AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood In the 1999/2000 season Arsenal finished third in their Champions League group against AIK, Barcelona and Fiorentina, and didn’t get through to the knock out stages, but instead dropped into the Uefa Cup – the precursor of the infamous Europa League. Here are the results: 3rd Round 25 November 1999: Arsenal 3 Nantes 0 9 December 1999: Nantes …
7 August 1999 Arsenal 2 Leicester City 1: The opening of the 1999/2000 season. This was Thierry Henry’s first ever game for Arsenal – for having not signed until 3 August 1999 he did not play in any of the pre-season games. Henry was the sixth and final transfer of the summer – the others …
Read More “What happened on Henry’s first game for Arsenal?”
11 July 2003: Peterborough 1 Arsenal 0 Given that you are reading the Arsenal History Society blog I take it you’ll know what happened in 2003/4 – Arsenal were unbeaten in the league all season. But what about the pre-season friendlies? They started with a 0-1 defeat to Peterborough followed by a 0-0 with Barnet …
Read More “Beware the pre-season friendly – it tells you nothing.”
The Gunners through the years Four national teams featuring Arsenal players have made it through to the finals of the World Cup in 2014. Belgium, Costa Rica, France and Germany have all shown tremendous promise this year, while Spain and England each went home in the group stages, despite having Arsenal players on their side. …
Because of the growth of readership Untold Arsenal’s server is regularly hitting its size limit. Not our fault – it is just that everyone wants to read us. So we are doubling the size of the server. Now we haven’t done it this way before, so all the things that can go wrong will go …
Cyril Grant was an Arsenal centre forward who was born in Wath, Yorkshire, on 10 July 1920 and played just two games for the club in the disastrous 1946/7 season. But he had a most interesting connection with one of the more unexpected tales we’ve unearthed on Untold. Some reports have Cyril starting his career with …
Leeds United have signed goalkeeper Stuart Taylor on a one-year deal. It was only a week or two back that we covered Stuart and wrote up his life as a goalkeeper of promise who spent most of his time as backup keeper at big clubs. He played 18 games for Arsenal across eight seasons – …
Read More “Stuart Taylor gets a club; but will it be the right one at last?”
By Tony Attwood Just look at these events all of which took place on 3 July. The revolution in tactics 3 July 1925: Charles Buchan, the man who helped develop WM, re-signed by Arsenal in £100/goal deal An England goal by the man who challenged the whole “retain and transfer” system 3 July 1966: George Eastham …
Read More “3 July – Buchan, Eastham, Bergkamp, Pires, Campbell. All on this day.”
By Tony Attwood Puma have released their first video following their record breaking deal with Arsenal – and rather nicely for us, it focusses on Arsenal’s heritage and history, pulling together some of the stories we have featured on this site over the years. Better still, as Walter Broeckx, my colleague on Untold Arsenal, has …
Some days – especially in June – we’ve been down to just a handful of events to commemorate when it comes to Arsenal. But if you noticed, there was a real upturn yesterday, and today we are back to the level of events on one day in history, that we are used to through much …
Read More “Alan Sunderland, Flint McCullough, Billy Blyth… and so many more. 1 July anniversaries.”
On Arsenal.com Davor Šuker is a stat: 39 (15 starts, 24 as a sub) , 11 goals For Real Madrid he was a more successful stat playing 109 games and scoring 49 goals. As a Croatian he is an absolute hero and if you want to know what he means to Croatia take a look here …
Read More “Davor Šuker: a passing whim, a giant among players, or something sinister?”
Every season there are player releases from Arsenal as contracts come to an end on 30 June. For 2014 the list was headed by Nic Bendtner who played 171 times for Arsenal, making his final appearance on Sunday 2 February 2014 at home to Crystal Palace. He came on as a sub in the …
Read More “The June 2014 Arsenal departures, and what they achieved”
By Tony Attwood Stuart Taylor made 26 starts for Arsenal in league and cup, and came on four times as a substitute between 1997 and 2005. Which when you come to think of it means an awful lot of bench sitting over an eight year period. But such is the lot of the second keeper. …
Read More “Stuart Taylor: league winner with Arsenal, but never a regular club man”
By Tony Attwood OK I am biased – because 22 June is my birthday. But it is also the day that made me think of creating the Anniversary Files of Arsenal – files that now contain over 5000 important Arsenal events, the largest collection ever gathered together. Of course it is a nerdy sort of …
Read More “If we ever create “Arsenal Day” it has to be 22 June”
Steven Charles Williams known to the world as Steve was born on 12 July 1958 in Romford, Essex and is number 38 in the list of the 50 greatest players of Arsenal, as elected by Arsenal supporters. He was loved because he was very much a man who loved Arsenal and he was never anything but committed …
Read More “Steve Williams. Never gave less than his all, never short of an opinion.”
By Tony Attwood Leonard Bruce Julians played 18 times for Arsenal and scored a remarkable 7 goals. Try to find out about him through Wiki or Arsenal.com or even the “Where are they now” site, and you get a line or two, if you are lucky. They will tell you his other clubs perhaps, (Leyton …
Rather oddly, Arsenal.com doesn’t actually acknowledge that Arsenal are playing in the Community Shield this summer. Or maybe we are not? Has it been cancelled? Details of the date are how it fits into the calendar are at the end of this piece. I was pondering this point when I remembered that the article here …
By Tony Attwood A while back in an article I traced the footballing life of David Bentley under the Whatever happened to…? heading. Now we have found out what did happen, thanks to an article in the Guardian on 13 June 2014 which tells us that, “David Bentley broke down in tears as he announced …
If you’ve had a look at the Anniversary Files on this site you might have noticed that the expansion of the Files continues day by day. We’re now approaching the 5000 event mark – and all this done without simply recording individual matches of no particular significance, each international that our players and have been …
Read More “Today in history: Herbert Chapman and Liam Brady joined Arsenal on 11 June”
By Tony Attwood In the first post-war season Arsenal, still managed by George Allison, came 13th in the league and were knocked out of the FA Cup in the Third Round. It started badly with three defeats and a draw in the first four and then carried on just as badly. By the 9th league …
By Tony Attwood It is not a day that gets any celebration, nor even a passing mention in the World Cup sodden press. But 8 June was one of those big, big days in the history of football. For it was the day that at its AGM in 1925 the Football League voted to change the …
By Tony Attwood This article was updated 19 August 2020. During the inter-war period many first division clubs hit on the idea of taking over non-league sides and running them as “Nurseries”. Perhaps by coincidence or perhaps as a result of some copycat activities, all three of the north London teams in the 1930s had …
Dr James Alexander Paterson was an Arsenal player. In many regards he was an Arsenal player who deserves a mention, both as a player as for his service to his country in the first world war. But there is more, for Dr Paterson helps us further unravel the allegations of an Arsenal manager which over the …
Read More “Dr Jimmy Paterson: unravelling a curious tale and pack of lies”
By Tony Attwood On February 29 1936 Arsenal beat Barnsley 4-1 at Highbury in the 6th round of the FA Cup. With other clubs playing League matches that day Arsenal now had a couple of games in hand, but clearly had little chance of winning the League. However being in the semi-final Arsenal had every chance of …
Read More “When Arsenal were fined for fielding a weakened team”
By Tony Attwood Fred Dwight was signed 5 June 1903 and played his first and last game for Arsenal on 7 January 1905, away to Preston. We lost 0-3. It was one of three consecutive defeats in which Arsenal scored no goals but let in nine. Fred played left back and was brought into because …
