Welcome to the daily blog of the AISA Arsenal History Society. You can read more about AISA at AISA.org
The Videos…
Details of the video collections, where we focus on matches against just one club are on the home page
The complete list of all the videos we have gathered so far are here.
The anniversaries
20 May 1910: The funeral of King Edward VII. Arsenal’s attempts to sell shares in the re-born club had been forced to stop during the period of mourning, but were allowed to re-start on the following day. On this day the Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet
20 May 1926: Amateure FK Austria 3 Arsenal 5 (Parker. Butler, Buchan, Brain, Ramsey). Herbert Chapman revived the Woolwich Arsenal tradition of post-season European tours to boost the standing of the club in Europe. This was the fourth of six games.
20 May 1928: Debut for Charlie Jones. Danish XI 0 Arsenal 1. Although he had only played with lower league clubs Chapman deemed him to be the man the club needed and he was pitched straight into the first team.
20 May 1936: George Marks, having transferred from Salisbury Corinthians, signed professional forms on this day. He moved into Arsenal reserves for 1938/9 as an understudy for George Swindin and Alex Wilson, and played his first major game on 17 April 1939 – a friendly against Tottenham.
20 May 1963: Arsenal 2 Rangers 2. Jack Kelsey testimonial match. He had been injured playing for Wales in Brazil and forced to retire.
20 May 1969: Hibernians (Malta) 0 Arsenal 0 (14,000). The second of two post-season games in Malta.
20 May 1975: Thailand National XI 0 Arsenal 3 (Kidd 2, Cropley). The fourth and final game of Arsenal’s Far East end of season tour.
20 May 1977: The third and final game of Arsenal’s post season tour ended Roros 0 Arsenal 6 (Rix, Macdonald 3, Price, Stapleton).
20 May 1982: Danny O’Shea made his first appearance in the friendly: Arsenal 3 Trinidad Representative XI 0. He went on to play six league games for Arsenal.
20 May 1993: Arsenal 2 Sheffield W 1 (FA Cup final replay). This was the third and final game against Sheff W at Wembley, and the 17th and last cup match of the Cup Double Season as Arsenal became the first ever team to win the League Cup and FA Cup in the same season. When Linighan scored Jonathan Pearce commentating, pronounced, “The boy from Hartlepool is in the big pool of London football, and he’s become the biggest fish of them all.” Ian Wright scored to make it 10 FA Cup goals, and five League Cup goals, in total an all time cup scoring record.
20 May 1995: Hong Kong Rangers 0 Arsenal 4. Paul Davis’ final game for Arsenal. He played for Brentford before returning to Arsenal as a member of the junior coaching team.
20 May 1997: Matthew Rose joined QPR. He had played five league games for Arsenal, but played 243 for QPR. He later became Head coach of Arsenal’s European Elite Academy.
20 May 2013: Craig Eastmond left Arsenal for Colchester Utd. He played 49 times for them before moving once again to Yeovil.
20 May 2015: Arsenal 0 Sunderland 0 was not a game to remember except that it was part of a run of 27 games starting on 4 January in which Arsenal only lost three and drew three. As a result we won the FA Cup and retained our position as a top four club.
Highlights
Today’s Arsenal Anniversaries: For the latest story please see the top story in “Recent Posts” on the left of this page. For the index month by month please see under “Pages” on the right side of the screen. The file for each month is updated at least once a year, normally at the end of that month.
Henry Norris at the Arsenal: There is a full index to the series here.
Arsenal in the 1930s: The most comprehensive series on the decade ever
Arsenal in the 1970s: Every match and every intrigue reviewed in detail.
The series
This site is based around series of articles on specific themes – and you can find links to many of these on this page and on the left column under the heading “Pages”.
Our three giant series are shown above. Here are some of the other popular series that have been written recently or are actively being updated at the moment.
- Arsenal players in the 30s
- Arsenal in the summer – now over 50 articles.
- The First League Season, including a review of each player who played in that season
- Arsenal day by day – over 5000 anniversaries of the club
- Tom Whittaker, player, coach, manager
Earlier series are shown on the home page
