AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood Arsenal had finished the previous season with disappointment – slipping to 5th when for a while second place was on offer, and being beaten by a very poor Ipswich team in the Cup Final and losing in the semi-final of the League Cup to a dour defensive Liverpool. It was these disappointments …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 22. July to Dec 1978. Surviving without Macdonald.”
. By Tony Attwood Arsenal ended the old year in fourth position in the league… P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Nottingham Forest 23 16 4 3 44 14 +30 36 2 Everton 23 12 7 4 47 27 +20 31 3 Liverpool 23 12 6 5 30 16 +14 30 4 …
Joe Mercer: The Arsenal Manager Who Never Was By John Sowman When Arsenal captain Joe Mercer broke his leg in two places following an accidental collision with colleague Joe Wade at Highbury on 10th April 1954, most people associated with the sport assumed that he would remain in football, probably in a managerial capacity. …
This article appears on the History Site, because Untold Arsenal is still down. Apologies for that – we hope to be back up soon. By Tony Attwood I thought we had seen the end of this type of refereeing back in the 1970s with the appalling Don Revie side, whose activities were so outrageous that …
By Tony Attwood Between 1893 (when Arsenal entered the Football League) and 1930 (when Arsenal won their first major trophy – the FA Cup) was a period of 36 trophyless years. During that spell Arsenal reached one FA Cup Final, came second in the First Divison on one occasion, and were defeated in two Cup …
Read More “To understand Arsenal’s success we also need to understand what led up to the success.”
By Tony Attwood 1977 had seen the most unwelcome of records for Arsenal as on 12 February 1977 the result Man C 1 Arsenal 0 was not just the fourth consecutive game without a win, but also the first of seven consecutive defeats in the league – the worst ever run of defeats, beating the six “achieved” under …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s Part 20: July to Dec 1977 – signs of recovery.”
By Tony Attwood Updated 8 Feb with end of season friendlies added. Arsenal ended 1976 in sixth place, seven points behind the league leaders with three games in hand. They began the new year at home to the much disliked Leeds United on 3 January 1977 in a match in which Alan Hudson, the man who quite …
. I am very grateful to Arthur Manners who wrote in recently to point out that the Arsenal munitions site, has been transferred from MOD ownership to Greenwich council hands now. The Royal Artillery museum closes in July 2016 and soon after its all likely to be flats. So if you want to set foot in …
By Tony Attwood On 21 August 1976 Malcolm Macdonald made his league début in Terry Neill’s first game as manager, against newly promoted Bristol City. Mee had ended his final season with this line up: Rimmer, Rice, Nelson, Ross, Mancini, Powling, Armstrong, Ball, Stapleton, Cropley, Brady. Neill began his new regime with Rimmer, Rice, Nelson, Ross, O’Leary, …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 18: July to Dec 1976. Neill takes control”
By Tony Attwood After Terry Neill became Arsenal manager in the summer of 1976 he is said to have presented the board with a list of players he wanted to sign. Top of the list was Malcolm Macdonald. I am not sure the list itself has ever been made public beyond that revelation so I …
Read More “Pat Howard: Terry Neill’s second purchase and a one season man”
By Tony Attwood The 1975/6 season marked the end of the Mee reign, as we considered in the previous article in this Arsenal in the 70s series. Mee ended his tenure as manager with three defeats, 17 April: Ipswich Town (H) 1-2 19 April: Queen’s Park Rangers (A) 1-2 24 April: Manchester City (A) 1-3 which …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s Part 17 – the summer of 76. New manager. New superstar.”
By Tony Attwood An index to the whole series of articles tracing Arsenal’s history through the 70s is given at the end of this piece. We left Arsenal in the last episode having won just two out of their six games in December, having scored two goals in their seven games. The league table at …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 16. Jan to June 1976: the end of Mee”
An index of all the articles in the series before this one is shown at the foot of this article. By Tony Attwood By the summer of 1975 Bertie Mee’s image was seriously tarnished. From the peak of his reputation in 1970 with the Fairs Cup Win, and then the Double in 1971, he …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s: July to Dec 1975. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse…”
By Tony Attwood The story so far… Arsenal in the 70s, part 1: the re-birth of the club. 1969/70 Arsenal in the 70s, part 2: preparing for the impossible. (July to December 1970) Arsenal in the 70s, part 3: The Golden Treble Arsenal in the 70s, part 4: What went so right in 1971, and …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 14. Jan to June 1975 – trying to send Tottenham down”
This is part of a series of articles not just on what happened to Arsenal in the 1970s but why it happened. There is an index to the articles published thus far at the foot of the page, and the index is updated on the site’s home page. By Tony Attwood Arsenal approached the 1974/5 …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 13: July 74 to Dec 74. Relegation beckons.”
By Tony Attwood We left Arsenal 16th in the League at the end of December, 16 points off the leaders, Leeds, and only 7 points above the third relegation spot – newly created for this season, plus knocked out of the League cup by Tranmere. Some serious improvement was needed – and quickly. Unfortunately this …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s Part 12: Jan to June 74. Farewell Bob, hello Liam.”
By Tony Attwood This page has been modified to correct the report of the Barcelona game. Before this season started, the question was, could Arsenal get back to their best? The club had appeared in cup finals for five consecutive years, as well as being runners up last year. Could this be the …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s: Part 11: July-Dec 73, as the world falls apart.”
By Tony Attwood We ended the last piece on the 1970s at the end of 1972 with the league table looking like this P W D L F A GAv Pts 1 Liverpool 25 16 6 3 49 26 1.89 38 2 Arsenal 26 14 7 5 34 24 1.42 35 3 Leeds United 24 …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal returned to training in July 1972, without a new trophy in the cabinet. But in the past five years they had won the league, the Fairs Cup, and the FA Cup. They had twice been beaten finalists in the League Cup Final, and once beaten in the FA Cup final. It …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 9: July to Dec 1972. The time of indiscipline and invasions.”
By Tony Attwood When Tottenham Hotspur achieved what all commentators of the era had believed to be the impossible – the League and FA Cup Double – in 1961, they maintained their position of prominence by winning the FA Cup again the following year, while slipping to third in the League. In the next season …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 8 – the lessons learned and the lessons ignored 1967-73”
By Tony Attwood ———– Derby literally took the fight to Arsenal with O’Hare at one stage punching and kicking Graham repeatedly. As players tried to pull O’Hare off, the referee checked with the linesman and then spoke to Gemmill and Simpson. It was that sort of display. ———– The story so far… Arsenal in the …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 7: The remains of 1971/2, revival and defeat.”
The story so far… Arsenal in the 70s, part 1: the re-birth of the club. 1969/70 Arsenal in the 70s, part 2: preparing for the impossible. (July to December 1970) Arsenal in the 70s, part 3: The Golden Treble Arsenal in the 70s, part 4: What went so right in 1971, and why did it …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 6. The winter of blossoming hope. Nov 71 to Jan 72.”
By Jaume Giró. I am a former media student and for many years I have been researching the history and films of the former film studio, Welwyn Studios. The studio was based in my home town of Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, and during the time when the building operated as a film studio, between 1928 to …
Read More “Enquiries about Arsenal documentary short ‘The Team’ during World War 2”
By Tony Attwood A link to the earlier articles in this series, which starts with the 1969/70 season, can be found at the foot of this piece. Note: Apologies the wrong league table was originally published at the end of this article. This has now been corrected. ————– There was a feeling that Arsenal had …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 5. After the double, double doubts.”
By Tony Attwood So, we won the League and the Cup in 1971; an amazing achievement. Which raises the question: why did it happen then, and why was it that we didn’t go on and build on that amazing achievement? First off, in the Double season we had amazing luck with injuries. Of course some …
