Arsenal beat Roma in the Champions League on this day

The anniversaries are below…

Contact Arsenal History Society at Tony@schools.co.uk



You can find the latest video each day on the home page of this site.   You can also find videos for previous days by clicking the articles in the left column of this page under “Recent Posts” or by clicking on the mauve headline at the top of the screen on the right, which will take you to yesterday’s selected video – and so on back to the start of the series in August.  There is more about who we are and other things we do, at the foot of the page.  Below are the anniversaries for today in Arsenal’s history…


The Arsenal History Society is part of the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association – a body which gives positive support to the club, and has regular meetings with directors and senior officials of the club to represent the views of its members to the club.  You can read more about AISA on its website.

24 February 1892: Royal Arsenal attempted to form the Southern League.  Arsenal eventually gave up on the scheme after some clubs were persuaded to pull out after having voted to join, and instead Royal Arsenal joined the Football League 18 months later as Woolwich Arsenal (being required to become a limited company for the purpose, and with the law prohibiting the word “royal” in a limited company name).

24 February 1894: Middlesbrough Ironopolis 3 Arsenal 6.  After taking 18 games to win 6, Arsenal completed a run of four wins in a row, en route to six wins and a draw in seven.  It was the club’s first nine goal game, and the first time Arsenal scored 6 in a league match.

24 February 1902: Millwall 2 Arsenal 1, London League Premier Division.  The rivalry between the two clubs continued; however only 3000 turned up as the game was played on a Monday afternoon.

24 February 1906.  Arsenal’s first ever match in the 3rd round of the FA Cup resulted in a 5-0 victory against Sunderland in front of 30,000.  See also here

24 February 1913:  A director from each of Tottenham and Clapton Orient went uninvited to the scheduled meeting of the Football League management committee to ask them to prevent any move by Woolwich Arsenal to north London from going ahead.

24 February 1917:  A 2-0 away win over Southampton with 3,000 present meant that out of the last 12 games Arsenal had won eight, drawn three and lost one.  It was a tremendous improvement on the first part of the wartime season.

24 February 1926. Arsenal 2 Aston Villa 0 in front of 71446 in the FA Cup 5th round replay.  It was the biggest crowd thus far at Highbury despite just two wins in the last six league games.  Jimmy Patterson whom manager Knighton denounced as merely the brother in law of the physio played his second game after his comeback under Chapman.

24 February 1934: Arsenal played Newcastle away just weeks after the death of Herbert Chapman. Arsenal won 1-0 but rumours spread that the Arsenal train returning to London had crashed killing two players.  In fact, a supporters’ special had had a minor accident.  The incident shows how the sense of disaster pervaded reports of Arsenal in the media in the weeks after Chapman’s passing  

24 February 1951: Jack Kelsey’s debut, against Chelsea, and he let in five.  But he returned and eventually became one of the all-time favourites at the club.

24 February 1959: Last game for Peter Goring.  First league games for Peter Goy and the first and last game for Roy Goulden in a 1-0 victory to keep Arsenal top of the League.  Herd got the goal.

24 February 1962: George Armstrong played his first Arsenal game, v Blackpool.  He went on to play exactly 500 league games for Arsenal before moving to Leicester.

24 February 1964: William Garbutt – the man who took football to Italy, died.  He played for Woolwich Arsenal before managing Genoa, Roma, Napoli and Milan and is still celebrated in Italy as the founder of Italian football.

24 February 1968 Jim Furnell’s last league game, against Manchester Utd.  Arsenal lost 0-2, one of nine consecutive games without a victory during which Arsenal scored just five goals.   After playing he went into coaching at Plymouth and later Blackburn.

24 February 1973: Arsenal 2 Carlisle 1. Ball and McLintock scored in the FA Cup 5th round.  After beating Chelsea Arsenal eventually lost in the semi-final to Sunderland.

24 February 1975: Leicester 0 Arsenal 1 (Radford).  FA Cup 5th round, 2nd replay.  Arsenal had thus taken seven games to get through three rounds.

24 February 1976   The crowd of 36,127 was a considerable improvement on recent attendances and the result of Arsenal 1 Liverpool 0 was unexpected, not least because for the first time in this season Arsenal had managed consecutive victories.

24 February 1979: Arsenal 0 Wolverhampton Wanderers 1.   Attendance: 32,215.  It was a huge surprise as Arsenal were second and Wolverhampton were 15th having won one, drawn one and lost ten of their away games in the season.  

24 February 1988: Arsenal 3 Everton 1.  Thomas, Rocastle and Smith scored to secure a place in the League Cup final, which Arsenal then lost to Luton.

24 February 2009.  Arsenal 1 Roma 0 did not look to be enough in the Champions League to allow Arsenal through to the next round.  Van Persie got the goal, but after a reverse 1-0 result in Rome, Arsenal went through on penalties.  It was part of a 17 match run without defeat.

24 February 2019: Arsenal beat Southampton 2-0, the first time Arsenal had won two consecutive games after a run of four wins alternating with four defeats.  In fact Arsenal had only two defeats in the next 12 games, before hitting another run of three successive defeats.

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