By Tony Attwood . Tom Whittaker became Arsenal manager on 2 June 1947. . He was on the move in the transfer market very quickly and in fact signed Dan Roper on 11 August 1947. . The manager then gave débuts to Archie Macauley and Don Roper in his first march in charge on 23 …
Thomas Stephen Caton was born 6 October 1962 and tragically died on 30 April 1993. He was a centre half, one of the wild bunch of hard drinking Arsenal players, but none the less a great player for all that – although he never achieved anything like his potential with Arsenal. Tommy was born in …
Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0 (again) This match saw Arsenal go top of the league, and was part an unbeaten run that started on 16 December 2007 when Arsenal beat Chelsea 1-0. The one defeat of the season so far had come against Middlesbrough on 9 December 2007 (2-1 away), and the new run including this …
By Tony Attwood It is still strange to me (although I was there) to remember some of the names that played in the Invincibles. I mean, we all know Lehmann did the 38 games, something no one else achieved, and we remember Henry, Vieira, Pirès, Lauren, Toure, Cole, Campbell, Ljungberg, Gilberto Silva – all playing …
From 1999 to 2001 Arsenal finished runners up in the Premier League three seasons running, the last of these being the year when Man U beat Arsenal 6-1 at Old Trafford, and Mr Wenger apparently truly did show his emotions after the game. In the final year of the three however Arsenal did get to …
15th August 1970: The balancing point. The Darkness has been ended. The Possible had been achieved. Now for the Impossible Context is everything. After the misery of mid-table hopelessness and 3rd round exits from the FA Cup Bertie Mee didn’t give us a Double out of nothing. He first gave Arsenal league cup finals, our …
By Tony Attwood There is a review of Arsenal’s season in 1929/30 here, and a note within that about the poor league form which saw us finish in 14th position. But in the FA Cup things were quite different, and finally it came to pass that Arsenal won their first major trophy. Having been …
1997/8 was Arsène Wenger’s first complete season at Arsenal, and as everyone will know, he set himself an impossibly high bar to measure up to thereafter by giving us a Double. It was our first championship in seven years, the first league/cup double since 1970/1 (only our second in fact although George Graham got …
How to go about writing for the Arsenal History Society (and, if you feel like it, Untold Arsenal). If you are writing an article for the AHS blog here are a few hints to make life easier for the editors, and to enhance your chance of getting the article published. First, and most obviously, please …
By Tony Attwood . When I started writing about the 1950s and 60s in Arsenal’s history on this site I soon hit upon the simple title of “The Darkness” to signify the era. . In 1953 Tom Whittaker had won another championship for Arsenal, but instantly things fell apart and the rest of the era …
Tony Attwood In the season 1908/9 the Football League began a curious experiment in which teams played each other home and away on Christmas Day / Boxing Day. The first incidence of this for Arsenal came with these two games 25 December 1908: Leicester Fosse 1 Woolwich Arsenal 1 26 December 1908: Arsenal 2 Leicester …
By Tony Attwood In 1979 Arsenal won the FA Cup against Man U in possibly the most famous ending to a final of all time. Alan Sunderland attained immortality and Terry Neill’s tenure as manager got a cup to polish. But then life went a bit downhill. 1980: Losing finalists in the FA Cup 1981: …
The Aisa Arsenal History Society Books on Arsenal at a discount On 5 December 2009 Arsenal beat Stoke 2-0 in the league, something of a relief after two consecutive defeats to Sunderland (1-0 away) and Chelsea (0-3 at home). At that time the table looked like this: Pld W D L F A G.D. Pts …
Anelka hits his first hat trick: 20 February 1999 In the summer of 1998 Platt and Wright had left the club. Nelson Vivas joined, along with Ljunberg and Kanu. We had won the league and cup double the season before, but on 12 September 1998 Leicester 1 Arsenal 1 meant Arsenal had four draws and …
In August 2000 Arsenal played Sunderland. It was suggested that after the game Mr Wenger, who until that moment had an utterly unblemished record as a manager, had indulged in violent or threatening behaviour against Mr Taylor, the fourth official at Sunderland. On 10 October 2000 Mr Wenger went to a hearing on the issue …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal and Tottenham played their first match on 19 November 1887 – the start of a series of five friendlies played between the clubs. However following a 10-1 drubbing of Tottenham by Arsenal in 1889, the games were abandoned for nearly six years, before resuming in 1896. The first game – which …
1976/77 Terry Neill’s first season as manager and Arsenal’s worst run of defeats. William John Terence Neill, to give him his full name, was born 8 May 1942 in Belfast and in December 1959 joined Arsenal’s youth side from Bangor for a fee of £2500, playing his first game one year later on 23 December …
By Andrew Beattie James Maxwell – a further update. You can read the original article on Maxwell here. He was the player who played in 1908/9 but who left of his own accord and was then implicated in issues relating to transfers that clubs did not necessarily wish to allow. Maxwell played for Sheffield …
By Tony Attwood 1961/2 was the end of the George Swindin era as manager. His record in the league had been 3rd, 13th and 7th, and in the FA Cup Arsenal had gone out in the 5th round, 3rd round and 3rd round, including in 1960 going out to Rotherham 0-2 after two drawn games. …
Tony Attwood . 13 February 1999 and 23 February 1999 – the time when Arsenal played Sheffield Utd twice in the cup, with neither game being a draw. It was the match in which Kanu received a Ray Parlour pass after a break in play for a Sheffield player to get treatment. Kanu passed to …
Tony Attwood 11 January 1969: Arsenal 2 Sheffield W 0. 6 consecutive wins, one goal conceded. First six in a row in the league since March/April 1956 Triumphs in football rarely, if ever, happen out of nothing. When Arsenal won the league and cup double in 1971 it is true that they had not won …
Hello The Arsenal History Society blog looks a bit different today. This is because of some nasty stuff happening around Word Press blogs. We’ve dealt with that but in so doing we’ve had to do some upgrades, updates, and the like, and during the course of the last one we lost some of the formatting. …
The story of 10 January 2004 by Tony Attwood . What’s the difference between Arsenal, The Arsenal and Woolwich Arsenal? . According to legend, (which we long ago showed to be untrue) Herbert Chapman changed the club from “The Arsenal” to “Arsenal” to get Arsenal’s result read out first on the 5pm sports report show …
By Tony Attwood Two changes happened to English football in general at the start of the 1925/6 season. The most famous of these was the change in the offside rule which led to Arsenal’s invention of the WM approach and tactical innovation. The second was a move by the FA which meant that instead of …
On January 18 2004 Arsenal went top of the Premiership with a 2-0 win at Villa Park. Thierry Henry got both. And those facts on any other day would have been enough to make the main back page story. Except that Thierry did more than that. He sidefooted home a free-kick in the 28th minute …