AISA Arsenal History Society: preserving Arsenal's heritage
By Tony Attwood What do you do after you have won the double in your second full season at a club? Answer: you do it again. That is what some fans expected. In fact the expectations were very high – and were dashed. 1998/9 started with four draws and a win. OK no defeats but …
Read More “1998/9 Mr Wenger’s Third Season: after the double, the Sheffield affair.”
By Andy Kelly and Tony Attwood . Henry Norris bought Woolwich Arsenal FC in 1910. Quite why he did so has always been something of a mystery, since he already owned two clubs – Croydon Common FC in the Southern League and Fulham FC in the second division. . Arsenal at the time were struggling, …
Read More “Why did Henry Norris have a fixation with Woolwich Arsenal”
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.”
