The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal
February 1920: the press discuss Arsenal (and gets it totally wrong.) (Yes they really were just as inept in the 1920s as they are today.
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. The headline is taken from
6 February 1892: Royal Arsenal 2 Cambridge University 1; a friendly in the final season for the club before it became Woolwich Arsenal.
6 February 1894: Ly Burrows debut for Woolwich Arsenal v Rotherham. As an amateur he was able to swap between Arsenal and Tottenham over several seasons moving between one and the next without any transfer formalities.
6 February 1895 Tommy Bryan made his league début against Rotherham Town and then played 11 consecutive games in the League and in friendly games up to 2 April for the match against Nottingham Forest
6 February 1899: Woolwich Arsenal 4 Kettering Town 2 in the United League. In these days Kettering were considered a club that although outside the Football League could always give Arsenal a decent game.
6 February 1904: Woolwich Arsenal v Fulham (FA Cup). The first game in which Henry Norris met up with the Arsenal. Fulham played in the colours that were later to become the Arsenal strip,
6 February 1909. Arsenal played Millwall Athletic in front of 32,000 on the Isle of Dogs, an event that proved that occasional matches between physically close rivals was a huge draw. It helped sow the seeds of Arsenal’s later move north. See also here
6 February 1915: Arsenal 2 Leeds City 0. Woolwich Arsenal and Chapman met at Highbury for the first time. Although Chapman was later accused of illegal payments to players during the war and banned for life, he was exonerated on appeal and returned to football with Huddersfield. It was Arsenal’s last game against Leeds City.
6 February 1919: Fulham FC held its AGM with Sir Henry Norris a director of the club and so in attendance. But footballing events at the end of February were about to cause the ultimate rift between him and the club which he had done so much to support.
6 February 1924: Sir Billy Wright born. Having spent his whole playing career at Wolverhampton and with his only managerial experience being England’s youth team, it would have taken a master tactician to have made a success of his only club management post – Arsenal. And he was not a master tactician.
6 February 1926: Leeds United 4 Arsenal 2. Debut for Joe Hulme, who was thought at the time to be the fastest man in English football. Brain and an own goal for Arsenal. It was the third of three successive defeats after which Arsenal only lost three more all season.
6 February 1926: Last game for Clem Voysey. His transfer to Arsenal was investigated by the FA in 1925 and 1927 but no charge was ever brought against the player, the club or Sir Henry Norris.
6 February 1932: Arsenal were fifth and Everton top before the two met at Goodison, with Everton having won 11 out of their 12 home games. Arsenal’s 3-1 away win closed the gap and made the newspapers take notice…
6 February 1935: England played Ireland and won 2-1. Both England goals were scored by Bastin and there were five Arsenal players (Male, Hapgood, Copping, Drake, Bastin) in the England team.
6 February 1953: Brendon Batson born in Trinidad. He signed for Arsenal as an amateurin February 1969 but only made six starts and four sub appearances across three seasons before going on to Cambridge in January 1974.
6 February 1960: Arsenal 5 Blackburn 2. A Mel Charles hattrick contributed to seven goals in four games for the striker. But he only scored 8 league goals all season in 20 games.
6 February 1968: Arsenal beat Huddersfield 3-1 in second leg of League Cup semi final to reach their first cup final since 1952. It was the club’s first ever League Cup final.
6 February 1971: Arsenal 1 Manchester C 0. After just one victory in the last four Arsenal returned to form in League match 27 of the first Double season. Better still, Leeds, after having lost to Tottenham 1-2 on 9 January now lost 0-1 to Liverpool. Arsenal were thus 3 points behind Leeds with one game in hand but with a fractionally worse goal average. It was Charlie George’s first match since August.
6 February 2001: The case about insulting comments being made against Notts County’s Sean Farrell by referee Taylor was very oddly heard AFTER the Arsène Wenger appeal against his imagined assault on Taylor. Arsène Wenger was cleared.
6 February 2006: Paul Merson was sacked as manager by Walsall
6 February 2010: Arsenal lost to Chelsea 2-0, following close on home defeat to Man U on 31 Jan, meaning there were no wins in three games, and with Liverpool the next team to be played.
6 February 2010: A member of the Norway Arsenal supporters club claimed that the club had lost over 300 members in the last month because of the poor performance by the team under Arsène Wenger.
Yesterday’s anniversaries:
The Arsenal man who testified against the match fixing of Liverpool and Man U
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”
“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 + £2.00 postage and packing for delivery in UK. Please see here for more details
