AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood The notion of a regular set of pre-season friendlies (and indeed the notion of the overseas tour) is quite recent – although occasional examples of such games can be found back in the early days of Arsenal. Back in 1913 the concept of playing lots of friends each season (see below) had …
Read More “The day when Woolwich Arsenal as a north London club actually began”
By Tony Attwood The Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy was a competition that Woolwich Arsenal should have been in. But by mistake they were not invited – which is sad because the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy was in fact the original World Cup competition. Sir Thomas had the idea for an international club competition and in …
Read More “Arsenal should have participated in the World Cup”
Ordinary is Pointless The Great History of Arsenal Competition: There’s the first of our clues in today’s article ——————– More from the very first programme issued at Highbury ——————- “We are making our making our re-entry into the second division of the Football League with light hearts and unbounded optimism.” What a way to …
Read More “Light Hearts and Unbounded Optimism. Arsenal enter Highbury in 1913”
Ordinary is Pointless By Tony Attwood Today is the anniversary of the day on which Arsenal FC finally bought Highbury for £64,000 – which was about one tenth of the cost of some of the more interesting apartments in the redeveloped Highbury when the land was redeveloped following the opening of the Emirates Stadium. I’ve …
———————————- Ordinary is Pointless ———————————- 14 August is the anniversary of the signing of Rémi Garde by Arsenal. But you will not find it noted much since it is also the day we signed a certain Patrick Vieira. Curiously although the two were utterly different players and at different stages in their careers, but …
Read More “Rémi Garde (now manager of Lyon) signs for Arsenal – 14 August”
By Tony Attwood Anyone picking up the very first programme issued by Arsenal at Highbury, and reading it through from cover to cover might well have felt that the club was going overboard a bit with the money raising activity through trying to sell shares. There were adverts on virtually every page for £1 shares …
Read More “A season ticket at Highbury in 1913: £1.05p. Bring your own lady and get a discount.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal 4 Tottenham 0, 13 August 1988. The Makita tournament was a summer tournament in London, which Arsenal organized initially as the Wembley International Tournament in August 1988. Of course was the era of the first division so we didn’t have Premier League Betting, but after what happened I was sorely tempted …
Read More “After one 4-0 victory let’s remember another similar scoreline on this day”
Ordinary is Pointless by Tony Attwood The story of Arsenal’s post-first-world-war era is that Sir Henry Norris refused to allow Leslie Knighton to buy players, but allowed Chapman to buy anyone he wanted. That at least is how it is generally reported – not least because a lot of Knighton’s autobiography (the only real source …
Read More “Exploding the myth that Knighton could spend no money, and Chapman could spend anything.”
By Walter Broeckx As you may know, Untold Arsenal reviews the performances of referees. On many occasions people have said that they would have loved to having us around in the past so that we could have commented on key matches that Arsenal seemed to lose due to strange referee decisions. And in particular they …
Read More “The Ref Review from the past. Man U 2 Arsenal 0; the unbeaten run is over”
By Tony Attwood Towards the end of last season I wrote an article with the snappy title, “When was the last time Tottenham finished above Arsenal?” You may realise why I was moved to write that piece was created at that moment. As it turned out, once again Arsenal finished above Tottenham. In fact as …
Read More “The Battle of London: how it felt to be an Arsenal fan in days gone by”
By Tony Attwood 9th August 1997: Overmars, Petit and Grimandi all start their first game for Arsenal. And of all people to play: Leeds United managed by G Graham Esq. At Elland Road. Did we know these men: Overmars, Petit and Grimandi? No – well at least I didn’t. Did we know that Petit / …
Read More “9th August 1997: Overmars, Petit, Grimandi start first game v. Leeds managed by Graham.”
———————– Ordinary is Pointless ———————————- By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you will know that this site is taking a long run up towards the 100th anniversary of the move of Woolwich Arsenal FC from Plumstead to the ground that we eventually got to know as “Highbury”. The reason for this is …
Read More “Behold! The programme for the first ever game at Highbury 99 years ago.”
By Tony Attwood We have got a couple of copies of Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football to give away. And in case you already have a copy, we’ve got some alternative prizes too. To win, all you have to do is to enter Andy Kelly’s fiendish Arsenal History Quiz. Better still, you don’t …
Read More “The Great History of Arsenal competition – with prizes”
Ordinary is Pointless By Tony Attwood This is the chronology of the move of Arsenal FC from Plumstead to Islington which took place in 1913 – part of the ISLINGTON 100 project run by the Arsenal History Society. Some dates are obvious ones that must be included – such as the first league match at …
Read More “ISLINGTON 100: Plumstead to Highbury, day by day”
By Tony Attwood If Arsenal FC had asked me to produce for them a phrase for the 125 year celebrations “Ordinary is Pointless” is the sort of thing I would have given them. Because a) it is true (there is no point in being ordinary in this life) and because b) Arsenal, from the very …
By Tony Attwood and Andy Kelly Britain’s Greg Rutherford has won the Olympic gold medal in the long jump on Saturday. And we mention this because Greg is the great grandson of Woolwich Arsenal, The Arsenal and Arsenal star player Jock Rutherford. Full details of Jock Rutherford are of course incorporated into the book Woolwich …
Read More “Great Grandson of Arsenal star wins gold at Olympics”
—————- Who invented away support? ——————— By Tony Attwood On August 4th 1938 George Allison, the Arsenal manager broke the British transfer record in signing Bryn Jones from Wolverhampton, for £14,500. So outrageous was the fee seemed (and what with this being Arsenal) questions were asked in Parliament. 74 years later to the day, as …
—————- Who invented away support? ——————— By Tony Attwood August 3 1999 – what a day. Henry arrives (for the first time). What on earth can we say about Thierry Henry that has not already been said? Maybe the story that when he was 13 the scout of Monaco went to watch him play in …
Read More “Arsenal Anniversaries: Thierry Henry signs for Arsenal, 3 August 1999”
By Tony Attwood A couple of years back I mentioned to Ivan Gazidis the idea that Arsenal might collect the memories of fans who have been to watch matches over the years. He was enthusiastic, but unfortunately it is one of those things that has never been able to get off the ground. The idea …
Read More “ISLINGTON 100: Send me your memories of Highbury”
By Tony Attwood, chairman, Arsenal History Society. I have been writing recently to the effect that the Arsenal History Society, part of the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association, had proposed to Arsenal FC a series of events to commemorate the move from Plumstead of Highbury. The move started in1912 when Henry Norris began the search for …
Read More “Celebrating 100 years of Arsenal in Islington: a proposal for the club’s AGM”
By Tony Attwood, chairman, Arsenal History Society. I wrote in an earlier post that the Arsenal History Society, part of the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association, had proposed to Arsenal a series of events to commemorate the move from Plumstead of Highbury. The move started in1912 when Henry Norris began the search for a new ground, …
Read More “ISLINGTON 100: The commemoration of Norris, Humble and Hall”
Look around the Arsenal today and you will not find a single mention of Henry Norris. No statue, no plaque, no picture. Mention Henry Norris to your average Arsenal fan and either he or she will not have heard of the man or that supporter will say something like “he was a crook wasn’t he?” …
Read More “The anniversary of the death of the man who created the modern Arsenal”
Arsenal History Society is part of the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association and together we put a proposal to Arsenal FC to work to commemorate the move to Islington – and the events of 1912 and 1913. Although Arsenal FC were very positive indeed in terms of our suggestion for a statue of Herbert Chapman at …
Read More “ISLINGTON 100: Celebrating 100 years of Arsenal in north London”
Launching Islington 100 by Tony Attwood Last season Arsenal celebrated 125 years since its first game. So maybe that’s enough anniversaries for now. Except that this coming season sees something much more important, by way of anniversary. What, you may ask, could be more important than the start of the club? Well, I would argue …
Read More “We’re approaching one of the biggest anniversaries in Arsenal’s history”
By Tony Attwood Woolwich Arsenal FC was created in 1893 and for the first four years of its existence (during which time it was in the Football League Division 2), it was managed by a Committee of the Directors – or indeed the whole board of directors (I’m not sure which). The selection meetings must …
Read More “When the Arsenal team was selected by a committee!”
