AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
This article in the series about Arsenal’s managers is about George Graham the manager. A separate article will appear in due course about his playing career. George managed four clubs: Millwall, Arsenal, Leeds, and Tottenham. His win percentage at Arsenal (48.91%) was the best of his career. At Tottenham it was 39.68% George took over …
Read More “George Graham: Arsenal’s second most successful manager for trophies”
Stewart Mackie Houston was born on 20 August 1949 in Dunoon in Scotland. In all he had two separate spells in charge of the club, making him unique in Arsenal’s history. He was manager number 21 and 23. In his first spell after the sacking of George Graham from March to May 1995 he took …
Read More “Arsenal managers: Stewart Houston – still with Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood This is part of what is becoming a fairly large series of articles on Arsenal’s managers. There is a full chart of the managers with links to numerous articles about them, and their players. Also we have a range of charts on that page which highlight the achievements of each manager. Rioch …
By Tony Attwood Steve Burtenshaw was Arsenal caretaker manager between March and May 1986. His appointment followed the resignation of Don Howe amidst rumours that he (Don) would be replaced. Steve was himself replaced by George Graham. His record as a manager of Arsenal was a win rate of 27.27% winning 3, losing 6 and …
Read More “Arsenal Managers: Steve Burtenshaw, our least successful manager”
By Tony Attwood Older supporters of every team will tell you (when they are being honest) that after years of watching their team, some games fade from the memory. You know you were there, but for the life of you, you can’t remember the game. So it is with me, but there is one moment …
By Tony Attwood On this day – 22 June 1893 – Woolwich Arsenal FC held its first AGM. It was the culmination of some of the most amazing events ever in the history of Arsenal, and it signified not only the survival of the club which had been under attack from a rival breakaway club …
Read More “It’s Arsenal’s birthday & the anniversary of the launch of a national football league”
By Tony Attwood On 11 June 2012 Sylvain Wiltord announced his retirement from playing football. Although I missed this as an anniversary, I really do feel the need to go back and pay tribute to one of our great, great players who spent four years at Highbury, winning two Premier League titles and two FA …
by Andy Kelly I recently read a post on the angryofislington blog which asked why no one likes Tottenham. I think Phil’s post is supposed to be light-hearted but there is a ring of truth to it. I should explain: I’m in the middle of a final read through of Woolwich Arsenal: the club that …
Read More “Why Don’t Tottenham Have Any Footballing Friends?”
By Tony Attwood William John Crayston (known universally as Jack) was born on 9 October 1910 in Grange-over-Sands in North Lonsdale (Cumbria), playing as a defender for local teams Ulverston Town and Barrow before moving south to Bradford PA. George Allison signed him in May 1934, was apparently impressed by his sober attitude to life and …
On June 18th 1979 Paul Davis signed professional forms for Arsenal. Paul Davis was born in Dulwich on 9 December 1961, signed by Arsenal in 1977, and played for the first team for the first time against Tottenham on April 7 1980 at Tottenham. We won 2-1. The cause of his sudden insertion into the …
Read More “Paul Davis. Wonderful wonderful player, talented coach, and one incident”
Tony Attwood Don Howe was, of course, both a manager and a player at Arsenal. In management terms he did not win any trophies nor secure any top four finishes but as our manager analysis chart shows in our chart of managers, if we exclude those who served one season or less he is the …
By Tony Attwood This ever-evolving series of articles focuses on Arsenal’s managers, and what the club looked like through each era of management. You can see the full list of managers at Manager by manager and from there go to an index of articles for each manager that we’ve covered. In doing this I am …
Noting a date when a player was sold? What’s the point of that? And a player you might never have heard of??? In fact Andy Ducat was one of the greatest Woolwich Arsenal players, and while there are so many Woolwich Arsenal men of whom we know nothing there are some of whom we know …
Read More “Arsenal Anniversaries: Andy Ducat sold, 15 June 1912”
By Tony Attwood Perhaps as we draw this story to its conclusion we should focus on one passage from the autobiography of Leslie Knighton. Knighton wrote of Sir Henry, “I have never met his equal for logic, invective and ruthlessness against all who opposed him. When I disagreed with him at board meetings and had …
Read More “Knighton: what do we learn about post-war Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood What we know of Leslie Knighton we mostly know from his autobiography. It is for the most part made up of short remembrances strung together in themes. It is clear that neither he nor his editors of publisher did any checking of his stories, for where they can be readily checked, such …
By Tony Attwood Continuing the story of Arsenal immediately after the first world war. It is clear from his record at Arsenal, and elsewhere, that Leslie Knighton, the manager for those early post-war years, was a man who could spot talent, but who could not combine the talent he found into a consistently effective, or …
By Tony Attwood What we have seen is that Leslie Knighton, the manager who came to Arsenal to take over after the first war world was in many ways doing what others were all over football were doing: bringing in players where ever he could find them, using 30+ players in a season (seasons which …
By Tony Attwood In my last post I introduced Leslie Knighton, the man who was Arsenal’s least successful long term manager ever. And yet he was a man who has significant impact on the way in which we see Arsenal in the period between the first world war and the arrival of Herbert Chapman. More, …
Read More “The man who wrote Arsenal’s history: height and cost restrictions”
By Tony Attwood If a historian from the future were to read the pages of Untold Arsenal he/she would immediately be struck by the variety of opinion that is expressed on that blog. Wanting to get a further view on the club at this time, such a historian might turn to the official Arsenal website, …
Read More “The man who wrote Arsenal’s history to suit himself”
“Duncan McNichol the man no manager signed” According to those record books and Arsenal histories that bother with such details on 20 February 1899 William Robson Elcoat left Arsenal as manager. He had been manager for less than a year and he left saying that he could not get on with the board. Unable to …
Read More “Arsenal’s manager goes missing – but we’ve found him”
7 June, Dave Bowen born. The article which we published on this site a little while back about the great Arsenal and Wales player Dave Bowen is headlined: The man who should have been our manager. But fate was against Arsenal, and Dave Bowen. He achieved so much as a man of football, but could, …
Read More “From the Arsenal Anniversaries file: 7 June, Dave Bowen born”
By Tony Attwood Billy Wright came with two problems – a lack of club management experience, and the joining of a club of national renown, who had been going through a bad patch. Under Swindin, the seasons had ended with us 3rd, 13th, 11th and 10th. In the cup we had once reached the fifth …
By Tony Attwood Billy Wright was one of Arsenal’s most unsuccessful managers – and certainly the most unsuccessful of modern times. Quite why he was such a failure may be because top footballers generally are – Andy Kelly and I did an analysis of Arsenal managers based on how good they were at playing football …
Read More “Billy Wright: great footballer, but Arsenal’s worst post-war manager”
3 June 1939 Jimmy James Tullis Logie was signed from Lochore Welfare. And what a time to sign – within 3 months we were at war with Germany, and Jimmy’s playing career was put on hold. But despite that he played 296 league games, scoring 68 goals and 30 cup games with 8 goals. Jimmy …
I have found 3 anniversaries for 2 June… 1947: Tom Whittaker becomes manager 1934 Wilf Copping joined Arsenal from Leeds United 1991 Gus Caesar moved to Cambridge United. Anyone who saw our league cup final against Luton Town will remember Gus Caesar, and perhaps no more should be said. Tom Whittaker does deserve coverage …
Read More “On this day: Tom Whittaker becomes Arsenal manager”
