Happy birthday Martin Keown indeed. Despite his occasional criticisms of Arsenal since his retirement, he is still remembered with great enthusiasm by many of us who watched his two spells at the club which resulted in 310 games for Arsenal across two spells. In all he played 585 first class games.
And of course he along with Ray Parlour and other players signed for non-league Wembley in to play in their 2012/13 FA Cup campaign. They beat Langford, but were knocked out by Uxbridge in the second round after a replay.
Plus we might note that on this day in 1910, Arsenal, on the brink of going into liquidation and being kicked out of the league, were rescued by Henry Norris. Without his intervention, the club would have folded, for there was no one else waiting in the wings with the money to pay off their debts.
Here are the anniversaries.
24 July 1870: Harry Storer born. He became Arsenal’s first ever player to win representative honours, and the first player to be transferred for disciplinary reasons after a major falling out with fans.
24 July 1905: Widespread interest in Woolwich Arsenal led to the Daily Mirror noting that season tickets for the season ahead had gone on sale.
24 July 1910: Woolwich Arsenal FC formally taken over by Henry Norris and William Hall. They promised the Football League to use their money to keep Arsenal in Plumstead for one year, but by this date had extended that to two years in a promise to George Leavey. Eventually they paid for the club to stay at the Manor Ground for three seasons before moving to Highbury.
24 July 1946: Arthur Milton signed pro forms. He became the last ever man to play football and cricket at the top level for England. He remains in the top ten in terms of catches in first-class cricket (758) and in 1952, he equalled the world record of seven catches in a day, and eight in the match.
24 July 1966 Martin Keown born. Although he started his career with Arsenal he was eventually sold to Aston Villa and then on to Everton, returning to Arsenal to play 311 games six years after he had left the club.
24 July 1971: Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic 0 Arsenal 5. (Simpson 2, Radford 2, Kennedy). The first friendly of the season. Although there doesn’t seem to be a full team sheet available for this game, it is noted that Marinello played in the starting XI – an attempt to rehabilitate him after missing out on the previous season.
24 July 1977: After a players’ drinking spree in Sydney, on a club tour of Australia, Terry Neill diminished his power base somewhat by sending just two of the culprits home including Alan Hudson who did not play for the club again. On this day the result was Celtic 3 Arsenal 2 (Sydney, Australia) (Rice, Macdonald)
24 July 1989: FK Mjolner (Norway) 0 Arsenal 4 (Merson, Adams, Quinn, Campbell). The second of three games in an early pre-season tour of Sweden.
24 July 1998: The BBC reported that Arsenal had gained the “go ahead” to play European games at Wembley. It was a revolutionary move at the time, but turned into a disaster in terms of results.
24 July 1990: Västra Frölunda 0 Arsenal 4 (Linighan, Smith, Merson 2). The second of the pre-season matches in Sweden.
24 July 2002: Richard Wright signed for Everton for £3.5m. He had joined Arsenal in July 2001 for what is thought to be about £2m as a potential successor to David Seaman, and in preference to Alex Manninger, but played just 12 games.
24 July 2005: SC Ritzing 2 Arsenal 5 (Bergkamp, Henry, Reyes, Hlev, Larsson). The third match of the pre-season in which we won every game of the six played.
24 July 2012: Arsenal played Malaysia on what seemed on TV pictures to be a
ploughed field. Eisfeld scored his first goal and appeared to have a bright future with the club. It was the series of games that was supposed to include a match in Nigeria, but never did. Eisfled moved on to VfL Bochum but his career was blighted by injury.
This site contains hundreds of articles on the history of Arsenal FC – there is an index to many of the series we have run, on the home page.
