Here are the anniversaries, our headline comes from 2001 – the third double season.
Below are the Arsenal (and for historical context, occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website. An index to all the monthly Anniversary files can be found in the right column of this site under “Pages” on the right of the screen.
An index of all our main series can also be found on the home page.
The series “Henry Norris at the Arsenal” is now complete.
The index to all the articles can be found at Henry Norris at the Arsenal. The final article just published is Henry Norris at the Arsenal: 1928 to the end.
We are now working on adding to the articles information that has come to light since writing the articles, and preparing a more concise edition for publication as a book.
1 – 5 December 1886: Extrapolating from the dates of other events we can take it that between these two dates a meeting was held to form Dial Square FC ahead of their first game on 11 December against Eastern Wanderers. 1 Dec is the date George Osborne is reported to have given in 1890 when talking about the Royal Oak meeting to form a club.
1 December 1906. First game for Archie Low. He had joined from Ashfield in Glasgow the previous June as cover for Roddy McEachrane. The game ended Arsenal 0 Sunderland 1.
1 – 5 December 1919: Curiously 33 years after the club was founded, and somewhere during exactly the same spread of five days, The Arsenal FC became Arsenal FC in terms of the way the club referred to itself. However the club’s actual legal name did not change.
1 December 1923: Arsenal started a sequence of 9 games in one month with a 2-2 home draw against Blackburn with 20,000 in the ground. Young playing at centre forward finally got his first goal of the season in his seventh match.
1 December 1926: St Ivel in the Islington Gazette suggested for the first time that the reserves were on course to win the league – a significant improvement on their 5th place the previous season. It was a time when the reserve league was taken very seriously by club and players.
1 December 1934: Arsenal 7 Wolverhampton 0. For the second match running Drake scored four as Arsenal scored five or more for fifth time in 17 league games.
1 December 1973: Arsenal played out a 2-2 draw with Coventry at Highbury in front of just 22,340. Arsenal’s scorers were unexpected: the young Hornsby, and Nelson, but the hero was Wilson, Arsenal’s pitch was unplayable, and the game started late as the players went off to change their boots after the warmup and Arsenal’s tactics were to run through the middle, as the journey was shorter.
1 December 1983: Tommy Caton joined Arsenal from Man City. In his wild, short life he played 95 times for Arsenal.
1 December 1983: Lee Chapman sold to Sunderland for £100,000. He had been brought in as the club’s new goalscorer but played just 23 league games and scored just four goals.
1 December 1985: Paul Merson signed a professional contract. Before becoming an integral part of the team he had one loan spell with Brentford who were managed by the Double winning captain of 1971, Frank McLintock.
1 December 1992: Cup Match 4 of Arsenal’s Cup Double season. Arsenal beat Derby 2-1 in a replay of the 3rd round match in the League Cup. Wright and Campbell got the goals.
1 December 2001: Ipswich 0 Arsenal 2 with goals from Ljungberg and Henry. League match 14 of the third Double season. Although part of three consecutive wins it was in fact just part of a run of three wins in nine.
1 December 2007: Aston Villa 1 Arsenal 2. Arsenal went five points clear and the media began to talk of another unbeaten season. Flamini and Adebayor scored. However the run lasted just one more game.
1 December 2012: Arsenal 0 Swansea 2. Arsenal had 21 points, their worst total after 15 games for 18 years. They were 10th in the league behind Stoke, Swansea and WBA, but ahead of Liverpool.
