AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood Terry John Mancini was born 4 October 1942 as Terry Sealy) in Camden Town. He joined Watford in 1960 and as he said in an interview much later, “I played for 5 years in and mostly out of Watford’s first team.” Then after a serious injury he spent two seasons playing for …
Read More “Terry Mancini: Arsenal occasional and thoroughly decent bloke”
By Tony Attwood 8 April 2001 This was one of those games where all the talk in the press before the game about the class of their new manager seeping into the Tottenham side was shown up for what it was. A lot of twaddle about Hoddle. It was also a game where even the …
Read More “When Arsenal beat Tottenham in Manchester. The FA Cup semi-final of 2001”
By Tony Attwood To often as we trace players who have come through Arsenal’s youth system in recent years, but then not quite made it, we find them slipping away to lower league clubs, and never quite living up to the promise that we saw in their earlier days at Arsenal. But it looks like …
By Tony Attwood Tommy Shanks is one of those Arsenal players who was incredibly important in the history of the club, but of whom we know precious little. Such as I have found I’ve put together below, but as always, if you know any more, please do get in touch. Here’s some of the …
Read More “Tommy Shanks: the mystery of the star of Arsenal’s promotion”
17 March brings us the usual stream of anniversaries, the full list of which is given below. But among them are two birthdays: Pat Rice and Lee Dixon, plus two significant matches in Double Seasons: 17 March 1998: WHU 1 Arsenal 1, FA Cup 6 Replay. Anelka scored in the game, and Arsenal won …
Read More “Doubles, birthdays, and our third semi final (plus Reading’s first)”
Roger Davidson was born in Islington on 27 October 1948 Roger played for England at schoolboy level in midfield and joined Arsenal in September 1964 aged 15. Roger became a pro in October 1965 and on 16 March 1968 in the game Arsenal 0 Wolverhampton 2 he made his first and last senior appearance. It was a tough …
The following are extracts from the Arsenal Anniversary files. Most days we publish the anniversaries for the day on the home page of this site and Untold Arsenal. 1 March 1930: West Ham 0 Arsenal 3. FA Cup round 6 on the way to the cup final and Arsenal’s first ever major trophy. 2 March …
Read More “West Ham in March – how we’ve played them in the past”
By Tony Attwood Sometimes the media come out with some fairly obscure records and odd statistics, but rarely when Arsenal was involved. So it was no surprise to find that the record that fell on 9 March 2015 was ignored by all the media, as was the fact that a Arsenal held on to a …
Read More “Arsenal and Wenger secure the all-time semi-final records”
William George Marks was born 9 April 1915 in Wiltshire, playing at first for Salisbury Corinthians. He joined Arsenal on 16 March 1936 as an amateur, and was quickly moved onto Margate, the nursery club, where he stayed for two years before returning in the summer of 1938. He moved into Arsenal reserves for 1938/9 as …
Read More “George Marks: the Stadium Mystery keeper, and world record transfer.”
Arsenal’s move from Plumstead to Highbury was welcomed by most clubs – because it offered them two benefits. The first was financial. When clubs played each other in league matches at that time (1913) the clubs shared the gate money. Not equally, but still it was an important source of income for visiting clubs. Especially …
Read More “1 March: one of Arsenal’s greatest, but sadly often forgotten, anniversaries”
By Tony Attwood On 21 February 1998 Arsenal made it seven consecutive games undefeated by beating Crystal Palace 1-0, at home. It was Arsenal’s lowest crowd of the season, which is a shame because the match witnessed a stunning goal by one of Arsenal’s most underrated players of all time: Gilles Grimandi. Quite why the match …
Read More “Gilles Grimandi and two Arsenal/Palace games 16 years apart to the day”
First a few warm ups that are not in the anniversary files… Warm up 1: How many times have Arsenal won the FA Cup? 11. Warm up 2: Who has won the Cup more times than Arsenal? No one Warm up 3: Which two teams have been in the most Cup Finals? Arsenal and Man …
By Tony Attwood As coincidences go, this one is fairly near the top of the list of strange and unexpected ones. 15 February 1930: Middlesbrough 0 Arsenal 2 in the fifth round of the FA Cup as Arsenal moved towards the club’s first major trophy. 15 February 2015: Arsenal 2 Middlesbrough 0 in the fifth …
Read More “85 years apart, Arsenal v Middlesbrough. Same round, same score, same date”
By Tony Attwood One bit of news before the quiz, the February file of anniversaries has been fully updated and revised with over 100 changes and updates. Work is starting on a complete revision of March now. If you spot anything amiss with the February file please do write to TonyAttwoodofLondon@gmail.com. As before, answers …
Matthew James Upson was born in Suffolk on 18 April 1979 and we were reminded of him once again following an atrocious tackle on Alexis Sanchez on 10 February 2015 in a Premier League match, while Upson was playing for Leicester. He came up through the Ipswich Academy to Luton Town for whom he played just …
David Reno Bacuzzi was born in Islington 12 October 1940 into a family that had Italian connections on his father’s side. His father became a footballer playing for Fulham and played a war time international for England. Dave was one of the first players brought into Arsenal by Ron Greenwood and he came as a trainee …
Read More “Dave Bacuzzi: Arsenal right back who took an amateur team into the Cup Winners Cup.”
10 stories the press probably won’t mention, and one that they might. In the build up to the Tottenham v Arsenal game on 7 February 2015 the English press has got very excited talking about the best players to play in the match, the best players in each team, and so on. Quite a contrast …
By Tony Attwood Royal Arsenal played their first ever FA Cup match against Lyndhurst on 5 October 1889 and I’ve covered the story before – and that earlier report has details of the team. I won’t go over all the issues from that article, but there was a debate therein as to which Lyndhurst FC Arsenal …
Alfred Edward Haynes (known as Alf) has been mentioned in passing before, both in terms of how he missed the notorious Walsall match (he played in the reserves that day and so missed out on the subsequent Chapman cull) and how he had one season of playing at number 4 for Chapman but an email from …
The January file of data that will ultimately be turned into chronological order to create the new volume “Arsenal: the Chronology” has now been updated once again, thanks to the help and support of many readers of the blog. You can find the new edition here. There’s still plenty of time to send in corrections …
By Tony Attwood In December 1957 Ron Greenwood became assistant coach at Arsenal, having been a coach at Eastbourne United, and stayed in the post under April 1961 when he replaced Ted Fenton as manager of West Ham. During this time he also coached the England under 23 team, having been spotted by Sir Harold …
Read More “Ron Greenwood at the Arsenal: was he the cause of the failure from 1958 to 1961?”
By Tony Attwood Reuben John “Ben” Marden was born on 10 Feb 1927. He was an outside left and joined Arsenal from Chelmsford City in 1950 and over a five year spell (spent mostly in the reserves) played 42 games for Arsenal scoring 11. Season Games Goals 1950/51 11 2 1951/2 7 2 1952/3 8 4 …
Read More “Ben Marden: league winner and star of our triumph at Anfield”
My colleagues and I at the Arsenal History Society need some help with our new book “Arsenal: the Chronology”. The rewards are not great (I’ll be open and say that from the start) but even so, I’m hoping you might want to join in. I’m currently revising the data that we have for each month, …
Read More ““Arsenal: The Chronology” needs researchers. Can you help?”
1. As we found in the last quiz, Arsenal were directly implicated in the development of transfers and the introduction of the retain & transfer system in 1893. But the new system quickly got out of control. On 1 January 1908 a new maximum for transfer fees was introduced. What was it? a) £350 …
Read More “January 1 and January 2. The answers to the quiz”
By Tony Attwood In the near future we’ll be publishing “Arsenal: the Chronology” – a book of over 4500 major events that have defined Arsenal across the years. Looking at the book it turns out that the opening days of the year have been quite significant for Arsenal’s history. Here are a few from …
Read More “In the first 2 days of January: the Arsenal quiz (and its easier this time)”
