The Arsenal Anniversary Files
Below are the Arsenal (and occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the complete files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website. An index to the Anniversary files can be found in the left column of this site under “Pages”
The current historical series on this site is Henry Norris at the Arsenal. An index of all our series can be found on the home page.
You can find an index to all the anniversary files in the Pages section on the right… we’ve changed the home page around a bit to make it more readable.
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8 July 1970: David Court sold to Luton Town having missed out on the Fairs Cup final games through injury. He played 168 league games league games for Arsenal, and in 1996 he returned to Arsenal as head of youth development.
8 July 1971: Don Howe left Arsenal to manage WBA. The move was not a success and WBA were relegated in 1973. Don moved on to Leeds and to Galatasaray, before coming back to Arsenal in 1977 as coach with Terry Neil as manager.
8 July 1975: David O’Leary became a full professional. He played his first game in the league aged 17, and went on to play 27 games in 1975/6, his first season.
8 July 1977: Wilf Rostrom moved to Sunderland. He had played 17 league games for Arsenal and scored two goals. In all he played nearly 500 league games, including 317 for Watford. After ending his playing career he spent a few years in management before leaving football in 1994.
8 July 1990: Anders Limpar signed from Cremonese. He played 94 league games in a four year spell at Arsenal, before moving on to Everton. He later won the Swedish league with AIK. After retiring in 2000 he went into coaching and then business.
8 July 1997: St Albans 1 Arsenal 4. The first friendly in what was to be the second Double season. The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.
8 July 1999: Kaba Diawara sold to Marseilles after just 12 games. He played for 17 different clubs but never more than the 60 games he played for Bordeaux (with whom he won the league). He retired in 2011.
8 July 1999: After loan spells with Brentford and Millwall, Under 15 international
Michael Black transferred to Tranmere on a free. In 2011 he dropped into
non-league football playing for eight different clubs before retiring in 2009.
8 July 2002: Pascal Cygan joined from Lille for whom he had played 179 league games. He played 98 matches for Arsenal (including 20 games in the Champions League).
8 July 2006: Sol Campbell confirmed his departure from Arsenal after 135 games.
He moved on to Portsmouth, where he played another 95 league games. In 2009/10 he returned to Arsenal once more for a further 11 games.
Cygan seems to have gotten a lot of stick, but he was excellent in that away game against Inter!