February 12th 1910. Woolwich Arsenal 0, Blackburn Rovers 1. Attendance 7,500
It wasn’t just the defeat, it was the awfully low crowd. With the club heading for administration, and no one other than Henry Norris flitting around the scene, survival as a club looked even more unlikely than survival in the First Division.
After this game, the table at the bottom was…
- Bristol C, played 25, points 18
- Tottenham, played 24, points 18
- Woolwich Arsenal, played 25, points 18
- Chelsea, played 25, points 17
- Middlesboro, played 24, points 15
- Bolton W, played 26, points 15
Two points for a win, and the bottom two go down a division.
Next up was yet another home match (the fourth home match in a row) against Sunderland who were half way down the league in 10th after this round of games. It was a possible game to win for Woolwich, but Sunderland were hardly an attractive proposition – and the club needed gate money even more than they needed points.
Five defeats, one draw and two victories in the last eight games – not a very exciting set of results.
The only thing that could be said was that it was an improvement on the 7-0 defeat by Blackburn earlier in the season.
IN OTHER MATTERS
This site covers the activities of Woolwich Arsenal in 1910, following developments day by day 100 years ago.
This period was the making of the modern Arsenal, hence the name of the blog – and you can read the whole story in the Making the Arsenal book. This is a novel based around the work of a Fleet Street journalist who covered Woolwich Arsenal in 1910 – both in terms of the football and in terms of the takeover of Arsenal by Fulham FC. More details here.
Daily events of Arsenal in 2010 are to be found on Untold Arsenal
We also cover issues relating to each club that Arsenal play on this site – flip back through previous articles to see stories about Blackburn and Liverpool in particular.
(c) Tony Attwood 2010
