George Lawrence is the man who invented the football special – and with it the whole notion of away support, persuading railway companies to organise special one-off return trips to and from football grounds where Woolwich Arsenal played. 27 April 1851: George Lawrence, the club’s first major benefactor, was born. He became interested in football when …
Read More “Remembering George Lawrence, the man who invented the “football special””
Tony Attwood reports on the day that Herbert Chapman resigned from Arsenal This is only our second video and we are getting used to the whole approach, so please do excuse the rough and ready approach. You may also at this time be interested in Arsenal win the cup for the first time – …
Read More “Arsenal History Society video: 26 April. Chapman resigns!”
Today is the anniversary of Arsenal’s first major trophy: the FA Cup in 1930. While Chapman is rightly remembered as the manager who built the sensationally successful Arsenal of the 1930s, it should also be remembered that after a flying start, taking Arsenal to second in his first season with the club, the club then …
Read More “Arsenal win the cup for the first time – complete with video!”
Welcome to the AISA Arsenal History Society’s first video – this to celebrate the biggest anniversary of 25 April.
In 1893 a major split occurred within Royal Arsenal FC as it prepared to become a professional club and join the Football League. The split was not primarily about professionalism and amateurism, but rather about who should run the club. A group of men from the wealthier families – we might today signify them as …
Read More “When Arsenal’s local rivals played just across the road.”
From 2006 to 2015, Arsenal had 10 years of coming third or fourth every season, with the six fourth-place finishes leading to the oft-repeated phrase “fourth is not a trophy”. The two FA Cups won during this period were of course trophies, and kept Arsenal as the most successful FA Cup team in history, but …
Read More “Fourth might not be a trophy, but it is still harder than it looks.”
There can be a tendency to think that how football is now, is how it always has been. This was certainly so when certain extremist fan groups criticised Arsenal, for allowing the crowd figures at the stadium to drop below 60,000 as for certain games, the number of no-shows increased somewhat. But the fact …
Read More “Arsenal’s crowd numbers across the years – and a video of the 1932 cup final.”
This is the anniversary of Mr Wenger’s last home match with Arsenal, and it was of course heavily featured by the BBC as they focussed on the only Arsenal manager ever to win three League titles, and not only the man who won more FA Cups with Arsenal than any other manager, but who won …
Read More “When our Arsenal banner was selected by the BBC for full-on publicity”
Today, rather than look back to the life of an Arsenal player from the past, I thought maybe we should focus just for a moment on the most extraordinary top flight match in England ever. The only game ever to generate 12 goals with both sides scoring. There have been a couple of games in …
Read More “The most goals ever scored in a top flight game with both sides scoring”
Colin Hill made his debut for Arsenal’s first team on this day, 20 April, in 1983 in the Norwich 3 Arsenal 1 defeat. The following season he played 37 league games, as Arsenal finished sixth in the league. However he was then displaced by the signing of Viva Anderson which put him primarily in the …
Read More “Whatever happened to Colin Hill?”
Perry Groves turned out for 155 league games for Arsenal scoring 21 goals, starting in 1986, having previously played for four years with Colchester United. Leaving Arsenal in 1992 he was at Southampton for two years but only played 15 games, before brief spells with Dagenham and Redbridge, Canvey Island and Guilden Morden FC …
Read More “Happy birthday Perry Groves, aged 55 today.”
Football managers are measured generally by their success in winning trophies, and by their percentage win rate in matches. Each is a valid measurement, and on each Arsene Wenger comes top of the table. But who were the worst long term managers of Arsenal? The men who won nothing, and also had a low percentage …
Read More “The best and the worst managers Arsenal have ever had”
It was a director of Aston Villa who first set out the idea of a League for football teams, instead of simply having endless friendly games with a few knock out cup matches. He proposed the idea in a letter sent to his fellow directors and directors of five other northern clubs on 22 March …
Read More “Happy birthday Football League: formed on this day”
It’s Freddie’s birthday and we wish him many happy returns from the Arsenal History Society. It is also the day we commemorate the birth of Ted Drake, one of the all-time greatest Arsenal players, and the man who scored all seven goals in one game against Aston Villa. Here are the anniversaries for today. You …
Read More “Happy Birthday Freddie Ljungberg, and remembering Ted Drake.”
Steve Walford is one of that handful of players who turned out for both Arsenal and Tottenham starting out with Tottenham in 1974 but he only played twice for them before Terry Neill, who of course himself at been at Tottenham, signed him for £25,000 on 1 August 1977. He played primarily as a centre half, and …
Read More “Whatever happened to Steve Walford?”
Football during the two world wars kept going, despite efforts by the national press and members of the government to have it stopped, efforts which were particularly strong in the first world war. In the first global conflict the Football League continued its full programme for 1914/15, not least because of the widespread belief at …
Read More “When Arsenal used seven different goalkeepers in one season”
Today, it is virtually unknown for newspapers and their websites to criticise TV coverage of a game, and certainly it is unheard of for a newspaper to suggest that TV coverage gave an unfair or unreasonable coverage of a match. And yet it was not always like this for back in the 1970s there were …
Read More “When the newspapers criticised TV for giving a false impression of matches”
John Hawley’s name won’t resonate with most Arsenal supporters; he played for the club 20 times between 1981 and 1983. But I want to reproduce part of an article on John that appears on this site, because his name crops up in the anniversaries as a goal scorer against Tottenham in 1982. You can read …
Read More “Whatever happened to John Hawley?”
Arsenal was Malcolm Macdonald’s last major club. He played 84 league games for us and scored 42 goals, but injury cut his career short. He achieved similar goal to game ratios with Luton (49 goals in 88 games) and Newcastle (95 games in 187 games). After 1979 he had one final club, playing nine times …
Read More “Whatever happened to Malcolm Macdonald?”
The Arsenal Anniversary Files contain details of over 7000 events relating (for the most part) directly to Arsenal FC since their foundation as Dial Square and up to the present day. A full index of all the anniversaries can be found in the 12 monthly cumulative files indexed under “Pages” in the right column on …
Read More “19 Things that happened to Arsenal on 10 April”
The Arsenal Anniversary Files have been compiled and published by Arsenal History Society, and consist of over 7000 events of note in the history of the club, in day order. You can access the whole set of files on this site – just see the “Pages” section on the right of this page, and select …
Read More “What have Arsenal done on 9 April throughout their history: a rundown.”
By Tony Attwood Jon Sammels played for Arsenal between 1963 and 1971 at which point he was sold to Leicester for £100,000. He played 215 league games for Arsenal and scored 39 goals, but went on to 241 games with Leicester. After that he played for Vancouver Whitecaps for a season, and then Nuneaton Borough, …
Read More “Whatever happened to Jon Sammels?”
All told Paul Davis played 447 times for Arsenal and scored 37 goals. Paul left Arsenal in 1995 and had a spell in Norway before making a final bow with five appearances for Brentford, retiring in 1995. The following season he joined Arsenal as a youth coach and stayed in that position until 2003 when …
Read More “Whatever happened to Paul Davis?”
Lauren (Laureano Bisan Etame-Mayer) was, of course, one of the invincibles during the unbeaten season. In all he played 159 league games for Arsenal, having played previously for Utrera, Sevilla, Levante, and Mallorca. He left Arsenal in 2007 and moved to Portsmouth for two seasons before playing a final five games for Cordoba. He also …
Read More “Whatever happened to Lauren?”
Arsenal hold the record for the longest unbeaten away run in top flight football of 27 games, starting from 5 April 2003. There were the inevitable moans at the previous away league game on 15 March when Arsenal lost 2-0 to Blackburn, a result which was followed by an away defeat to Valencia in the …
Read More “Arsenal start out on the longest unbeaten away run in top flight football”
