Arsenal in January 1927: Sir Henry Norris acts strangely
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” on the right of the screen.
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.
Today’s headline comes from 1979
9 October 1897: Arsenal boasted a crowd of 14,000 for second time in the league, in a 3-0 win over Luton, perhaps reflecting anticipation among the crowd over the fact that Arsenal had beaten Luton 2-0 away the previous week.
9 October 1905: Arsenal beat West Ham 3-2 in the Southern Professional Charity Cup before going on to beat Tottenham and Reading to win the trophy.
9 October 1909: Arsenal 0 Nottingham Forest 1. It made three defeats in a row, but at least the goal avalanche against the club (12 in the last two games) had stopped and there was a slight hope for better times. G Fisher, the replacement keeper, played his second and last game for the club. .
9 October 1910: Jack Crayston born. He played over 200 games for Arsenal from 1934 to the outbreak of war winning the league twice and FA Cup once. He became assistant to Tom Whittaker in 1947 as manager and then took over on Tom’s death. He was the first manager since Herbert Chapman (appointed 1925) not to win the league and cup in his spell in charge.
9 October 1914: The Arsenal Football And Athletic Co Ltd became The Arsenal Football Club Ltd – as Henry Norris launched a new share issue continuing to sell the club to local supporters.
9 October 1915: A crowd of just 2500 turned up at Watford to see the home team beat Arsenal 1-0. It was clear that wartime football was not a hit with supporters.
9 October 1919: The FA which had been investigating Leeds City FC (previously managed by Herbert Chapman) stated that the club could not play its game against South Shields the following Saturday because of “irregularities” during the war.
9 October 1920: Having played three games without a win, Arsenal got a goalless draw at home to Bolton in front of 38,000. The local paper now got ever more angry with the Arsenal forward line and didn’t appreciate the lack of goals.
9 October 1926: The extent of Chapman’s failure to maintain the club at the standard of his first season at Highbury was fully revealed as going into this game Arsenal still had not won away this season, and this continued against mid table Newcastle, with Arsenal losing 0-2. Arsenal slipped down to 14th.
9 October 1971: After four league wins in a row Arsenal beat Newcastle 4-2 regaining the style and zest of last year’s Double team with Kennedy George, Radford, Graham and Armstrong all shining. Newcastle’s goals, both from Macdonald came in the last few minutes, and in fact he could have had a hat-trick at the very end but for Wilson’s fine save.
9 October 1976: Steve Gatting made his first appearance as sub in Peter Simpson Testimonial. He had joined Arsenal as an apprentice in July 1975 and became a professional footballer two years later.
9 October 1979: Arsenal beat Ipswich Town 2-1 at Portman Road in front of 22,527.. Rix and Brady ran the show but the highlight was the Ipswich keeper throwing the ball out only for it to hit the ref on the back, it rolled to Hollins who passed to Sunderland who chipped the keeper. A masterpiece.
9 October 2001: Frank McLintock announced an auction of his medals, shirts and memorabilia. He said that he was not struggling for cash, but since the medals etc were in a bank vault he never saw them.
9 October 2009: Gavin Hoyte was loaned to Brighton for the season. (See also here) And here
