AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
Frank Stapleton played 225 league games for Arsenal and scored 75 goals between 1974 and 1981, before moving on the Manchester United where he played 223 games and scored 60 goals. After that he played for nine more clubs, but only two (Blackburn Rovers and Bradford city saw him knock up more than 50 games. …
In the “Whatever happened to” series, which is written to coincide with an anniversary, we are often dealing with players who simply didn’t make it at Arsenal, or simply didn’t make it at all. And Luke Ayling has the look of one of these players having never played for Arsenal. But for him, his first …
If you have been glancing at the Arsenal anniversary series you’ll know that we have been running a note at the top of many of the articles with the headline “Whatever happened to…” and then looking at what the player in question did after Arsenal. Roger Davidson is different because he played just one game …
Read More “Whatever happened to Roger Davidson who played but one game for Arsenal”
Between 1997 and 2005 goalkeeper Stuart Taylor played 18 times for Arsenal, as well as having loan spells with Bristol Rovers, Crystal Palace, Peterborough United and Leicester City. He then moved to Aston Villa, Cardiff (on loan), Manchester City, Reading, Yeovil Town (on loan), Leeds and Southampton. The 18 league games he played for Arsenal …
14 March 1892: Arsenal 0 Third Lanark Rovers 1. Arsenal played a remarkable nine friendly games in March 1892 as behind the scenes the battle for control of the club’s committee (and thus the club’s future) between the “gentlemen” and the “workers” heated up. 14 March 1894: Henry (Harry) Woods born. After the first world …
Read More “Remembering the days when they used to play football. Arsenal events on 14 March”
Phil Brown was the manager of Hull City when he particularly came onto our radar in 2009, accusing Cesc Fàbregas of spitting at Hull’s assistant manager Brian Horton, and being improperly dressed on the pitch, after Hull were beaten at Arsenal Stadium. Fabregas was cleared of all charges. Then Brown claimed Arsène Wenger refused to …
Read More “Whatever happened to Phil Brown, the man who accused Faberegas and Wenger?”
Loughborough FC may well not be a club you’ve heard of, unless you study Arsenal’s earliest history, in which case you might know they turn up several times. They won the Midland League in 1894/5 and then were elected to the second division of the Football League. They didn’t fare well however and in 1900 …
Read More “Whatever happened to Loughborough FC? Arsenal’s strange involvement”
Lukas Podolski played for Bayern Munich and FC Koln before joining Arsenal in 2012, playing 60 games and scoring 19 goals before going on loan to Inter Milan in 2015. He then played for Galatasaray, Vissel Kobe and is now with Antalyaspor in Turkey. Between 2004 and 2017 he played 130 times for Germany scoring …
by Tony Attwood As you can read from the entry for this day in 1905 below, Tottenham made a number of attempts in the early part of the Football League’s history to try to secure their place as the dominant team in the area. They blocked Chelsea from the Southern League, tried to block Arsenal’s …
Read More “When Tottenham were rejected by the Football League, but Arsenal helped them out.”
By Tony Attwood I ask that question today because this is the anniversary of the earliest St Totteringham Day of the modern era (and perhaps of all time) (see 2008 below). St Totteringham Day is, as you will know I’m sure, the day upon which it is impossible for Tottenham to overtake Arsenal, and we …
Read More “Could there actually be a St Totteringham Day this year”
By Tony Attwood Having played 49 games for Everton, Francis Jeffers joined Arsenal in 2001 and stayed until 2004 playing just 22 games and scoring four goals. He then returned to Everton on loan, before a meandering career which took him to Charlton, Rangers, Blackburn, Ipswich, Sheffield Wed, Newcastle Jets in Australia, Motherwell, Floriana and …
Read More “Whatever happened to Francis Jeffers? Arsenal anniversaries for 8 March”
by Tony Attwood There would, I imagine, be uproar of the first order with demands that the manager be sacked, for most of the players in the team never to play for Arsenal again, and for the owners to go if we lost 7-0 in any game this season, or indeed next season. Fortunately in …
During the first and second world wars, normal league and cup football was suspended – although the 1914/15 season was played, largely because of the view that the war would be finished by December 1914, and thus not inconvenience the Football League. There was a major campaign to get football banned, particularly supported by Sir …
Read More “What happened to Arsenal in the wartime leagues?”
Willie Young played 170 games for Arsenal and scored 11 goals, before moving on to Nottingham Forest for whom he played 59 times. After that the injuries began to catch up with him, and his spells with Norwich City, Brighton and Hove and Darlington resulted only in a handful of games in each case. After …
Ian Allinson originally played for Colchester, and would have stayed there had it not been for the fact that the club offered him a contract worth less than his previous contract, meaning he could, if he wished, leave on a free transfer. Arsenal made him an offer and he took it in 1983. He went …
Arsenal only ever played two wartime games on 3 March, one in 1917 and the other on this day in 1945, both against Clapton Orient. Both were won by Arsenal 3-1, both being played in the Football League Cup South. Despite losing 2-4 to Portsmouth in this competition in the sixth game in 1945, Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal in wartime: the curious case of playing Clapton Orient twice on 3 March”
Marouane Chamakh played just 40 games for Arsenal before a short loan period with West Ham, and then a three year spell with Crystal Palace where he played 60 games. He concluded his playing career in 2016 with two games for Cardiff. He then had a couple of years without playing at all before formally …
By Tony Attwood David Court played 168 league games for Arsenal and scored 17 goals but in 1969/70 he was injured and so missed out on the Fairs Cup final games and in the summer after that season – just as Arsenal were going to hit it bigger than big, he was transferred to Luton. …
Read More “Whatever happened to David Court? The Arsenal Anniversaries on 1 March”
Finding events on 29 February is of course tough, and indeed even searching for the last Arsenal game played on this date turned out to be an activity that took me back to the last century. I may have missed one but I think the last Arsenal league game on 29 February was almost 50 …
Read More “Whatever happened to Pal Lydersen and the leap day anniversaries”
Steve Walford started out with Tottenham before moving to Arsenal between 1977 and 1981, playing 77 times. He then went to Norwich (93 games) and West Ham (115 games) before having a series of loan spells from 1987 onward. He ended his playing career with Lai Sun and (possibly, although records are unclear) Wycombe Wanderers. …
Jay Emmanuel-Thomas was with Arsenal from 2008 to 2011, but only made one first team appearance for the club. He had loans at Blackpool, Doncaster and Cardiff before signing for Ipswich in 2011 where he made 71 appearances. In 2013 he moved to Bristol City where he played 82 times scoring 24 goals. After that …
The most recent news we have of Tomas Rosický became comes from 2018. In January he became assistant to the new Sparta sport director Zdeněk Ščasný. Then on 17 December he replaced Ščasný as a sports director, soon after Ščasný became Sparta head coach. In Germany, as a player he gained the nickname “The Little …
The league results for Arsenal under George Graham, from mid-January 1987 to early April that year looks like just about the worst set of results one could imagine. It wasn’t just the results, but the fact that across these ten games Arsenal scored just two goals. Can you imagine the media coverage of such a …
Read More “The most awful run of results for Arsenal in the league. But…”
In 1991, Michael Thomas was transferred to Liverpool, for whom he played 124 games scoring nine goals. In his final season with them in 1998 he was loaned to Middlesbrough. After that he moved to Benfica for the 1998/9 season playing 18 games, and then ended his career in 2000/1 by playing for Wimbledon. After …
On 1 May 2006 Diaby suffered a severe ankle fracture after an atrocious tackle from Sunderland’s Dan Smith. In a disgraceful response Sunderland manager Kevin Ball defended Smith stating “Smith is not a malicious, dirty player and I think it’s unfair to make that call on him and say he deliberately went to do it.” …
Read More “Whatever happened to Abou Diaby and the man who crippled him: Dan Smith.”
