AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
The last I heard of Phillipe Senderos he was playing for Houston Dynamo in the USA but I suspect he finished his contract there last year and has now retired. His reputation among Arsenal fans was not of the highest, but I saw him in a more positive light, as obviously did the Swiss national …
Read More “Phillipe Senderos reaches the end of his career and the Arsenal anniversaries today”
“Arsène Wenger” (CC BY 2.0) by Ronnie Macdonald Arsene Wenger is the measuring stick by which all subsequent Arsenal managers will be judged. Now that successor Unai Emery has completed his first season at the helm of the Gunners, how do their debut campaigns compare? Turning the clock back to September 1996 when Wenger’s appointment at Highbury …
Read More “How Unai Emery’s First Season at Arsenal Compares with Wenger”
Making fun of people who suggest there might be something amiss with football is a common substitute for proper debate. The very notion that it could happen in English football is thus considered laughable and not worthy of investigation. Those suggesting something is amiss are themselves held to be worthy of derision. Such was the …
Read More “When dismissing the notion of match fixing seriously backfired on the League”
Looking at anniversaries in June one is bound to come across players who came to Arsenal but then moved on for it is the month for unwanted players to leave the club. Some never made it with the club (Archie Low and Elias Chatzitheodoridis turn up on our list today), while some looked like they …
Read More “Whatever happened to… Low, Chatzitheodoris, Hoyte, Butler and James?”
If you follow the lives of ex-Arsenal players you will know of Thierry Henry’s managerial spell at Monaco which ended on 24 January this year with the club facing the possibility of relegation. What you might perhaps have missed is that the assistant manager at Monaco is another Arsenal man: Kwame Ampadu, who left Arsenal …
Does anyone remember Gilles Grimandi at Arsenal? I hope so because with us he won two Premier League titles and two FA Cups – in fact the two doubles under Mr Wenger. He also won the French League with Monaco. That might be enough for most people, but since then and playing 114 games …
Read More “The knighting of Henry Norris, the rioting at Wembley, the long serving Grimandi”
Manninger is the least remembered of that trio of keepers, and yet when called upon to play six games without conceding in his first season, following an injury to Seaman, he became player of the month. This day in 2003 and 2008 saw the departure of Seaman and Lehmann – the latter often ignored, …
Read More “Manninger, Seaman, Lehmann: 3 June is Arsenal goalkeeper day”
The ban on ALL English clubs from playing in Europe in 1985 following the behaviour of some Liverpool fans in the European Cup final, always seemed wrong to me. Yes, of course, people died and that was truly awful, but it was not something that involved the great majority of clubs in England. As a …
Read More “English clubs banned from Europe, and the similarity of Arsenal managers”
On this day in 1953 the great Alex James died. Contrary to what has been published in many copycat histories, Alex James is Arsenal’s second greatest captain; leading his team to three league titles, one FA Cup and one Charity Shield. Tony Adams is the only man to beat that with …
Read More “Arsenal’s two greatest captains in terms of trophies…”
On 31 May 1893 Woolwich Arsenal FC were elected to Division II of the Football League. It was an amazing moment for the club, because at the time it was under a ceaseless assault from a rival organisation – Royal Ordnance Factories FC, which had been formed by ex-members of the Royal Arsenal committee who …
Read More “How the enemies of Arsenal tried to extinguish the club just as it was born”
Publications We have a small number of copies of “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” and “Making the Arsenal” now available in paperback. They are also available on Kindle. Please see here for more details. The series Henry Norris at the Arsenal: There is a full index to the series here. Arsenal in …
Read More “The Arsenal man who gave Chelsea their only title in 100 years”
If there were ever a black day recorded in English football’s history it was this, the day when Liverpool fans moved to attack Juventus fans in the European Cup Final in 1985. If there were ever a curious day in English football’s history it was also this, when Chelsea, a club with no players, …
Read More “Football’s blackest day and football’s most curious day.”
Although I suspect most Arsenal fans with even a passing knowing of the history of the club will have heard of George Allison, his is not a name that has the same instant recognition as that of Herbert Chapman. And yet Allison had the same record of achievement as Chapman, with two league titles …
Read More “The forgotten Arsenal manager with two league titles and an FA Cup win”
On 22 January 2015 I wrote a little piece in Untold Arsenal about a change in the law in Switzerland which meant that corrupt Fifa officials could be arrested in that country and then prosecuted for their crimes. It was not a piece that got that much attention beyond the regular Untold readership and I …
Read More “How we tipped off Fifa about a raid, but they took no notice.”
Publications We have a small number of copies of “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” and “Making the Arsenal” now available as printed books. They are also available on Kindle. Please see here for more details. The series Henry Norris at the Arsenal: There is a full index to the series here. Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal’s forgotten great manager, and a certain match v Liverpool”
Granit Xhaka is one of those players that some journalists and fans get on the back of, call useless, and demand the end of. No matter what the statistics and evidence show (his successful pass rate is in the Gilberto league for example) the word is out – he is useless, he has to go, …
By Tony Attwood Just how wild and crazy are the stories that circulate in the media about Arsenal can be seen by the tale which was doing the rounds at this time in 2010 – that Arsenal were going to be bought by a Nigerian businessman. They were not, and on this day the gentleman …
Read More “Arsenal and the Nigerian takeover, plus the supposed dispute with Tottenham.”
By Tony Attwood The revolutionary nature of Arsenal FC throughout its history is often forgotten, it seems to me. And today’s first anniversary – the first report of Arsenal becoming a club that paid its players – is an example of that. Clubs in the north of England had been paying their players for several …
Read More “The revolutionary nature of Arsenal Football Club.”
The answer to the question above is Jack Lambert – one of the most extraordinary footballers ever to have taken on the Arsenal shirt. I won’t try and summarise his story here, but rather suggest that if you are interested you might like to follow the link in the first anniversary article, commemorating the …
Read More “Who scored 38 goals in 34 games, and 74 in 90 games – and was booed?”
Fifa getting the rules of football in a muddle – whoever would have thought it! But seemingly they did get the issue of whether a goal could be scored from a corner completely muddled up, and had to do some hasty re-writing in 1924. But even now they still can’t get their own story right …
Read More “Fifa cock up the rules, ball dropped from plane, Vieira’s last kick”
The answer to the question above is Ian Wright, and I mention it today, because today is the anniversary of Arsenal winning the FA Cup in 1993 – the cup double season. It was the first time any team had won both the League Cup and FA Cup in the same season. Wright got ten …
Read More “Who scored 15 cup goals for Arsenal in one season?”
Everyone who saw him knew from the off that Liam Brady was a brilliant player and extraordinary natural talent. But his time with Arsenal was a tragedy. Not of Liam’s making of course but of the fact that he played under two poor managers. Bertie Mee had delivered a European trophy and the first double, …
Read More “The sadness of Brady and scoring in 47 consecutive games”
There is much on this site about Henry Norris – indeed there is a whole series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal which overturns many of the stories that have emerged about him following the self-justifying autobiography of the one manager Sir Henry sacked: Leslie Knighton. Henry Norris’ name turns up twice in the anniversaries …
Unai Emery’s first season in charge of Arsenal is coming to a close. The verdict? It was always going to be a strange one, following on from 22 years under Arsène Wenger, which brought three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups but ultimately ended in mediocrity and a sixth-place finish. While Emery wasn’t left …
Read More “Why Emery Should Play Aubameyang & Lacazette Together”
Arsene Wenger won the FA Cup an incredible seven times with Arsenal – an amazing record. Those victories came in 1997–98, 2001–02, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2013–14, 2014–15, and 2016–17. It is recorded that George Ramsey of Aston Villa won it six times, but when we look at the years involved we can see that at least …
Read More “The FA Cup record holding manager remembered on this anniversary”
