Jon Sammels: wonderful player, victim of the 1960s Anti-Arsenal “fans”

By Tony Attwood Jon Sammels played for Arsenal between 1963 and 1971 and I remember him well.  Of course in those days the amount of information we had about the club was far less than now, and I never understood why he left when, as far as I could see, he was still such a …

Arsenal 7 Hibernian 1. Arsenal’s first televised game under the lights.

By Tony Attwood The match on 22 October 1952 was one of three friendlies played by Arsenal in the 1952/3 season. The other two were linked to particular causes.  First, on 29 September 1952 Arsenal played a team known as the All Stars, at Brighton.  It was the benefit match for our goalkeeper Alex Wilson, …

Arsenal and Arsène Wenger create new FA Cup records

By Tony Attwood It is sometimes said by statisticians that no one really remembers FA Cup semi-finals, and the media will undoubtedly be quick to forget the hype they made about the inevitability of Liverpool getting to the 2015 final so Gerrard could play on his birthday, and undoubtedly score the winning goal in his …

Untold-Arsenal struck down again… my apologies

It seems a long time since we had a techno problem on Untold Arsenal, but here we are on cup semi-final day, and it is down.  There’s a note popping up if you try to log on saying there is a loop.  I’ve asked a colleague to look at it, but it is saturday, and …

Eddie Carr played 12 games for Arsenal and won us the league!

Edward Miller Carr (known as Eddie) was born in Wheatley Hill on 3 October 1917 and worked as a teenager at Wheatley Colliery. At 17 he signed as an amateur footballer for Arsenal, going first to the Margate nursery club, and turning professional in time for the start of the 1936/7 season. This was a …

Arsenal v Blackburn 1964, and the promise of a heated pitch

  By Richard Bedwell On 11 April 1964, fifty-one years ago, I attended my first ever professional football match. It was at Highbury to see Arsenal play out a 0-0 draw against Blackburn Rovers in front of a crowd that barely half filled a ground which had a capacity at that time some 10% bigger …

George Drury: the man who refused to be sent off against Moscow Dynamo

by Tony Attwood George Drury was born in Hucknell on 22 January 1914 played 40 times for Arsenal either side of the Second World War.  He played for Heanor and Sheffield Wednesday in September 1934 and moved to Arsenal for £7,000 in March 1938.   He won a championship winners’ medal and he also played in the …

Why on earth did Arsenal go to Scotland and play nine games in ten days!

By Tony Attwood As footballing ideas go, this one looks to have been just about the craziest of all time.  To have a tour of Scotland immediately after the Football League season had finished, and end up playing nine games in ten days, is, well, bizarre. But that is what happened, and the games are …

Which Arsenal player was also a preacher?

Mike Tiddy was born on 4 April 1929. Mike first joined Torquay United when football resumed after the second world war, undertook his National Service and then played with the club until November 1950 when he signed for Cardiff City. He played 145 league games in five years with Cardiff before going to Arsenal, with …

Arsenal in the Southern Floodlight Challenge Cup (Southern Professional Floodlit Cup)

By Tony Attwood The Southern Floodlight Challenge Cup (also known as Southern Professional Floodlit Cup, and to some as the Southern Professional Floodlight Cup) was won once by Arsenal – on 27 April 1959. It was run from the 1955/56 season to 1959/60 but then in 1960 the competition was closed down and the Football League Cup …

Arsenal have just broken another record. Here’s their great consecutive sequences

On 4 April 2015 Arsenal made it seven consecutive wins in a row in the league, starting with a 2-1 home win over Leicester City on 10 February. Of course runs are hard to create – so I thought I might highlight a few of the great runs the club has had over the years. …