How Arsenal have managed to screw up their own history

Here are the Anniversaries from 13 August – part of our regular daily look at Arsenal’s history.

Our most recent article is The rebirth of Arsenal after the move to Highbury: November 1913.


 

13 August 1934: Ken Friar born.  He started with Arsenal aged 12 and rose through the club to rose become Company Secretary in 1973. During this time, he took part in discussions between Arsenal and Tottenham about a stadium share at Alexandra Palace.  Between 1983 and 2000 he was MD of Arsenal.

13 August 1966: Arsenal v Huddersfield pre-season friendly; George Eastham’s last game.  He was Arsenal captain between 1963 and 1966 and scored 41 goals in 223 matches before joining Stoke for whom he played in the 1971 and 1972 cup semi-finals against Arsenal.

13 August 1968: Arsenal’s new handbook announced that the club was formed in 1884 but “the project failed” and that the club was elected to division 2 in 1894.  The second claim was certainly false and no evidence given to support the first.

13 August 1980.  Clive Allen and Paul Barron sold to Crystal Palace, Kenny Sansom joining Arsenal.  Allen played three pre-season friendlies but no league games before moving on.

13 August 1988.  Arsenal beat Tottenham 4-0 in a pre-season tournament at Wembley with Merson, Marwood (2) and Smith scoring.  In the other match Arsenal beat Bayern Munich 3-0 with Smith getting two and Dixon the third.  Tottenham lost again in their second game.

13 August 1998: Isaah Rankin transferred to Bradford C for £1.3m.  He played just one league game for Arsenal.  He played in the league for ten years before moving into the non-league football, ending with Hendon in 2014.

13 August 2008: Arsenal defeated FC Twente 0-2 away in Third Round Qualifying Round of Champions League with goals from Gallas and Adebayor.  Aaron Ramsey made his debut as sub for Theo Walcott.

13 August 2010: Pedro Botelho loaned to Cartagena; Samuel Galindo loaned to Salamanca.  Neither player ever played for Arsenal, and Galindo had an amazing eight loan spells, and only played any league games in four of them.

13 August 2012: Ryo loaned to Wigan.  He played just four games for them, before later moving on loan again to FC Twente.

Details of the whole list of 5000 Arsenal anniversaries and other activities undertaken by the Arsenal History Society are below.

If you spot any errors please do write in and say, and we’ll correct them.  We think we’ve got up to about 97% accuracy, and anything you can do to help us weed out the final 3% of wrong-uns would be much appreciated.

 


Also on this day

In 1888 John Logie Baird was born.  The Scottish inventor has an awful lot to answer for – he invented the television.

In 1899 Alfred Hitchcock was born.  He invented a totally new way of making movies and as a result transformed the way films were shown in the cinema by insisting that cinemas showing his movies could only allow in patrons prior to the start of the film – not at any time (including part way through) as was the convention before then.


The current series from the Arsenal History Series being developed on this site is  Henry Norris at the Arsenal, covering all aspects off the life and work of the man who rescued Arsenal from extinction, secured the club’s future by moving it to Highbury, and then brought in Herbert Chapman as manager.

The previously untold tale of how it was that Norris came to choose Highbury as the suitable location for Arsenal’s new ground.

The series is being worked on daily, and the articles thus far are here.

Among the many other series we have run are…

There are details of many other series covered by this site on our home page.

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