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Arsenal March 1927: from regular turmoil to total turmoil and the edge of the cliff
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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.
The anniversary files: our headline today comes from 1999
23 October 1893: Woolwich Arsenal beat Roston Bourke’s XI 4-3. It was one of many friendlies played in the season, made particularly intriguing by the fact that Roston Bourke was a leading referee who also had his own team. Joseph Cooper: the most mysterious of all the mysterious Arsenal players made his debut.
23 October 1893: Stanley Briggs a centre half, born in Stamford Hill, north London was signed by Arsenal on 23 October 1893 as an amateur from Tottenham where he had been playing since 1892.
23 October 1896: Daniel Burgess born. He was signed from Goldenhill Wanderers and made his league debut on 1 September 1919 in a league match against Liverpool as an inside forward having started out with Port Vale, In 1922 he moved on to West Ham for the 1922/3 season, followed by Aberdare Athletic (1923), QPR and Sittingbourne.
23 October 1909: Woolwich Arsenal 1 Everton 0. After one win and one draw in the first nine, Arsenal secured their second victory, scoring their 10th goal but having conceded 34.
23 October 1915: Arsenal beat Croydon Common away 4-1. The Common were a Southern League club prior to the war, but they were in financial trouble at the time, and were the one club from the League that failed to reappear in the League when the war was over, Arsenal then picking up several of their released players.
23 October 1922: Arsenal v Tottenham following the battle of WHL three weeks before, in the London FA Challenge Cup. It was rough and tumble on the pitch but there are no reports of problems among the crowd of 11,000. Arsenal won 3-2.
23 October 1926: Arsenal were solidly mid-table and hopes of building on last year’s achievements were fading fast. So it was a surprise to the 27,846 who watched Arsenal v Sheffield Wednesday to see Arsenal win 6-2. Haden got two, and then Brain got four in the second half. It lifted Arsenal up to 10th.
23 October 1933: Peter Dougall was offered a trial at Arsenal before signing as a professional on 23 October. He made his first team debut on 10 February 1934 and went on to play eight times this season.
23 October 1935: Arsenal lost a Charity Shield match for the first time ever in a 1-0 home defeat to Sheffield Wednesday in front of 30,000.
23 October 1937: With Crayston injured Bastin dropped back into the right half position, as on occasion he had done before. Davidson took over at inside left in a 1-1 draw with Stoke. But what astonished people was the champions Man City being beaten 0-4 by Middlesbrough, thus taking them down to 13th. And far worse was to come as this was the season the champions were relegated.
23 October 1948: Bryn Jones scored on his 17th and last appearance for Wales. His transfer had been the British record, but he never lived up to the high standards expected of him. See also here
23 October 1957: Graham Rix born. He joined Arsenal in 1974 while Bertie Mee was manager, and turned pro in 1975. His first ever match for Arsenal was against Leicester on 2 April 1977.
23 October 1976: Leicester 4 Arsenal 1 with 19,351 in the crowd. Stapleton got the goal playing alongside Ball, Brady, Macdonald, Stapleton, Armstrong. After, the Daily Mirror said Macdonald had “been threatened with the axe.” But Arsenal had just conceded nine in two games, and even a fully functional Macdonald could hardly be have expected to get ten.
23 October 1994: Freddie Ljungberg made his debut for Halmstads. He played 79 games for the team before moving to Arsenal in 1998.
23 October 1999: “With 15 minutes left they trailed 2-0 to a Chelsea team who hadn’t conceded at home all season. Arsène Wenger feared for his season, and what happened next aged him 10 years.” (Report on Kanu scoring 3 in the Observer, 24 Oct)
23 October 1999: Stuart Taylor who had joined Arsenal in 1997 as a youth player finished his first loan spell at Bristol Rovers. He graduated to being third choice keeper, and eventually won a league winners’ medal.
23 October 2007: Arsenal beat Slavia Prague 7-0 in Champs League. Eboue and Walcott each got two.
23 October 2007: Jens Lehmann made an infamous speech in which he spoke of “my dear manager” and detailed the “humiliation” he felt of being dropped. Mr Wenger said later that “Jens always thought he was right about everything”.
23 October 2010: Mark Randall loaned to Rotherham. It was his third and final loan from Arsenal before he moved to Chesterfield in 2011.
