Chapman’s first game and Arsenal’s first XI beaten by Rotherham

Here are the Anniversaries from 29 August – part of our regular daily look at Arsenal’s history.

Our most recent article on Arsenal’s history is The newly named The Arsenal start their first season and go top of the League


 

29 August 1921: Dan Burgess (generally known as Dick) played his final game: a 2-3 away defeat to Preston.  He then moved on to West Ham followed by Aberdare Athletic, QPR and Sittingbourne.

29 August 1925: Herbert Chapman’s first match as Arsenal manager, against Tottenham in the first league match under the new offside rule.  Arsenal lost 0-1.  The outgoing manager Leslie Knighton alleged some 20 years later that he was promised the gate money from the game as a benefit payment, but no evidence of such an agreement was ever produced and almost all of Knighton’s anti-Norris statements were subsequently proven to be untrue.   

29 August 1925: Charlie Buchan’s debut as a pro after signing for Arsenal for a second time. Part of his transfer arrangement was that Arsenal would pay a fee of £100 for every goal he scored in the season.  He scored 20.   Buchan’s first signing for Arsenal is here.

29 August 1931: As champions Arsenal slipped back losing 0-1 to WBA at home on the opening day and failing to win any of the first four games.

29 August 1936: Arsenal beat Everton 3-2 with Alex James as captain.  James, Bowden and Hapgood scored.

29 August 1938: Rangers 0 Arsenal 1 – part of the Chapman inspired annual series of friendlies between the two sides.

29 August 1944: George Armstrong born in County Durham, having previously been an apprentice electrician.  Between 1962 and 1977 he played 490 league games, plus 10 appearances as sub, plus 58 (2) in the FA Cup, 35 in the League cup and 24 (2) in European games.

29 August 1949: Jack Kelsey joined from Winch Wen of the Swansea and District League.  Arsenal was his only senior club and he played 327 games for the club before being injured playing for Wales, and being forced out of the game.

29 August 1951: Arsenal 2 Chelsea 1.  Final game for Lawrie Scott.   He won a league winners medal and cup winners medal with Arsenal.  He played 115 games for Arsenal before moving on to Crystal Palace.

29 August 1956: Viv Anderson born.  He came to the attention of the football world playing for Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough with whom he won promotion and then the league.

29 August 1959: Dennis Evans had his leg broken in a 3-3 draw with Wolverhampton – the team that turned him down before he came to Arsenal.

29 August 1959: John Milne died. He won the league with Arsenal in 1937/8 and played twice for Scotland.  He left Arsenal for Middlesbrough in 1937.

29 August 1964: Johnny MacLeod’s 101st and last league game.  He moved on to Aston Villa, before moving on to KV Mechelen in the Netherlands.  He played over 100 league games for each of his first four clubs: Hibs, Arsenal, Villa, Mechelen.

29 August 1970: Arsenal lost 2-1 away to Chelsea – the first defeat of the 1st Double season in game 5.  Andy Kelly scored for Arsenal in front of 53,722 spectators.

29 August 1978: Arsenal lost 1-3 to Rotherham in the Football League cup, despite putting out the regular first team.  The defeat came on top of two draws and a defeat in the opening matches in the league season.

29 August 1987: Kevin Richardson league debut with Arsenal after joining from Watford.  He went on to play 96 times in the league – including in the championship winning game at Liverpool in 1989.

29 August 1987: Alan Smith scored three – his first goals for Arsenal as Arsenal beat Portsmouth 6-0 having failed to win any of the first three games of the season, the team scoring just one goal in them.

29 August 1997: The movie The Full Monty was released in the UK – the film refers to the Arsenal famous back four’s offside tactics, as the men rehearse their dance routine.

29 August 2013: Flamini arrived at Arsenal for the second time.  He played 102 league games for Arsenal between 2004 and 2008, and then 97 in the next five years with Milan.



Elsewhere on this day, in 1955 Edward Appleton, the British physicist said, “I do not mind what language an opera is sung in, so long as it is a language I don’t understand.”

In 1974 the UK’s Radio and Space Research Station was renamed the Appleton Laboratory in honour of the man who had done so much to establish the UK as a leading force in ionospheric research.  It was Appleton who proposed that radio waves travel two paths, one direct from transmitter to the receiver, and the other via a part of the atmosphere (the ionosphere) which then knocks the wave back to earth.   He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1947 for his seminal work proving the existence of the ionosphere during experiments carried out in 1924.

 


 

The current series from the Arsenal History Series being developed on this site is  Henry Norris at the Arsenal, covering all aspects off the life and work of the man who rescued Arsenal from extinction, secured the club’s future by moving it to Highbury, and then brought in Herbert Chapman as manager.

The previously untold tale of how it was that Norris came to choose Highbury as the suitable location for Arsenal’s new ground.

The series is being worked on daily, and the articles thus far are here.

Among the many other series we have run are…

There are details of many other series covered by this site on our home page.

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