AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood The 1893/4 season was the sixth in which the Football League operated and the first in which Woolwich Arsenal played in the league. The club finished 9th out of 15 in the league winning 12 and losing 12. Arsenal twice saw a crowd of 10,000 for league games, and having fought their way …
Read More “After one year in the league what happened to Arsenal? Football and Arsenal in 1894”
By Tony Attwood The summer of 1976 saw the confirmation of Liverpool’s continuing dominance now under Bob Paisley as manager, but largely forgotten is the fact that QPR pushed them all the way in the league. In the FA Cup Southampton beat Man U in the final. For Arsenal it was the end for Bertie …
Read More “The summer of 1976: trying to rebuild after the Bertie Mee era.”
. The Arsenal Summer of 1977 By Tony Attwood 1976/7 was the season when the old “goal average” calculations were abolished and goal difference was introduced, along with the red and yellow cards for the refs to wave about a bit. This was the period when Liverpool started winning the European Cup and …
Read More “The Arsenal summer of 1977. Heavy drinking after Tottenham are relegated”
By Tony Attwood After war had been declared in 1914, the Football League continued to play out the 1914/15 season. Recruiting officers and local Mayors (including Henry Norris) attended matches trying to persuade young men as they entered and left the ground (and indeed at half time) to sign up (conscription having not yet started). …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal played the 1969/70 season as a club had not won a major trophy since 1953. In both 1968 and 1969 Arsenal had thought they might end the drought, but on both occasions lost in the League Cup final – the second time to the mighty Swindon Town. So with the …
Read More “Arsenal’s 1970 pre-season. Preparing for the impossible”
By Tony Attwood On 19 February 1930 the score that was revealed in the London late evening papers was very unimpressive for your London based Arsenal supporter. Derby 4 Arsenal 1. (There was no radio roundup of match results then – that didn’t start until the Light Programme launched Sports Report at 5.30pm on a saturday …
Read More “1930 Arsenal pre-season. Preparing for the unthinkable – winning the league.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal ended the 1977/8 season with some very up and down form. For example on 4 March 1978 we had the result Arsenal 3 Manchester City 0. This was the first win in six league games but also a part of a run of nine undefeated. Some of that nine unbeaten run …
By Tony Attwood Before Chapman arrived Defeat to Liverpool on 3 January 1925 started a run of 6 consecutive defeats during which Arsenal scored 2 goals. Worse, in utter desperation on 14 January 1925 the Arsenal manager started experimenting by giving drugs to the Arsenal players – as he revealed in his later memoires. On …
Read More “1925: Arsenal’s pre-season. The arrival of Chapman”
By Tony Attwood 1979/80 is the season that is remembered for starting out with the optimism of being Cup Holders, and ending with the ludicrous number of games the club played getting to the CWC final and the FA Cup final, and the defeats in both – and indeed the failure to get into Europe …
Read More “1979 pre season: Cup holders looking for a bright new era.”
By Tony Attwood Football in the early 20th century was of course very different from now. The notion of the pre-season friendly didn’t exist, and the period 1 May to 31 August was an absolute football free zone. Undoubtedly the “Probables v Improbables” (later renamed more respectfully, the first team against the reserves) matches …
Read More “1903: the pre season and Arsenal’s greatest ever start to a campaign”
By Tony Attwood 1979/80 ended with one of the most overloaded match schedules in the history of the club. Perhaps the most overloaded. Arsenal got to the club’s third successive FA cup final (the only time this had ever been achieved by the club) but a combination of drawn games in the semi-final against …
Read More “1980: Arsenal pre-season after trying to win nearly everything”
By Tony Attwood There is a clamour by journalists and their lapdogs in the blogettes at the moment for Arsene Wenger to be sacked because of the allegedly poor start to the 2015/16 season, in which his side has won one, drawn one and lost one. I’ve just published a review of managers sacked this …
Read More “Why every successful Arsenal manager in history should have been sacked”
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”
