In 1932 Everton won the league scoring 116 goals in 42 games. That wasn’t the all time record however – for the season before Arsenal had scored 127 as champions, but Aston Villa had scored 128 in coming runners up.
Arsenal came back and won the league again in 1933 with 118 goals scored and in 1935 knocked in 115 with another league title, but by the time football was suspended for the war years, the days of high scoring were more or less over.
But looking back to this day in 1932 we find that the high scoring was very much the order of the day as Arsenal won 8-2 beating Leicester. They had already beaten Sunderland 6-1, and the week after the Leicester game beat Wolverhampton Wanderers away 7-1.
And yet that still wasn’t the top score of the season for on Christmas Eve that year Arsenal beat Sheffield United 9-2. There was then something of a hiatus in terms of huge scores until as a final volley Arsenal beat Blackburn 8-0 in Feberuary. It must have been quite a season.
Here are the anniversaries
29 October 1892: Royal Arsenal almost emulated their FA cup record victory with a 10-1 defeat of City Ramblers. Booth, Elliott and Henderson all got hat tricks, with the other goal coming from George Alexander Davie.
29 October 1908: Alex Wilson born in Lancashire. He played for Overton Athletic and Greenock Morton winning promotion to the first division with them in 1929. He was signed by Chapman in May 1933.
29 October 1911: Bernard Joy born. He played university football and then went on to play for the amateur side Casuals and won the prestigious FA Amateur Cup in 1936 plus ten caps for England amateurs as well as playing for Arsenal.
28 October 1917: Henry Norris became the Director of the South-East Recruiting Region as well as being the military Deputy Director of recruiting in the region. This was part of the unification of a military and civilian roles as conscription was under the control of the Secretary of State for National Service in Parliament.
29 October 1921: Arsenal lost 1-3 at home to Huddersfield Town, making it four defeats in a row.
29 October 1923: Following allegations that Sir Henry Norris had allowed illegal payments to be made to the player Harry White, much of the press ran anti-Norris stories. But Athletic News was more measured, and ex-ref Arthur Bourke who reported on Arsenal for the Islington Gazette described Sir Henry as a “gallant gentleman and sportsman.” He did however point out that Sir Henry had brought much of this on himself by saying, “unkind things of the Press”.
29 October 1924: A general election was held, dominated by the fake Zinoviev Letter published by the Daily Mail, which suggested the left were about to overthrow the state. Islington East which included Highbury moved from being a Liberal seat to that for the Conservatives.
29 October 1925: The long running court case between Arsenal’s Jock Rutherford and Turf Publishers ended with the court ruling that Turf had used Rutherford’s name and there was no evidence that they had got permission. But despite this ruling the FA would not release Rutherford to play again until they had held their own enquiry!
29 October 1932: Arsenal 8 Leicester 2, continuing a run in which they won 9, drawn 2 and lost 1 in the league. Hulme 3, Bastin 2, Coleman 2, Jack got the goals in front of 36714 and for the first time in the season hit the top of the league.
29 October 1965: Jimmy Magill transferred to Brighton after playing 116 games for Arsenal. He also played 26 times for N Ireland. In 1969 he moved to Denmark and had a successful career as a manager before stepping down for the last time in 1996.
29 October 1969: Sporting Lisbon 0 Arsenal 0 with a crowd of 32000 in the Fairs Cup.
29 October 1973: Robert Pirès birthday. Robert had a Portuguese father and Spanish mother and found learning both French and English difficult. After he had left Arsenal to play for Villareal he did an interview in fluent Spanish and the UK journalists, not realising Spanish was his native tongue berated him for not having bothered to learn English properly. Among many other achievements he scored a hat trick in the first game of the “49”.
29 October 1977: Trevor Ross played his last game for Arsenal. His transfer to Everton took several weeks to complete, and during that period he had a major falling out with Terry Neill.
29 October 1983: Tony Woodcock scored five against Villa by the 48th minute. Final score 6-2. In all he scored eight in three consecutive matches.
29 October 1994: Everton 1 Arsenal 1. This was the start of an 18 match sequence in which Arsenal scored 16 goals, winning just four games. The problem with scoring was reflected in the end of season stats: Wright got 18, Hartson 7 and no one else more than four.
29 October 2008: Arsenal 4 Tottenham 4. Bentley scored against his old club – perhaps the highpoint of his career. Silvestre, Gallas, Adebayor, van Persie scored the goals for Arsenal.
29 October 2011. Chelsea 3 Arsenal 5. Van Persie scored three, to make it three wins in a row for Arsenal in a run that continues for eight games until 10 December.
29 October 2016: Arsenal beat Sunderland 4-1 away, with 2 each from Sanchez and Giroud. This made it 14 games unbeaten. Sunderland were relegated at the end of the season and again the next season to take them down to League One.
