Note: The anniversary file pages have over time been split and split again as they have grown. Please use the index below to find the month you want. The links to the rest of the files and notes on sources and contributions are at the end.
- For contemporary events: Untold Arsenal
———————————
Last major update of this file 1 July 2022
1 July 1916: Arsenal’s annual report was published showing Henry Norris as being owed £7196 by the club, while the builders of the main stand were owed £18087 (about £2.5m today) – this sum guaranteed by Henry Norris personally. It also showed that the club had bought some further properties around the ground, which would later be used to improve the entrances to the ground and as accommodation for staff.
1 July 1918: There was an explosion at the National Shell Filling Factory in Chilwell (Notts) in which 134 died as 8 tons of TNT exploded. Only 10% of the bodies could be identified.
1 July 1918 Sir Henry Norris, having demonstrated his concern for the position of women in society through the vote in favour of equal pay for women teachers, followed this up on a personal level by setting up a trust fund for his wife assigning her many of the houses he owned as a result of his building work. Within the context of the era and standards of the age in which women were third class citizens (after men and boys) it was a very unusual and considered at the time an incredibly generous settlement and possibly dangerous – women did not get equal voting rights with men for another ten years.
1 July 1933: London Transport was formed by an amalgamation of the various companies that had been running public transport in the capital until that point.
1 July 1937: Reg Trim moved from Arsenal to Nottingham Forest where he played 70 games. After serving in the RAF in the war he played for Swindon and then worked in flight refuelling at Hurn (now Bournemouth) airport.
1 July 1939: The Women’s Land Army was re-formed to work in agriculture.
1 July 1953: Alan Sunderland born in Mexborough. He signed initially for
Wolverhampton, and played around 200 games for them, winning the Second Division with them, and the 1974 League Cup.
1 July 1961: John MacLeod joined Arsenal from Hibs. He started with Edinburgh Thistle as a schoolboy then went with Joe Baker to Armadale Thistle and finally Hibs, before choosing Arsenal over Man City as his next destination.
1 July 1966: Billy “Flint” McCullough left Arsenal for Millwall. He had played 253 league games, and went on to play 19 for Millwall, before moving on to Bedford, Cork Celtic and Derry City.
1 July 1968: William Naismith “Billy” Blyth died. After leaving Arsenal he had a role in the movie “The Great Game” filmed in 1930, the first movie (as opposed to a film of a game) which involved an Arsenal player, and which pre-dated the Arsenal Stadium Mystery by nine years.
1 July 1973: Richie Powling signed as a professional. He made occasional
appearances until 1975/6 when he played 29 games. But the arrival of Willie Young in the centre, combined with awful luck regarding injuries curtailed his career. He was last heard of in football as the director of football at Clacton Town in 2003.
1 July 1976: Terry Neill, a man oft confused by detail, claimed in newspaper interviews that he got the job as Arsenal manager on this day, although most accounts tend to put the date of his appointment on 9 July
1 July 1977: Kevin Stead signed on a free transfer from Tottenham, one year after Terry Neill made the same move as manager. Having made no impact at Tottenham he also made no impact at Arsenal and took part in just two games. He was released in September 1979, and joined Isthmian League club Oxford City. After retiring from football, he worked as a taxi-driver. He died in 2016 at the age of 57.
1 July 1987: Viv Anderson sold to Man U. He had played 120 league games for Arsenal and scored nine goals and was Ferguson’s first signing after taking over at Old Trafford. After leaving Middlesbrough as assistant manager in 2001 he was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2004. In 2005 he started to run a sports travel agency and work as a goodwill ambassador for the Football Association.
1 July 1990: Kevin Richardson transferred to Real Sociedad. He had played 96
league games for Arsenal and was a part of the 1989 league winning team that played the final game at Anfield to win the league. He was most recently heard of coaching the under 17s at Newcastle.
1 July 1997: Marc Overmars (£7m from Ajax) and Manu Petit (£3.5m for AS Monaco) both registered with Arsenal.
1 July 1998: Richard Hughes sold to Bournemouth. Although he spent five years at Arsenal he never played for the club, being only registered as a youth player, He had two spells with Bournemouth and a period with Portsmouth before retiring in 2014.
1 July 2002: Lee Dixon and Tony Adams, two members of the most famous of all defences, both formally retired. Dixon had played 458 league games with Arsenal and Tony Adams 504.
1 July 2006: The player loan agreement between Arsenal and Beveren ended – it is the closest Arsenal had to a nursery club since Margate in the 1930s.
1 July 2008: Mathieu Flamini left Arsenal at the end of his contract for Milan – only to return in 2013 again at the end of his contract there. After his second Arsenal spell ended he went to Crystal Palace. On 18 December 2018, Flamini joined Getafe for a second time. He never once left a club during the course of his contract.
1 July 2012: Gavin Hoyte released by Stevenage and signed for Dagenham. After 68 games there he moved on to Gillingham. He also elected to play for Trinidad and Tobago, and started to play for them in 2014/15. In 2019 he signed for Maidstone.
1 July 2013: The transfer of Yaya Sanogo to Arsenal announced. He cost £390,000 and went on to play in the FA Cup final of 2014. In 2015 he went on loan to Crystal Palace and played 10 times for them. After a series of injuries he was brought back to Arsenal for 2016/17 but failed to make the first team and left on 30 June 2017.He then joined Ligue 1 side Toulouse on a three-year deal.
1 July 2014: The start of Arsenal’s £170m partnership with Puma, which at the time was the most lucrative kit deal in English football history. In its opening video promoting its interest in and respect of Arsenal’s history, the company focussed on the cover of the novel “Making the Arsenal”.
1 July 2014: Arsenal announced a 3% price rise in ticket prices. It was the third rise in prices in nine years.
1 July 2018: Stefan Lichsteiner and Bernd Leno were signed from Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen respectively
1 July 2018. Arsenal had a major clear out of players including Santi Cazorla, Per Mertesacker (retired), Jack Wilshere, Marc Bola, Alex Crean, Josh Dasilva, Vlad Dragomir, Yassin Fortune, Ryan Huddart, Hugo Keto, Tafari Moore and Josh Benson.
1 July 2019: Arsenal released Cohen Bramall, Petr Cech, Charlie Gilmour, Stephan Lichsteiner, Julio Pleguezuelo, Aaron Ramsey and Danny Welbeck.
1 July 2020: For the first time in their history Arsenal played a League match in July, as clubs sought to finish the season delayed by the coronavirus outbreak. Arsenal beat Norwich 4-0 to make it three wins in a row.
1 July 2021: David Luiz released by Arsenal.
1 July 2022: The departure of French midfielder Matteo Guendouzi to Ligue 1 side Marseille was announced as well as the departure of Alex Lacazette who was released and went to Lyon. The arrivals of Fábio Vieira , Marquinhos, and Matt Turner were announced.
2 July 1970: Steve Morrow born. He joined Arsenal just after his 17th birthday in July 1987 and went out on loan to Reading, Watford and Barnet, playing his first Arsenal game proper on 8 April 1992. In 2008 he returned to Arsenal as International Partnerships’ Performance Supervisor, managing Arsenal’s international partnerships, including Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer in the United States, BEC Tero of Thailand and Hoàng Anh Gia Lai of Vietnam, and assisting Arsenal’s academies overseas. On 7 May 2021, Morrow was appointed The FA’s head of player selection and talent strategy working across England’s men’s teams.
2 July 1975: Charlie George ludicrously sold to Derby by Bertie Mee who put his own authority above the good of the team.
2 July 1977: Bob Wilson, the goalkeeping hero of the first Double season, re-signed for Arsenal as emergency cover, but didn’t give up his TV work.
2 July 1990: While preparing to show the full force of their wrath to Arsenal over a spot of handbags at 50 paces at Old Trafford, in 1991/2 the FA inexplicably reduced Swindon Town’s punishment for an illegal payment scandal and let them stay in Division II. The reasons for this change of heart have never been fully revealed (other than the fact that they beat Arsenal in a League Cup final).
2 July 1999: Steve Bould sold to Sunderland for £500,000. He had played 287 league games for Arsenal. He returned in July 2001 as youth team coach, became head of the under 18s, and then Arsene Wenger’s assistant.
2 July 2009: Ivan Gazidis proposed a salary cap in the PL. It was rejected and alternative versions were put forward – but it proved unable to stop Manchester City’s explosion in expenditure. Uefa started to water down its expenditure limitation process in 2015 and as a result failed to stop PSG. However Uefa returned to the problem in 2019 in relation to Manchester City’s finances.
2 July 2014: Ben Sheaf joined Arsenal from West Ham for an undisclosed fee.
2 July 2015: Ainsley Maitland-Niles loaned to Ipswich for the forthcoming season. He played 30 times for the club but was reportedly dropped after his mother made what was called an “X rated” phone call to the club. However by 2018 he was a full blown first team member.
2 July 2019: Gabriel Martinelli transferred from Ituano to Arsenal for £6m, after having been rejected by Manchester United.
3 July 1915: After a vigorous campaign against football continuing during the war (combined with a similar campaign to ensure horse racing did continue) the Football League confirmed that there would be no 1915/16 professional season but clubs could organise regional leagues in which players would not be paid, and “guest” appearances would be allowed.
3 July 1917: Arsenal player Gordon Hoare was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Service Corps in the mechanical transport section. By the end of the war, Hoare had been promoted to lieutenant. In football he has the amazing record of being transferred 23 times
3 July 1920: The UK got its first roller coaster ride, at a fairground in Margate.
3 July 1925: Charles Buchan, the man who helped develop (but did not invent) WM, re-signed by Arsenal in £100/goal deal. He played 102 games scoring 49 goals before finally retiring in 1928. Buchan’s first signing for Arsenal.
3 July 1933: Horace Cope sold to Bristol Rovers for £1500, having been signed by Chapman, playing 65 games for Arsenal. Bristol R was his final club, and sadly we know nothing more of him, save for the fact that he died on 4 October 1961.
3 July 1966: George Eastham scored for England in his 19th and final international
3 July 1996 Tommy Black signed for Arsenal. He played his only game for the club as a sub in the match against Middlesbrough on 30 November 1999 and was sold to Crystal Palace on 21 July 2000. He played for 13 clubs, the last being Debden Sports who play in the Essex Olympian Football League in 2012–13 season.
3 July 1997: Alex Manninger transferred from Grazer AK for £1m. In 1998, with an injury to David Seaman, Alex played six games without conceding a goal, and was then dropped upon Seaman’s return.
3 July 2000: Robert Pires signed from Marseille for the astoundingly low figure of £6m. Also that summer Wiltord was purchased for £13m and Overmars went to Barca for £25m.
3 July 2000: Eduardo César Daude Gaspar (Edu) joined Arsenal from Corinthians. Unfortunately his Portuguese passport was a fake, but he qualified for an Italian passport because of his father was Italian. He signed again for Arsenal on 16 January 2001. In 2019 he returned to Arsenal as a director, having worked with the Brazil national team.
3 July 2001: Sol Campbell signed after 11 years with Tottenham. He had played 255 times for Tottenham, and stayed with Arsenal for five years before moving on to Portsmouth.
3 July 2013: Vito Mannone moved to Sunderland for about £2m. He went on to play in the League Cup final that year having defied Man U in the semis and became their player of the year. However after an 8-0 defeat to Southampton in 2014 he fell out of favour for a while. In 2020 he joined Monaco.
4 July 1931: Tommy Black joined Arsenal from Strathclyde. He played 16 reserve games in 1932/3 before playing in the notorious defeat to Walsall in the FA Cup. He was transferred to Plymouth Argyle six days after the Walsall game. He ended his career at the outbreak of war in 1939.
4 July 1977: Six weeks after winning the FA Cup with Man U, Tommy Docherty admitted his affair with Mary Brown, the wife of the club’s physiotherapist. The club’s directors decided that he had broken their moral code and he was sacked. It wasn’t widely mentioned since nobody realised Man U had a moral code.
4 July 1990: Andy Linighan purchased from Norwich for £1.2m. He had previously
played for Hartlepool, Leeds and Oldham.
4 July 1998: Dennis Bergkamp became the Netherlands top scorer. He went on to score 37 goals in 79 international games – despite not wishing to fly to away matches. He left his coaching role with Ajax in December 2017.
4 July 2002: Start of the Alex Manninger adventure at Espanyol which ended 7 weeks later with the club saying they never had the money to buy him in the first place. The fee was £760,000. He retired in 2017 and worked in the furniture and property industries.
4 July 2013: Hector Bellerin signed a new long-term contract. Having transferred
from Barcelona in 2011 as a youth player he had been on loan at Watford during 2013/14 before in September 2014 making his Arsenal debut following a spate of injuries to other defenders. In 2016 and 2017 he was daily reported across all media as moving back to Barcelona. Amazingly it was all lies. How extraordinary!
4 July 2014: Hugo Keto joined Arsenal for an undisclosed fee from HJK Helsinki. He went on to be the under 21 keeper for Finland and under 23 keeper for Arsenal but in July 2018 moved to Brighton.
4 July 2020. Arsenal beat Wolverhampton away 0-2 as the league continued to struggle to catch up with matches missed during earlier parts of the coronavirus lockdown. It was our fourth consecutive victory in the league.
4 July 2022: Arsenal included five academy players in its summer training camp: Salah-Eddine Oulad M’Hand, Charlie Patino, Matt Smith, Lino Sousa and Reuell Walters.
4 July 2022: Arsenal signed 25-year-old Brazilian striker Gabriel Jesus from Manchester City.
5 July 1910: Harry Logan signed for Arsenal from Sunderland, having previously played for Shettleston, in the East End of Glasgow. His first match was on 3 September against Bury (although some sources quote a later date), in a 1-1 draw, playing initially at inside left, and later in the season at inside right. After 11 league games ending in March 1911 he seems to have stopped playing football.
5 July 1920: Amidst floods and insurrection, the first airmail service between London and Amsterdam was launched.
5 July 1939: Football League finally allowed numbered shirts having previously
outlawed them as Herbert Chapman and others tried to introduce the concept. See also here
5 July 1978: Paul Barron joined from Plymouth as cover for Pat Jennings and went on to play eight games before moving on to Crystal Palace. In all he played over 400 games before retiring and becoming a coach in the USA.
5 July 1982: Italy 3 Brazil 2. The match is remembered by all who dislike the attempts by the media to dictate the football agenda. Paolo Rossi was accused by the press of having an affair with a team mate, excessive drinking and drug taking. Appalled, the Italy squad turned their backs on the media, and in this world cup match Rossi scored a hattrick to put Italy through. He also scored both goals in their semi-final win, and the opening goal as Italy beat West Germany in the final. The media was dismayed and tried to pretend the attacks on Rossi had never happened, but everyone knew how the media had tried to control the agenda – and failed.
5 July 2001: Richard Wright was transferred to Arsenal for £2m from Ipswich as
deputy to David Seaman. He stayed for one year playing 12 games before
moving on to Everton
5 July 2011, Jérémie Aliadière signed a deal for Lorient, and played 76 games over the next three seasons. After retiring from football in 2017 he made the comment that during his playing days Arsène Wenger, was like a father to him and that they continued to remain in touch.
5 July 2013: Terry Burton became the reserve-team manager at Arsenal. Having captained the 1971 Youth Cup team he had worked at Arsenal as a coach, before moving through various clubs, and returning to Arsenal in 2013. He was last heard of a technical director at WBA, a post he left in 2015.
5 July 2013: In a move that surprised a few, Francis Coquelin, having signed a long
term contract went to Freiburg on a season long loan. He played just 16 times for the club and had difficulties with the manager, before returning to Arsenal in June 2014.
5 July 2013: Johan Djourou completed a loan move to Hamburg following a loan period at Hannover. He later signed permanently for Hamburg. He played for Serie A team S.P.A.L. whom he left in January 2019, and registered with Sion in 2020.
6 July 1916: During the 1st world war Arsenal’s chair, Henry Norris, undertook work for the War Office. The records of this work were later destroyed so piecing together his work is difficult but we know he worked in Worthing for the WO sorting out recruitment before this date, but was back in London by this date as he made a speech at a Chamber of Commerce event in Fulham. Such is the way the story is recovered – by joining the dots from the information we do have.
6 July. 1959: David Bowen sold to Northampton Town for £5,000. He had previously been purchased from Northampton, and now went on to play 22 times for them in the 1959/60 season before retiring for playing, but staying as manager of the club. He took Northampton from the 4th to the 1st division in five seasons. He was also manager of Wales (1964/74) and remained on the board of Northampton until retirement. He died in 1995 and the north stand of the Northampton stadium is named in his honour as is a street where he lived.
6 July 1980: Colin Addison became Derby County’s manager. He played 28 games for Arsenal in 1966-7 before moving onto Sheffield United. As a manager he was in charge or assistant at 22 different clubs in England, Europe, South Africa and the Middle East mostly staying for one season. He remained at Derby until 1982. In all he managed 22 clubs and ended his career as a commentator and football advisor across the UK and Europe, also consulting for clubs and media entities in Spain, USA and Asia.
6 July 1995: Jimmy Carter left on a free transfer for Portsmouth. Having come from an unsuccessful spell at Liverpool he played just 25 times in four years for Arsenal and had had two loan spells at Oxford. After leaving Arsenal he played almost 100 more league games for Portsmouth and Millwall. He retired from playing in 1999 and moved into support and charity work for clubs he has been associated with.
6 July 2021: Matteo Guendouzi loaned to Marseille for the season.
7 July 1917: Islington’s Baby Week concluded. These “Weeks” were held across the country to encourage mothers to work harder to protect the health of their children despite the hardships of wartime, amidst a growing concern about the rise in infant mortality in the capital from malnutrition and the continuing measles epidemic. Arsenal’s owner Henry Norris, was at the forefront of promoting them in London.
7 July 1921: Joe Wade born in Shoreditch. He joined Arsenal as an amateur in 1944 – while Britain was still at war and he was serving in the RAF. He played at left back
and playing mostly reserve football for Arsenal
7 July 1975. Charlie George joined Derby County in a £99,000 deal (although the date is quoted in some sources as 2 July). He played 106 league games for Derby
– his only long term assignment after leaving Arsenal.
7 July 1997: Paul Merson moved to Middlesbrough for £5m. He stayed for just one season and played 48 games, before moving on to Aston Villa where he played 101 games. After that he played for Portsmouth and Walsall before dropping out of the league to become notorious as an anti-Wenger pundit – something which he continued as part of his act for over 10 years before calming down.
7 July 1998: Following the arrival of Arsene Wenger, David Platt was released from his Arsenal contract one year early. He moved to Nottingham Forest but only played five games before retiring. In 2018, he was appointed as a club consultant for U.S. Città di Palermo of Italy’s Serie B following the club takeover by an English group
7 July 1999: Laurie Scott died. In 1951 he moved to Crystal Palace as player-manager but after Palace had to apply for re-election in 1954 he moved on to Hendon and later Hitchin Town.
7 July 1999: Jason Crowe moved to Portsmouth on a free transfer. In a career lasting to 2013 he played over 400 league games, with clubs including Palace, Brentford, Grimsby, Northampton, Leeds, Leyton Orient, and finally Corby Town.
7 July 2010: Laurent Koscielny completed his move to Arsenal from Lorient for whom he had played 35 games, for £8.45 million. Arsene Wenger stated in 2015 that he felt this was his best value transfer of the past ten years. On 6 August 2019, Koscielny signed for French Ligue 1 club Bordeaux, in a deal rumoured to be worth £4,600,000 and played 25 games in the 2019/20 season.
7 July 2020. Arsenal drew 1-1 with Leicester to make it four straight wins and a draw in the last five games and just three defeats in the last 20. The season continued until 1 August as a result of the cancellation of matches earlier in the season due to the pandemic.
8 July 1970: David Court sold to Luton Town having missed out on the Fairs Cup final games through injury. He played 168 league games for Arsenal, and in 1996 he returned to Arsenal as head of youth development where he stayed until his retirement.
8 July 1971: Don Howe left Arsenal to manage WBA. The move was not a success and WBA were relegated in 1973. Don moved on to Leeds and to Galatasaray, before coming back to Arsenal in 1977 as coach with Terry Neil as manager.
8 July 1975: David O’Leary became a full professional. He played his first game in the league aged 17, and went on to play 27 games in 1975/6, his first season.
8 July 1977: Wilf Rostron moved to Sunderland. He had played 17 league games for Arsenal and scored two goals. In all he played nearly 500 league games, including 317 for Watford. After ending his playing career he spent a few years in management before leaving football in 1994. Thereafter Wilf worked for a furniture company. He later went on to establish his own furniture business
8 July 1990: Anders Limpar signed from Cremonese. He played 94 league games in a four year spell at Arsenal, before moving on to Everton. He later won the Swedish league with AIK. After retiring in 2000 he went into coaching and then business.
8 July 1997: St Albans 1 Arsenal 4. The first friendly in what was to be the second Double season. The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.
8 July 1999: Kaba Diawara sold to Marseilles after just 12 games. He played for 17 different clubs but never more than the 60 games, but he did win the league with Bordeaux. He retired in 2011 and moved on to be pundit with Canal +
8 July 1999: After loan spells with Brentford and Millwall, Under 15 international
Michael Black transferred to Tranmere on a free. In 2011 he dropped into
non-league football playing for eight different clubs before retiring in 2009.
8 July 2002: Pascal Cygan joined from Lille for whom he had played 179 league games. He played 98 matches for Arsenal (including 20 games in the Champions League). He retired from professional football in 2011 after two years with Cartegena of the Spanish second division.
8 July 2006: Sol Campbell confirmed his departure from Arsenal after 135 games.
He moved on to Portsmouth, where he played another 95 league games. In 2009/10 he returned to Arsenal once more for a further 11 games. He was assistant manager of the Trinidad and Tobago national team and then Macclesfield. He moved on to be manager of Southend United but left before the end of the 2019/20 season.
8 July 2018: Greek central defender Sokratis joined the club from Borussia Dortmund for £14.8 million. He played 25 league games for Arsenal in his first season.
8 July 2022: Arsenal beat Nuremburg away 3-5 in a friendly.
9 July 1856: Nikola Tesla, the man who invented alternating current electricity supply system, was born
9 July 1910: William Rippon joined Arsenal. He had already played for Hackenthorpe, Rawmarsh Albion, Sandhill Rovers, Kilnhurst Town, and Bristol City.
9 July 1921: The two sides in the Irish War of Independence signed a truce to come into effect on 11 July, but on 10 July, 23 died in Belfast and the surrounding area and around 200 homes were destroyed
9 July 1938: As a sign of things to come, gas masks were issued to the population at large.
9 July 1976: Terry Neil became Arsenal manager, after having spent two years at Tottenham in which he narrowly avoided relegation and came 9th in his second season. (see also main index on Terry Neill)
9 July 1999: Barnet 1 Arsenal 6. Arsenal started a three year sponsorship with
SEGA worth £10m, with this match.
9 July 1999: Oleg Luzhny transferred from Dynamo Kiev. He won the Cup with Arsenal in 2003.
9 July 2004: Graham Stack went to Millwall on a year long loan spell. Despite
six years at Arsenal he never played a league game, but did get games with
Millwall and Beveren. He later had extended runs with Hibs and Barnet,
where he was also a coach, and in 2018 joined Watford as a coach.
9 July 2007: A season long loan spell to Colchester for Matthew Connolly was announced, but this was curtailed on 2 January 2008 after he had played 16 games and scored two goals, and his permanent transfer to QPR was announced. He was called up for the England under 21s shortly after. He then played for Cardiff and was released at the end of the 2019/20 season.
9 July 2019: Edu became Arsenal’s first technical director.
10 July 1916: The Princess Royal, colonel-in-chief of the 7th Dragoon Guards (the Princess Royal’s Own), opened a new building in the grounds of Fulham’s board of guardians’ infirmary. The building was to be used by the military for the duration of the war, and Captain Henry Norris, Arsenal chairman, was part of the welcoming party.
10 July 1920: Cyril Grant born. Seen as a possible post war replacement of Ted Drake, he played just two games for Arsenal in the difficult 1946/7 season. He then played one season with Fulham before finishing his league career with Southend United.
10 July 1921: The truce in the Irish war of Independence came into effect.
10 July 1956: Frank Stapleton born, Dublin. He joined Arsenal in 1972 as an apprentice (having tried his hand first with Man U) and played his first game in 1975 against Leicester in a 1-1 home draw.
10 July 1962: Telstar, the first communications satellite which paved the way for football eventually to be seen live around the world, was launched.
10 July 1975: Bob McNab completed a free transfer to Wolverhampton. He played 13 league games for them before moving to the US league, and then finished at Barnet. He managed Vancouver and Tacoma, was caretaker manager of Portsmouth in 1999 and then worked as a property developer in Los Angeles. See also here.
10 July 1985: Park Chu-Young born. In 2004 he won the Golden Ball for the most valuable youth player, and was Asian Young Footballer of the Year in 2010.
10 July 1988: A key moment in the history of the League as ITV proposed different payments to different clubs, opening the way to separate negotiations along the lines of the Spanish League’s arrangements.
10 July 1989: Rangers signed Mo Johnson, their first Catholic player, three months after Celtic had announced that they had re-signed him from Nantes. After a dispute Celtic pulled out of the deal, and Johnson moved to Rangers. It had taken 117 years for the club to sign a member of the Catholic faith.
10 July 1995: David Platt transferred to Arsenal from Sampdoria for £4.75. Platt said that Bruce Rioch had been on holiday in Portugal and flew to Italy to make the signing, and they “hit it off straight away”. He has since had a number of unsuccessful coaching and managerial jobs and in on 3 December 2018, he was appointed as a club consultant for U.S. Città di Palermo of Italy’s Serie B although the club was then removed from the professional league for irregularities.
10 July 1998: Arsenal, the double winners of 1997/8 beat Boreham Wood 5-2 amid rumours that Ian Wright was about to leave. Shortly after he went to West Ham but never found his form again.
10 July 2014: Arsenal signed Alexis Sanchez from Barcelona for around £30m. He became an immediate success being the club’s top scorer in his first season and showing an unending drive and passion while on the pitch. However in 2018 he left for Man U but only scored 5 goals in 45 appearances in his first 18 months after which he went on loan to Inter Milan.
10 July 2018: Arsenal signed defensive midfielder Lucas Torreira from Sampdoria for a reported fee of £26.4 million. He played 34 games in his first season with the club, but later went on loan to Atletico Madrid.
11 July 1302: The Battle of the Spurs between the French army and Flanders rebel as part of the Franco Flemish war. Unexpectedly the Flemish won. It has no connection with football, but just somehow seems a slightly odd name. Not sure why.
11 July 1866: James Boyle born in Glasgow and started out playing for Towerhill
before joining Celtic in 1890. He moved to Arsenal in 1893 and scored the goal which gave the club its first away point in the Football League
11 July 1890: Alex Graham born. He played at first for several Scottish clubs before getting a trial with Woolwich Arsenal in December 1911, by when he was 21. He
went on to play over 179 games for Arsenal. (See also here)
11 July 1922: Angus McKinnon transferred to Charlton after 217 appearances in 14 years. In 1923 he joined Wigan Borough who were then under the managership of former Woolwich Arsenal player Charlie Bell before moving on to New Brighton.
11 July 1956: Ralph Guthrie transferred to Hartlepools Utd, his home town club. He had only played twice for Arsenal, but was part of Hartlepools push for promotion following his return.
11 July 1977: Don Revie resigned as manager of the England national football team after three years in charge. The following day he accepted a four-year contract worth £340,000 to take charge of the United Arab Emirates national team, making him the highest-paid football manager in the world. He was considered utterly disloyal.
11 July 2000: Edu arrived from Corinthians in Sao Paulo. However allegedly his Portuguese passport was a fake (!) which was odd because he had the right to an Italian passport because of his father’s nationality, so he applied for one, and finally joined Arsenal on 16 January 2001 for £6 million. On 9 July 2019, he became Arsenal’s first technical director..
11 July 2003: Peterborough 1 Arsenal 0 – it was followed by Barnet 0 Arsenal 0. In fact the club only won four out of nine pre-season games, but still did rather well in the season to come. As you might recall.
11 July 2008: Arsenal fans voted Robert Pirès as the club’s sixth greatest player of all time, having spent six seasons at the club and played 189 games. He continued playing after leaving Arsenal, including eight games for FC Goa in 2014/15. In 2012 he became an ambassador for Grassroot Soccer, a non-profit organisation that uses the power of football to mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV.
11 July 2008: Samir Nasri signed from Olympique de Marseille for whom he had
played for four years, making 121 league appearances. After leaving Arsenal he was banned in 2018 for breaching WADA drugs rules and given an 18 month ban. After a period with West Ham in July 2019, Nasri signed for Anderlecht and was released one year later.
11 July 2011: Arsenal signed Gervinho from Lille. He had played for Beveren and Le Mans previously, and made 67 appearances for Lille, scoring 28 goals. Since leaving in 2013 he has played for Roma, in the Chinese league, and since 2018 for Parma.
11 July 2016: Isaac Hayden sold to Newcastle for a fee thought to be around £2.5m. By 2019 he had won the Championship with Newcastle and has played over 130 games for them.
11 July 2018: Arsenal announced the transfer of Matteo Guendouzi from Lorient for a rumoured £7 million. He played 33 games in his first season but was then sent out on loan for disciplinary reasons first to Hertha Berlin (24 games) and then to Marseille for 2021/2.
11 July 2021: Amid scenes of unprecedented chaos the final of the Euros was played at Wembley. Saka was racially insulted by some members of the crowd. No action was ever taken against the FA for its failure to operate the game safely.
12 July 100BC. Julius Caesar (of whom you may have heard) born. He oversaw the destruction of the Roman Republic, discovered that he was descended from the gods, and created the Roman Empire. Had he lived in more recent times he might have bought himself a Premier League football club.
12 July 1935: There was rioting in Belfast following the annual Orange parades, with 13 dead, hundreds injured and around 2000 Catholic houses destroyed.
12 July 1958: Steve Williams born in London. He signed for Southampton straight from school, and made his debut in a 1–0 victory away to Portsmouth aged 17 helping to relegate Portsmouth Division 2.
12 July 1963: Gerry Ward sold to Leyton for £8000. He made 44 league appearances for them before moving into non-league football. He died aged just 57 in 1994.
12 July 1974: Ray Kennedy sold to Liverpool. He had played 158 league games for Arsenal, but went on to play 275 for Liverpool before moving onto Swansea and finally Hartlepool, retiring from football in 1984. According to Wiki By 2002, he was reported as living alone and soon after as suffering from hallucinations. A Liverpool fan then bought him a computer so he could make friends in football chat rooms.
12 July 1974: Brian Kidd purchased from Man U for whom he had played 203 league games and scored 52 goals, after Manchester United were relegated to the second division and felt they could no longer afford his services.
12 July 1977: Red Star Belgrade 3 Arsenal 1 (in Singapore) (Macdonald); at the start of a four match tour which included two matches in Australia.
12 July 1977: The depths to which England football had sunk was revealed to the world as the manager Don Revie announced his resignation from the job not by telling the FA but in the Daily Mail in order to take over as manager of the United Arab Emirates. The FA banned him for 10 years for bringing the game into disrepute, but it was the FA themselves who had done that, and the ban was thrown out in court.
12 July 1995: George Graham found guilty of receiving £425,000 payment from agent Rune Hauge following the purchase of John Jensen and Pål Lydersen. He was dismissed by Arsenal and banned for one year by the FA. He went on to manage Tottenham.
12 July 1995: Stefan Schwarz transferred to Fiorentina. He had played 34 league games for Arsenal and later played for Valencia and Sunderland. It is said that Sunderland inserted a clause in his contract that said that he could not travel into space. He retired in 2003 and we have no further knowledge of him.
12 July 1998. The phenomenal strength of the Arsenal team built by Arsene Wenger was revealed for the world to see as Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira (along with Thierry Henry and Robert Pires who did not play in the final but were in the squad) became the first Arsenal players to win the World Cup; Petit also became the first Arsenal player to score in a WC final. Dennis Bergkamp won World Cup Goal of the Tournament
12 July 2007: Bacary Sagna signed from Auxerre for whom he had played 89 games. He had played in the same Auxerre team as Abou Diaby. His final signing was with Montreal Impact on 8 August 2018. On 31 March 2011, Sagna became an ambassador for Grassroot Soccer, an international non-profit that uses the power of football to educate, inspire, and mobilise communities to stop the spread of HIV
13 July 1856: Frederick Beardsley born. He worked in a Nottingham government munitions factory and played for Nottingham Forest as an amateur keeping goal in the FA Cup semi-final against Queen’s Park.
?13 July 1904 Phil Kelso officially started his duties as manager. He introduced the notion of professionalism to Arsenal, insisting that players live locally, and didn’t drink or smoke. He also got the players together for matches a day or two before, to start preparations – a revolutionary stance in those days.
13 July 1910: Woolwich Arsenal Football and Athletic Company Limited (the company which still exists as the ultimate company that owns the club) issued a financial statement showing it was already £700 in debt, through paying the players’ close season wages.
13 July 1920: In one of its most appalling acts in its entire history the London County Council banned people who were not English nationals from working for the council – an act that was legal at the time.
13 July 1929: Joey Williams played his second and final game in the FA’s tour of South Africa.
13 July 1930: The first ever World Cup competition began in Uruguay. England did not enter, and instead, in terms of overseas sports, the broadcasters and newspapers focused on the first ever British Empire Games held later that summer in Canada. On this day in Uruguay the scores were France 4 Mexico 1, USA 3 Belgium 1.
13 July 1936: Jimmy Dunne sold to Southampton. He never replicated his amazing goalscoring form that he showed at Sheffield Utd and after he was dropped was described in the press as the most expensive reserve in English football. However in the season after leaving Arsenal he scored 28 goals in 36 games for Southampton.
13 July 1970: David Court sold to Luton Town. He had played 175 first division games for Arsenal between 1962 and 1970.
13 July 1971: Following the departure of Don Howe, Steve Burtenshaw was appointed first team coach, being promoted from the reserves.
13 July 1995: George Graham banned from football for one year as a result of his taking illegal payments. He then returned with Leeds Utd before also managing Tottenham.
13 July 1998: Ian Wright having become the club’s all time record goal scorer left Arsenal to join West Ham. He played 22 league games for them, and also played for Nottingham F., Celtic and Burnley before retiring.
13 July 1998: The Daily Mirror ran the headline “Arsenal win the World Cup” on the
front page in relation to the previous day’s triumph for France.
13 July 2000: Jay Bothroyd moved to Coventry. He won the FA Youth Cup for Arsenal against Coventry in 2000 just ahead of his move, but never played for Arsenal in the league. He later played 116 league games for Cardiff. By 2017 he was playing in the J league.
13 July 2005: Robin van Persie voted Arsenal’s Player of the Season with 35.3% of
the votes as Arsenal came second in the league, 12 points behind Chelsea.
13 July 2011: Malaysia XI 0 Arsenal 4 (Ramsey, Vela, Walcott, Rosicky) – the first match of the pre-season tour.
13 July 2017: Arsenal opened their Australian tour with a 2–0 win over Sydney FC, with Mertesacker opening his final season as a player with an overhead kick to score the first goal.
13 July 2021: Arsenal played their first friendly of the season against Hibernian
13 July 2022: Arteta named a 33-man squad for the trip to the United States where the club would play three friendly games. The group included 17-year-old defender Reuell Walters as the only academy player to travel with the first team to the US.
14 July 1890: Tommy Winship born in Newcastle upon Tyne. He was known as ‘Tiny’ being only five feet four inches tall. He started out playing for Wallsend Park Villa in the Northern Football Alliance and joined Woolwich Arsenal in 1910.
14 July 1894: First “Woolwich Arsenal Football Company Day Excursion” to Hastings
patronised by 400 people, organised by the club’s great benefactor George Lawrence. It was quite possibly the first ever away match excursion
14 July 1917: King George V declared that male descendants of the royal line would from henceforth be called Windsor instead of being noted as part of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. On the same day, Winston Churchill became Minister of Munitions
14 July 1947: Archie Macaulay signed from Brentford for £10,000 having played with Rangers and West Ham and served as a physical training instructor in the war.
14 July 1969: Honduras and El Salvador had had very negative relations with each other for some time when they were drawn together in the World Cup qualifiers being played in 1969. After two drawn games diplomatic relations were broken off between the two countries as fighting broke out along their mutual border. El Salvador won the play off and then followed this up by invading Honduras. In the six day war that followed over 3,000 died and 100,000 were made homeless. The peace treaty was not signed for 11 years.
14 July 1976: Tottenham assistant manager Wilf Dixon defected to Arsenal to work
alongside Terry Neill, who described Dixon as “my best friend”. Dixon died in March 2014.
14 July 1989: Rhy Wilmot transferred to Plymouth after eight league games for Arsenal and three loan spells. He played 133 times for Plymouth and retired from playing in 1997, after which he became a goalkeeper coach.
14 July 1992 John Jensen signed from Brondby. The signing was, in 1995, shown to involve the agent of Jensen paying George Graham, a deal that led to Graham’s dismissal. Jensen played 132 games for Arsenal over four years before returning to his former club.
14 July 1995 David Platt joined from Sampdoria (also reported as 11 July in some quarters). He played 88 times for Arsenal before being released one year before the end of his contract, and then went into management.
14 July 1998: Scott Marshall transferred to Southampton. The move however was not a success and he quickly moved to Brentford. He was caretaker manager of Aston Villa in December 2018, but a significant lack of success in that role led to him being moved on very quickly.
14 July 1999: Stefan Malz signed from TSV Munich for whom he had played 36 games, but only managed six league games in his two years at Arsenal. The last record we have of him was as co-coach of the women’s second-division club 1 FFC 08 Niederkirchen but he was released in November 2012 and we have no further details of him.
14 July 2004 Manuel Almunia signed from Celta Vigo. (Different dates often quoted). Almunia never played for Celta Vigo, having had three loan spells, but went on to play 109 times for Arsenal. Wiki has this note: “Almunia, whose brother served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in Kosovo, had a noted interest in the second world war and regularly visited sites associated with the conflict before European games with Arsenal.”
14 July 2005, Arsenal sold Patrick Vieira to Juventus for €20 million. Also reported as 21 July. Juventus won the league that season but were stripped of the title for wholesale match fixing, and relegated, and Vieira quickly moved on to Inter.
14 July 2013: Arsenal beat Indonesia 7-0 at the start of a pre-season tour. Walcott, Akpom, Giroud (2), Podolski, Olsson, Eisfeld get the goals.
14 July 2015: Carl Jenkinson loaned to West Ham for the season. He played 20 times having played 32 matches in the previous season before an injury forced him back to Arsenal for repairs.
15 July 1946: Cyril Grant joined from Lincoln and was seen as a possible replacement for Ted Drake. He was one of 18 players newly recruited to the club for the first post-war season, but as with many others, was not a success.
15 July 1953: Freddie Cox sold to WBA for £3500. In 1956 he moved to Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic of the Third Division (South) as manager and in 1957 oversaw their Cup victories against Wolverhampton and Tottenham before losing finally to Manchester United.
15 July 1979 John Hollins joined from QPR. He played initially for Chelsea (including a spell as captain) and in 12 years knocked up 436 appearances including 167 consecutive games, before having four seasons at QPR. After that he moved to Arsenal aged 33.
15 July 1995: Stephen Hughes signed a professional contract. He went on to
play 49 times for Arsenal before moving on to Everton in 2000. His final football contract was with Walsall in 2008/9
15 July 2002: Arsène Wenger became a member of Legion d’Honneur. The Order was established by Napoleon Bonaparte on 19 May 1802 and is the highest decoration in France.
15 July 2006: Barnet 0 Arsenal 0. This opening of the pre-season games was played just before the first match at the Emirates – the Bergkamp testimonial.
15 July 2015: Singapore XI 0 Arsenal 4 (Akpom 3, Wilshere). This was the start of only the second unbeaten pre-season in Arsenal’s modern history. The first was in 2005. In the early 20th century Arsenal had several unbeaten end of season tours.
15 July 2017: Arsenal played the second game of their Australian tour, against Western Sydney Wanderers, in front of 83,000 people. Arsenal won 3–1 after first-half goals from Olivier Giroud, Aaron Ramsey and Mohamed Elneny.
15 July 2019, Arsenal beat Colorado Rapids 3-0 with Martinelli scoring on his debut.
15 July 2020 Arsenal beat Liverpool 2-1 in the League, as the club sought to finish off the season delayed by coronavirus. It meant five wins and one draw in the last seven games.
15 July 2021: William Saliba, join Marseille on loan for the season, where he earned rave reviews for his performances.
16 July 1917: The London Combination announced how it would run its wartime league for clubs in the capital in the season to come. The league was reduced to 10 clubs from the 14 of the previous season, removing the four non-London clubs: Watford, Luton, Southampton and Portsmouth, to fend for themselves.
16 July 1945: The first atomic bomb explosion took place in New Mexico
16 July 1936: The nation’s collective heartbeat stopped as George McMahon tried to shoot King Edward VIII at the Trooping of the Colour.
16 July 1946: John Hollins born in Guildford into a family in which both father and grandfather played football, as well as his three brothers.
16 July 1954: Jimmy Bloomfield signed. He played initially for Hayes and moved on to play for Brentford in 1952, but when the club were relegated from Division II into Division III South in 1954 he moved to Arsenal for £8000.
16 July 1962 Joe Baker was Billy Wright’s first marquee signing and Arsenal’s record signing at the time. He had been Hibernian’s top scorer for four years getting 102 goals in just 117 league games before moving to Torino.
16 July 1963: Bob Wilson signed as an amateur, having been playing reserve games for Wolverhampton while studying at Loughborough College (now Loughborough University) to train as a teacher.
16 July 1977: Singapore 1 Arsenal 5 (Macdonald 3, Stapleton, Brady). This was the second match of a four game tour also taking in Yugoslavia and Australia.
16 July 1996: Valur Gíslason transferred from Fram Reykjavík. He never played a league match for Arsenal, and in 1999 moved to Strømsgodset in Norway, before then returning to Fram.
16 July 2005: Barnet 1 Arsenal 4 (Hleb, Henry, Bergkamp, Hoyte). This was the start of the first pre-season series of the modern era in which Arsenal won each of six games scoring 20 goals along the way.
16 July 2008: Alexander Hleb signed for FC Barcelona from Arsenal for around €15 million plus €2 million if Barcelona won the La Liga. The club duly came first in 2008–09 which took his transfer deal to €17 million – just about what Arsenal paid for him. Hleb described the move as the biggest mistake of his life.
16 July 2011: Hangzhou Greentown (China) 1 Arsenal 1 (Vela). Match two of a six game pre-season series, after beating Malaysia 4-0 three days earlier.
16 July 2013: Seb Squillaci moved to Bastia on a free transfer. Although only given a one year contract this was extended and he played over 50 games for the club.
16 July 2013: The tale of Arsenal’s running man begins in the Far East. He ran alongside the team bus for so far that he was invited on board, and later came to a match at the Emirates Stadium.
16 July 2020 Konstatinos Mavropanos loaned to Stuggart until the end of the (extended) season.
16 July 2022: Arsenal beat 2-0 away in the “Charm City Match”.
17 July 1897: Roger Ord joined from Hebburn Argyle. During his time at Arsenal he kept 29 clean sheets out of his 99 games, a ratio of 3.41 percent which makes him the 16th highest on the Arsenal clean sheets list.
17 July 1888: Harry Logan born. He signed for Arsenal in 1910 and played 11 times for the club, but was only on the winning team once.
17 July 1903: Samson Haden born near Barnsley. He started his working life as a miner before playing for Castleford Town in March 1922, and was brought to Arsenal by Leslie Knighton and was the player who crossed for Buchan’s first goal for Arsenal.
17 July 1922: With the Prime Minister himself implicated, a Parliamentary Committee was set up to investigate the awarding of honours for cash. On the same day County Hall on the bank of the Thames was opened as the new HQ of the London County Council.
17 July 1940 Joe Baker born. He went through several junior Scottish clubs before playing for Hibernian and was their top scorer for four years getting 102 goals in just 117 league games. The Hibs board apparently refused to up his weekly wage from £12 to £17 and so sold him to Torino for £75k.
17 July 1965: Dan Lewis died aged 62. He was transferred from Arsenal to Gillingham in May 1931 having played 169 games for Arsenal in a career in which he was constantly in and out of the side. He played only six times for Gillingham
and retired from professional football soon after.
17 July 1977: Fulham, the club Sir Henry Norris helped take into the Southern League, and then the Football League, were banned from the transfer market due to a reported £700,000 debt.
17 July 1991: Team Malarvik 1 Arsenal 4. Campbell, Smith, Groves (plus og). This was one of eight pre-season friendlies played between this day and 7 August. Team Malarvik played in Stockholm. I’m not sure they are still in existence.
17 July 2002: Stevenage Borough 1 Arsenal 6. Interestingly, by 2015 Stevenage FC as they became known, had Teddy Sheringham as team manager and Dave
Beasant as goalkeeping coach. In 2020 they were relegated to the National League.
17 July 2004: Barnet 1 Arsenal 10. Reyes got three, Van Persie one, Bergkamp two. Jeffers got a second half hat-trick. Quincy Owusu-Abeyie got the other one on 70 minutes. This match took place in the midst of the “49”. Arsenal were undefeated in their eight pre-season games. See also here for more details.
17 July 2008: Gilberto sold to Panathinaikos. He played 76 games for them before moving on to Grêmio who he played for in 2011/12. He was technical director of Panathinaikos in 2016 and acts now as a consultant.
17 July 2010: Barnet 0 Arsenal 4 (Arshavin, Simpson 2, Nasri). At this time pre-season took on a regular format: the Barnet game, a training camp in Austria and then the Emirates cup as Mr Wenger kept the arrangements as low key as possible.
17 July 2013: Vietnam 1 Arsenal 7. (Giroud (3), Oxlade Chamberlain, Akpom, Miquel.) The second of seven pre-season games, following one in Indonesia, and followed by a match in Japan.
17 July 2014: Arsenal announced the signing of Mathieu Debuchy from Newcastle for around £12m. His first season was very disrupted by two separate long term
injuries and he missed a chance to play in the Cup Final. On 31 January 2018, six months before the expiry of his contract with Arsenal, Debuchy joined Ligue 1 club AS Saint-Étienne on a free transfer.
17 July 2015: Yaya Sanogo loaned to Ajax. After only three games he moved on in February 2016 to the youth team before moving to Charlton on loan where he started to get a decent number of games. He joined Toulouse in 2017 and has been a regular in their team since then.
17 July 2017: Arsenal beat Bayern Munich 3-1 in a pre-season friendly.
17 July 2019 Arsenal beat Bayern Munich in California in the 2019 International Champions Cup and 2–1 with Eddie Nketiah scoring the winning goal.
18 July 1870: The infallibility of the Pope proclaimed by the Vatican Council
18 July 1919: The Cenotaph in London was unveiled and the following day was designated Peace Day with victory parades in many towns. Unfortunately it didn’t always go smoothly as rioting ex-servicemen burned down Luton Town Hall.
18 July 1925: The first part of “Mein Kampf” published.
18 July 1971: Ray Parkin died aged 60. He played 25 games for Arsenal from 1925 to 1936 and scored 11 goals. He also played 232 games for the reserves winning the Football Combination five times at a time when Combination games regularly got crowds of 7000, sometimes far more.
18 July 1984: Bernard Joy died in Kenton, London aged 72. He moved into
journalism after giving up playing, and his book “Forward Arsenal!” became a
definitive guide to the club’s progress until 1954. Unfortunately it repeated many serious errors and omissions found in earlier histories – and invented quite a few new ones which then became part of the standard Arsenal story.
18 July 1987: George Graham signed a new five year contract as Arsenal manager, having taken the club to 7th in 1986/7, the highest position since 1982.
18 July 1998: 18 July 1998: Enfield 0 Arsenal 0. The second of a six match pre-season run which ended with Arsenal winning the charity shield 3-0 against Man United.
18 July 2003: Philippe Senderos joined Arsenal from Servette. He stayed with Arsenal until 2010 and played 116 games as well as having two loan spells with Milan and Everton. He played with Houston Dynamo until 2018 and joined Chiasso of the Swiss League in 2019, finally retiring from football on 16 December that year.
18 July 2005: Emmanuel Adebayor joined Manchester City for £25 million. He played 34 times for them, which when salary is included works out at over £1m per game – even more than Barce paid per game for Henry. He later moved to Tottenham. In 2017 he joined İstanbul Başakşehir and in 2020 Olimpia of Paraguay.
18 July 2005: Ashley Cole signed a new contract extension for Arsenal but it
didn’t stop him illegally negotiating his own move to Chelsea just one year later. In 2019 he was reported as playing for Derby County. He is now academy coach at Chelsea.
18 July 2009: Tomáš Rosický played 45 minutes against Barnet, following an absence of 18 months due to successive injuries following a game against Newcastle on 26 January 2008. The score was 2-2 with goals from Arshavin and Barazite.
18 July 2009: Thomas Vermaelen made his début in the match at Barnet. He
played 100 league matches for Arsenal and became captain but was seriously
hampered by injury before moving on to Barcelona. Vermaelen married in 2017 and in 2019 joined Japanese team Vissel Kobe
18 July 2015: Arsenal beat Everton 3-1 in the final of the Asia Trophy with Walcott, Cazorla and Ozil scoring. It was the second of five consecutive wins pre-season.
18 July 2016: After a long run over loan spells Wellington Silva was finally transferred to Fluminense. In 2019 he played for Inter in Brazil.
18 July 2020. Arsenal’s incredible improvement in form under new management was confirmed with Arsenal’s defeat of Manchester City 2-0 in the FA Cup semi-final. Aubameyang scored in each half. The result meant that Arsenal, having been joint top in the list of finalists with 20 previous appearances would now be out on their own as the club that has appeared in more finals than any other. 21 finals, and as it turned out, 14 wins.
19 July 1915: The FA and Football League held their AGMs. The League voted in favour of paying footballers during wartime, the FA against it, resulting in chaos. Eventually the League conceded. The FA then met the League and the Southern League and agreed there would be no FA Cup, but there could be regional leagues in the north west and midlands. This left the south and the north east without any football. Scotland had already voted to continue with professional football.
19 July 1919: Peace celebrations break out at the end of the 1st world war.
19 July 1954: Joe Haverty signed from St Patrick’s Athletic, and although only 18 immediately made his debut for Arsenal. He stayed until 1961 when he moved to Blackburn.
19 July 1966: North Korea beat Italy 1-0 in the World Cup finals, and so knocked them out of the tournament, at a time when Italy were odds-on favourites.
19 July 1995: Alan Smith announced his retirement. Between 1987 and 1995 he played 264 league games for Arsenal, scoring 86 goals. He went on to have a career as a commentator and reporter.
19 July 1996: A 0-6 away win to St Albans City on this day, with a team including much of the first team regulars like Dixon, Merson, Stephen Hughes etc, did not prepare supporters for four subsequent defeats and a draw in the rest of the pre-season. Fortunately a new manager was ready to step in.
19 July 2003: Arsenal drew with Barnet 0-0 after losing to Peterborough. Yaya
Toure played as a trialist but Arsène Wenger saw him as “completely average” and
did not follow up the option of signing the player.
19 July 2004: Manuel Almunia signed from Celta Vigo
19 July 2007: Gençlerbirliği 0 Arsenal 3 (Van Persie 2, Walcott). The seven match pre-season run saw the introduction of Bacary Sagna and Eduardo into the squad.
19 July 2008: Barnet 1 Arsenal 2 (Simpson, Barazite) The start of a 9 match preseason run in which Arsenal were unbeaten, including a 1-0 win over Real Madrid
19 July 2014: Arsenal began their pre-season games with a 0-2 away victory over Borehamwood, Olson and Afobe getting the goals. Arsenal’s team included many younger players hoping to make an impact including Coquelin and Bellerin.
19 July 2021: Arsenal signed Albert Sambi Lokonga from Anderlecht for £17m
– – – 20 July updated 20 July 2023 – – –
20 July 1871: FA secretary Charlie Alcock proposed a Challenge Cup competition for all member clubs. It began on 11 November 1871, and the rules stated that clubs that lost a match were knocked out, but all others would go forward (including those who drew) to the next round. The first winners were Wanderers based in Battersea.
20 July 1943: Bob McNab born. From 1963 to 1966 he played 68 games for Huddersfield Town before moving on to Arsenal.
20 July 1977: Australia 3 Arsenal 1 (Armstrong). The match was notorious for a drinking spree by the players after the game which saw Neill threaten them with expulsion but only one player (Hudson) ultimately was punished and he left the club. Neill’s authority was seriously diminished by the event.
20 July 1984: John Kay sold to Wimbledon for £25,000, after 14 games for Arsenal. After 63 league games for the Dons he went on to Sunderland where he played over 200 times. He finished his career in 1999 with Scarborough.
20 July 1991: FC Trollhättan 0 Arsenal 1 (Hillier). The second of eight pre-season friendlies in the build up to the first ever all-London charity shield match, against Tottenham who had won the FA Cup the previous season.
20 July 1993: Eddie McGoldrick’s first match – a friendly v Orient. He had played 147 matches for Crystal Palace where he had played alongside Ian Wright and went on to play 57 games for Arsenal.
20 July 1997: Stade Nyon 0 Arsenal 4 (Mendez, Boa Morte, Overmars, Bergkamp.. One of the friendlies before the second double season.
20 July 1998: Uefa approved Arsenal’s application to stage Champions League games at Wembley. The move allowed over twice as many people to see the games as would be possible at Highbury, and provided proof that the club could draw in enough support to fill the proposed new stadium.
20 July 2003: Gael Clichy signed from Cannes for whom he had played 15 times having graduated to the first team, after two years in the junior teams. Although the club was also the launch pad for such players as Zinedine Zidane, and Patrick Vieira, it was wound up on July 1st 2014 because of its financial situation. They are now in the 5th tier of French football (National 3)
20 July 2004: Martin Keown sold to Leicester City having won the league and FA Cup three times each plus the Cup Winners Cup. He played 17 times for Leicester and then five for Reading before retiring.
20 July 2005: SC Weiz 0 Arsenal 5 (Flamini, Henry, Bentley, Bergkamp). Part of the sequence in which Arsenal won every single pre-season game.
20 July 2009: Adebayor went to Man City for £25m. He had cost just £3m three years earlier, and as a quick profit sale must rank alongside Anelka who moved from £250,000 to £25m also in three years. Three years after joining City he was told he was not part of their plans and could leave.
20 July 2013: Andre Santos transferred from Arsenal to Flamengo after a short loan spell with Grêmio. He played 28 times for Flamengo before moving on to Goa.
20 July 2019: Arsenal beat Fiorentina 3-0 with two from Nketiah and a goal by Joe Willock.
20 July 2022: Arsenal beat Orlando City 1-3 in the Florida Cup
21 July 1898: Tom Whittaker born in Aldershot. His prime interest in his early days was in being a marine engineer, but he was spotted playing football while serving his country, and in 1919 signed for Arsenal. As Arsenal manager after the second world war, he won the league twice and the Cup once, as did Allison and Chapman before him.
21 July 1953: Brian Talbot born in Ipswich. He started his career with Ipswich Town in 1968 before graduating to the first team in 1972 playing 177 games for the club.
21 July 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon
21 July 1987: Alan Smith’s first appearance for Arsenal, in the Barrie Vassallo Testimonial. He had transferred from Leicester City where he had played alongside Gary Lineker, but was immediately loaned back to the club until the summer of 1987.
21 July 2000: Tommy Black and Julian Gray released to Crystal Palace. Black played in the Youth League winning side of 1998 and both players won promotion with Palace in 2004.
21 July 2005: Samir Nasri fractured his right fibula during a training session while playing for Marseilles.
21 July 2005: Patrick Vieira moved to Juventus. He only stayed one year before moving to Inter Milan for four years and then Manchester City for one year.
21 July 2014: Wellington Silva loaned to Almeria until June 2015. He was then able to obtain a Spanish passport through length of residence meaning he could play anywhere in the EU.
22 July 1934 Danny Clapton born in Stepney. He played for Leytonstone as an amateur before joining Arsenal in August 1953
22 July 1966: Tony Burns transferred to Brighton. He played as a goalkeeper 31 times for Arsenal. He continued playing until 1979, most notably playing 90 games for Crystal Palace, and then became a manager, and later goalkeeping coach.
22 July 1971 Jon Sammels sold to Leicester for £100,000, after becoming a victim of the “boo-boys” in the crowd. He had played 215 league games and went on to play 241 for Leicester, leaving them for Canada in 1977.
22 July 1989: First appearance of goalkeeper Alan Miller in a friendly against Skelleftea. He played nine times for Arsenal and then after several loan spells moved to Middlesbrough in 1994.
22 July 1990: Andy Linighan and David Seaman debuts v Varberg Bois. Linighan joined from Norwich while Seaman came from Queens Park Rangers. After Linighan retired from football he went on to run his own plumbing business.
22 July 1992 David Rocastle sold to the league champions Leeds for £2m. Later reports strongly suggested that he was very much sold against his will and was deeply distressed by the move forced upon him by George Graham.
22 July 2003: Oleg Luzhny sold to Wolverhampton W. Luzhny played 110 league games for Arsenal and was part of the team that won the 2001/2 double
22 July 2003: SC Ritzing drew with Arsenal to make it one defeat, two draws and
no wins in pre-season games. Matters picked up later and Arsenal won four of
the nine pre-season games all told before embarking on the Unbeaten season.
22 July 2004: Mathieu Flamini signed from Marseille on a free transfer – a profile he continued through his career, never once commanding a transfer fee. He played 102 times for Arsenal before moving on to Milan; returning in 2013, and then leaving again for Palace. After leaving football Mathieu not only became a partner in GF Biochemicals, he also co-founded The BioJournal the world’s first e-magazine devoted entirely to eco-sustainability.
22 July 2004: Ray Parlour joined Middlesbrough. He had played 339 games for Arsenal, and finished his career in 2007 playing for Hull. He currently holds Arsenal’s all-time Premier League appearances record of 333. All told he won the League three times, the FA Cup four times, the League Cup and the Cup Winners’ Cup.
22 July 2006: The Emirates Stadium opened with the Dennis Bergkamp testimonial, Dennis’ father kicked off the match. Dennis had played 423 games for Arsenal, and was part of both Arsène Wenger’s Doubles and the Unbeaten Season.
22 July 2016: Arsenal signed Bolton’s Player of the Year Rob Holding for £2m. The transfer was met with wholesale derision by the anti-Wengerian mobs who were spurred on by the mass media and their newly emerging small scale blogs. Although no one seemed to apologise for the abuse by the end of the season when Holding put in a sterling display in the Cup Final to see off Chelsea, it was apparent that this was another Wenger work of absolute brilliance.
22 July 2013: Arsenal played Nagoya Grampus, the club Arsène Wenger managed
before Arsenal. Arsenal won 3-1 with goals from Giroud, Ryo and Walcott.
22 July 2022: Oleksandr Zinchenko, joined Arsenal on a long-term contract
23 July 1403: Sir Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, killed in battle. He fought in several campaigns against the Scots in the northern border and against the French during the Hundred Years’ War. The nickname “Hotspur” was given to him by the Scots as a tribute to his speed in advance and readiness to attack.
23 July 1865: Henry Norris born. Utterly maligned by Leslie Knighton’s libellous and inaccurate autobiography but praised unstintingly by George Allison (who knew him from 1910 onwards) in his autobiography, Norris was the man who rescued Arsenal from bankruptcy, honoured all the club’s debts (not just the “football debts”) moved the club to north London, built Highbury, and ultimately brought Herbert Chapman to the club. He was also a war hero rising from no rank to Lt Colonel and being awarded a knighthood for his services to the country.
23 July 1893: Charles Ambler signed for Woolwich Arsenal having played five games for Royal Arsenal since 1891. He left Woolwich Arsenal without playing a league game, but then returned on 22 November 1895 from Tottenham, and played his one and only league game on 30 November 1895
23 July 1920: 14 people died and over 100 were injured in continuing rioting and rebellion in Belfast.
23 July 1942: Andy Ducat, suffered a heart attack and passed away while at the crease at in a wartime match at Lords. He played 175 times for Woolwich Arsenal and his transfer to Villa in 1912 signalled the financial desperation of the club.
23 July 1945: Jon Sammels born in Ipswich. He supported Arsenal as a boy and joined the club as youth player, winning seven youth caps for England.
23 July 1956: Bill Dickson sold to Mansfield. He had played 29 games between 1953 and 1956, having been signed from Chelsea. In later life he was a joiner and a part-time scout for Arsenal.
23 July 1966: England beat Argentina 1-0. Rattin was sent off for violence of the tongue, even though the German ref spoke no Spanish and Rattin no German. Alf Ramsey the England manager called the Argentine team “animals” (although England committed more fouls than Argentina) and refused to let his players exchange shirts. The newspapers the next day railed against the lack of respect for authority in South America.
23 July 1973: Liam Brady signed as a pro for Arsenal. He went on to make 235 appearances scoring 43 goals. Sadly he joined the team just as a serious decline set in, and left in 1980 for Juventus. His one trophy with the club was the 1979 FA Cup.
23 July 1984: Viv Anderson signed from Nottingham Forest. He had played 328 games for Forest, but he felt the need to move on as the club appeared to be in terminal decline. He displaced Colin Hill and played 120 times for Arsenal.
23 July 1988: Arsenal beat Yeovil 5-0 in Alan Skirton’s Testimonial, with Steve Bould making his first start.
23 July 1996: Kevin Dennis was given a free transfer from Arsenal to Brentford. He never played for Arsenal, and only played 17 times for Brentford before dropping into non-league football.
23 July 2001: Junichi Inamoto signed from Gamba Osaka for £3.5m. He played in the Carling Cup and Champions League, and despite a good 2002 World Cup he moved on to Fulham, before playing in Turkey, Germany and France.
23 July 2004: Ray Parlour sold to Middlesbrough. Few players are ever universally loved by fans, but Ray Parlour came closest, and Arsenal lost more than a player when he left. He won the league three times and the cup four times with Arsenal under Wenger – the manager who realised how to make maximum use of his talent.
23 July 2007: Freddie Ljungberg sold to West Ham for whom he played 25 games before moving onto Seattle Sounders, Chicago Fire, Celtic and Shimizu S-Pulse. He later returned to Arsenal first in charge of the under 23s, then as assistant first team coach, taking over the first team for a short while after Unai Emery was fired.
23 July 2010: Arsenal History Society published the article “Where is the statue of Herbert Chapman at the Emirates?” which led to discussions with Ivan Gazidis and finally the erection of a series of statues around the ground.
23 July 2014: Thomas Eisfeld left Arsenal for Fulham after making just one first
team appearance for Arsenal in the league. He signed a two year contract with
Fulham and later moved to VfL Bochum.
23 July 2011: Cologne 1 Arsenal 2 (Gervinho 2). Arsenal went on to draw with Boca Juniors and New York Red Bulls before beating Benfica in the final pre-season game.
23 July 2019: Arsenal played Real Madrid in the final International Champions Cup match of the campaign, and drew 2-2 having gone 2-0 up with goals from Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Arsenal lost on penalties but ended the tournament in 3rd place.
23 July 2022: Having already beaten Everton and Florida on their “Florida Cup” tour Arsenal beat Chelsea with Oleksandr Zinchenko making his debut. Gabriel Jesus scored his 4th pre-season goal, with the others coming from Ødegaard, Saka and Sambi Lokonga. Arsenal won 4-0.
24 July 1870: Harry Storer born. He became Arsenal’s first ever player to win representative honours, and the first player to be transferred for disciplinary reasons after a major falling out with fans.
24 July 1905: Widespread interest in Woolwich Arsenal led to the Daily Mirror noting that season tickets for the season ahead had gone on sale.
24 July 1910: Woolwich Arsenal FC formally taken over by Henry Norris and William Hall. They promised the Football League to use their money to keep Arsenal in Plumstead for one year, but by this date had extended that to two years in a promise to George Leavey. Eventually they paid for the club to stay at the Manor Ground for three seasons before moving to Highbury.
24 July 1946: Arthur Milton signed pro forms. He became the last ever man to play football and cricket at the top level for England. He remains in the top ten in terms of catches in first-class cricket (758) and in 1952, he equalled the world record of seven catches in a day, and eight in the match.
24 July 1966 Martin Keown born. Although he started his career with Arsenal he was eventually sold to Aston Villa and then on to Everton, returning to Arsenal to play 311 games six years after he had left the club.
24 July 1971: Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic 0 Arsenal 5. (Simpson 2, Radford 2, Kennedy). The first friendly of the season. Although there doesn’t seem to be a full team sheet available for this game, it is noted that Marinello played in the starting XI – an attempt to rehabilitate him after missing out on the previous season.
24 July 1977: After a players’ drinking spree in Sydney, on a club tour of Australia, Terry Neill diminished his power base somewhat by sending just two of the culprits home including Alan Hudson who did not play for the club again. On this day the result was Celtic 3 Arsenal 2 (Sydney, Australia) (Rice, Macdonald)
24 July 1989: FK Mjolner (Norway) 0 Arsenal 4 (Merson, Adams, Quinn, Campbell). The second of three games in an early pre-season tour of Sweden.
24 July 1998: The BBC reported that Arsenal had gained the “go ahead” to play European games at Wembley. It was a revolutionary move at the time, but turned into a disaster in terms of results.
24 July 1990: Västra Frölunda 0 Arsenal 4 (Linighan, Smith, Merson 2). The second of the pre-season matches in Sweden.
24 July 2000: Real Madrid signed Figo and launched the Galacticos era and Zidane, Ronaldo, Owen and Beckham arrived, leading to the club not winning anything for four years.
24 July 2002: Richard Wright signed for Everton for £3.5m. He had joined Arsenal in July 2001 for what is thought to be about £2m as a potential successor to David Seaman, and in preference to Alex Manninger, but played just 12 games.
24 July 2003: Oleg Luzhny joined Wolverhampton W after 109 games for Arsenal.
24 July 2005: SC Ritzing 2 Arsenal 5 (Bergkamp, Henry, Reyes, Hlev, Larsson). The third match of the pre-season in which we won every game of the six played.
24 July 2012: Arsenal played Malaysia on what seemed on TV pictures to be a
ploughed field. Eisfeld scored his first goal and appeared to have a bright future with the club. It was the series of games that was supposed to include a match in Nigeria, but never did. Eisfled moved on to VfL Bochum but his career was blighted by injury.
25 July 1883: Joseph Lievesley born. He played in goal for Poolsbrook United, and Sheffield United and was the unfortunate keeper to be in goal in an FA Cup first round replay on 16 January 1908 in which Swindon Town beat Sheffield United. It was Swindon’s first win in the FA Cup proper for 20 years. He later played in goal for the last-ever Woolwich Arsenal match.
25 July 1909: Louis Charles Joseph Blériot made the first airplane flight across the English Channel and won a prize of £1000 from the Daily Mail. He also developed the first practical headlamp for cars and was the the first to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane.
25 July 1910: Woolwich Arsenal was formally taken over by Henry Norris and William Hall in a meeting at the Mortar Hotel, Woolwich. It was chaired by George Leavey, who was confirmed as chairman of the new limited company with Henry Norris as a director at this stage. The solicitor Arthur Gilbert, was installed as company secretary.
25 July 1921: On 25 July Arsenal published its annual report, showing itself at last back in profit, to the tune of £5434 – about £250,000 today (without taking into account the particular inflation that has occurred in football above and beyond in the country at large).
25 July 1945: Although the war was over and it had been announced that the FA Cup would resume in 1945/6 it was felt it would be impossible for football league clubs to get their teams back together with demobilisation still being a long way from completion. On this day the league divided into North and South divisions although there was opposition to the plan.
25 July 1946: The four nations of the UK rejoined Fifa, having left the organisation in 1928, after Fifa agreed to countries paying amateur footballers “broken time payments” in compensation for money that amateur athletes lost at work by competing in the Olympics. The return was celebrated by a match between the UK and the Rest of Europe in May 1947 which the UK won 6-1.
25 July 1972: Arsenal 2 Watford 0 (Kelly, George). Playing Watford as the first pre-season game was a tradition of the time as Arsenal shared training facilities with Watford. It was the first of four matches before the start of the campaign.
25 July 1983: John Lukic signed for the first time. He transferred to Arsenal for £75,000 as a replacement for Pat Jennings and stayed at Arsenal until 1990 returning in 1996.
25 July 1987: Arsenal beat Morton 1-0 in Nigel Winterburn’s first game. He went on to play 440 league games for Arsenal.
25 July 1988: Steve Williams left Arsenal for Luton Town. He was replaced in the team by Michael Thomas.
25 July 1992: First game for John Jensen and Ian Selley in a friendly v Byafossen. Selley showed a lot of promise, but when he suffered a broken leg it affected his subsequent game and he spent his later career playing in non-league football.
25 July 1998: David Grondin signed from St Etienne. He made one Premier League, two League Cup and one UEFA Champions League appearance before going on loan to Cannes, Beveren and Dunfermline Athletic for whom he finally signed. He ended his career in 2010 playing for Brussels.
25 July 1998: Double winners Arsenal drew 1-1 away to Luton, making it two draws and one defeat in the first three pre-season games.
25 July 2003: Jens Lehmann signed from Borussia Dortmund for £1.5m. He went on to become the only goalkeeper ever in the top division to go a whole league season undefeated and later worked with Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. In retrospect, £1.5m must be one of the bargains of all time, just for that season alone.
25 July 2003: Arsenal beat Austria Wien 2-0 to record their first pre-season win after a defeat and two draws. Bergkamp and Jeffers scored the goals.
25 July 2012: Pedro Botelho transferred to Atlético Paranaense. He never played a league game for Arsenal but went on five separate loan deals after signing in 2007, prior to this transfer. By 2018 he was back playing in Brazil
25 July 2015: Arsenal beat Lyon 6-0 in the Emirates Cup with goals from Giroud, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Iwobi, Ramsey, Ozil and Cazorla. This was part of the run in which the club won every pre-season game.
25 July 2019, Arsenal completed the signing of French teenage centre-back William Saliba from Saint-Étienne for £27 million. As part of the deal he was loaned back until 30 June 2020. Arsenal also completed a season-long loan for midfielder Dani Ceballos from Real Madrid.
26 July 1887: James Maxwell, was born in Kilmarnock for whom he first played before moving to Sheffield Wednesday and then Arsenal. At Wednesday he competed with Harry Chapman (the brother of Herbert) for the right wing position.
26 July 1912: AGM of Woolwich Football and Athletic Company Limited. Henry Norris acted as chair and he took the opportunity to tell the audience that crowd figures were too low for the club to be sustainable.
26 July 1915: Members of the Football League and Southern League in the London region discussed keeping football running in and around the capital during the war and formed the London Combination, an independent league that would have no affiliation to the Football League. Henry Norris was elected as Chair.
26 July 1919: Henry White signed from Brentford. He was Arsenal’s top scorer with 15 and again in the 1921/2 season when he got 19. He also had a trial for England but was an extremely troublesome player who seemed to think “retain and transfer” did not apply to him.
26 July 1920: Ian McPherson born in Glasgow. He started with Rangers but left the club to serve with the RAF during the second world war where he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was signed in August 1946 by George Allison.
26 July 1933: Battersea Power Station came on line supplying a more reliable electrical supply to London.
26 July 1947: Alf Calverley sold to Preston NE. Calverley played 10 of the last 11 games of the season for Arsenal, at outside left, starting with Arsenal 4 Preston North End 1 on 15 March 1947
26 July 1950: Dave Bowen joined from Northampton for £1000. He had been spotted as a player of potential by the son of the Arsenal manager of the day, as both he and Dave Bowen were doing their National Service.
26 July 1961: David Herd sold to Man U for £35,000. In total he scored 107 goals for Arsenal in 180 games and he became the club’s 15th best goalscorer. He won five caps for Scotland, scoring three goals.
26 July 1973: After all the hope and hype Peter Marinello was sold to Portsmouth for £80,000 having never reached the potential he was believed by Berie Mee to have.
26 July 1977: Last game for George Armstrong in a friendly v Red Star Belgrade. He retired from football in 1979 having become Arsenal’s top player for appearances – 621 – a record that was eventually beaten by O’Leary and Adams.
26 July 1978: Kaiserslautern 3 Arsenal 0. The first pre-season friendly, with the full first team playing the whole game.
26 July 1984: Paul Merson signed apprenticeship forms, and played his first games for the first team in 1986/7 (seven games and 3 goals) before moving on loan to Brentford.
26 July 1985: Gael Clichy born. He joined Gersoise as a child and then aged 11 moved on to Cugnaux, Muret, Tournefeuille and finally Cannes with whom he made the jump into the first team.
26 July 1994:First game for Stefan Schwarz in friendly v Lyn. He had played 77 games for Benfica across a three year period but only played one season for Arsenal before moving on to Fiorentina.
26 July 1996: John Lukic returned from his time at Leeds on a free transfer and played 15 games in his final five years as a pro. He then moved on to coaching and working as an after dinner speaker.
26 July 2004: Marc Overmars retired from football and became technical director of Go Ahead Eagles. He returned as a player and played 24 games in the 2008/9 season.
26 July 2008: Four years to the day after retiring, Overmars returned to play in the Jaap Stam testimonial and for his team. He became director of football at Ajax in June 2012.
26 July 2010: The Arsenal History Society expanded its campaign for statues around the Emirates Stadium by suggesting that there should be three statues to launch the programme – including in particular, one of Herbert Chapman looking up at the stadium as if to say “I did this.” Which is exactly what happened.
26 July 2013: Joel Campbell went on loan to Olympiakos during which time he scored in the Champions League against Man U. In 2014/15 he returned to Arsenal, but soon went out on loan again.
26 July 2014: Arsenal played the club’s first game in the USA for 25 years at the Red Bull Arena, where Thierry Henry had played. New York won 1-0 through a goal by the son of Ian Wright.
26 July 2015: Arsenal beat Wolfsburg 1-0 with a goal by Walcott. It was the first time in the club’s entire history that Arsenal won every one of the club’s pre-season games.
26 July 2019, Mesut Özil and Sead Kolašinac were attacked in the street as armed robbers tried to hijack a car. Both escaped uninjured and the carjackers were later caught..
26 July 2020. Arsenal beat Watford 3-2 as the much delayed 2019/20 season came towards its end. This was the final league game, leaving Arsenal 8th in the league but there was still the cup final to come. Mike Dean refereed, and as expected gave Watford two penalties for their two goals in the second half, but Arsenal were already three up, with two from Aubameyang and one from Tierney.
27 July 1913: Albert Beasley born. Born in Stourbridge, he began his career as playing for local sides in Kidderminster, before joining Stourbridge. In 1931, while still only seventeen he was signed for £550 by Herbert Chapman for Arsenal
27 July 1935: Billy McCullough born. He played initially for Portadown and then in 1958 was signed by Arsenal being one of the first players signed by George Swindin.
27 July 1971: John Matthews joined as an apprentice. He became a professional in 1973 and then made his first appearance in the league in the opening match of the 1975/6 season.
27 July 1992: Blackburn broke the British transfer record paying £3.3m to Southampton for Alan Shearer, who had scored 23 goals in 118 league games thus far. The move followed the takeover of Blackburn by Jack Walker, and set the scene for ever richer men put ever more money into winning the league. Three years later Blackburn were relegated, by 2017 they were in League One.
27 July 2000: Brian McGovern joined Norwich City. He only played one league match for Arsenal, but played five on loan to QPR. He played 21 for Norwich in the next two years before playing briefly for Peterborough and then moving back to Ireland.
27 July 2002: Arsenal’s friendly against Rapid Vienna in Austria abandoned after rioting among local fans. The problem was entirely focussed on the directors of the Viennese club which had not won the league since 1996 and finished 8th the previous season.
27 July 2005: FC Utrecht 0 Arsenal 3 (Pires, Reyes, Henry). It was the fourth of six pre-season games in which we won every game.
27 July 2006: The old Highbury clock was erected onto the wall of the Emirates Stadium. The new clock inside the ground, based on the design of the original clock of Highbury was unveiled in 2010.
27 July 2009: Szombathelvi Haladas (Austria) 0 Arsenal 5 (Bendtner 2, Eduardo 2, Van Persie). One of seven pre-season games that summer.
27 July 2010: SC Neusiedl 0 Arsenal 4 (Walcott, Emmanuel Thomas, Chamakh, Vela). This was one of six pre-season games, of which the last was Legia Warsaw 5 Arsenal 6
27 July 2012: Arsenal lost a pre-season game against Man City as some supporters became anxious about the club’s direction following the departure of Robin van Persie and Alex Song. It was one of 12 pre-season matches that summer.
27 July 2014: Arsenal announced the signing of David Ospina from Nice for a fee
quoted in the press of around £3m, with Ospina replacing Fabianski. By early 2015 Ospina had become first choice keeper.
28 July 1750: JS Bach, one of the three greatest classical composers of all time (alongside Mozart and Beethoven) died.
28 July 1901: Bill Seddon born in Clapton. After playing junior football he moved to Gillingham, and had an unsuccessful trial with Villa before coming to Arsenal in December 1924.
28 July 1920: The first ever women to serve on a jury in the Quarter Sessions in the UK (the Crown Court) were sworn in.
28 July 1937: There was an assassination attempt on King George VI in Belfast by the IRA.
28 July 1951: Ray Kennedy born. He was initially rejected as an apprentice by Stanley Matthews, when he was manager at Port Vale, being told at the age of 16 that he was “too slow to be a footballer”.
28 July 1962: 74 years after the Football League was formed the German FA agrees to create a national league to replace regional leagues which had existed until this time. Bayern Munich did not make it into the new league, they protested, but their protests were turned away.
28 July 1970: A pre-season friendly away to Gothenburg Alliance started the season
that no one who was there could ever forget. Arsenal won 4-2 with goals from George (2), McNab and Graham.
28 July 1972: David Price signed professional forms having joined Arsenal in 1970, and made his first team début aged 17 in the end-of-season game against Leeds on 9 May 1973.
28 July 1975: Arsenal had a 2-1 win over Notts County, Hornsby and Kidd getting the goals. Then, in a further sign of cutting back, and the decline in Arsenal’s standing in football, rather than go to Europe, the club did a three match tour of Scotland.
28 July 1978: First game for goalkeeper Paul Barron (friendly v B. Dortmund) which Arsenal won 1-0. Barron came on as a sub for Pat Jennings.
28 July 1979: First game for John Hollins (friendly v Munich 1860). Hollins came on as a substitute for David Price in a 1-1 draw. It was noted that Macdonald was not playing, and indeed the following day he retired from football.
28 July 1989: Sigurður Jónsson known as Siggi signed from Sheffield Wednesday for £475,000 but his time with Arsenal was plagued with injury and he only made 8 appearances. He was subsequently voted one of the 10 top Icelandic players.
28 July 2000: Overmars and Petit signed for Barcelona. At €40.6 million Overmars was the most expensive Dutch player of all time but injuries inhibited his style and he rarely showed the quality that he had delivered at Arsenal. Including wages he cost Barcelona around £4,000,000 a game.
28 July 2002: Arsenal signed Gilberto Silva for just £4.5m. The low fee came because Atlético Mineiro had not paid their players, were banned from transfer deals, and there were problems getting the work permit despite the fact he went on to captain Brazil.
28 July 2008: In a knock about pre-season friendly against Burgenland XI, Bendtner scored four in the first half and Vela three in the second as Arsenal won 10-2
28 July 2009: Kolo Toure sold to Man City for £14m thus making Arsenal a profit of £13,850,000. He played 82 games for City before being transferred on to Liverpool on a free – thus costing Man City £170,731 per game.
28 July 2014: Alex Forbes died. After finishing as a player he had worked with the coaching team at Arsenal training the reserves and A team, before emigrating to South Africa where he coached school children. He was the last survivor of the 1950 FA Cup team.
28 July 2014: Calum Chambers signed from Southampton for £16m. He came as a full back, but there was soon talk that he could also play central defender or defensive midfield. He played 23 times for Arsenal in his first season – more than in his entire Southampton career before this.
28 July 2019: The Emirates Cup returned after a one year break caused by building work extending club level, but Arsenal failed to win the Cup for the first time since 2014. The Cup was then abandoned again because of the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed in 2020 the FA Cup final had still not been played (it was finally on 1 August).
29 July 1588: The Spanish Armada was defeated
29 July 1912: David Neave transferred to Merthyr. He had played for Arsenal in two separate spells between 1904 and 1912, making 168 appearances (154 in the league) and scoring 32 goals (30 in the league).
29 July 1956: Viv Anderson born. He joined Arsenal from Nottingham Forest and played 120 games over 3 seasons before moving on to Man U. While with Arsenal he made 16 appearances for England and scored two goals for them.
29 July 1972: Lausanne 0 Arsenal 6 (George 2, Kennedy 2, Radford 2). The second in a series of four pre-season games.
29 July 1976: Malcolm MacDonald signed from Newcastle for £333,333. There was an argument about the price between the clubs and eventually the Arsenal chairman said, “one third of a million and not a penny more.” And so it was.
29 July 1979: Three years to the day after being signed Malcolm Macdonald announced his retirement from football. There is no doubt that without his injury he could have helped Arsenal to greater things and his loss was a major blow. His final game was the last game of the 1978/9 season – a 1-1 draw away to Chelsea in which he scored our goal.
29 July 1989: Arsenal 1 Porto 0 (own goal). After winning the league at Liverpool Arsenal started the new season by playing a friendly tournament at Wembley. But despite being champions only 20,000 showed up for this game.
29 July 1995: Gaelstads 1 Arsenal 6 (Merson 3, Jenson, Bergkamp, Wright). Having appointed Rioch as manager Arsenal went on a three match tour of Sweden.
29 July 2000: Micky Thomas joined Wimbledon (his final club) playing nine times for them. After retiring from football, he set up his own security service, called Stop Taking the Michael, and has played for Liverpool legends.
29 July 2003: Arsenal beat Beşiktaş 1-0 to make it two wins, two draws, one defeat
in pre-season. Bergkamp scored the only goal, slipping the ball through the keeper’s legs.
29 July 2004: Kanu joined WBA. He played 53 times for WBA and 141 for Portsmouth. He left Portsmouth with them owing him £3m but dropped the legal case in order to help the club survive. See here for memorable incident. Here for first game
29 July 2005: Ajax 0 Arsenal 1 (Lupoli). Part of the pre-season run in which Arsenal won every single match.
29 July 2007: Arsenal 2 InterMilan 1 (Hleb, Van Persie) [Emirates Cup]
29 July 2009: Hannover 96 1 Arsenal 1 (Fabregas). Part of a seven match pre-season, prior to the notorious Champions League qualifier in which the media and Uefa conspired against Eduardo.
29 July 2011: Ever anxious to put the boot in, on this day the BBC described Wrexham 2 Arsenal 1 in the FA Cup 3rd round on 4 January 1992 as one of the biggest shocks of all time. And if it wasn’t, then it was Chapman’s defeat by Walsall. It seems no other club has cup shocks. Only Arsenal.
29 July 2012: After a 2-0 pre-season defeat to Man C Arsenal could only draw 2-2 with Kitchee. Walcott and Eisfeld scored in the Hong Kong Stadium. The team won only one of their first team pre-season games and it presaged a poor start to the season.
29 July 2015: Following Diaby’s release on 10 June 2015, he signed for Marseille on this day. After continuing injury problems in the first half of the season, he made his return on 18 March 2016, coming on as a substitute in Marseille’s 5–2 home defeat to Rennes. On 3 April 2016, he started in a league match against Bastia, his first league start in over three years.
29 July 2015: Wojciech Szczęsny loaned to Roma for one year playing 31 league games for the club in the course of the 2015/16 season.
29 July 2017: Arsenal beat Benfica 5-2 in the Emirates Cup with two goals from Walcott, one each from Giroud and Iwobi. The game marked an early appearance from Reiss Nelson.
30 July 1912: William Garbutt, ex-Arsenal man, appointed manager of Genoa CFC. Genoa was seen to be an English town in Italy, and Garbutt sought work in the docks – but within weeks he was given the job of being head coach of the club.
30 July 1915: Archie Macaulay born in Falkirk. He played at first with Rangers and then West Ham, served his country in the Army Physical Training Corps, and later signed for Brentford from whom he was signed by Arsenal in July 1947 for £10,000.
30 July 1923: Arthur Hutchins was given a free transfer to Charlton then of Division III South, having played 108 league games for Arsenal.
30 July 1934: Death of Lt Colonel Sir Henry Norris – the man who rescued Arsenal in 1910, built Highbury in 1913, and hired Herbert Chapman in 1925. Contrary to his current reputation he was very generous to the club’s staff, and always fought for Arsenal against vested interests elsewhere. See Henry Norris at the Arsenal for the full story of his work with the club.
30 July 1938: The first edition of the Beano comic went on sale while those who liked slightly more serious matters would have been eagerly reading the new summer publications including “Brighton Rock” (Graham Greene), “Scoop” (Evelyn Waugh) and the hit novel of the year “The Code of the Woosters” by PG Wodehouse.
30 July 1962: Jon Sammels signed as a professional. He scored on his debut in 1963 and went on to play 212 games all told, including making 21 appearances in the first Double season.
30 July 1966: England beat Germany to win the world cup
30 July 1969: Kaiserslautern 2 Arsenal 2 (15,000) (Radford, George). The third of four pre-season games.
30 July 1974 Brian Clough became the new manager of Leeds United, but his assistant Peter Taylor remained at Brighton as manager. Brighton had finished two places off relegation from the 3rd division under Clough, which is exactly where they ended the following season under Taylor.
30 July 1975: Hearts 0 Arsenal 2 in front of 11,000 fans. Kidd was injured on 20 minutes and replaced by Radford, but not before putting Hornsby through to score. Eddie Kelly ran the defensive side of the team excellently and Hearts hardly had a chance to get anywhere near the Arsenal goal.
30 July 1976: Arsenal 2 Notts C 0 (Ross, Macdonald). It was the first friendly ahead of the new season.
30 July 1985: Windsor and Eton 0 Arsenal 1 (Woodcock). First of four pre-season friendlies.
30 July 1989: Arsenal 1 Liverpool 0 (Bould) Just 23,000 turned up at Wembley for the second of two games in the Makita Tournament.
30 July 1991: Arsenal 2 Celtic 2. Paul Davis Testimonial. He stayed with the club until 1995, making 447 league appearances all told and scoring 37 goals.
30 July 1997: PSV Eindhoven 1 Arsenal 0 in a pre-season friendly.
30 July 2001 Real Mallorca 0 Arsenal 2 (van Bronckhorst, og). The fourth of seven pre-season games.
30 July 2007: Reyes, one of the Invincibles, left Arsenal. He had just had a season long loan with Real Madrid, playing 30 games for them, having played 69 for Arsenal across three seasons.
30 July 2008: Jens Lehmann, having moved to Stuggart, played his first match for them… against Arsenal. It ended VFB Stuttgart 1 Arsenal 3 (Vela, Bendtner, Wilshere)
30 July 2011: Arsenal signed midfielder Amaury Bischoff from Werder Bremen. Arsene Wenger admitted the signing was a gamble because of his injury record and indeed he only played one game for Arsenal, before moving on to Académica de Coimbra in Portugal. Also on this day: Arsenal 2 Boca Juniors 2 (Emirates cup) (Van Persie, Ramsey)
30 July 2015: Jon Toral loaned to Birmingham City for a season after a successful spell with Brentford. He played 36 games, scored 8 goals, and won awards for Goal of the Season award, Players’ and Supporters’ “Player of the Season” awards. After an unsuccessful spell at Granada he went to Rangers and finally found a permanent club in Hull City whom he joined in 2017.
30 July 2017: Arsenal lost to Sevilla 2-1 in the Emirates Cup, with a goal from Lacazette.
30 July 2021: Arsenal signed Ben White from Brighton for £50m
30 July 2022: Arsenal beat Sevilla 6-0 to win the Emirates Cup.
31 July 1910: After the Metropolitan Police sent a telegraph message to the captain of the SS Montrose en route to Canada to say Dr Crippen was on the ship, he was arrested upon arrival. It was said to be the first use of the telegraph in this way.
31 July 1914: Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxembourg,
31 July 1919: There were police strikes in London and Liverpool over the refusal to recognise the police and prison officers’ trade union. Over 2000 of the strikers were dismissed from their jobs as a result of the strike
31 July 1931: A report of the Committee on National Expenditure recommended the slashing of government spending to try to salvage the economy.
31 July 1951: Ian McPherson sold back to Notts County. He had played 152 games for Arsenal, and won a league winners medal in 1958. After County he moved to Brentford and then into non-league football.
31 July 1961: Joe Haverty sold to Blackburn for about £25,000. Joe spent one year with Blackburn, before moving on to Millwall, Celtic and Bristol Rovers.
31 July 1970: Kungsbacka BI 0 Arsenal 5 (Sammels 2, Kennedy, George 2). The third of five pre-season games.
31 July 1971: Benfica 2 Arsenal 0; “Champions Challenge Match,” celebrating
each club’s victory in their respective leagues.
31 July 1974: Cardiff 1 Arsenal 2. Brian Kidd’s debut, having signed from Manchester United. He went on to play 77 games for Arsenal before moving to Manchester City.
31 July 1979: Arsenal played out a second 1-1 draw with Duisburg, (Arsenal’s goal coming as an o.g.) in front of 5,000. Paul Vaessen came on as a substitute and clearly looked like a player with a real future at the club.
31 July 1981: Colin Hill signed professional terms, having played for Hillingdon Borough before moving to Arsenal as a schoolboy in 1977. He made his debut in April 1983.
31 July 1983: Meppen (of Germany) 1 Arsenal 4; the first game for John Lukic and Charlie Nicholas who scored two of the goals.
31 July 1994: Raufoss 0 Arsenal 9 (Wright 3, Merson 2, Campbell 2, Dikov, Carter). Having lost their first tour game against a local side, Arsenal got themselves back together in this game.
31 July 1995: Celtic 2 Arsenal 1. A pre-season game as speculation mounted that the manager was going to be sacked. There was talk of who might come in, but no one got anywhere near the correct prediction.
31 July 1999: Clydebank 1 East Stirling 2 attracted the lowest crowd for a league match in England or Scotland – just 29 people, as fans boycotted the game after Clydebank moved to Greenock Morton’s ground for the season. Some claim that Stockport v Leicester on 2 May 1921 got a smaller crowd – but that game was played at Old Trafford after Man U v Derby. Fans who had watched the first match could stay on to watch the second, and others could enter for free as the main gates were opened to let fans leave as the first game ended. As a result only 13 entered via a turnstyle and paid specifically to watch Stockport v Leicester, but the crowd in the ground was around 2,000.
31 July 2005: Porto 1 Arsenal 2 (Ljungberg 2). The final game of the tour meaning Arsenal had won all of their pre-season games.
31 July 2006: Schwadorf 1 Arsenal 8. In the build up to the opening match at the Emirates.
31 July 2008: Gary Lewin left Arsenal to work as a physio for England. He later suffered a dislocation to his left ankle and a fractured fibula, back of the tibia and ligaments while celebrating a Sturridge goal in a world cup match England lost.
31 July 2008: Tottenham bought David Bentley from Blackburn for £15m of which £7m went to Arsenal. He played just 42 games for the club (thus costing one third of a million pounds a game) before going on a series of loans to Birmingham, WHU, Rostov, and Blackburn. He later opened a restaurant.
31 July 2011: An injury to Wilshere forced a total rethink in the way Arsenal lined up with Arteta moved to defensive midfield playing alongside Song, leaving Vermaelen more free to push upfield during attacks. The result in the Ems Cup was Arsenal 1 New York Red Bulls 1 (Van Persie).
31 July 2014: Carl Jenkinson loaned to West Ham for one season. He had played 37 league games for Arsenal, and became a regular in the WHU side playing to much acclaim for two seasons, until he was seriously injured.
31 July 2015: Daniel Crowley loaned to Barnsley until October during which time he played 11 league games for the club.
31 July 2015: Isaac Hayden loaned to Hull City for the season. He played 18 league games and scored one goal.
31 July 2019, Arsenal played Angers in a friendly celebrating the 100th anniversary of the start of the record beating century in the first division for Arsenal and 100 years since Angers founding.
———————————
The anniversaries file aims is the biggest database of Arsenal events ever produced. However in trying to build it I always openly acknowledge that some of the details recorded here will be wrong, and facts will be inaccurate and will need correcting, not least because information may be taken from inaccurate sources, or (in my specialist way) I may have made copying and typing errors. So far over 250 people have contributed to the articles that make up the anniversary files, and if you can help us improve the data, please do either comment on an article (and I’ll correct the file itself), or write a new article for us. A correction and a citation of sources would be good however, rather than just saying “you’re wrong”. A special mention as always must go to Andy Kelly and Mark Andrews, who helped with the early development of this site. But whether you can add original research or corrections with the right data, or articles on people we have not yet covered, that will be very welcome indeed.
The dates in this file are being added to all the time, and come from a whole variety of sources including the internet and a variety of printed volumes. If you notice an error please write to Tony@schools.co.uk – ideally with a correction and a note of your source.
I would particularly like to mention Richard Lerman and David Brown, and their wonderful (but now tragically out of print) volume “The Gunners: Day to Day Life at Highbury”, which is a mine of information. Also to “Arsenal On This Day” by Paul Donnelley (Pitch Publishing). Also where would any of us be without “Arsenal a complete record” by Fred Ollier (Breedon Books), and “Arsenal the football facts” by Dean Hayes (John Blake). If I have missed another sourcebook, please do let me know and I will correct this at once.
If you know of any anniversary dates not yet listed, please do write in and add them. Not only are new dates being added at the rate of about half a dozen a day, but so are links being added to articles on this site. It is intended to produce a book based on this site in due course – but the date gets put back as I find more and more info.
Source note:
The dates in this file are being added to all the time, and come from a whole variety of sources including the internet and a variety of printed volumes. If you notice an error please write to Tony.Attwood@aisa.org – ideally with a correction. (Just telling me I am wrong, without giving a clue to either the right information or how you know I am wrong, is not quite as helpful as it might be).
I would particularly like to mention Richard Lerman and David Brown, and their wonderful (but now tragically out of print) volume “The Gunners: Day to Day Life at Highbury”, which is a mine of information. Also thanks of course to Andy Kelly, who has not only supplied dates and information, but who was involved in the “Day to Day Life” volume, and quite rightly is acknowledged therein. Also to Arsenal Football Club whose own On This Day appears on www.arsenal.com And “Arsenal On This Day” by Paul Donnelley (Pitch Publishing). Also where would any of us be without “Arsenal a complete record” by Fred Ollier (Breedon Books), and “Arsenal the football facts” by Dean Hayes (John Blake). If I have missed another sourcebook, please do let me know and I will correct this at once.
If you know of any anniversary dates not yet listed, please do write in and add them. Not only are new dates being added at the rate of about half a dozen a day, but so are links being added to articles on this site. It is intended to produce a book based on this site in due course – but the date gets put back as I find more and more info.
