AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
by Tony Attwood I started this series of articles about Arsenal’s pre-season campaigns simply because I couldn’t find a comprehensive record anywhere else and I kept wanted to check details. I could see the results of friendlies, of course, and separately the transfers, but no overall view of what happened in each pre-season. But now, …
By Tony Attwood Towards the end of the old season… On 11 March 1981 Peter Nicholas signed for Arsenal from Crystal Palace for £400,000. He never really made the impact hoped for and after just 60 league matches he returned to Palace, before moving on to Luton, Aberdeen, Chelsea and Watford. He made his first appearance …
Read More “1981 Arsenal pre season: the pressure of expectation overwhelms.”
By Tony Attwood The 1981/2 season ended fairly poorly. There was hope that in Stewart Robson Arsenal had found another talented youngster after he appeared on 2 January 1982 when he became Arsenal’s youngest FA Cup player. Unfortunately the match ended Tottenham 1 Arsenal 0 in the FA Cup 3rd round and I think the …
Read More “1982: Arsenal try to get beyond one goal a game.”
By Tony Attwood Oh the horrors of being an Arsenal supporter in the early 1980s! 1982/3 was part of the era of Liverpool dominance – they won the European Cup, League Cup and the First Division. It was also the era in which all players who qualified to play for England played in England. And …
Read More “1983 pre season: the horrors of being an Arsenal supporter”
By Tony Attwood Despite the doom and gloom surrounding football in relation to falling attendances and press hysteria over hooliganism (which certainly existed as next season showed, but which was not as rampant throughout the game as the press made out) there was optimism at Arsenal that the club might at last have a team …
Read More “1984 pre-season: real hope but Arsenal fade away.”
By Tony Attwood This article continues our series on pre-seasons. There is an index to all the articles at the end. 1985 was football in crisis – at least according to the media – and in one major instance because of the media. Millwall fans created some havoc at Kenilworth Road, which led to highly …
Read More “1985 pre-season: it was most certainly not the best of times”
Untold Arsenal is still being erratic so here is the post we would have posted this morning. It will transfer onto Untold Arsenal just as soon as I can do it. When we have problems there are always details on Twitter @UntoldArsenal and the piece is published here and on our Facebook site www.facebook.com/untoldarsenaltoday …
Read More “Crystal Palace v Arsenal Sunday 16 August 2015 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood If you have been reading Untold Arsenal for a while you might remember a time when the site went down as we came under repeated attack from someone who really didn’t like the way we poked our noses into the bits of football that most of the media shy away from. And …
Read More “Untold Arsenal under attack again, FA up to its dirty old tricks again.”
Sorrry if you have been having difficulty getting onto Untold Arsenal yesterday and today. I’m trying to get things fixed, but in the meantime have put the last article, which seemed to cause a lot of the problems, on the Untold Facebook site and I will continue to publish there until the problems are resolved. The …
Read More “Problems with Untold Arsenal; where we’ve now gone.”
By Tony Attwood Ernest William Tuckett to some degree is one of Arsenal’s mystery men although I have just about patched together most of the information that there is available in public records. He was born on 1 January 1914 in Lingdale according to Hayes, or 1 March 1914 according to Smith and Russell …
Read More “Ernie Tuckett: Arsenal and Margate, and a tragic early death.”
A Memorial to the founders of Arsenal’s Highbury dynasty Today, 8 August 2015, Arsenal History Society is launching its new campaign: a campaign to invite the club to erect a memorial to the founders of Arsenal’s Highbury Dynasty in the area that surrounds the Emirates Stadium. Every Arsenal supporter knows about Herbert Chapman – and …
Read More “A Memorial to the founders of Arsenal’s Highbury dynasty: the launch of a new campaign”
By Tony Attwood On 22 March 1986 after reports circulated that the board were seeking to appoint Barcelona manager Terry Venables in his place. Don Howe resigned as manager 10 years to the day after Bertie Mee had resigned. Steve Burtenshaw took over. Normally of course managers walk out or are sacked when things are going badly …
Read More “1986: George Graham’s first pre-season. A slow start indeed.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal had just won their first trophy since 1979, by winning the league cup on 5 April 1987, but even before that win Arsenal had tried to reform their major crisis: a complete lack of goals. Thus on 26 March 1987 Alan Smith signed and was then loaned back to Leicester for the remainder …
Read More “1987: six without a goal, 10 without a victory, the first signs of the famous back five”
By Tony Attwood, AISA Arsenal History Society This article started out as a search for another season in which Arsenal won every pre-season game. It has ended up covering the history of pre-season matches – but yes, there has been one pre-season previously in which every game was won. Of course, no one regulates pre-seasons, …
1989 gave Arsenal its most famous end of season triumph of the modern era – replicating the achievements of 1 May 1953 by winning the league in the last match of the season. It was the club’s first league trophy in 18 years. But then what? What happened that summer and into the new pre-season? …
Read More “After winning the league at Anfield, how did the summer of 1989 go?”
by Tony Attwood Arsenal had won the league in 1989 most famously in the last seconds of the season, but only managed 4th in 1989/90 with fourth round exits in both cups. I think most of us were hoping that the 1989 triumph had not just been a one-off blip and that we could come …
Read More “The summer of 1990: the gateway to Arsenal heaven”
Tony Attwood Arsenal had finished 1990-91 season as champions, seven points clear of their nearest challengers, despite having two points ludicrously deducted by an ever eccentric League. Within the season Arsenal lost only one match, scored 74 goals and let in only 18. It was an amazing achievement. In the close season there were two …
Read More “1991 pre season: after the record breaking, a sad reality”
This is part of a series which looks at the pre-season from each season. This is the pre-season for 1992 – before the Cup Double. A list of all the articles to date from 1993 to 2014 is at the end. By Tony Attwood In 1991/2 Arsenal came fourth in the league scoring an amazing …
Read More “1992 pre-season: a record but where was the entertainment?”
By Tony Attwood Prelims In the season 1992/3 Arsenal won the Cup Double – the first ever club to do so, playing 17 FA and League Cup matches en route. It was a matter of great pride and success, and yet it came at the expense of the league. 40 goals in 42 league games …
Read More “1993 Pre-season: Osama bin Laden spotted at Highbury – we reveal the chant”
By Tony Attwood This article continues the series on pre-season events across the years. All the pre-seasons from 1995 to 2014 have been covered so far and there is an index on the home page. Although of course we didn’t know it at the time, Arsenal finished George Graham’s last complete season (1993/4) in fourth …
Read More “1994: The last Arsenal pre-season for George Graham”
Background My initial thought with the series on pre-season games and transfers was to work through the Wenger era. But there have been some nice comments made about the series, and I’ve found it fascinating so I thought I’d look to see how far back I could push this. I’m also changing the style slightly …
Read More “1995: Bruce Rioch’s one pre-season. Bergkamp arrives!”
by Tony Attwood Having had a net spend of around £32.5m in the 2013 pre-season period Arsenal went further in the summer of 2014 spending £35.6m, (before spending another £13.7m in the following January.) It all added weight to the pro-Wengerian argument that spending had been restricted during the building and paying for the Emirates. …
Read More “2014: pre-season. Thrashing Man C and the arrival of Alexis and Bellerin.”
by Tony Attwood This article continues the series reviewing Arsenal’s pre-season adventures over the years. A full index of the pre-season articles so far is given at the foot of the article. Arsenal went into this season with the usual jibe – that Arsenal hadn’t won a trophy since 2005. Big signings were demanded …
Read More “2013 Pre-season. The build up before winning the Cup.”
by Tony Attwood After the chaos of the 2011 pre-season we were all looking for a spot of relief and re-assurance, and we got it with the announcement before the old season was over that Lukas Podolksi was joining. Olivier Giroud was added to the rosta in June. The release notices came the following month …
Read More “2012 Pre season. Nigeria cancelled, Akpom and Bellerin make their mark”
By Tony Attwood As we have seen many times, teams that were up the top can fall from grace. Think of Man U after Ferguson left, think of Liverpool and its problems even getting back into the Champions League. In 2011 Arsenal looked to have reached that moment. Pre-season had been horrific and by early …
Read More “2011: Pre season. Chaos and disaster, but still Arsenal pulled through.”
