Selling the best player to pay the bills: its almost as old as Arsenal itself

 

The Anniversary Files

Here are the Arsenal (and occasionally one or two non-Arsenal) anniversaries for today taken from the complete files of over 6000 Arsenal anniversaries which appear on the Arsenal History Society website.  An index to the Anniversary files can be found in the left column of this site under “Pages”

The current historical series on this site is Henry Norris at the Arsenal.   An index of all our series can be found on the home page.


 

14 June 1912:  Andy Ducat was sold to Aston Villa.   He was Arsenal’s one great player at the time, and was still only 26.  He had remained loyal to the club through all its troubles and had played 175 league games for Arsenal.

14 June 1920: Athletic News magazine gave fulsome praise to Sir Henry Norris for his work on steering the anti-gambling bill through the Commons.  It now moved onto the Lords where their Lordships who were fond of a flutter on the horses did all they could to hold the bill up. However it did eventually pass.

14 June 1973: David O’Leary signed for Arsenal.  He went on to become Arsenal’s all time record holder for first team appearances.  He stayed for 20 years whereupon he transferred to Leeds.

14 June 1973: Peter Storey made his 19th and last appearance for England.  He also played twice for England Schoolboys and twice for the Football League.

14 June 1974: Ian Selley born.  He joined Arsenal in 1990 as a trainee and won the SE Counties League and the Floodlit Cup winners’ medal in his first season.

14 June 1990: John Lukic left Arsenal for Leeds for £1m.  He played 265 league games for Leeds before returning to Arsenal in 1996 where he remained as backup keeper until 2001.

14 June 1993: Eddie McGoldrick joined Arsenal from Crystal Palace.  In all he played 57 times for Arsenal and scored one goal, before moving on to Man City, after a loan spell.

14 June 1997: Luis Boa Morte signed from Sporting CP to Arsenal for £1.75m.  The press were very critical of Arsenal’s signing of overseas players and in reporting the move the Daily Telegraph sarcastically said of Luis Boa Morte he was “apparently just one player, not three”.

14 June 2001: Francis Jeffers signed by Arsenal for £10m from Everton.  His transfer was not a success and in 2003 he was loaned back to Everton.  In all he had 12 clubs but never played more than 55 games with any of them.

14 June 2013: Denilson transferred to São Paulo who gave him a four year contract, after he had played 96 times for Arsenal, followed by a loan spell to the Brazilian club.

14 June 2014: Sir Chips Keswick announced as Arsenal’s new chairman, replacing Denis Hill-Wood who had been chair from 1962 to 1982.  Denis Hill-Wood was the third generation of his family to serve as chairman of Arsenal going back to his grandfather, Samuel Hill-Wood.

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