AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
by Tony Attwood Finding John Storrs, who played 12 league games and four FA Cup games for Woolwich Arsenal in the club’s inaugural league season, has turned out to be a bit of a problem. We know about his football: he came into the first team on 25 September 1893 for the fourth match of …
Read More “John Storrs who played in our first season, but then vanished.”
By Tony Attwood Joseph Frederick Heath, named in some places as “Billy” and once as “Joe” played ten league games for Arsenal and scored five goals. A remarkable achievement, and one that sent me scuttling around trying to find out more about this player. And wouldn’t you know it, there was something very special to …
Read More “Joseph Frederick (“Billy”) Heath; the man who scored the very first penalty”
By Tony Attwood Patrick (Paddy) O’Brien is one of the Arsenal players from the 19th century of whom we know only a little of his life outside football. However I think this is the most comprehensive review of his life and work yet published – but of course if you have more information, please …
John East Hawley is one of those players who when he gets mentioned in reports linking him with Arsenal is described as one of the men who never really made it in an Arsenal shirt. Such an attitude, in my opinion, is mistaken – he was brought to Arsenal by a management that was in desperation, …
Read More “John Hawley: a life saver who played for Arsenal at a most difficult time”
By Tony Attwood Bob Buchanan (full name Robert John Buchanan) was born in 1868 in Johnstone (Paisley). He started out with his local team Johnstone (not to be confused with St Johnstone who played in Perth), before moving to Abercom (a Scottish League team until 1915, local rivals to St Mirren), Sunderland Albion (a breakaway …
Read More “Robert Buchanan; an Arsenal man for two seasons who died tragically young”
By Tony Attwood The story of Arsenal during the barren years of the mid to late 1950s and on through the 1960s is told in the superb book, Arsenal the Long Sleep. There are full details of this volume, which is available worldwide as a paperback, and via Amazon on Kindle on the Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal from 1953 to 1980, the overview of an era.”
By Tony Attwood So, the series on Arsenal in the 70s is ended. But what happened in the 70s overall? Season Posn FAC Lge C Europe Rnd Manager 1969-70 12 3 R3 Fairs Cup W Mee 1970-71 1 W R4 Fairs QF Mee 1971-72 5 RU R4 Euro QF Mee 1972-73 2 SF QF Mee …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s the overview & what happened next”
By Tony Attwood There is an index to this series of articles at the foot of the page. Arsenal finished the 1970s in fourth, not only eight points behind the leaders, but also with a significantly lower goal scoring rate than the clubs above. P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Liverpool 22 …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 25: Jan to June 1980. Farewell Liam Brady.”
By Tony Attwood Below is a list of all the managers in the history of Woolwich Arsenal, The Arsenal and Arsenal FC. The second column shows when that person (or in the case of the first time around, the committee) took up the job, and what happen in their first season. The “first season” …
Read More “How long does it take a new manager to win the league at Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood If you have read the book, Woolwich Arsenal: the club that changed football, (and there are details at the end of this article if you haven’t) you will know that Arsenal FC began its life as a professional football club by being split in two. For between 1891 and 1893 the …
Why Mesut Ozil can inspire Arsenal to the title next season by Ray Hobbs It would be fair to say that things haven’t quite gone as planned for Arsenal this season. The Gunners are slipping out of contention for the Premier League title, have been knocked out of both the FA Cup and Capital One Cup …
Read More “Why Mesut Ozil can inspire Arsenal to the title next season”
By Tony Attwood The pre-season started off in a most curious manner with the signing on 15 July 1979 of John Hollins who joined from QPR. He played initially for Chelsea (with a spell as captain) and in 12 years knocked up 436 appearances including 167 consecutive games and then had four seasons at QPR before moving to Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 24 July to Dec 79. One pace forwards, one pace back.”
by Tony Attwood January 1979 started in the traditional fashion with an FA Cup 3rd round tie; on this occasion it was Sheffield Wednesday away on 6 January, and the result was a 1-1 draw. 33,635 were in the crowd, and the team was Jennings, Rice, Walford, Price, O’Leary, Young, Brady, Sunderland, Stapleton, Gatting, Rix. It …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 23. Jan-June 79. The trophy drought is over”
By Tony Attwood It is interesting I think to compare the 20 years of Arsene Wenger at Arsenal with the previous 20 years. Of course in any statistics a cut off point in the measurement can change the way the numbers work – for example by working on 20 years we avoid 1975/76 when Arsenal …
Read More “Just how does Mr Wenger’s 20 years compare with the 20 years before him?”
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.”
