AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood The result in the league for 1997/8 look wonderful – we won the league with two games to spare, and finished five points ahead of Manchester U who ended up in second place. We also won the FA Cup – our second double. The winning match of the season, by which I …
Read More “1997/8 Mr Wenger’s second season. The close margin between success and failure.”
Untold Arsenal and Arsenal History on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here Untold Arsenal Index History of Arsenal with a new series on the Rioch year, and onto the Wenger years. Making the Arsenal – the book of Arsenal death and rebirth By Tony Attwood If we look at the Premiership appearance figures for …
By Tony Attwood As we saw in the last article, Mr Wenger started out with the same sort of promise as Herbert Chapman. But it is what happened then that marked him out as a different type of manager. We are in an era before rampant match fixing and before the financial corruption that took …
By Tony Attwood What we have seen in the previous articles is that the time before Arsene Wenger took over the club was not a period of huge league success. It has been pointed out however that this is a somewhat unfair analysis since although George Graham’s team slid away in the league, there were …
By Tony Attwood My feeling is that there are many people who claim to be Arsenal supporters who believe the mantra that “this is the worst Arsenal team ever”. My personal remembrance, backed up by videos of the pre-Wengerian seasons is that what we see now is several million light years ahead of what we …
The season in question was 1995-6, and the man in charge was Bruce Rioch. As the previous article showed, Arsenal had been hunting in the lower leagues to try and find a man to take over from George Graham. They found a man who had had a few run ins with those in the clubs …
Read More “Arsenal before Arsène: What happened the season before Wenger arrived”
By Tony Attwood Rioch had one season at Arsenal – 1995/6. He can point to the season as having some success such as Reaching the UEFA Cup for the following year, having come fifth in the league League Cup Semi-Final, lost on away goals But we might also note that Arsenal were knocked out of …
by Tony Attwood It has become commonplace for people who don’t like Arsene Wenger to state that “this is the worst Arsenal team that I have ever seen, and I have been supporting the club for 30 years.” I was about to add to that sentence “or words to that effect” but actually looking at …
Read More “When Bruce Rioch managed Arsenal; the man, the myth”
THERAPY – A GROUP EXERCISE With all this present day chit-chat about “Wenger Out!”, I’d like to offer a little perspective, stimulate some debate, and hopefully cheer everyone up a bit. You always read these polls about who were the best players to ever put on an Arsenal shirt, which always infuriate me: you’re always …
Read More “Who were Arsenal’s worst players? The History Site investigates.”
By Tony Attwood Three seasons gone and the man brought in to bring trophies to Arsenal had delivered a couple of near misses but no actual trophies. In the league we had been 2nd, 11th and 10th – far better than under the previous management. In the cup we had lost in a final, lost …
Read More “Herbert Chapman Season 4: flirting with relegation and the signing of Charlie Jones”
By Tony Attwood This is the third article in the series which reviews the reign of Herbert Chapman season by season. Links to the earlier articles are at the foot of the page. 1927/28 was the third season of Herbert Chapman’s reign at Arsenal. In the previous two seasons he had broken new ground by …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here By Tony Attwood I don’t know of any contemporary commentaries from 77 years ago, but for the regulars at Highbury1926/7 must have started as a season as stupendous promise. Having never won a single thing of consequence (not the second division, not the first division, not …
By Tony Attwood Leslie Knighton was appointed manager of The Arsenal upon the return of the club to the first division at the end of the first world war, in 1919. Arsenal were promoted after refusing to back down on the match fixing scandal in the last pre-war season (which actually went on into the …
By Gf60 The memories flooded back after that 1-0 win against Stoke. The last 1-0 home win against them that I can remember happened nearly 40 years ago. And that was the start of something very special. Not that that week had started off well. A Monday night kick off and a train trip up …
By Tony Attwood I’ve good reason to remember this game today, as we make one of our rare appearances against Orient – and one of our even rarer appearances at Brisbane Road – simply because I was there. By 1962 my family had moved away from Devonshire Hill Lane in Tottenham, where I was brought …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here Victory Through Harmony Wilf Copping was born in Yorkshire on 17 August 1909. He attended Houghton Council School and left to become a miner while playing for local teams Dearn Valley, Middlecliffe and Dartfield Rovers (of whom I can find no information.). He tried for a …
Read More “Wilf Copping, one of the original hard men of football”
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here Victory Through Harmony Jack Crayston was born in Lancashire and played for his local school sides. It is also said that he played for Ulverston Town but I can’t find any details of that club (although the town is in the right area for this to …
Read More “Jack Crayston: Arsenal player and Arsenal manager”
Continuing the series about players who played under George Allison, we come to Eddy Hapgood, who was signed by Herbert Chapman from Kettering Town, and played under both Chapman and Allison. Eddie has been the subject of a piece here before, when I wrote a piece about his autobiography The idea here is to complete …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here Victory Through Harmony By Tony Attwood We play Huddersfield Town rarely, so now that we have one of those moments it is worth, I think, having a look at the eternal link that binds the two clubs together: Herbert Chapman. In this article I focus on …
This article was updated 26 January 2017 with details of Bob John’s year by year statistics. By Tony Attwood If you want a simple fact about Bob John it is that he played for Arsenal 470 times – more than any other player up to the cessation of football in 1939. Robert Frederick John was born …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here Victory Through Harmony There are so many famous names from the Chapman / Allison era that is not surprising that one or two slip from the public mind despite their being players of enormous importance and stature in the history of the club. Herbie Roberts is …
Read More “Herbie Roberts: how can Arsenal forget this wonderful player?”
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here Victory Through Harmony In an era when people stay at clubs for just a few years it is wonderful to look back at George Male – a man who spent more than half of his life at Arsenal. As a player he joined us in 1929 …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal There’s no article about George Allison on the Arsenal official web site, other than a 70 word summary in the “Managers” section and yet even if he is judged simply by his record as a manager he is surely worth of more. He game us two league trophies and the …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here By Tony Attwood I should start by making a confession (well not much of a confession because what I am going to confess is undoubtedly patently obvious if you have been reading through my jottings over the past couple of years. It is this: when I …
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here By Tony Attwood This is the final entry in our series of articles about players who played 100 or more games for Woolwich Arsenal. This final article takes us to a group of players in the 100+ club who we have covered before. I’m listing them …
