Drawing with Port Vale, losing to Walsall and drugging the team before the game.

The Anniversaries …

14 January: the day we drew with Port Vale before going on to do the Double (1998), the day Chapman’s Arsenal lost to Walsall (1933 – and it is worth reading the match report to see what conditions were like) and played WHU in 1925 as part of the notorious drugs’ scandal.

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.   You will also find links to the month by month listing of anniversaries in the right hand column of this page.


The big series

“Henry Norris at the Arsenal” is now complete.  The index to all the articles can be found at Henry Norris at the Arsenal.   We are now  preparing a more concise edition for publication as a book.

Arsenal in the 1930s: the complete history.  The most detailed review and analysis of Arsenal in the 1930s ever published.  The full index is here.

Arsenal in the 1970s: the complete history.  Every game reviewed and analysed.  The full index is here.


The Anniversaries for Today

14 January 1899: Arsenal 6 Darwen 0 in division 2.   Arsenal were later to face Darwen again, and this next time scored 11 .

14 January 1911: The FA Cup match against Clapton Orient was abandoned at 1-0 to Arsenal.  Arsenal won the rearranged match 2-1.

14 January 1919: The FA met and agreed to allow the resumption of matches on days other than saturdays and public holidays and to permit clubs to start registering players from 1 May.  In a separate meeting it was agreed to extend the next season into August and May.

14 January 1922: Arsenal beat Chelsea 1-0 in front of 40,000.  The inside left, Reg Boreham scored his fourth goal in consecutive league games to give Arsenal a 1-0 victory. Strangely details of Reg Boreham’s life, and even the club he came from, are scarce in the extreme.

14 January 1925: The Arsenal West Ham match at the centre of the drugs “scandal” was finally played.    The story only emerged 20 years later, in a sunday newspaper and then in Knighton’s autobiography and such evidence as we can find suggests the whole event was another Knighton fantasy.

14 January 1931: The replay of the Cup game with Aston Villa was held at Villa Park, with 73,668 in attendance (an amazing number for a mid-week afternoon game) and Arsenal won 3-1, with Brain joining the team to replace Jack Lambert, (David Jack moving to centre forward).  

14 January 1933: The Walsall Experiment, in which Arsenal as last year’s cup finalists were knocked out in Chapman’s last ever FA Cup match.  For subsequent impact see also here.  Chapman rapidly transferred several players who were part of the game.  Walsall won their next league game 8-1 against Mansfield.

14 January 1941: Goalkeeper Alex Wilson who had played his first Arsenal game in 1934 was transferred to St Mirren; one of the few war time transfers.  He had played 37 games in the 1935/6 season when he was an FA Cup winner.

14 January 1961: Herd gained his second consecutive hattrick as Arsenal scored five for the second consecutive game – but only just got the win as it ended Arsenal 5 Man City 4.

14 January 1978:  Arsenal 3 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1, continued Arsenal’s upturn.  Brady took on the air of a man who was contemplating a variety of new approaches to playing football while reading a novel. Willie Young, whose form had so improved of late that he looked as if he could do everything right, then scored an own goal, just to prove he couldn’t.

14 January 1995: Hartson and Kiwomya made league debuts just weeks before George Graham was sacked.

14 January 1998: Port Vale 1 Arsenal 1 (FA Cup round three) in the second Double season.  Arsenal went through on penalties 4-3. Having drawn at Highbury, there was no score in normal time, and Dixon missed Arsenal’s first penalty.    The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.

14 January 2006: Arsenal 7 Middlesbrough 0. Henry scored a hat-trick.  This game equalled the highest Premier League win for the club.  Senderos, Pires, Gilberto and Hleb got the others.

14 January 2008: The launch of the short lived Arsenal TV as part of Setanta Sports  It was ultimately replaced with an online service after it closed on 7 August 2009 as Setanta was liquidated.  It was replaced by BT Sport, but without Arsenal TV.

14 January 2008: After launching two days earlier Untold Arsenal published its first article: an attack on rotational fouling and rotational time-wasting.

14 January 2015: Benik Afobe sold to Wolverhampton Wanderers for £2m.  He never played for Arsenal but had multiple loans including MK Dons where he scored 19 goals in 30 league and cup games.  He scored 8 in his first 14 matches for Wolverhampton and in January 2016 moved to Bournemouth for £12m.

14 January 2016: Arsenal signed Mohamed Elneny from FC Basel.  He played in Switzerland for 3 years making over 90 appearances and winning three consecutive Super League titles.   He had also played for Egypt in the London Olympics in 2012. During the remainder of the season he twice won the fans’ award for player of the month.

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