AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
In 1999 Arsenal concluded the season having conceded just 17 league goals – their lowest ever league total. The top four read… Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester United 38 22 13 3 80 37 43 79 2 Arsenal 38 22 12 4 59 17 42 78 3 Chelsea 38 …
Read More “Arsenal’s tightest ever defence, but we didn’t win the league.”
By Tony Attwood 15 May is one of those days for which I have found a limited number of anniversaries, but among them is a real corker, and a second one that still makes me smile. And in both cases I was fortunate enough to be at the ground. The first was on this day …
Read More “A grown man cries at Highbury; everyone laughs at the Emirates”
By Tony Attwood Today’s highlight… Some players don’t make it, we know that of course, and some do make it but fade away quickly. But few that I have seen have slipped so quickly and so far as Christopher Wreh. Signed in 1997 he scored the only goal in the cup semi-final against Wolverhampton in …
By Tony Attwood We regularly get emails from readers looking for information about relatives who may have played for Arsenal. While the list of players who played for the club is published in several places (Wiki has a list, and we have a list with links to articles on this site (Arsenal players A-K and Arsenal Players …
Read More “Arsenal’s lost players and their families: Logie and Calvert”
Arsene Wenger was the longest serving manager Arsenal has ever had, with the best win record of any manager who had managed over three seasons. His final match – a win at Huddersfield was a year ago on this day. Also interesting to note that on this day George Graham ended the season as the …
Read More “One year ago today – farewell Mr Wenger, and Henry’s “police officer””
Publications I’ve discovered another box of copies of the book “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” in our store room, having previously said it was out of print. So both this book and “Making the Arsenal” are now available as printed books, and on Kindle. Please see here for more details. Anniversary news …
Read More “Why youth trophies don’t mean a thing (at least not always)”
Today there would be complaints and complaints – with a top scorer with just 11 goals, but in 1972 the top scorer got 12. Ten years on the top scorer for Arsenal got just 11. But really the key issue of the day is 11 May 1985, the day of the Bradford fire, killing 56 …
Read More “Arsenal great hero, and when the top scorer managed to score just 11 goals”
That man is Leslie Knighton, Arsenal manager from 1919 to 1925. Knighton was a modest manager for the first three years of his reign, but only just avoided relegation in the final two years. However what has soured his reputation considerably is a reconsideration of Knighton’s autobiography in which he launched a series of attacks …
Read More “The man who did more to disrupt Arsenal than anyone else – ever”
It was said on this day 2014 by Arsene Wenger concerning Laurent Koscielny, a player who had not been highly valued by some fans when he first came to the club. 9 May 1891: Royal Arsenal FC voted at its AGM to turn itself into a professional side, making the club the first professional team in …
Read More ““The best value for money player I have had at the club” Who said that about whom”
When the first Arsenal double was completed in 1971 it was considered a rare fluke – Tottenham had done it, but no other team had managed it since the earliest days of the Football League. It was utterly unimaginable that by 2002 we would be on the edge of our third double. On this day …
Read More “The first double and winning the league… in Manchester”
The story of Arsenal’s title win on this day in in 1938, their 5th in eight years, required not only their win, but a defeat for Wolverhampton Wanderers – with which they duly obliged. But this was nothing compared to what happened at the foot of the table. Manchester City, the champions of the …
The deduction of two points from Arsenal’s tally in 1990 because of supposed bad behaviour during the game against Manchester United was unprescedented and it was never clear why this punishment should suddenly be introduced at this point, when it had seemingly never been used before. In fact the most likely reason for the deducation …
Read More “When Arsenal won the league, despite having two points deducted”
It is interesting just how much of Arsenal’s history, beyond the strictly factual accounts of who played and what the score was, is down to the testimony of one man. On this day I am reminded of another such case as Charlie Buchan’s name turns up twice – in 1910 and 1928. Many know that …
Read More “How the untrue stories about Charlie Buchan and Arsenal have grown and grown”
By Tony Attwood It is my experience that a lot of Arsenal fans think that Herbert Chapman won the league three times in succession – something which no manager since has done. It is a nice idea but it is not true. Chapman won the League title twice and the FA Cup once. His second …
Read More “3 League titles in 3 successive seasons under 3 different managers”
By Tony Attwood If there are days with more Arsenal anniversaries of importance to celebrate, this surely has to be up there with the best of them. But I do actually think this is the biggest day of them all. Bigger than the founding of the original club, bigger than – well everything. Just consider, …
Read More “3 May: Surely the biggest day of all for Arsenal celebrations”
2 May 1970 was indeed a disappointing day in the club’s league history – the final league game of the season, away to Tottenham, being beaten and seeing the club 12th in the table. And yet one year on Arsenal won the League and Cup double – the first league title since 1953 – a …
Read More “Ending the season in 12th with a defeat to Tottenham. And then….up and then down again.”
Looking at the anniversaries for 1 May, it is of course the time when for many years the last match of the season was played – and on two May Days, Arsenal won the league. In 1948 it had been a season of Arsenal all the way with huge scores and a brilliant team performance …
Read More “The day the dream of Arsenal FC owned by its fans was finally destroyed”
Arsenal FC has a long engagement with betting on football, going right the way back to the organisation of an archery tournament in November 1902. It raised about £1,200 – equivalent to a quarter of the club’s annual income from gate receipts at the time! Now that might seem strange – the organisation of an …
Read More “Gaining enhanced odds with Arsenal FC through the ages”
There must be some younger fans for whom St Totteringham’s Day was just simply a regular event, celebrated on slightly different days each year – but celebrated nonetheless. Because for 19 years up to 2016 it happened as Arsenal finished above Tottenham in the League. Then it all went wrong – on this day. We …
Read More “When St Totteringham’s Day was simply an annual event”
On this day in 1933 Bastin took his season total to 33 goals in 42 games. He played just 17 games for Exeter aged 16 before Chapman spotted him and signed him for Arsenal. Once signed he became both a regular player and scorer, and seemingly a man without nerves. His goalscoring was …
Read More “Cliff Bastin, the genius goal scorer gets 33 goals in 42 games”
Until the publication of John Sowman’s “The Long Sleep” no one had ventured to write a proper history of Arsenal between 1953 and 1970, simply because Arsenal achieved nothing during that spell. After all the titles that had gone before, no one really saw this coming, but a series of disastrous decisions by the board …
Read More “The first Arsenal trophy in 17 years, and 18 in a row”
Leslie Knighton was Arsenal’s first manager after the first world war, who, 21 years after he was sacked, wrote an account of his time at Arsenal. It is a pack of make-believe stories which make the author look like a great hero, working under impossible conditions, and for the past 70 years his words have …
By Tony Attwood For anyone who has not read Henry Norris at the Arsenal the notion that Norris was something of a wartime hero must seem strange as he is portrayed elsewhere as a self-centred incompetent. But not only was this quite untrue, he was an extremely important part of Britain’s war effort, rising from …
Read More “The first Footballers Battalion, set up by Henry Norris, play their first match”
By Tony Attwood Think “bitter local rivals” and you might think of Tottenham Hotspur, but in the 1890s Arsenal had a very different bitter set of rivals who were even more local, for they played in a ground across the road from Arsenal. This was Royal Ordnance Factories FC, the club formed after splitting from …
Read More “Winning the league at WHL for the second time, and playing our most bitter local rivals”
By Tony Attwood These days we don’t ever have referees criticised by the newspapers, but in the past even the FA would tell a referee off in public as was the case for the Arsenal v Tottenham game on this day in 1900. The crowd at Arsenal were known to be rowdy and were …
Read More “When the referee was criticised by the FA for his handling of the game”
