed until this date!  Before then, no one really knew who stood where in the League, and the 2 point method was considered highly contentious.

21 November 1914: League debut for Billy Blyth v Huddersfield, Arsenal losing 0-3.  During the month Arsenal won 6-0 and 3-0, lost 0-3 twice, and drew 1-1.

21 November 1914: As part of a campaign by right wing newspapers to have football stopped the Times sent a reporter to Arsenal without the paper or the reporter realising he was witnessing a reserve game rather than a league game!  His raging piece said that the crowd was tiny but still criticised those present for not volunteering for armed service.  The result was Arsenal reserves 1 Chelsea reserves 2.   

21 November 1916: The hospital ship HMHS Britannic was sunk in the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine.  This was the largest ship to go down during the whole of the war.

21 November 1918: An Act of Parliament was passed giving women over 21 the right to stand for Parliament.

21 November 1920: The IRA shot the Cairo gang of fourteen British undercover agents in Dublin. In immediate retaliation the Royal Irish Constabulary opened fire on a crowd at a Gaelic Athletic match in Croke Park, killing thirteen spectators and one player and wounding 60.

21 November 1921: Arsenal beat Clapton Orient in extra time 2-1 in the semi-final of the London FA Challenge Cup. Meanwhile, amid discussions over the move towards the separation of Ireland from the UK, troops were sent in to restore order in East Belfast and as the violence spread.  

21 November 1925: Having won their last two league games 5-2 and 6-1 Arsenal, now in 2nd position, played away to 16th placed Blackburn Rovers.  Arsenal won again, with the result Blackburn Rovers 2 Arsenal 3, Buchan and Brain getting the goals with an own goal from Rollo completing the victory.

21 November 1931: League debut for Frank Moss in a 1-2 away defeat to Chelsea.  This game was part of a series of nine games in which David Jack scored 13 goals, including at least one in every match. 

21 November 1936: Arsenal ran out 5-3 winners against Middlesbrough.  In three matches Arsenal had moved from just outside the relegation zone to fourth scoring 13 goals on the way.

21 November 1942: In one of the numerous errors in his book Bernard Joy reported on watching a match at Aldershot which ended 6-2.  In fact it ended 7-4.  It’s a detail, but when writing what was to be acclaimed as a definitive football history, it is an important one. Lewis got a hattrick in front of a crowd estimated at 10,000.  Arsenal brought in a new keeper (Kelly) for his first match.  Arsenal won all three games with him in goal, and after the war he played in the second and third divisions.

21 November 1945: Arsenal 3 Dynamo Moscow 4 – Stanley Matthews and other guests players turned out for Arsenal in this friendly played in such thick fog that no one really knew what was happening.  54.620 had to wait for the next day’s papers to hear that the Soviet team had won 3-4.  See also here

21 November 1955: Rangers 0 Arsenal 2: the first appearance of Stan Charlton.  It was a series that started through the work of Chapman due to his friendship with Bill Struth of Rangers.  Struth had been at Rangers longer than Chapman at at Arsenal and had watched Arsenal grow from being relegation fodder into the dominant side in England.

21 November 1962: Alan Smith born.  He won the league as Arsenal’s centre forward in 1989 (scoring the first goal of the final game against Liverpool) and 1991.

21 November 1970: Ipswich Town 0 Arsenal 1.  League match 18 of the first Double season.  Arsenal were now four points behind Leeds but with a game in hand.  Jon Sammels playing his first game became the 16th and last player to be used by Arsenal – the lowest number ever for a season equalling the 1968/9 record.

21 November 1972: Having just been beaten away by Norwich for the first time, Arsenal lost to them again on this day, this time at home 0-3, in league cup quarter finals.   37,671 looked on in disbelief. 

21 November 1987: Arsenal 0 Southampton 1.  The first of a run of 11 league games in which Arsenal won 1, drew four and lost six.  Only once in the 11 games did Arsenal score more than one goal.

21 November 1992: Leeds 3 Arsenal 0 – the first of four consecutive league defeats, and the start of an eight match sequence without a victory during which Arsenal scored just two goals.  Allan Miller was the first Arsenal keeper to come on as a sub.

21 November 1995: Arsenal got one of only four wins in 15 matches during a dreadful mid-season run beating Sheffield W 4-2.  This was the second and final time Arsenal scored more than three in a match in the season – both games ending 4-2.  The goals came from Bergkamp, Winterburn, Dikov and Hartson.

21 November 1998: Arsenal lost 1-0 away to Wimbledon.  It is part of a run of five without a win for the champions and part of a sequence of just one goal in four.

21 November 2006: A 3-1 defeat of Hamburg left Arsenal needing only to avoid defeat in final match to win their Champions League group

21 November 2007: An asteroid that circles the sun between Mars and Jupiter once every 4.23 years was renamed Arsène Wenger by the International Astronomical Union.  It was previously known by the slightly less memorable name of 33179

21 November 2008: The BBC reported that William Gallas had his captaincy of Arsenal removed following a verbal outburst against other players.  Almunia was given the captaincy for the next match.

21 November 2012: Arsenal secured their place in the next round of the Champions League with a 2-0 win over Montpellier.

21 November 2016: Arsenal lost 1-2 away to WBA to conclude a run of one win in five, a run that included a league cup defeat to Sheffield W, a 5-1 defeat to Bayern Munich and a 1-1 draw with Tottenham.  Arsenal then recovered to have one defeat in the next 11.

22 November 1895: Charles Ambler joined Arsenal from Tottenham.  It was his second stint with Arsenal (having also played for Royal Arsenal), but he only managed one league game in his second spell.

22 November 1899: Alexander “Sandy” Main signed from Hibs.  The move to Arsenal was his fifth transfer during 1899 but he then stayed til 1902/3, playing 63 league games including the 12-0 win over Loughboro, in which he scored twice. 

22 November 1913: Last senior game for Roddy McEachrane.  He ended his career with a 1-0 home win (at Highbury) against Birmingham in front of 25,000.  Both his first and last games were Division II games, but in between he played in the promotion season that took Arsenal to Division I for the first time, and the two cup semi-finals.

22 November 1913: Last senior game for Joseph Fidler. His final appearance in football was the 1914/15 season when he played for Port Vale.  In the war he fought with the Middlesex Regiment which had integrated the battalions raised and paid for  by Henry Norris, the voluntary work for which he was given a knighthood.   It was also the last game for Roddy McEachrane.

22 November 1916: Henry Norris presented a Royal Humane Society award to a local child who had pulled a girl out of the Thames when she was drowning.

22 November 1918: The Football League held its first post-war meeting, and countered the FA ruling by giving clubs permission to start paying players immediately, now the war was over.

22 November 1919: The programme for Arsenal versus Notts County used the club name as “The Arsenal”, for the last time.  The Arsenal won 3-1; it was their first home win since 20 September, in front of 25,000. Pagnam got two more goals, making it four goals in three games.  It seemed Arsenal had a centre forward worthy of the name. See also here.

22 November 1920: Sir Henry Norris MP asked a question about cheap railway fares for groups travelling to sports fixtures.  These had been a regular feature pre-war but had been stopped by the rail companies post-war and they refused to re-introduce them.

22 November 1924: Sidney Hoar was purchased by Arsenal from Luton for £3000 in the era (according to manager Knighton) of “no transfer over “£1000″, thus revealing another misleading assertion in the Knighton autobiography. On this day Arsenal drew 0-0 with league leaders Sunderland.

22 November 1924: WHU 1 Tottenham 1.  In his autobiography Arsenal manager Leslie Knighton wrote a lot about how worried he was facing a very powerful WHU in the cup, and yet this was the only point the club got in five matches in November.  And December was little better!

22 November 1930: Arsenal 5 Middlesbrough 3.  The second of three games in which Arsenal scored five in four matches.  Lambert got three and Bastin two. See also here

22 November 1947:  Arsenal 2 Huddersfield Town 0.  The 17th match unbeaten at the start of Tom Whittaker’s reign.  The win meant Arsenal had won 12 and drawn five of the games so far.  Rooke and Logie scored the goals. 

22 November 1962: Raphael Meade born.  He started his career at Arsenal as a schoolboy in 1977, turning professional in 1980. He was the leading scorer for Arsenal’s London Combination side for two seasons and made his league debut in 1981.

22 November 1963: James Furnell signed by Billy Wright from second division Liverpool for around £15,000 or £16,000. Wright spoke about getting up a 5am to secure the deal, and needing Furnell to help Arsenal win the league

22 November 1975:  40,102 turned up to be amazed by  a score of Arsenal 3 Manchester United 1.  Man U were third in the league with the best goal scoring record in the division.  O’Leary, Brady and Stapleton (all Irish) were the heroes and so the main focus in the press was that there were too many “foreigners” were playing in “our league”. 

22 November 1977: Arsenal 1 Tottenham 3, Pat Rice Testimonial.  See also here.

22 November 1978: Red Star Belgrade 1 Arsenal 0, in front of 51,000.   Brady was missing, following a sending off in the previous game.  Ironically Petrovic floated in a Brady-like centre that confused everyone allowing Blagojevic to squeeze the ball in from close range.

22 November 1986: League debut of Paul Merson.  Arsenal 3 Man City 0.  City were relegated at the end of the season, the last season before Wenger when Tottenham finished above Arsenal (4th to 3rd by one point).

22 November 1997: Sheffield Wednesday 2 Arsenal 0.  Game 15 of the 2nd Double Season.    The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.  It meant Arsenal had won just one game in five – and they lost the next game as well.

22 November 1989: Arsenal lost 1-3 away to Oldham in the league cup, having just won three consecutive league games.  Niall Quinn scored the goal.

22 November 2000:  Spartak Moscow 4 Arsenal 1; but despite the defeat Arsenal still eventually went through to the knockout stage.

22 November 2003: Birmingham 0 Arsenal 3.  The 13th league match of the unbeaten season – a new Premier League unbeaten record. Ljunberg, Bergkamp and Pires scored.  Arsenal had won ten and drawn three.

22 November 2005: Arsenal beat Thun 0-1 in Bern to win the Champions League group stages with a game spare.  It came in a run of 10 games in which nine were victories and one was a draw.

22 November 2010: Henri Lansbury went on loan to Norwich City.  He played 23 games for the club and scored four, and followed on with one final loan, to West Ham, before settling permanently at Nottingham Forest.

22 November 2010: Following irate comments after a defeat to Tottenham, the History Society looked back at other “disasters” – showing that more often than not in the Wenger era a run of poor results preceded spectacular success. 

22 November 2011: Chuks Aneke’s loan to Stevenage for whom he played six games.  He never played for Arsenal but played 82 loan games for three different clubs before his final transfer away to Zulte Waregem in 2014.

22 November 2014.  Arsenal 1 Man U 2.  The press made much of Arsenal’s “poor start” to the season of four wins, three defeats and five draws thus far as Arsenal’s position of 8th in the league was (quite wrongly) called the club’s worst start for 30 years.

23 November 1889: Royal Arsenal 4 Foxes 1 in London Senior Cup; en route to the final.

23 November 1896: Kettering v Arsenal in the United League.  This was the game in which Joseph Powell was injured and subsequently tragically died of tetanus aged 23.  He was Woolwich Arsenal’s first captain.

23 November 1910: Suffragist Hugh Franklin attempted to whip Winston Churchill (the home secretary, and thus the person directly responsible for the government’s response to the suffragettes) on a train.  Meanwhile Dr Crippen was hanged.

23 November 1918: The British military government of Palestine began.  Meanwhile Arsenal played and lost again, this time 1-4 to Brentford in front of 5000 fans, making it two defeats, one draw and one win in November.

23 November 1919: Jimmy Logie born.  Jimmy first played for Scottish junior side Lochore Welfare, who are still playing (home crowds are around 200 or so).  He signed for Arsenal just before the outbreak of the second world war, and then served in the Royal Navy playing occasional wartime matches for Southampton, Grimsby, Dunfermline and even one or two for Arsenal when on leave and at the end of the war.

23 November 1921: Fulham East Conservative Association had written to Sir Henry Norris to ask him to double his annual contribution to the party.   He wrote back on this day and not only said no, but he also resigned from the Fulham branch of the Conservative Party.  The man who had been the longest ever serving London Mayor of all time (and still a record) without any payment or expenses claim, had finally had enough.

23 November 1929: George Male joined Arsenal.  His first attempt at senior football was a trial with West Ham, who amazingly (in the light of what happened later) turned him down, thus ensuring that his first club was Clapton.

23 November 1935: Steve Burtenshaw born.  He was Arsenal caretaker manager between March and May 1986 following the resignation of Don Howe amidst rumours that he (Don) would be replaced.  Steve was himself replaced by George Graham.  His record as a manager of Arsenal was a win rate of 27.27% winning 3, losing 6 and drawing 2.

23 November 1935: Arsenal played 12th-placed Wolverhampton (who had in seven away games gained just one point).  Rogers scored, Drake got two, making it three games in a row in which he had scored, Hulme got the fourth.  It was the first time since the opening game of the season that Drake had scored more than one goal in a game.

23 November 1937: Jim Furnell born in Lancashire.  He moved to Arsenal for £15,000 or £16,000 (depending on the source you read) on November 22 1963, signed by Billy Wright.  

23 November 1938: John Macleod born in Edinburgh.  He joined Hibernian the club he supported as a schoolboy playing first for Edinburgh Thistle, the feeder team of Hibs.    Then he went with Joe Baker to Armadale Thistle for what Scottish clubs liked to call “toughening up.” 

23 November 1940: Northampton Town 1 Arsenal 8.  7000 turned up to see one of two of Arsenal’s eight goal routs – the other being a home win against Luton. There were five different goalscorers.

23 November 1959: Arsenal 4 Leicester 2 in Southern Floodlight Challenge Cup..   Arsenal had also won the cup the previous season.  

23 November 1963: Jim Furnell’s first game (on his birthday)  – a 5-3 win against Blackpool.   He had moved to Arsenal for about £15,000 the previous day.  Strong (2), Barnwell, Brown and Eastham scored. 

23 November 1976: Pat Jennings Testimonial.  Tottenham 3 Arsenal 2.  He played 472 games for Tottenham and 327 games for Arsenal.  28,582 turned up.

23 November 1985: Last game for Chris Whyte, first game for Martin Keown.  WBA 0 Arsenal 0.  Chris Whyte played 90 league games for Arsenal before moving onto the American indoor league.

23 November 1994: Ian Wright scored against Leicester making it 12 appearances in a row in which he has scored.  Unfortunately only five of those games were league matches which Arsenal won, as Arsenal under Graham went on to end the season in 12th.

23 November 2002:  Arsenal lost 3–2 to Southampton, conceding three for the first time since May 2001.   Bergkamp and Pires scored but Campbell was sent off after which Southampton quickly scored two.

23 November 2006: Matthew Connolly went on his first loan period, to Bournemouth, playing five league games and two FA Cup matches, and scoring against Nottingham Forest.  He returned to Arsenal and played in the League Cup quarter final on 9 January 2007 in the amazing Liverpool 3 Arsenal 6 match.

23 November 2010: Arsenal lost 2-0 away to Braga of Portugal in one of the most notoriously odd referee displays of all time – so odd that even the press mentioned it although they nationalistically put it down to foreign refs not understanding the rules of the game.  A simpler explanation was that the ref had been bought.

23 November 2011: Arsenal qualified for the Champions League knockout stages with a 2-1 win against Borussia Dortmund.  Van Persie got both goals.

23 November 2011: Richard Wright returned to Ipswich and played in the reserves then went to Preston, then on to Colchester for a trial and finally Manchester City signing a one year contract extension on 10 July 2013.

23 November 2011: Sanchez Watt went to Sheffield Wednesday on loan.  It was the fourth of six loan spells before he signed permanently for Colchester.  He never played for Arsenal in the league.

23 November 2012.   Arsenal announced a £150m ground sponsorship deal with Emirates.

23 November 2013: Arsenal 2 Southampton 0, in the League; part of a run of six wins in seven games.

23 November 2016: Arsenal 2 PSG 2 in the Champions League.  It was one of 19 consecutive games in all competitions without a defeat.

23 November 2017.  Arsenal played their 5th Europa League match, away to Germany’s bottom club, Kologne, and lost 1-0.  Although hardly of significance to Arsenal on this day the editor of these files spent an hour wandering the streets of a small Cyprus town trying to find a bar that was showing the match.  Eventually one was found, full of German supporters, who were awfully decent about events on the screen.

23 November 2019: Arsenal 2 Southampton 2.  It was part of a six games without a win run which ultimately led to the sacking of manager Unai Emery.

24 November 1894:  Robert Buchanan scored his first goal for Arsenal, against Newcastle.  (Wiki has different scorers, but all other sources note it as Buchanan.) 

24 November 1888: Arsenal 4 Dulwich 2 in London Senior Cup.  Royal Arsenal’s first team made it to the semi-final, in this season, and won the competition in 1891.

24 November 1895: Billy Milne born in Buckie.  He played before and after the first world war for Buckie Thistle, and during the war served his country with great honour with the Seaforth Highlanders in France, for which he won the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1918. 

24 November 1903: Edward Anderson signed from St Mirren.  He made his debut away to Stockport on 1 January 1904 but played just one more game after that before moving to Fulham in 1904.

24 November 1913:  Reg Stockill was born in York.  Although he only played a handful of games for Arsenal he should always be remembered for what he did on 27 August 1932.  For on that day there was a football result which read Birmingham 0 Arsenal 1.  It was the opening day of the season, and Reg got the goal in the first match in the extraordinary three year run in which Arsenal were champions three times running – under three different managers.  

24 November 1917: Alfred  Godfrey Calverley was born.  He joined Mansfield Town in June 1946 but was signed by Arsenal for £2,500 on 11 March 1947.  

24 November 1923: Tottenham 3 Arsenal 0 – the signs for manager Leslie Knighton were not good.  Although Arsenal won the London FA Challenge Cup, they finished 19th in the league and went out of the FA Cup in the second round; a state of affairs not even mentioned in his subsequent self-serving autobiography that attacked Sir Henry Norris and which was run in the Sunday press.  This made it four games in a row without a win over Tottenham.

24 November 1934: After two defeats, a win and a draw normal service was resumed on this day with a 5-2 win over Chelsea, followed on December 1 with a 7-0 win over Wolverhampton.    

24 November 1951 Arsenal 4 Bolton 2. Doug Lishman’s third consecutive home hat trick – an all time record.  Arsenal scored 14 goals in those three home games.

24 November 1971: 52,884 at WHL saw a classic of determination and pure entertainment mixed with tension.  Storey was booked on the half hour – leading to press comments about him being not quite the sort of man that should be playing for England. Rice passed a free kick to Kennedy who dribbled and scored.  Rice also did a back pass which Chivers latched onto and scored. It ended 1-1.

24 November 1979: 55,546 saw a goalless draw with Liverpool with the star performers being Clemence and Jennings.  It was probably the most entertaining 0-0 the crowd had ever seen. 

24 November 1996: Arsenal 3 Tottenham 1.  Arsène Wenger’s first derby.  Arsenal had not beaten Tottenham in over 3 years and Tottenham were unbeaten at Highbury since Sept 1991.  When Lukic threw the ball out after an injury, Tottenham failed to return it and scored as Arsenal looked on.  Wright, Adams and Bergkamp set things right.

24 November 2004: PSV Eindhoven 1 Arsenal 1.   Arsenal’s fourth draw in a row in the group.

24 November 2007: Victory over Wigan left Arsenal 3 points clear at top of league and undefeated after 13 games.  Gallas and Rosicky scored but the run only lasted two more league games.

24 November 2008: Arsène Wenger announced that Cesc Fàbregas was the new permanent Arsenal captain, following the dismissal of William Gallas who had fallen out with the squad.

24 November 2009: Rhys Murphy loaned to Brentford where he played five games before going on loan to Preston, after which he transferred to Telstar in the Netherlands.

24 November 2009: Alex Song signed a new contract to last to 2014.  However after reported disagreements with the management he was sold to Barcelona after 2012, and after two years they loaned him for two seasons to West Ham and then went to Rubin Kazan.

24 November 2009: Rounding off a busy day at Arsenal the club beat Standard Liege 2-0 to secure a place in the next round, having been undefeated thus far in the group stage.

24 November 2015:  Arsenal beat Dinamo Zagreb 3-0 in the Champions League which helped remove some of the memories of  the previous match which was lost 5-1 to Bayern Munich, three weeks earlier.  Better still it kicked off a ten match run of eight wins, one draw and one defeat, which further helped eradicate the memories of Germany.

25 November 1893: Woolwich Arsenal’s record crowd to date – 20,000  – turned up for the FA Cup tie against local rivals Millwall Athletic.  See also this review of crowds that season.  Arsenal 3 Millwall Athletic 2.

25 November 1911: The impact of cost cutting on Arsenal was revealed in full by the result Blackburn 4 Arsenal 0.  And it was to get worse because exactly one month on from this game Tottenham beat Arsenal 5-0. 

25 November 1916: How little the public in some quarters cared about wartime football was shown with a crowd of just 1500 for Fulham 2 Arsenal 0.  Arsenal could still get 8000 for a game, but that enthusiasm was clearly not shared everywhere.

25 November 1922: Last game for Arthur Hutchins – a 2-3 home defeat to Sunderland.  He moved on to Charlton of Division 3 South on a free transfer in July 1923, having played 108 games in total and scoring one goal.  He stayed with Charlton for three seasons and then retired from football, but we have no details of his later life.

25 November 1930:  Cecil Paine, a pathologist at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, cured an eye infection in a patient using penicillin.  It was the first time it had ever been done.

25 November 1951: Willie Young born.  He started out with Aberdeen, before going to Tottenham.  From there he moved on to Arsenal.   His first game for Arsenal was on 5 March 1977. 

25 November 1972: Derby 5 Arsenal 0.  Arsenal had lost by the same score to Stoke City in the previous Double winning season, and did it again in 1973/4 losing 0-5 to Sheffield Utd.  

25 November 1978: Coventry 1 Arsenal 1.  26,786 in the crowd. Coventry were described in the Sunday Times living “as dangerously as a chain smoking petrol pump attendant.”  (Remember them?)    Arsenal were 5th, nine points behind the leaders with one game in hand –  and the club was coping without Macdonald.

25 November 1980: Arsenal 0 Celtic 0, Sammy Nelson’s testimonial, Raphael Meade and Chris Whyte made their debuts.

25 November 1984: An injury to Pat Jennings heralded a decline in Arsenal’s fortune after a table topping start.  It turned out to be Jennings last game as Arsenal lost 2-1 to Sheffield Wednesday.

25 November 1994: Paul Merson admitted to multiple addictions.  Arsenal continued to pay him although he left football to address his issues, not returning until 1 February 1995.  His honesty and bravery in facing the media earned him significant acclaim but he lost a lot of this goodwill following his later vitriolic TV attacks on Arsenal and Arsene Wenger.

25 November 1998: 73,707 attend the home defeat 0-1 to Lens at Wembley

25 November 1999: Arsenal 3 Nantes 0 in the Uefa Cup, en route to the final.  Overmars, Winterburn and Bergkamp scored – the return match ended 3-3 with Overmars once again scoring in Europe.

25 November 2001: Arsenal 3 Man U 1. League match 13 of the third Double season. The game is best remembered for the errors by Man U goalkeeper Barthez.   Ljungberg equalised an early Man U strike and Henry tormented Barthez with two in the last ten minutes of the match.

25 November 2003: Internazionale 1 Arsenal 5 in the Champions League.  Henry (2) Ljungberg, Edu, Pires each scored in one of the most memorable Arsenal nights in Europe.

25 November 2008: Arsenal beat Dinamo Kiev to secure passage to the knockout stages of the Champions League.

25 November 2009: Death of Mike Tiddy.   After Arsenal he worked with his local football clubs in Cornwall, was a Methodist lay preacher, and was also very active on his local council.

25 November 2010:  Aaron Ramsey was sent on loan to Nottingham Forest for his recovery after his horrific injury. The deal lasted until 3 January 2011.

25 November 2018: Arsenal beat Bournemouth away 2-1 in the league.  It was part of a 22 match unbeaten run in League, League Cup and Europe.

26 November 1887: Millwall Rovers 3 Royal Arsenal 0.  This was the third game between the two clubs who became great rivals while Arsenal played in Plumstead and Millwall on the Isle of Dogs.

26 November 1910: Matthew Shortt, played the first of his four games for Arsenal – each of which ended in defeat.   On this date it was Arsenal 1 Newcastle 2,  William Hall and Henry Norris were both at the Manor Ground where a prospectus for a new share issue in Woolwich Arsenal FC was given to everyone in the crowd inviting local people to buy back their club.  Mostly they chose not to.  See also here

26 November 1923: Arsenal played the London FA Challenge Cup semi-final against Millwall on Clapton’s ground but the fog descended in the second half and the match was abandoned with Arsenal 2-0 up.  

26 November 1924: Herbert Lawson turned professional with Arsenal, ahead of  his debut on 3 February 1926 as Chapman tried to find a replacement for Sid Hoar, whose injuries had stopped his progression.

26 November 1928, Sir Henry Norris dropped his legal action against the Daily Mail in order to continue discussion with the FA in which Sir Henry asked for changes to the report they had issued privately on the finances of Arsenal.

26 November 1932: Arsenal beat Middlesbrough 4-2 at Highbury, while Aston Villa who had just beaten Arsenal 5-3 were beaten 5-2 by lowly Man City. For Arsenal Coleman (2) Hulme and Jack obliged with the goals.  Alex James was injured and Parkin got his first game of the season at number 10.  Arsenal went back to top.

26 November 1955: Doug Lishman’s final senior game, a 0-1 home defeat to Burnley.  He joined Nottm Forest and scored a hat-trick in the match that got Nottingham Forest promoted in 1956/7, but retired in the summer of 1957 to join his father-in law in a furniture retail business in Stoke on Trent. 

26 November 1958: Danny Clapton’s only appearance for England

26 November 1969:  Arsenal 3 Sporting Lisbon 0 in the Fairs Cup saw George Graham get two, Radford the third, and an improved crowd of 35,253 came to join in the fun.

26 November 1977:  Arsenal 1 Derby County 3 rang the alarm bells.  What was so worrying was not that Arsenal lost, but could have been 3-1 up by half time but instead it was 1-1 as Stapleton back headed to his keeper, only to find he wasn’t there.  It then got worse and Arsenal looked a spent force.

26 November 1983: Final game for Lee Chapman after just 28 games; a 0-3 away defeat to Leicester.  Fortunately Tony Woodcock found his goalscoring form and got 21 goals in 37 games to help haul Arsenal up to 6th.  It was also the last game for Alan Sunderland

26 November 1994: Final game for Jimmy Carter.  He managed only 25 games and two goals with Arsenal and did not play in any of the Cup finals.   After the fall of Graham, Rioch loaned him to Oxford, before going to Portsmouth and then back to Millwall in 1998 where an injury curtailed his career.

26 November 1995: A 0-0 draw with Blackburn: the start of a period of one win in eight, during which Arsenal only scored eight goals and managed to lost 1-3 at home to Wimbledon. 

26 November 2005: Henry scored his 100th goal at Highbury against Blackburn.  His goal came on half time with Fabregas and van Persie also scoring in a 3-0 win.  It was Arsenal’s third successive win and made it nine unbeaten in league and cup.

26 November 2011: A 1-1 draw at home to Fulham on this day was the only game in a run of eight consecutive League games that Arsenal did not win.

26 November 2013: Arsenal beat Marseilles 2-0 in the Champions League as they went through a run of four consecutive games without conceding a single goal and just one goal in eight consecutive Champions League and Premier League games.

26 November 2014: After defeats to Swansea and Man U in the Premier League Arsenal gained a welcome 2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund.  It began a run of just two defeats in the next 15 matches.

27 November 1877: Leigh Roose, one of the most famous players of the age, and an Arsenal player at the end of his career, was born. Leigh was the player who was singled out from Arsenal’s first world war heros at the Remembrance Ceremony before the Arsenal Tottenham game in November 2016. 

27 November 1909.   Bury 1 Woolwich Arsenal 2.  After just two wins in the first 14 Arsenal were bottom of the league.  With this and two subsequent wins the club rose to 15th after the 11 December game, leaving Bolton and Tottenham stranded.  

27 November 1915:  2,500 turned up for QPR 1 Arsenal 1 – Arsenal’s third draw of the month.  With Parliament now sitting on Saturdays legislation was introduced to control housing rents and maintain them at their pre-war level following a series of rent strikes in Glasgow which had often led to civil disorder and wholesale eviction by landlords.

27 November 1938: Racing Club de Paris 1 Arsenal 1.  The landing of the planes going to France for the Remembrance match was affected by fog.  The two planes carrying the Arsenal players missed each other and one went on to miss a hanger by a matter of feet.

27 November 1943: Arsenal 6 Charlton 2 in the Football League South wartime league.   The result meant Arsenal had scored 17 goals in three consecutive games, with Lewis getting seven and Dennis Compton four.

27 November 1971: After four defeats in a row the result was Arsenal 2 Crystal Palace 1, with 32,461 in attendance, and the win brought much relief.  Arsenal were two up in 35 minutes as Radford volleyed the second in from an Armstrong corner.  But Palace responded and nearly got a draw – it was not looking good.

27 November 1972: Henry White (known as “Bert”) died.  After playing 101 league games for Arsenal scoring 40 goals, between 1919 and 1923, and being a member of the London Challenge Cup winning side of 1922, he moved on to Blackpool, and also played first class cricket for Warwickshire.  See also this second article

27 November 1984: Martin Hayes first game  – a friendly v Australia at Highbury.  He had joined  Arsenal as an apprentice in June 1982. 

27 November 1996: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 4 (League cup round 4).  In three league cup games Arsenal scored eight goals, of which five were scored by Ian Wright.

27 November 2000: Sebastian Svard bought in from Kjobenhavns Boklklub.  He did not play a league game for Arsenal but won the Youth Cup and after a series of loans went on to play for Borussia Mönchengladbach.

27 November 2001: Only 16,917 turn up for Arsenal v Grimsby in the league cup, although 3rd division Grimsby had just knocked out Liverpool.  Edu and Wiltord scored.  This low crowd influenced the decision to offer League Cup games for £10 (lower) and £20 (upper) from then on.

27 November 2002: Roma 1 Arsenal 3, Henry’s first European hat trick.

27 November 2007:  Arsenal lost 3-1 to Seville and thus ended a 28 games unbeaten sequence.

27 November 2010: Aston Villa 2 Arsenal 4.  A start of a run of ten games with only one defeat.

27 November 2016: Arsenal beat Bournemouth 3-1.  The result meant that since the opening game of the season Arsenal were unbeaten in all competitions – a total of 19 games.

27 November 2021: After losing their first three league games of the season Arsenal had had 8 wins and 2 draws, but then lost 4-0 to Liverpool.  However on this day a comfortable 2-0 victory over Newcastle took Arsenal to 5th, just six points behind the leaders.

28 November 1874: John Caldwell, who became Arsenal’s left back, was born in Ayr.  His clubs are recorded as New Mills, Hibernian, Woolwich Arsenal, Third Lanark, Woolwich Arsenal, Brighton United, Galston, Brighton and Hove Albion.

28 November 1895: Sidney Hoar born in Bedfordshire.  He was signed by Leslie Knighton for Arsenal even though Knighton claimed in his autobiography that he was forbidden from signing players at the time and had no funds so to do.

28 November 1914:  Before the home game with Bristol City Henry Norris was interviewed by the Times on the subject of recruiting volunteers at football matches. Subsequent reports of the game said that of the 7000 present 2000 of these were in uniform and the rest too old, or too young to serve – a typical put down by the paper which wanted the abandonment of football but supported the continuation of horse racing as a suitable activity for wartime.

28 November 1921: The London FA Challenge Cup final was postponed due to fog – the second Arsenal game of the week to be affected by the persistent fog.   The LFA CC final was in fact left until 8 May

28 November 1923: The Times published a copy of a letter by Sir Henry Norris disagreeing with government policy that tariffs on imports would help reduce the UK’s high levels of unemployment.  Norris was taking an essentially Liberal Party free trade position on the question despite having been a Conservative councillor and MP.

28 November 1925: Arsenal 2 Sunderland 0.  Arsenal 5th consecutive win – a sequence which included 10 goals in those five games for Jimmy Brain who scored 34 goals in 41 games in total in the season.  The sequence also included five goals from Charlie Buchan.

28 November 1927: Alf Baker’s only international appearance. England lost 1-2 to Wales at Burnley. England ended the home championship bottom of the table with no points, while Wales came top, winning two and drawing the third game.

28 November 1931: Arsenal 6 Liverpool 0 – Division 1.   Jack 2, Lambert 3, Hulme 1. It was the start of a four match unbeaten run in which Arsenal scored 14 goals.

28 November 1934: A rare outing for Norman Sidey in Arsenal 4 Manchester City 0 played at Highbury in front of 10,888.  Arsenal won the Charity Shield for the second year running

28 November 1937: Racing Club de Paris 0 Arsenal 2

28 November 1951: Arthur Milton’s only international appearance as a footballer.  He played six test matches for England at cricket.  Only 12 men played for England at both cricket and football (excluding wartime games).  Three of them Andy Ducat, Wally Hardinge, Arthur Milton, were Arsenal men.

28 November 1956: John Barnwell became a professional with Arsenal.  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.

28 November 1962: Arsenal 12 Ford United 0 in FA Youth Cup.  Ford United were an early incarnation of the club now known as Redbridge FC.  Ford played in the Aetolian League which they won twice, but by 1995 the club was in serious financial difficulty, until Sky Sports was signed up as a sponsor thus rescuing the club.  

28 November 1964: Last game for John Snedden.  He joined Charlton Athletic for £150,000 in March 1965 and towards the end of his career went to South Africa.

28 November 1970: Arsenal 2 Liverpool 0.  League match 19 of the first Double season.  Graham and Radford scored.

28 November 1979: Arsenal 2 Celtic 0 with 42,149 in the crowd to see the friendly, although the game was not shown on the official complete Arsenal record of games against Celtic,

28 November 1990: Arsenal 2 Man U 6 in the League Cup.  It was an extraordinary game; Arsenal were unbeaten in the league, second in the table and 12 points ahead of Man U in 7th.  Man U had only won two of their last six in the league, but as Man U took the lead, Arsenal seemed to say, “we’ll give you that; we’ll have the league”.

28 November 1999: Henry scored two goals in one game for the first time, in a match that ended Arsenal 2 Derby 1.  It meant Arsenal had won all three of their November league games and were unbeaten in six.

28 November 2012: The month ended with 1-1 draw to Everton making it 3 draws 1 win and 1 defeat in the month.

28 November 2019: Arsenal’s home run in the Europa League group stages ended in a disappointing 1-2 defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt, Arsenal’s only defeat in the group stages.

 

29 November 1890 Jimmy Charteris had his leg broken in two places in a scratch match played in frost and snow and consequently never played again, highlighting the awful consequences of playing during a singularly bleak winter

29 November 1893: James Boyle signed from Celtic having won a cup medal when he played in the Glasgow Cup Final in 1891, Celtic’s first major honour.   He seems to have been one of the many engineers who travelled south looking for work at the Woolwich factories.

29 November 1896: Joseph Powell died after breaking his arm in a match at Kettering, as a result of tetanus and blood poisoning.  After his death Arsenal played a friendly against Aston Villa on 7 December 1896. The proceeds of the match, £137 8s 6d (about £12000 in today’s money) were given to his widow who was pregnant with their second child. 

29 November 1899: Alexander Main début in friendly v Eastbourne.  Having played for four Scottish clubs in the previous season he travelled south and signed for Woolwich Arsenal.  His first league game was 25 December 1899 away to Lincoln. 

29 November 1902:  Arsenal organised an archery competition and raised about £1,200 by selling 80,000 competition tickets.  (The total income from the 1901-02 season was £5600).    The police advised the club that they were organising an illegal lottery and charged Arsenal’s manager. Harry Bradshaw, was found guilty, and fined £5.   Woolwich Arsenal, though kept the proceeds. 

29 November 1913: First appearance for Robert Benson.  He had played 19 times for Southampton before leaving to move to Sheffield United (then in the First Division) for a fee of £150 and played for them 283 times before joining Arsenal.

29 November 1918:  Lt Col Sir Henry Norris, the man who had, at the start of the war, been simply Mr Norris, and who was now Chairman of the Ministry of Labour’s Advisory Committee on demobilisation, started his campaign to become an MP.

29 November 1919: Arsenal played the return match against Notts County and drew 2-2 in front of 6000.  The club stayed 10th, but the best news was that Pagnam yet against scored (Buckley getting the other goal).  That was five goals in the last four league games.  

29 November 1920:  The rationing that was imposed during the war was finally ended with the removal of restrictions on the sale of sugar.   

29 November 1924: First appearance by Sidney Hoar away to Cardiff – a 1-1 draw.  Arsenal were a comfortable 11th in the league after this game, but a disastrous second half of the season saw them only just avoid relegation.

29 November 1924: Bolton 5 WHU 0 making four defeats and one draw for WHU.  This is noteworthy as Arsenal manager Knighton claimed 22 years later that WHU were the most fearsome team of the era, and he had to drug the Arsenal team to get them hyped up enough to play against the club.

29 November 1926: Miners voted on whether to return to work; the majority said no, but their union rules required a two thirds majority for a strike, and this was not achieved.  The last element of the general strike was over..

29 November 1930: Chelsea 1 Arsenal 5  The third game in four in which Arsenal scored five.  Across these four games the scorers included Lambert (7), Jack (5), Bastin (4).

29 November 1934: Prince George, Duke of Kent married Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark.  This was the last occasion of a foreign-born princess marrying into the British royal family and the wedding was the first to be broadcast live on radio – a matter of even greater excitement than the Arsenal manager doing a commentary on England while his own players were hacked to pieces.

29 November 1941: Arsenal 3 Reading 1 in the wartime London League. It was the penultimate game in a run of 14 in which Arsenal won 12, drew one and lost one. 

29 November 1946: First appearance for Joe Mercer.  Everton, his previous club, did all they could to stop him going back to say goodbye to friends at the club, even though the player continued to live in the north west and just travelled to Arsenal for games!

29 November 1947: After 17 games without a defeat Arsenal lost 0-1 to Derby.  Despite the result Arsenal were still five points clear at the top of the league.

29 November 1967: Colin Addison sold to Sheffield Utd.  He later became a manager, working with a most varied list of clubs including: Hereford, Durban City, Notts County, Newport County, Al-Ahli, Celta Vigo, WBA, Atletico Madrid, Cadiz, Hereford Utd, Al Arabi, Badajoz, Merthyr Tydfil, Scarborough, Yeovil Town, Swansea City, Forest Green Rovers, and Barry Town.

29 November 1975:  Arsenal lost away to WHU 0-1, with 31,012 in attendance.  The result ended Arsenal’s best run of the season although the WHU goal appeared to much of the crowd to be offside, as it did to most of the Arsenal players, and ultimately to the TV audience on Sunday.   However Keith Coleman of West Ham distracted the ref by going down pretending that Kidd had punched him.  A clever if wholly ungentlemanly ploy.

29 November 1977: 25,922 saw Arsenal beat Hull City of the second division 5-1 in the League Cup.   Brady, Stapleton and Macdonald scored in the first half,  After scoring five Arsenal eased up, and at the death conceded a penalty.  Picking the ball from the net was the only time Jennings touched it all night.

29 November 1983: Arsenal lost to Walsall 1-2.  Ian Allinson made his debut after moving from Colchester United in October. Alan Sunderland made his final appearance before moving to Ipswich Town in February 1984.  The defeat was effectively the last straw in Terry Neill’s managerial reign.

29 November 1998: “Perhaps we gave our fans too much by winning the Double. Once you’ve eaten caviar, it is difficult to go back to sausages.” Arsène Wenger on this day.  Fortunately there was still more caviar in the fridge.

29 November 2006 After a fine September/October which included five consecutive wins, the 2-1 defeat to Fulham made it 1 win, 2 draws and 3 defeats in last six, after which a small group in the crowd declared Song was not fit to wear the shirt.

29 November 2009: Arsenal lost 0-3 at home to Chelsea, having lost 0-1 to Sunderland the previous week.  Curiously the next two defeats were in consecutive matches in January, and then it happened for the fourth time – two consecutive defeats in April.

29 November 2011: Arsenal went out of league cup 0-1 to Man City.  Arsenal played Man C three times in the season, all ending 1-0, twice to Man C and once to Arsenal.

29 November 2017: Although suffering from huge levels of negative coverage in the press Arsenal made it 3 league wins in a row and 5 wins in 6 games by beating Huddersfield 5-0.  The match however was not reported at all by BBC Radio 5 which instead spent much of its programme discussing a goal by Rooney.

29 November 2018: Arsenal played Vorskla in the Europa League in a game moved to Kiev following the declaration of martial law.  Arsenal won 3-0 (Smith Rowe, Ramsey and Willock) with Medley, Gilmour and Saka making their debuts.

29 November 2019: Unai Emery was sacked as manager, and replaced by Freddi Ljungberg who took temporary charge of the club.

30 November 1889: Arsenal 13 Ordnance Store Corps 1, on way to first trophy: the Kent Junior Cup.

30 November 1893: James Boyle début in friendly v London Caledonians.  It is said in some references that he left Celtic and joined Clyde in 1893 after making just nine appearances and later that year he moved south. But at this point there are contradictions in the account of his career, Arsenal saying he came straight from Celtic in November 1893

30 November 1895: Charles Ambler made his one and only appearance for Arsenal in the league, despite having two spells with the club.  He had returned for his second period on 22 November, transferring from Tottenham, and on this day played in the league match against Newton Heath.

30 November 1903: Woolwich Arsenal 4 The Army 0.

30 November 1910: Thomas Winship sold to Wallsend Park Villa, before returning slightly later, almost certainly on loan.  Arsenal appear to have retained his registration, and the matter was not fully settled until 1925.

30 November 1912: Final appearance of Alf Common in a 0-1 defeat to Blackburn.  It meant Arsenal had scored one in the last five.  In fact the run went on and Arsenal scored only two goals in nine games.

30 November 1920: Frank Townrow signed by Arsenal.  He went on to play eight times for the club.

30 November 1923: The Fulham Chronicle reported that “a torrent of wrath” had been unleashed on Sir Henry Norris by the local Conservative Party and quoted an unnamed source as calling Sir Henry “a disgruntled and embittered man” who acted from “personal malice.”

30 November 1925: Athletic News took up the big news from the weekend: Arsenal were top of the first division for the first time ever.   Their article noted particularly Bob John’s work as left back, and the tactics of the team as behind this astonishing rise from the ashes of the last two seasons.

30 November 1932: Arsenal 3 Racing Club de Paris 0.  It was the first visit of Racing to Highbury.   See also here

30 November 1935: Huddersfield were undefeated at home (five wins, two draws) and they had won three of their last four.  For Arsenal Parkin stood down and Beasley stepped in, but the result was a 0-0 draw.   Derby and Sunderland won to take them further ahead.  Arsenal were fourth.

30 November 1936: The Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire.

30 November 1940: Arsenal 2 Crystal Palace 2 in the South Regional (wartime) League. Only 761 turned up – the lowest for any attendance for Arsenal in the second world war. Only matches in the League War Cup that season got over 10,000, and it wasn’t until 1943-44 that wartime attendances really started to grow.

30 November 1944: George Graham born, the youngest of seven children from a poor Coatbridge family.  His father died on Christmas Day that year from TB, as did his eldest sister in 1951.  

30 November 1946: Joe Mercer debut v Bolton, a 2-2 draw.  The result made it six games without a win.

30 November 1965: Arsenal 3 Moscow Dynamo 0 in a friendly game.

30 November 1974: Arsenal (19th) beat Middlesbrough (12th) 2-0 at Highbury in front of 25,283.  The visitors had two shots in the whole match, Kidd and Ball were off-song, Radford tried for a goal but couldn’t get his range right, and Brady was reduced to running in circles in an attempt to avoid having his legs broken, Sadly after the match it was revealed that Brady had indeed been injured in the game, and would be out for about a month.

30 November 1983: Niall Quinn joined Arsenal from school.  He had played Gaelic football, and hurling, including taking a one-month tour of Australia

30 November 1994: Vince Bartram first appearance (as sub keeper) v Sheffield W in the league cup; Arsenal won 2-0 to reach the 5th round.  Morrow and Wright got the goals.

30 November 1997: Arsenal 0 Liverpool 1 left Arsenal with only two wins in eight league games.  This was the fifth game in six in consecutive matches in which Arsenal failed to score – which didn’t make it seem like league game 16 of the 2nd Double Season.   The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.

30 November 2003 Arsenal 0 Fulham 0 – the first failure to score in 46 consecutive matches at Highbury.  The 14th league match of the unbeaten season, and the start of a period in which Arsenal drew three games in four.

30 November 2010: Arsenal 2 Wigan 0.  The start of a sequence of just one defeat in ten games.

30 November 2013: Cardiff 0 Arsenal 3.  This was part of a four match run in which Arsenal scored nine but conceded nil.

30 November 2016: Arsenal played Southampton in the quarter-finals of EFL Cup, with a team with 10 changes from the last game.  Southampton won 2-0, the first defeat for Arsenal since the opening day of the season.  Arsenal were however to get their own back in the FA Cup later in the season.

30 November 2021: Aaron Ramsdale gained the player of the month award for the second month running.  Martinelli gained the goal of the month award for his goal against Newcastle.

 


The anniversary files are divided into 12 separate files


 

The anniversaries file is 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”.

I am grateful to Andy Kelly and Mark Andrews, who helped with the early development of this site and 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 interesting anniversary dates not yet listed, please do write in and add them.   Not only are new dates being added at the rate of about two or three 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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *