When Arsenal wrote to an unknown team and said “Would you like to play us?”

This is our daily review of Arsenal anniversaries taken from the Arsenal day by day  files prepared by the AISA Arsenal History Society.

Our headline is taken from 1886

Here are the stories from this day in history…

6 December 1885.Angus McKinnon, was born in Paisley.  He played with the junior league team Petershill in the north of Glasgow and there are suggestions Angus signed for Heart of Midlothian and then Carlisle United in the Lancashire Combination before going to Woolwich Arsenal in May 1908.

6 December 1886: Working through the events of the winter of 1886 we can conclude  that the Secretary of the newly formed Dial Square FC, having seen an advert requesting fixtures in “The Referee”, wrote to Eastern Wanderers on this day to fix up the club’s first game which then took place on the Isle of Dogs.

6 December 1913: Arsenal 1 Leeds City 0 and Chapman’s first visit to Highbury.  Before he was to become Arsenal’s manager, Leeds City would be ejected from the league and Chapman banned from football for life.

6 December 1919: 50,000 came to Highbury for the first time to see 1-1 draw with Chelsea.  It was also the day on which the programme referred to the club on its cover for the first time simply as “Arsenal”.

6 December 1930: Arsenal v Grimsby abandoned due to fog.  It was replayed on January 28th 1931 with the result  Arsenal 9 Grimsby Town 1.  

6 December 1955: Tony Woodcock born in Nottinghamshire.  He started with Nottingham Forest in 1974, joining their first team in the 1976/7 season and working under Brian Clough he was a major force in the drive to win the League, League Cup and European Cup.

6 December 1982 George Graham became manager of Millwall, at a time when they were bottom of Division 3.  They avoided relegation that season and in 1984–85 they were promoted to the Second Division.

6 December 1997: Arsenal beat Newcastle U away 1-0 in a sequence in which the club won two out of eight but still went on to win the Double for the second time.  (Game 17)  The second double: part 1, part 2, part 3.

6 December 2003: Leicester 1 Arsenal 1.  With no Henry, no Vieira, and Cole sent off for wild challenge Arsenal managed to secure a draw in the 15th league match of the unbeaten season.

6 December 2011: Olympiacos 3 Arsenal 1.  Arsenal put out a much changed team and with Fabianski injured on 25 minutes, Mannone took over.  Rosicky gave Arsenal the lead but Mannone had a difficult night thereafter.

6 December 2014: Stoke City scored three in the first half (including one in the fourth minute) and appeared to have scored a fourth before the ref changed his mind.  Cazorla and Ramsey scored in the second half to leave it 3-2 to Stoke.

6 December 2016: Basel 1 Arsenal 4 in the Champions League.  As a result of this and PSG’s results Arsenal won the group and on 12 December were drawn against Bayern Munich in the round of 16.

 

Yesterday’s anniversaries: The FA acts to wind up women’s football and demand clubs’ compliance.


 

The latest post from our series on Henry Norris at the Arsenal

The 1917/18 season; Arsenal’s players and the final league table

Special feature:

Highbury: from start to end with previously unseen pictures of the end of the stadium.

What’s on the Arsenal History Society site

An index to the various series that contain over 1,700 articles on this site concerning the history of Arsenal appears on our home page.

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