The Arsenal Anniversary Files
Today’s headline anniversaries come from 2013
Latest article published by the Arsenal History Society
April 1925: the end is nigh; Arsenal escape, experiments continue, a new dawn approaches
Coming up today: Farewell Knighton
Below are the Arsenal (and for historical context, 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 monthly Anniversary files can be found in the right column of this site under “Pages”
The current historical series on this site is Henry Norris at the Arsenal. An index of all our main series can be found on the home page.
17 August 1896: Andrew Young born. He was signed by Knighton in 1921 from Aston Villa. He played 68 games for the club up to 1926/7.
17 August 1909. Wilf Copping born. He became a miner while playing for local teams and tried for a place with Barnsley in 1929, but failed to get in. He kept on trying and later in the year he signed for Leeds United of the first division.
17 August 1911: A national railway workers strike started and in riots relating to this strike two men were shot dead by soldiers. Magistrates’ homes were attacked and four more people were killed.
17 August 1917: One of the most extraordinary meetings of literary geniuses occurred at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh when Wilfred Owen introduced himself to Siegfried Sassoon.
17 August 1922: The regular pre-season friendly between the reserves and the first team was almost certainly played on this date as Dublin Castle was handed over to the Irish Republican Army as the final British troops left Irish soil. It was a momentous occasion especially as many senior politicians objected strongly to giving up part of the “home country”.
17 August 1943: Wally Barnes joined Arsenal. He played in every position during the remaining time before the end of the war and then settled down at left back in the 1948 championship winning team.
17 August 1955: Wally Barnes final appearance on the 12th anniversary of his signing. He retired in 1956 having played 294 matches and having scored 12 goals.
17 August 1956: John Kosmina born. He played for Polonia and then West Adelaide, before signing for Arsenal in February 1978.
17 August 1960: First league appearance of Geoff Strong in a 5-0 win over Newcastle. His impact was instant, playing 19 league games in 1960/1 and scoring 10 goals.
17 August 1966: Colin Addison played his first match. He had signed for York in 1957, moving to Nottingham Forest in 1961, Arsenal in 1966 for £45,000 but his career was hampered by injury and was sold on in 1967.
17 August 1970: Match 2 from the first Double season. WHU 0 Arsenal 0 thus making it played 2, drawn 2, showing that one should never draw too many conclusions from the opening games.
17 August 1971: Huddersfield 0 Arsenal 1. The attendance was a paltry 21,279. Arsenal took the route of efficiency rather than fine football to beat Huddersfield, dominating the game, but taking no risks. They could have won by three or four but it looked as if the side were under orders to hold the back line and wait.
17 August 1974: Arsenal beat Leicester 0-1 away in what was the first of no less than seven matches against Leicester in League and FA Cup during the season. See also here.
17 August 1977: Thierry Henry born in Essonne, Paris and played for various local sides. He was spotted by AS Monaco in 1990 and signed immediately.
17 August 1977: Pat Howard transferred to Birmingham City for £40,000. He had made 15 starts and 1 sub appearance for Arsenal during his one year in the club but had slipped down the order after the arrival of Willie Young. See also here
17 August 1984: Brighton and Hove Albion 1 Arsenal 1 (Allinson). The last game of a poor pre-season in which Arsenal won two games, lost two more and drew this one.
17 August 1990: Steve Gatting’s testimonial match. Brighton 2 Arsenal 2. He had played 58 games for Arsenal and by the time he left Brighton had played 316 games for them.
17 August 1991: Arsenal 1 QPR 1 (Merson scoring in the 90th minute) in the first game of the season. This was most disappointing as Arsenal were champions having won the league despite the ludicrous removal of two points for some argybargy at Old Trafford.
17 August 2009: Jay Emmanuel-Thomas loaned to Blackpool. He played 11 games for them before moving on to loan spells with Doncaster and Cardiff.
17 August 2012: Thomas Vermaelen promoted to club captain and Mikel Arteta to vice-captaincy. Arteta took over as captain after Vermaelen’s departure, but both suffered significant injuries following their acceptance of the captaincy.
17 August 2013: Arsenal lost the first match of the season to Villa at home 1-3 amid referee decisions so odd that even the press started mentioning them. Arsenal won the next five to go top of the league where they remained apart from one week until 8 February.
17 August 2016: Tafari Moore loaned to Jong FC Utrecht for the season.
I have been saying a long time the refs are there to prevent winning games and the epl.
Until the FA and ref boss take concrete action to punish errant refs who give wrong decisions against Arsenal,I will believe them.
For starters the Mustaphi push shd have been a 100% penalty.The ref could claim he didn’t see the incident. Then Arsenal lose out because of these error prone guys.Then it become a fllod of errors.
Sometging has to give.