The Arsenal Anniversary Files
Our headline story today comes from 1996
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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Just published by the Arsenal History Society
1924/5: Knighton’s best start and a look back to Norris’ work on Fulham’s election of 1903
19 July 1915: The FA and Football League held their AGMs. The League voted in favour of paying footballers during wartime, the FA against it, resulting in chaos. Eventually the League conceded. The FA then met the League and the Southern League and agreed there would be no FA Cup, but there could be regional leagues in the north and midlands. This left the south and the north east without any football. Scotland had already voted to continue with professional football.
19 July 1954: Joe Haverty signed from St Patrick’s Athletic, and although only 18 immediately made his debut for Arsenal. He stayed until 1961 when he moved to Blackburn.
19 July 1995: Alan Smith announced his retirement. Between 1987 and 1995 he played 264 league games for Arsenal, scoring 86 goals. He went on to have a career as a commentator and reporter.
19 July 1996: A 0-6 away win to St Albans City on this, with a team including much of the first team regulars like Dixon, Merson, Stephen Hughes etc, did not prepare supporters for four subsequent defeats and a draw in the rest of the pre-season. Fortunately a new manager was ready to step in.
19 July 2003: Arsenal drew with Barnet 0-0 after losing to Peterborough. Yaya Toure played as a trialist but Arsène Wenger saw him as “completely average” and did not follow up the option of signing the player.
19 July 2007: Gençlerbirliği 0 Arsenal 3 (Van Persie 2, Walcott). The seven match pre-season run saw the introduction of Bacary Sagna and Eduardo into the squad.
19 July 2008: Barnet 1 Arsenal 2 (Simpson, Barazite) The start of a 9 match preseason run in which Arsenal were unbeaten, including a 1-0 win over Real Madrid
19 July 2014: Arsenal began their pre-season games with a 0-2 away victory over Borehamwood, Olson and Afobe getting the goals. Arsenal’s team included many younger players hoping to make an impact including Coquelin and Bellerin.
