On this day in 1971 Don Howe left Arsenal having coached the team to the Double. It can most certainly be argued that if he had stayed and acted as a moderating vision on Bertie Mee’s visions, the rapid decline of the club into a near relegation side would have been avoided.
Don Howe was always considered one of our most solid of defenders, even though he was only at the club as a player for the last couple of years of his playing career – having appeared 342 times for West Brom.
Then after a period as a coach he managed West Brom and Galatasaray before returning to Arsenal as manager from 1983 to 1986, but without succcess. After that he managed QPR and Coventry
Howe retired in 2003 although still ran youth coaching schemes across the country and wrote for both the BBC and the official Arsenal magazine. He also worked as an adviser for the Football Association of Ireland. Don passed away in December 2015 at the age of 80.
Below are the Arsenal anniversaries for today.
There is a separate file for the anniversaries for each month of the year adding up to a total of over 7000 entries – just take a look at the right hand column of the page and you will find an index to the months under “Pages”.
29 June 1900: Loughborough FC, the team against whom Arsenal had their largest league victory, finally folded. They had been in serious financial difficulty for some time and Arsenal had paid their train fares so they could complete their final visit to Plumstead. The town gained a new team in 1955 – Loughborough Dynamos.
29 June 1914: The international exhibition opened at the “White City”. It closed on the declaration of war and the site was used as an armaments depot.
29 June 1923: Ernest Williamson was granted a free transfer to Norwich after over 100 games in goal. He played for Norwich for two seasons, before retiring from football in 1925 after which we lose sight of him completely
29 June 1929: Billy Warnes, one of the “Walsall Experiment” players in Herbert Chapman’s last ever FA Cup match, was signed. The FA Cup match against Walsall was his only first team game for the club. See also here
29 June 1971: Don Howe left Arsenal having helped guide the club to the Double as first team coach. He moved on to WBA where he stayed until 1975 before a year at Galatasaray SK after which he returned to Arsenal as manager.
29 June 1982: Kenny Sansom and Graham Rix – two players who had troubled times in later life – played for England against West Germany in a goalless draw in the world cup.
29 June 1998: Dennis Bergkamp scored in the Netherland’s 2-1 world cup win over Yugoslavia in France. Mark Overmars was also in the team.
29 June 2003: Thierry Henry scored in the 97th minute with the golden goal that gave victory over Cameroon in the Confederations Cup Final.
29 June 2015: After much expectation, Arsenal purchased Petr Cech from Chelsea for around £10m. It was reported that the Chelsea manager Mourinho was particularly unhappy about the sale. Cech returned to Chelsea as a coach in 2019.
