“The worst half any Arsenal fans could remember.” Said in the unbeaten season!!!!

The simple fact is that the dislike of Arsenal within the mass media is generally so intense that reason, logic and any type of even semi-decent reporting goes out the window.   But even if this bizarre setting, suggesting that a match in the unbeaten season contained “the worst 45 minutes [by Arsenal] that any …

The day the club played its first match at Highbury – but we don’t know the score!

By Tony Attwood As you will see before for the anniversary of this day in 1913, Arsenal played at Highbury for the first time in a practice match. Although officially it was behind “closed doors” as the comment below says, the reality is that the ground was far from secure right up to the first …

Average crowd of under 27000 and a defeat to Rotherham. When was that?

Because the start of the 1970s was such a good time for Arsenal, with three major trophies in two seasons, it is easy to forget what happened thereafter.   For what happened was that the club sank lower and lower and lower as indeed did the crowds. From an average league crowd of 43,776 in …

When Arsenal fans’ criticism was aimed at the reporter, not the club.

How did newspaper commentary on Arsenal begin?  It is hard to say exactly, but as Arsenal became a professional club in 1891 – two years before the club entered the Football League – the Woolwich Gazette started running a regular column, “Arsenal Football Notes” – on this day in 1891.  And a year later there …

Why Alexis Sanchez declined so rapidly from his best form after leaving Arsenal

On this day in 2014 Alexis Sanchez scored his first goal for Arsenal.  It was his first of 60 in 122 games – a remarkable record.   If we just measure league games he got 24 in 38 in his last league season.  Even in the season in which he left half way through he got …

Arsenal player banned retrospectively to the delight of the media.

The events following the game between Arsenal and Celtic in the Champions League on this day in 2009 are among a group of happenings which show that there most certainly is something very underhand and nasty going on in football. The BBC’s online report of the event read, “Eduardo was the central figure when Arsenal …

When under 14,000 watched Arsenal’s first game of the season

In many ways the Unbeaten Season has dimmed the memory of the almost unbeaten season which started on this day in 1990, in front of a crowd of 13,733.   Arsenal were insanely docked two points that season for a bit of pushing and shoving of the type that was regularly going on in games …

Remembering the great talents whose careers were broken by injury.

Publications “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” is the definitive history of Arsenal from its inception as a league club through to its first year at Highbury, and reveals dramatic elements of Arsenal’s early days that have never been revealed before. “Making the Arsenal” is a journalist’s inside view of the events around Arsenal’s …

Why season openings don’t always tell us what is going to happen

Publications “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” is the definitive history of Arsenal from its inception as a league club through to its first year at Highbury, and reveals dramatic elements of Arsenal’s early days that have never been revealed before. “Making the Arsenal” is a journalist’s inside view of the events around Arsenal’s …

When Arsenal scored ten goals in the first two games of the season

Publications “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” is the definitive history of Arsenal from its inception as a league club through to its first year at Highbury, and reveals dramatic elements of Arsenal’s early days that have never been revealed before. “Making the Arsenal” is a journalist’s inside view of the events around Arsenal’s …

Losing at home to average sides doesn’t mean we can’t win things.

Publications “Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football” is the definitive history of Arsenal from its inception as a league club through to its first year at Highbury, and reveals dramatic elements of Arsenal’s early days that have never been revealed before. “Making the Arsenal” is a journalist’s inside view of the events around Arsenal’s …

Do the media really know anything at all about negotations and transfers?

Considering that the media endlessly tell us who Arsenal are secretly negotiating with, who is going to be bought, and who is going to be sold, when it comes to the test, their knowledge is generally woefully lacking. Each summer between 85 and 110 players are tipped as coming to Arsenal, while the entire first …

The moment officialdom decided that it had to take on Arsenal

19 years ago today after a league match at Highbury, it was suggested that Mr Wenger, who until that moment had an utterly unblemished record as a manager,  had indulged in violent or threatening behaviour against  Mr Taylor, the fourth official at Sunderland.   At the hearing Mr Wenger was given a 12 match ban.   He …

The Arsenal contrasts: two defeats at the start of last season vs the club’s record runs

by Tony Attwood Looking at today’s anniversaries I am reminded of how much the media make of any possible stories of Arsenal failing, and how little they make of Arsenal’s successes.   Last season on this day Arsenal lost their second match of the season – having already lost the first, and the media were …

Celebrating the players that are loaned, loaned and loaned again

by Tony Attwood Being a supporter, rather than someone with that much particular inside knowledge of what is happening, I have become fascinated with players who seem to make almost an entire career from going on loan.  And I think of it on this day because it is the anniversary of Joel Campbell being sold …

Beware the stories told by an ex-Arsenal manager!

by Tony Attwood Just after the second world war, two Arsenal managers published their autobiographies.   One came from Leslie Knighton who managed Arsenal from 1919 to 1925, and the other from George Allison who was manager from 1934 to 1947. The difference between the two men can be seen from that fact that Knighton …

Arsenal’s best opening of a Premier League season.

What happens on the opening day of the season is not always a complete indicator of what was to come.  Certainly this seems to have been the case for 2009/10 when the result of the first weekend was Everton 1 Arsenal 6.   Arsenal finished 3rd in the league table at the end of the …

The most successful FA Cup manager of all time

No matter what records a club establishes in football there is always a strong chance that one day someone will come along and overtake that record. But one footballing record looks secure for many years to come – if not for all time… the record for the most FA Cup wins by a manager. The …

Arsenal’s chaotic reporting of its own history

Quite why Arsenal has always had a slap dash approach to its own history is a matter of surmise – but it could be seen once again on this day in 1968 when Arsenal published a new handbook with completely false details about the club’s origins – and of course no source information to back …

When Arsenal sacked their manager part way through pre-season

Sometimes pre-season games can be enough to show the board that the manager is not going to be able to deliver during the coming nine months.   And so it was on this day in 1996 when for the last time to date Arsenal sacked their manager, leaving the club theoretically managerless for the rest …

Only one person predicted Arsenal’s unbeaten season. But you’ll not guess who!

The answer to our question comes in  the entry for 11 August 2003, and I really don’t want to spoil the fun by telling you who it was. But I’ll give you a clue.  He later became a notorious critic of the club. Here are the anniversaries for today. 11 August 1923.  It was common …

What the papers predicted for Arsenal ahead of the unbeaten season

Staying with yesterday’s theme of predictions on 10 August 2003 the newspapers were making their predictions for the season to come.  None got it completely right – although that would be quite a lot to ask.   But some of the predictions were spectacularly wrong. Here are the anniversaries… 10 August 1916: The official documentary …

“Fair play is an English word. Unfortunately, it does not function any more here,”

At the start of every season people make lots of predictions but most of them are way off the mark.  And I don’t think that on this day in 1997, either before or after our first match of the campaign, anyone was predicting a particularly wonderful season for Arsenal.  We had come third in the …

The tragic demise of Paul Vaessen and Arsenal History Soc celebrates 10 years

It’s the 10th anniversary of the Arsenal History Society today, after we were formed as part of the Arsenal Independent Supporters’ Association.  But on a much sadder note we share the day as an anniversary with the death of Paul Vaessen who died, unremembered, on this day in 2001. There is a record of much …

If we want a complaint, how about the absence of Arsenal TV?

Several clubs have their own TV stations which run films of old games and discussions about current footballing affairs, plus of course player interviews. And Arsenal did have such a station for a while but it closed on this day in 2009 when its carrier – Setanta went into liquidation.  There is the on line …