AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
The run of two draws and then three wins had taken Woolwich Arsenal out of the relegation zone by December 1909 and things were surely looking up. Notts County were a high flying team – 3rd at the time – but still on this form, and at home (which no none-London team liked coming to, …
In my last post I mentioned the time when Arsenal played three games in three days. I wrote that piece just before Wolverhampton W created a storm in the EPL by actually changing their team around because the players couldn’t manage two tough games in four days. What is interesting is that in 1904 when …
Read More “The days when pro footballers would play three games in three days”
Go back 100 years and you would find Christmas then similar to Christmas today. Presents were exchanged (all tied up with string), there was an emphasis on religion, and it was a public holiday – although less so than now. Families got together, and there was a lot of drinking. No TV and no radio …
Read More “Five first team games in seven days. Christmas the Arsenal way.”
It was the most unlikely result. There certainly was gambling on football 100 years ago, but I don’t know if anyone gambled on actual scores. If they did , they would never have picked this result in a million goes. Woolwich Arsenal went into the match just about crawling out of the relegation zone. Preston …
Read More “100 years ago Arsenal beat Preston to move up to 15th”
Actually in that headline the bit that is most unlikely is the Passion. By 1909 the once Invincibles had declined and were in a backwater of football, where crowds of between 3,000 to 7,000 were commonplace. Preston North End had wonthe first league (1888/9) without losing a game – impressive, but not too hard when …
Read More “Preparing for Proud Preston, Passion and Possible Progress”
Looking at the records of Woolwich Arsenal it is clear that player longevity at a club was a rarity. Look up the records and you will find that the vast majority of players played maybe a dozen or so games for the club and then moved on elsewhere. Transfers (probably without any fee) were commonplace …
Back in 1909 football crowds in the First Division were highly variable – a bit like the Scottish Premier League 100 years later. Chelsea and Manchester United could get crowds of up to 60,000 or even more. Bristol City, Bury and Preston NE would often be around the 6,000 mark. But crowds were variable not …
Of course the similarities between Woolwich Arsenal in 1909 and Arsenal 2009 are small. It is the same club (the shares issued in Woolwich Arsenal after it was taken over by Henry Norris are the same shares as we have now) and the traditions of the club continue. But the style and approach to the …
Read More “100 years on and still the same problem: no Arsenal centre forwards.”
This is, of course, a site that deals with the history of Arsenal FC, particularly what happened 100 years ago. And for the past two days I have been writing about the first ever game between Woolwich Arsenal and Tottenham which took place on 4 December 1909. But today (5 December 2009) we should celebrate …
Read More “Yesterday was 100 years since the 1st Totts game, today is 500 games under Wenger”
So here we are at last: the first of the centenaries that this site was set up to celebrate. 100 years to the day when the first game between Woolwich Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur was played. I wrote in the last article about the comparative situation of the two clubs – Woolwich Arsenal established in …
Read More “100 years ago today: the first ever Arsenal/Tottenham game”
2 December 1909 And so it was that Arsenal, having got their mini revival moving along with a win and two draws, and having dragged themselves off the bottom of the First Division for the first time this season, had to play hosts to Tottenham. But it is important not to see this as a …
Read More “Trying to improve while Tottenham stand in the way”
On UNTOLD ARSENAL after the Chelsea game I wrote a piece in which I suggested that some matches in the English Premier League are fixed. It is a debate that continues on that site. But it made me think it might be worth a meander around the time that this site deals with, in terms …
November 27, 1909: 100 years ago today. Bury v Woolwich Arsenal Woolwich were bottom of the league, with just two wins all season. But there had been a slight glimmer of hope. The desperate defence had stopped leaking five or six goals a game, and the club had actually drawn the last two matches. Bury …
If you’ve been following any of this story you’ll know that one of the key problems in the 1909/1910 season was that we couldn’t find a centre forward. We’d even converted our centre half into a centre forward, and still nothing worked. Players came in and went out, getting one or two games before moving …
For authors of books there is a routine. It starts with a six month or year long slog of writing and revising, followed by the comments of one or two people you know who kindly agree to read the pre-published edition. Then the arguments with the editor (“I nearly fell asleep in chapter 8”, or …
And I don’t mean this lightly. Nor is it a retelling of the old story about Winston’s Churchill’s driver or relative or someone wanting to be a footballer and being told that was not a suitable occupation. No – this is a truthful story about Churchill and his involvement in the world of Woolwich Arsenal …
Read More “Winston Churchill’s direct involvement in Arsenal nearly led to the end of the club”
Sky News seem to have missed it, and it is not featuring on any of the blogs that I can see but the biggest match fixing scandal since 1914/15 is about to hit football. Let’s do the history first, since this is primarily a history site – but I will move onto the current situation …
Read More “UNTOLD ARSENAL raided by police, Ireland guilty, Platini arrested, Iraq banned”
So we had had a draw away from home last weekend against Sheffield Wednesday. Now a home match against Bristol City. The draw had done nothing for our league position, and we were still firmly bottom of the league, but it had been preceded by two defeats, and that therefore was a step forward. Also …
Of course you could all be laughing at me (if you remember me at all) but the fact is that in ten years it will be possible to go back and look at the blogs and commentaries of a few years before, and look at how stupid all the commentators were. At the risk of …
Read More “In ten years time we’ll all be laughing our heads off”
When Arsenal went unbeaten for a whole season much was made by the snarling sniveling gutter press who never like to give credit for anything that the club does, that this was not the first time this had happened. Preston North End had done it once before. In fact PNE did go a season unbeaten …
Read More “Just how many games can you lose in one season and still win the league?”
Assuming you read fiction at all you will know a few genres. Science fiction maybe. Detective fiction, Historical fiction, War fiction, the Wild west… you name it, fiction has it. Except… football fiction. Our biggest sport, the issue that occupies much of the nation not just at weekends but every day of the week. And …
Saturday November 13th, 1909. Sheffield Wednesday vs Woolwich Arsenal. The omens were poor. Our record was played 12, drawn 1, won 2, lost the rest. Bottom of the league. Worse, only five members of the team who played on the opening day of the season in September were still playing. One player McDonald was playing …
Read More “Arsenal v Sheff W – at last the improvement begins”
MI5 was originally known as MO5, and was set up as part of a network of secret government committees in the aftermath of the Boer War. During the Boer War, which ended in 1902, the government had set up Section H, which was effectively a spying network – the first serious attempt by the British …
It is a question that must be circulating around the minds of a number of club supporters at the moment. Clubs that are supposedly ok for money, clubs which are maybe successful. And then suddenly it begins to unravel. Of course what many people do is just pretend the difficulty doesn’t exist – and it …
Read More “What does it feel like when your club goes bust?”
MAKING THE ARSENAL is a novel – the diary of a football journalist in 1910 who is given the job of covering the story of the collapse of Woolwich Arsenal, its take-over by Fulham and its re-birth as a new club. But the story is more than just football – it is a story about …
