AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood Today, there isn’t that much of a problem at Arsenal’s home games. I remember some issues with Everton supporters a couple of years back (they blame us, we blame them, and I was four blocks along from where the incident took place, so I don’t really know) but not too much else. …
Read More “When the Arsenal / Tottenham Hotspur game was stopped by the ref due to bad language”
Today, 16 July we have the anniversaries of two players who played a significant part in the history of Arsenal – Joe Baker and Bob Wilson. You can read more about them here 16 July 1962 Joe Baker joins Arsenal 16 July 1963 Bob Wilson signs Arsenal History Society has an anniversary list which we …
Read More “Joe Baker and Bob Wilson – two anniversaries on one day”
By Tony Attwood At this moment when we are having our attention drawn towards players and their on field behaviour, and with some journalists now linking that to the chants that can be heard from the stands, it is interesting to spend just a moment thinking about how it was in the past. What is …
Read More “What was it like in the crowd 100 years ago at Woolwich Arsenal?”
It may seem that the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal (the AAA) is a recent phenomenon, Indeed that is how the AAA like to portray themselves with their “I have been an Arsenal supporter for 50 years and I have never seen a team this bad” stuff (forgetting perhaps in 1974 we spent a period bottom of the …
Read More “Celebrating 120 years of the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood Does that headline sound familiar? The club reaches heights that no one has seen before, and then everyone moans and calls for the manager to be sacked. Sounds a bit like the 21st century at Arsenal, with an endless stream of top four finishes met with comments from the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal that …
Read More “Arsenal does better than ever before… and everyone complains”
———————————- ——————– Publication on July 20th: Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football. The book that re-writes the Arsenal story. ——————————— By Tony Attwood There is this image that I have that when a player seeks a new move there are negotiations, chats with agents, thoughts, discussions with possible new clubs, debates. And …
Read More “Walley Barnes: football as a series of accidental events”
by Mark Andrews Now that the wait is over and the quite revolting new purple and black striped away kit is revealed, and given that we are only days away from the publication of the publication of the definitive book on the early years of Arsenal as a professional club, I thought it would be …
By Tony Attwood Frank Stapleton’s career at Arsenal spans the reigns of Bertie Mee (1966-76) and Terry Neill (1976-83). He joined us in 1972 as an apprentice (having tried his hand first with Man U) and played his first game in 1975 against Leicester in a 1-1 home draw. This was Bertie Mee’s last season …
Read More “It is Frank Stapleton’s birthday (born 10 July 1956)”
The Arsenal Anniversary File is an ever growing record of the important dates in the club. We only started it a few months ago and already it has well over 100 important dates listed, with more being added each week. Today, 9th July, is the 36th anniversary of Terry Neill signing as a manager. Terry’s …
Read More “9th July 1976: Terry Neill becomes Arsenal’s manager”
Tom Whittaker is one of Arsenal’s managers. Here is his record Season League FA Cup 1947/48 1st 3rd (Bradford) 1948/49 5th 4th (Derby) 1949/50 6th Won 1950/51 5th 5th (Man U) 1951/2 3rd Final (Newcastle) 1952/3 1st 6th (Blackpool) 1953/4 12th 4th (Norwich) 1954/5 9th 4th (Wolverhampton) 1955/6 5th 6th (Birmingham) 1956/7* 5th 6th (WBA) …
Read More “Tom Whittaker: Arsenal’s 4th longest serving manager”
By Tony Attwood NOTE: This article is taken from a section of Woolwich Arsenal: the club that changed football, which is published in a couple of weeks time. —————————- Britain became involved in the first world war on 4 August 1914, but the decision was taken to continue with the league programme for the 1914/15 …
Read More “James “Punch” McEwen: Arsenal’s manager in the first world war”
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”
