AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
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.”
Nicolas Anelka joined Arsenal for just £500,000 and won the PFA Young Player of the Year in 1998/9. I believe the nickname Le Sulk came from the Sun, and it was a tragedy that it was taken up by some supporters (although I don’t recall hearing it too often at games). He played 72 times …
Glen Helder joined Arsenal in 1995 from Vitesse Arnhem and played 39 games for the club before moving on to Benfica on loan. After that he had seven clubs but never managed more than 10 games for any of them. His final club in 2009/10) after six years of not playing professionally was DOTO, a …
Peter Marinello came to Arsenal as the great hope – the man who would take Arsenal forward to the next level. This vision was based on just 45 games in the Scottish league, and between 1970 and 1973 with Arsenal, despite all the hype, he only played 38 games. After that he played for Portsmouth, …
The anniversaries of 19 February do indeed remind us of the media’s constant theme: Arsenal are not good enough. They ply this line no matter what Arsenal are doing, because whatever Arsenal achieve, the media demand more, in order to keep up the negatives. Even the unbeaten season was greeted with comments that it wasn’t …
Read More “The media’s constant tune: Arsenal are not good enough”
In 2015, Wiltord competed on the TV reality show Dropped, in which sportspeople were dropped by helicopter into inhospitable environments. The day after his elimination from the programme, there was a mid-air helicopter collision which killed ten. Since then we’ve not heard of him, and that of course is thoroughly understandable given the horror of …
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look Joe Haverty was one of those wingers who was loved by the crowd because of the excitement he generated running up and down the left, and when he left Arsenal in 1961 after seven years by the club …
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of the current issues of football in depth – do take a look On 23 February 2008, Eduardo suffered a broken left fibula and an open dislocation of his left ankle in a match against Birmingham City, following a tackle by Martin Taylor, for which Taylor was sent …
