The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal
November 1919: Arsenal solid but in debt, Labour advances, another goalscorer, Norris honoured.
Below is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society. We expect to add 1000 new anniversaries to our files this year.
If you spot an error please do write in with the correction and as much detail as possible so we can keep enlarging and upgrading what is the largest database of Arsenal events that has ever been produced.
The headline story comes from 1908.
25 January 1890: Arsenal won 2-1 against Folkestone in the semi-final of the Kent Junior Cup, played in Chatham. Arsenal won the competition, this being their first trophy of significance.
25 January 1893: Royal Arsenal lost away to Oxford University as the club entered its last half year. While Arsenal were already professional and heading towards League status it shows that the gap between professional and university sides was not that great.
25 January 1896: Adam Haywood, one of our early stars, played his first game for Woolwich Arsenal, his first professional club. He retained his place and played nine consecutive games scoring and four and was part of the 7-0 thrashing of Crewe on March 21 1896.
25 January 1889: Sevenoaks 0 Royal Arsenal 7. Gradually it was becoming clear that the local rivals were not strong enough to stretch Arsenal.
25 January 1902: Despite challenging for promotion Woolwich Arsenal met their match in the fourth round of the cup losing to Newcastle 0-2 at home in front of 15,000, the season’s top crowd.
25 January 1908: George Morrell who had been reserve team coach at Rangers, and then manager of Morton joined Arsenal as manager. He stayed until 1915 when he walked out of the club before the final game of the season leaving the kit manager in charge. (We won 7-0)
25 January 1913: Newcastle 3 Arsenal 1 made it 20 games without a win, including four straight defeats in January.
25 January 1919: Arsenal beat West Ham away in the London Combination (wartime league) in front of 18,000 fans – not as many as had attended Highbury the week before, but still a huge increase on the figures for the previous year.
25 January 1930: Arsenal 2 Birmingham 2. The journey to the first trophy was not all plain sailing as this 4th round tie and the semi-final of the FA Cup both went to a replay. Jack and Bastin scored in front of 43,274.
25 January 1936: Arsenal played Liverpool in the FA Cup with the players wearing armbands and the singing of the national anthem and Abide With Me before kick off. 53720 turned up and Arsenal won 2-0.
25 January 1940: Ted Platt’s debut, in a wartime league game v Tottenham. Although in peacetime he did notch up 53 league appearances between 1946 and 1953
25 January 1960 Arsenal 4 Olympic XI 0. The first game for Terry Neill. He went on to play 240 league games before becoming player-manager of Hull City. He returned to manage Arsenal after Bertie Mee left.
25 January 1961: Arsenal 9 Oxford City 0, 4th round FA Youth Cup – one of our biggest ever wins.
25 January 1975: Coventry 1 Arsenal 1 in the FA Cup: the last game for Charlie George. He was always a favourite of the crowd, but had a very difficult relationship with disciplinarians like Bertie Mee.
25 January 1981: Francis Jeffers born. He scored 20 goals for Arsenal but never delivered to his potential and continued a nomadic existence seemingly ending of his career with Accrington Stanley in 2013 – although he was reported having a trial with Chester in 2014.
25 January 1993: Leeds United 2 Arsenal 2. FA Cup 4th round. This was cup match 8 in Arsenal’s Cup Double season. Parlour and Merson scored.
25 January 1996: Tim Rogers died aged 86. He had joined Arsenal in 1934 from the third division as a possible winger, but found the range of talent ahead of him too much to allow for a breakthrough. He moved on to Newcastle, and then again played in Wales.
25 January 2003: Farnborough Town 1 Arsenal 5, played at Highbury by arrangement. Arsenal donated all programme sales income into Farnborough; the Arsenal fans singing to the Farnborough supporters, “You’re supposed to be at home” as the teams came out.
25 January 2010: Vito Mannone signed new long term contract. However despite some fine performances (especially once at Fulham) he never became the first choice keeper.
25 January 2010: Philippe Senderos loaned to Everton. He made 84 league appearances for Arsenal, before moving on to Fulham and then Aston Villa where sadly he met Tim Sherwood who simply refused to list him in the 25 man squad.
25 January 2011: Arsenal beat Ipswich in the League cup semi final to make it to the the final. See also here Arsenal went through 3-1 on aggregate with goals by Koscielny, Bendtner and Fabregas.
25 January 2013: Frimpong joined Fulham on loan. He showed promise but somehow could not hold his temper in check and by 2016 was reported to be playing in Russia but suspended after reacting to racist abuse.
25 January 2015: Brighton 2 Arsenal 3. In the 4th round of the FA Cup. With the media anticipating an upset, goals from Ozil and Walcott in the first 25 minutes and a third from Rosicky meant the victory was never in doubt.
25 January 2015: It was confirmed that Joel Campbell would join Villarreal on loan until the end of the season and there were thoughts that he might never play for Arsenal, but he returned for 2015/16 and took advantage of injuries to others to claim his place in the team.
Yesterday’s anniversaries:
Arsenal: 18 unbeaten, 10 without winning, six without scoring, in one continuous sequence
“Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” and “Making the Arsenal” are both available on Kindle, and we have a small number of copies of the printed edition available at £10 each. Details are here.
What’s on the Arsenal History Society site
An index to the various series that contain over 1,800 articles on this site concerning the history of Arsenal appears on our home page. Our current series is “Henry Norris at the Arsenal”