The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal
The next article in this series will appear today.
Here are the anniversaries of today. Our headline comes from 1967.
If you have been following this series for some time you’ll know that often we have 20 or 30 anniversaries on a particular day but now as we approach summer this number declines rapidly. While in recent times matches have been played into mid-May, in earlier years the League finished either by the end of April, or in the first week of May, so our number of events to records declines. Nevertheless we have found some.
13 May 1910: Representatives of the Football League had a discussion about Woolwich Arsenal’s financial problems and its future at its management committee meeting.
13 May 1904: Archibald Gray joined Woolwich Arsenal from Hibernian with whom he had won the Scottish League and Cup, playing 51 league games. He played in Arsenal’s first ever first division game.
13 May 1926: To conclude Chapman’s first season as Arsenal manager the club went on a six match European tour with the first game on this day: MTK Vörös Meteor (Budapest) 2 Arsenal 2 (28,000). Brain and Lee got the goals.
13 May 1933: Eddie Hapgood made his international début. In all he played 30 times for England. See also here
13 May 1939: England played away to Italy and drew 2-2 with Male and Hapgood in the team.
13 May 1967: Sheffield W 1 Arsenal 1. George Graham got the goal – his 11th league goal of the season to make him top scorer, as Arsenal finished unbeaten in the last 12 in Mee’s first season, and ended 7th in the league.
13 May 1970: Arsenal concluded their two match post-season tour of Cyprus with 13 Appollon (Cyprus) 0 Arsenal 2 (Marinello and George getting the goals).
13 May 1991: Birth of Francis Coquelin. He played for AS du Bourny, and Stade Lavallois before moving to Arsenal in July 2008. After loan spells with Lorient and Freiburg he returned to Arsenal and after a further five match loan to Charlton became the first choice defensive midfielder and was hailed by Thierry Henry as “the police officer”. He left Arsenal in 2018.
13 May 1996: Jason Crowe joined as a trainee. He played three times as a sub in cup games before moving to Portsmouth in 1999.
13 May 2005: Just two days after beating Everton 7-0, Arsenal finished the season with a 2-1 away defeat to Birmingham to come second in the league, 12 points behind Chelsea.
13 May 2007: Portsmouth 0 Arsenal 0. The draw left Arsenal 4th in the league. A win would have taken them to third. Portsmouth finished mid-table. Seven years later they were in the fourth tier.
13 May 2012: WBA 2 Arsenal 3, and Arsenal secured Champions League football once again -for the 15th consecutive season.
The current series: 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, our current series of articles is on Henry Norris at the Arsenal. The series is being worked on daily, and the articles thus far are here.
“Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” and “Making the Arsenal” are both available on Kindle. Please see here for more details
The previous series
This site is based around series of articles on specific themes – and you can find links to many of these on this page and on the left column under the heading “Pages”.
Here are some of the more popular series that have been written recently or are actively being updated at the moment.
- Arsenal in the 30s
- Arsenal players in the 30s
- Arsenal in the summer – now over 50 articles.
- The First League Season, including a review of each player who played in that season
- Arsenal day by day – over 5000 anniversaries of the club
- Arsenal in the 70s
- Tom Whittaker, player, coach, manager
