Latest news item:
The Arsenal History Society meets Brian Talbot: a most fascinating discussion.
Latest article from the current series: Henry Norris at the Arsenal
Chaos at the Arsenal. The dramatic and bizarre story of February 1927.
The March 1927 article in which the crisis at Arsenal reaches its summit will be published later today.
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 index to the current historical series on this site can be found at Henry Norris at the Arsenal. An index of all our main series can be found on the home page.
Our headline today comes from 1974.
Four new articles added to this day’s anniversaries in the last year.
19 October 1889: Arsenal beat Dartford Working Men’s Club 7-1 in the first round in the Kent Junior Cup starting their journey to the club’s first ever piece of silverware.
19 October 1910: James Quale rejoined Woolwich Arsenal after a period with Northfleet. He made just one appearance, as a deputy for Joe Shaw against The Wednesday on 12 November 1910. In the match, which Arsenal won 1-0 he was badly injured and had to leave the field of play. He did not play football again.
19 October 1912: Arsenal 1 Sunderland 3, in Arsenal’s relegation season. But the rumours were circulating that this would be Arsenal’s last season in Plumstead.
19 October 1918: Arsenal were top of the London Combination but on this day lost 1-4 away to Chelsea in front of 25,000. They were however still second, which was quite a change from most of the war years.
19 October 1920: Arsenal’s annual report was issued, showing George Peachey as a director and the club heavily in debt. Humphreys were still owed £10484 for building the grandstand; and others £5943. The club had an overdraft of £17000; £10,000 of which was personally guaranteed by Sir Henry Norris. (That’s about £500,000 today).
19 October 1922: The coalition government of the UK resigned over the Chanak Crisis in relation to Turkey thus heralding another general election.
19 October 1929: Arsenal beat Nottingham Forest 4-0 in a friendly with 3,340 in the crowd. These friendlies were arranged so that the manager could look at some of the reserve players – something that was hard to achieve since reserve games were normally played at the same time as first team matches.
19 October 1935: Male, Hapgood and Bowden were all selected to play for England away to Ireland leaving Arsenal patching together a team to play Portsmouth on the same day. As a result Compton played at right back and Bob John played his first game of the season at left back. England won 3-1. Arsenal lost 2-1.
19 October 1946 Albert Sigurður Guðmundsson played first of two league matches for Arsenal. He was the first ever Icelandic professional footballer and later became Minister of Finance of his country.
19 October 1974: Arsenal (bottom of league) played Tottenham (one from bottom) in front of 36,194. Tottenham won 2-0. Arsenal remained at the foot of the table while the bottom six also included QPR and Chelsea.
19 October 1999: After a 1-1 draw in Barcelona, Arsenal lost the return game at Wembley 2-4; their first defeat in the series. Bergkamp and Overmars scored.
19 October 2002: The all-time best away win sequence ended with a 2-1 defeat by Everton, the start of 3 defeats in a row, the worst run for 19 years. It was the first defeat of the season, Rooney scored his first goal, in the last minute. Arsène Wenger said, “At that age, Rooney is already a complete footballer. The guy can play. He’s the best English under-20 I’ve seen since I came here.” 13 years later he became England’s all time top scorer.
19 October 2010: Arsenal beat Shakhtar Donetsk 5-1. The goals came from Song, Nasri, Fabregas, Wilshere, Chamakh, meaning Arsenal had played three, won three and scored 14 goals.
19 October 2011: Arsenal beat Marseille 1-0 away in the Champions League, with a goal from Ramsey in the 92nd minute. Arsenal remained unbeaten in the group.
19 October 2016: a home win against Ludogorets Razgrad involved goals from Sánchez, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and a career first hat-trick for Özil.. This took Arsenal to seven wins in a row in all competitions
