AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood It is still strange to me (although I was there) to remember some of the names that played in the Invincibles. I mean, we all know Lehmann did the 38 games, something no one else achieved, and we remember Henry, Vieira, Pirès, Lauren, Toure, Cole, Campbell, Ljungberg, Gilberto Silva – all playing …
Read More “Jose Antonio Reyes: the Invincible who never quite delivered”
From 1999 to 2001 Arsenal finished runners up in the Premier League three seasons running, the last of these being the year when Man U beat Arsenal 6-1 at Old Trafford, and Mr Wenger apparently truly did show his emotions after the game. In the final year of the three however Arsenal did get to …
Read More “Remembering the battle against Liverpool in the cup”
15th August 1970: The balancing point. The Darkness has been ended. The Possible had been achieved. Now for the Impossible Context is everything. After the misery of mid-table hopelessness and 3rd round exits from the FA Cup Bertie Mee didn’t give us a Double out of nothing. He first gave Arsenal league cup finals, our …
Read More “How Arsenal moved from Darkness towards the first Double”
By Tony Attwood There is a review of Arsenal’s season in 1929/30 here, and a note within that about the poor league form which saw us finish in 14th position. But in the FA Cup things were quite different, and finally it came to pass that Arsenal won their first major trophy. Having been …
Read More “How it started: Arsenal win their first major trophy”
1997/8 was Arsène Wenger’s first complete season at Arsenal, and as everyone will know, he set himself an impossibly high bar to measure up to thereafter by giving us a Double. It was our first championship in seven years, the first league/cup double since 1970/1 (only our second in fact although George Graham got …
How to go about writing for the Arsenal History Society (and, if you feel like it, Untold Arsenal). If you are writing an article for the AHS blog here are a few hints to make life easier for the editors, and to enhance your chance of getting the article published. First, and most obviously, please …
By Tony Attwood . When I started writing about the 1950s and 60s in Arsenal’s history on this site I soon hit upon the simple title of “The Darkness” to signify the era. . In 1953 Tom Whittaker had won another championship for Arsenal, but instantly things fell apart and the rest of the era …
Tony Attwood In the season 1908/9 the Football League began a curious experiment in which teams played each other home and away on Christmas Day / Boxing Day. The first incidence of this for Arsenal came with these two games 25 December 1908: Leicester Fosse 1 Woolwich Arsenal 1 26 December 1908: Arsenal 2 Leicester …
Read More “Arsenal / Tottenham, the first Highbury derby, and why we had to wait for it.”
By Tony Attwood In 1979 Arsenal won the FA Cup against Man U in possibly the most famous ending to a final of all time. Alan Sunderland attained immortality and Terry Neill’s tenure as manager got a cup to polish. But then life went a bit downhill. 1980: Losing finalists in the FA Cup 1981: …
Read More “17 game unbeaten run and the first trophy in 8 years”
The Aisa Arsenal History Society Books on Arsenal at a discount On 5 December 2009 Arsenal beat Stoke 2-0 in the league, something of a relief after two consecutive defeats to Sunderland (1-0 away) and Chelsea (0-3 at home). At that time the table looked like this: Pld W D L F A G.D. Pts …
Read More “20 Jan 2010: Arsenal beat Bolton to go top of the league”
Anelka hits his first hat trick: 20 February 1999 In the summer of 1998 Platt and Wright had left the club. Nelson Vivas joined, along with Ljunberg and Kanu. We had won the league and cup double the season before, but on 12 September 1998 Leicester 1 Arsenal 1 meant Arsenal had four draws and …
In August 2000 Arsenal played Sunderland. It was suggested that after the game Mr Wenger, who until that moment had an utterly unblemished record as a manager, had indulged in violent or threatening behaviour against Mr Taylor, the fourth official at Sunderland. On 10 October 2000 Mr Wenger went to a hearing on the issue …
Read More “2 Feb 2001: Wenger v Referee Taylor. The outcome of the appeal.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal and Tottenham played their first match on 19 November 1887 – the start of a series of five friendlies played between the clubs. However following a 10-1 drubbing of Tottenham by Arsenal in 1889, the games were abandoned for nearly six years, before resuming in 1896. The first game – which …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham, the games removed from the record”
1976/77 Terry Neill’s first season as manager and Arsenal’s worst run of defeats. William John Terence Neill, to give him his full name, was born 8 May 1942 in Belfast and in December 1959 joined Arsenal’s youth side from Bangor for a fee of £2500, playing his first game one year later on 23 December …
Read More “Terry Neill oversees Arsenal’s worst ever run of defeats”
By Andrew Beattie James Maxwell – a further update. You can read the original article on Maxwell here. He was the player who played in 1908/9 but who left of his own accord and was then implicated in issues relating to transfers that clubs did not necessarily wish to allow. Maxwell played for Sheffield …
Read More “James Maxwell – more tales of our mystery man from the early 20th century”
By Tony Attwood 1961/2 was the end of the George Swindin era as manager. His record in the league had been 3rd, 13th and 7th, and in the FA Cup Arsenal had gone out in the 5th round, 3rd round and 3rd round, including in 1960 going out to Rotherham 0-2 after two drawn games. …
Read More “Four consecutive defeats launch the search for a new manager”
Tony Attwood . 13 February 1999 and 23 February 1999 – the time when Arsenal played Sheffield Utd twice in the cup, with neither game being a draw. It was the match in which Kanu received a Ray Parlour pass after a break in play for a Sheffield player to get treatment. Kanu passed to …
Read More “When we played a cup match twice, and the bits of the story not often reported”
Tony Attwood 11 January 1969: Arsenal 2 Sheffield W 0. 6 consecutive wins, one goal conceded. First six in a row in the league since March/April 1956 Triumphs in football rarely, if ever, happen out of nothing. When Arsenal won the league and cup double in 1971 it is true that they had not won …
Read More “The curious story of 1968/9; the first run of six wins in 13 years.”
Hello The Arsenal History Society blog looks a bit different today. This is because of some nasty stuff happening around Word Press blogs. We’ve dealt with that but in so doing we’ve had to do some upgrades, updates, and the like, and during the course of the last one we lost some of the formatting. …
Read More “We are still the AISA Arsenal History Society but…”
The story of 10 January 2004 by Tony Attwood . What’s the difference between Arsenal, The Arsenal and Woolwich Arsenal? . According to legend, (which we long ago showed to be untrue) Herbert Chapman changed the club from “The Arsenal” to “Arsenal” to get Arsenal’s result read out first on the 5pm sports report show …
Read More “When Arsenal led the table on alphabetical position”
By Tony Attwood Two changes happened to English football in general at the start of the 1925/6 season. The most famous of these was the change in the offside rule which led to Arsenal’s invention of the WM approach and tactical innovation. The second was a move by the FA which meant that instead of …
Read More “Arsenal’s journey to their first ever cup final, and the unwarranted “favourites” label”
On January 18 2004 Arsenal went top of the Premiership with a 2-0 win at Villa Park. Thierry Henry got both. And those facts on any other day would have been enough to make the main back page story. Except that Thierry did more than that. He sidefooted home a free-kick in the 28th minute …
Tony Attwood, Match data supplied by Andy Kelly Royal Arsenal’s seventh season was their last. They played a record number of games, but disaster (and recovery) was just around the corner. Date 1892/1893 Opponents V Cup Res Att 01 Sep 92 Highland Light Infantry H Fr 8-0 3,000 03 Sep 92 Gainsborough Trinity …
Read More “After seven seasons Royal Arsenal comes to an end”
6 January 1971: Yeovil 0 Arsenal 3 FA Cup round 3. The chairman does his thing. Tony Attwood The game of the minnows from outside the football league playing the aristocrats of division 1 could have been a nice friendly and warm affair but it wasn’t. Arsenal entered the match second in the league after …
Read More “Yeovil 0 Arsenal 3, a publicity seeking chairman, and a journey to the double.”
By Tony Attwood A couple of years ago I ran a little piece here about Arsenal’s first foreign player. Much of the article was taken up with the issue of definition, but taking it at its narrowest finding Scottish players is a doddle (they were at Royal Arsenal from the start), and the rest of …
