Latest article from the current series: Henry Norris at the Arsenal
Film of Arsenal’s first cup final and the continuing investigation into the Arsenal accounts.
Special features
Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.
Meeting a player you have admired can be such a very strange experience.: Brian Talbot comes to the Arsenal Independent Supporters AGM.
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 1973
27 October 1892: Royal Arsenal 0 Oxford University 4
27 October 1913: Jock Rutherford signed from Newcastle for £800. He was regularly in the side up to the first world war, and despite being 35 when the league resumed in 1919 he returned to play for Arsenal in the first division – and continued to do so for four years.
27 October 1914 Little war news was published in the papers, but what there was, was bleak. On this day the battleship HMS Audacious was sunk off the north-west of Ireland, by a minefield. Three days later the SS Rohilla, which was requisitioned as a military hospital ship, was lost in a storm on rocks off Whitby with the loss of 85 lives.
27 October 1919: Tom Whittaker joined Arsenal from the army. He went on to become a first team player, was the club trainer under Chapman, trainer of the England squad, Arsenal coach and ultimately as manager equalled Chapman and Allison’s trophy record of two league titles and the FA Cup.
27 October 1922: The local paper said that there were serious differences of opinion among the Conservatives in the Fulham East constituency, now that Sir Henry had moved on. But Sir Henry made it clear he had cut all ties with the party and was not interested.
27 October 1923: Despite having six defeats, four wins and two draws thus far Arsenal continued to attract 30,000+ to every home game. And this also despite Bolton being far from an attractive side, having drawn four of their seven away games scoring eight conceding seven. One might have put money on a 1-1 draw and lost the bet. It was goalless.
27 October 1931: A general election saw an overwhelming victory for the National Government. The Labour Party suffered its greatest defeat, losing 80% of the seats it held at the previous election. The people voted for austerity.
27 October 1933: Gilbert Biggs signed as an amateur player for Arsenal aged 18, having not been registered with any club before that point and became a professional on 14 December 1933.
27 October 1936: It was announced that Wallis Simpson had divorced her husband, removing the legal barrier to her marrying King Edward VIII. It left the newspapers in a state of turmoil over whether it was permissible for the King to marry a divorced lady.
27 October 1948: Roger Davidson born. He won reserve team honours with Arsenal but only made one league appearance for the club. He later was part of Fulham’s 1971 promotion winning team.
27 October 1951 Arsenal 4 Fulham 3 – the first of three hat tricks in consecutive home games for Doug Lishman. Those three games involved 22 goals and were watched by a total crowd of 161,400.
27 October 1956: Everton 4 Arsenal 0. First match as manager for Jack Crayston. The team were clearly in shock over as they had just won their previous three games scoring 16 goals in total.
27 October 1967: Don Howe became chief coach, 3 months after retiring as a player. He was central to the success in the following years which saw Arsenal’s first European trophy and first Double.
27 October 1973: Gordon Rahere Hoare died. In his football career he had played for 13 clubs and won a gold medal playing for England in the 1912 Olympics.
27 October 1973: With 29,115 present Arsenal were defeated 0-2 by QPR. Even the reserves were now in 19th in the Combination having mustered only nine goals from 11 games. The state of football was revealed by the fact that there were only 14 goals in 10 first division games. Alf Ramsey’s England tactics were blamed
27 October 1979: Bristol City became the latest club to use the “smothering football” tactic aiming for a goalless draw but Arsenal found a way through and got a 1-0 away victory with a crowd of 23,029. “Brilliant Brady” shouted the Express in the aftermath of the game ignoring the way City fouled him throughout.
27 October 1981: Arsenal 2 Sheffield Utd 0 (League Cup) Final game for Willie Young (who scored one of the goals; Sunderland got the other). He had played 170 league games, after which he played for Nottingham Forest, Norwich, Brighton and Darlington before becoming a publican, and running a kennelling business.
27 October 1984: A 3-1 defeat to West Ham was the start for Arsenal of a run in which they won just 12 league games out of 30 between this date and May 11 as they slipped from being top of the table and finished in sixth place.
27 October 1986: After a 0-1 defeat to top club Nottm Forest, Arsenal were 15th, with just two wins in the first eight games.
27 October 1999: Arsenal made it two home defeats in a row in the Champions League losing to Fiorentina at Wembley. They had proven the crowds would go to Wembley, but the results didn’t follow.
27 October 2001: Sunderland 1 Arsenal 1. League match 10 of the third Double season. Kanu scored. The result left Arsenal third – and they were soon to slip to fifth.
27 October 2004: Almunia and Senderos made their debut in a league cup match which ended Man City 1 Arsenal 1.
27 October 2010: In the 4th round of the league cup (after an encouraging 4-1 away win to Tottenham in round 3), Arsenal beat Bolton away 4-0. Walcott (2), Bendtner and an own goal gave Arsenal victory. Arsenal reached the final scoring 15 in the run
27 October 2012: Arsenal beat QPR 1-0 to bring slight relief after one win in the last four matches. Arteta scored the goal to take Arsenal up from 9th to 6th in the league.
