AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood An index to the whole series of articles tracing Arsenal’s history through the 70s is given at the end of this piece. We left Arsenal in the last episode having won just two out of their six games in December, having scored two goals in their seven games. The league table at …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 16. Jan to June 1976: the end of Mee”
An index of all the articles in the series before this one is shown at the foot of this article. By Tony Attwood By the summer of 1975 Bertie Mee’s image was seriously tarnished. From the peak of his reputation in 1970 with the Fairs Cup Win, and then the Double in 1971, he …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s: July to Dec 1975. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse…”
By Tony Attwood The story so far… Arsenal in the 70s, part 1: the re-birth of the club. 1969/70 Arsenal in the 70s, part 2: preparing for the impossible. (July to December 1970) Arsenal in the 70s, part 3: The Golden Treble Arsenal in the 70s, part 4: What went so right in 1971, and …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 14. Jan to June 1975 – trying to send Tottenham down”
This is part of a series of articles not just on what happened to Arsenal in the 1970s but why it happened. There is an index to the articles published thus far at the foot of the page, and the index is updated on the site’s home page. By Tony Attwood Arsenal approached the 1974/5 …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 13: July 74 to Dec 74. Relegation beckons.”
By Tony Attwood We left Arsenal 16th in the League at the end of December, 16 points off the leaders, Leeds, and only 7 points above the third relegation spot – newly created for this season, plus knocked out of the League cup by Tranmere. Some serious improvement was needed – and quickly. Unfortunately this …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s Part 12: Jan to June 74. Farewell Bob, hello Liam.”
By Tony Attwood This page has been modified to correct the report of the Barcelona game. Before this season started, the question was, could Arsenal get back to their best? The club had appeared in cup finals for five consecutive years, as well as being runners up last year. Could this be the …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s: Part 11: July-Dec 73, as the world falls apart.”
By Tony Attwood We ended the last piece on the 1970s at the end of 1972 with the league table looking like this P W D L F A GAv Pts 1 Liverpool 25 16 6 3 49 26 1.89 38 2 Arsenal 26 14 7 5 34 24 1.42 35 3 Leeds United 24 …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal returned to training in July 1972, without a new trophy in the cabinet. But in the past five years they had won the league, the Fairs Cup, and the FA Cup. They had twice been beaten finalists in the League Cup Final, and once beaten in the FA Cup final. It …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 9: July to Dec 1972. The time of indiscipline and invasions.”
By Tony Attwood When Tottenham Hotspur achieved what all commentators of the era had believed to be the impossible – the League and FA Cup Double – in 1961, they maintained their position of prominence by winning the FA Cup again the following year, while slipping to third in the League. In the next season …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 8 – the lessons learned and the lessons ignored 1967-73”
By Tony Attwood ———– Derby literally took the fight to Arsenal with O’Hare at one stage punching and kicking Graham repeatedly. As players tried to pull O’Hare off, the referee checked with the linesman and then spoke to Gemmill and Simpson. It was that sort of display. ———– The story so far… Arsenal in the …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 7: The remains of 1971/2, revival and defeat.”
The story so far… Arsenal in the 70s, part 1: the re-birth of the club. 1969/70 Arsenal in the 70s, part 2: preparing for the impossible. (July to December 1970) Arsenal in the 70s, part 3: The Golden Treble Arsenal in the 70s, part 4: What went so right in 1971, and why did it …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 6. The winter of blossoming hope. Nov 71 to Jan 72.”
By Jaume Giró. I am a former media student and for many years I have been researching the history and films of the former film studio, Welwyn Studios. The studio was based in my home town of Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, and during the time when the building operated as a film studio, between 1928 to …
Read More “Enquiries about Arsenal documentary short ‘The Team’ during World War 2”
By Tony Attwood A link to the earlier articles in this series, which starts with the 1969/70 season, can be found at the foot of this piece. Note: Apologies the wrong league table was originally published at the end of this article. This has now been corrected. ————– There was a feeling that Arsenal had …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 5. After the double, double doubts.”
By Tony Attwood So, we won the League and the Cup in 1971; an amazing achievement. Which raises the question: why did it happen then, and why was it that we didn’t go on and build on that amazing achievement? First off, in the Double season we had amazing luck with injuries. Of course some …
By Richard Hoover When Arsenal signed Mesut Ozil in the autumn of 2013, the thinking was that one of the best no. 10s in world football was on his way to London. The move was meant to revitalise the Gunners’ offense and allow the team to begin playing through the talented German midfielder, who at …
Arsenal in the 70s, part 1: the re-birth of the club. 1969/70 Arsenal in the 70s, part 2: preparing for the impossible. July to December 1970 By Tony Attwood Thus Arsenal had finished 1970 in a solid position in the league, still in the Fairs Cup, and of course ready for the opening of another …
By Tony Attwood. (Amended 1 June 2017) Although Arsenal entered 1970/71 season on a high having won a European competition for the first time, they were still often reminded by a belligerent press that they had not won any major domestic competition since the league trophy of 1953. Worse, they were the nearly men, the …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s part 2: preparing to do the impossible.”
By Tony Attwood I’ve already written a brief summary of the Curious story of 1968/9 – in this article I want to do a deeper review of what happened as 1968/9 came to an end, and of the following season, a season that will always be remembered both as the first season in which Arsenal won a …
Read More “Arsenal in the 70s, part 1: the re-birth of the club. 1969/70”
By Tony Attwood Imagine yourself to have been working in a factory complex whose grounds covered over 1000 acres, and which employed around 70,000 people. The year is 1886 and you are working in an era when the game of football was already well known and well established. Indeed the oldest football competition – …
Read More “Why was the first Arsenal side called Dial Square and why did it only last one game?”
I have recently been writing about Arsenal’s summers – simply because no one seems to have gathered the summer pre and post season campaigns and signings together before. But I have had several comments to the effect that it would be even better if a similar style could be used but for the whole season …
Read More “The end of Knighton, Herbert Chapman’s arrival, the truth about “WM” and a new club high”
Arsène Wenger OBE is the longest serving and most successful Arsenal manager of all time. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that he has singlehandedly created the second Arsenal Golden Age, while at the same time revolutionising English top division football. The first Arsenal Golden Age ran of course from 1930 to 1953, encompassing the careers …
By Tony Attwood The first season after the second world war was fairly gruesome for Arsenal. In fact it turned out to be worse in terms of the league than any season since 1929/30 when Arsenal had the overwhelming compensation of winning the FA Cup for the first time – indeed their first ever major …
Read More “Arsenal in the summer. 1947: The Phoenix rises out of the ashes”
By Tony Attwood This is part of our series that focusses on Arsenal’s activities each summer. A list of all the articles in the series thus far is given at the foot of the article, and updated each week on the home page of the site. As soon as war broke out in 1939 the …
Continuing the story of Arsenal’s summers through the ages. An index to the 45 articles already published in the series is given at the foot of the page. By Tony Attwood The summer of 1913 is of course one of the absolute key periods in the history of Arsenal FC as it was the …
Read More “Arsenal in 1913: The summer of moving to Highbury”
If you are an occasional reader of this site you will know that we are slowly building a complete set of important anniversaries for Arsenal – the number of entries is currently around 4500. Others have gone before us with this task of course, but mostly they have either included just three or four entries …
Read More “Arsenal Anniversaries in October – a major update”
