1980: Arsenal pre-season after trying to win nearly everything

By Tony Attwood 1979/80 ended with one of the most overloaded match schedules in the history of the club.  Perhaps the most overloaded.   Arsenal got to the club’s third successive FA cup final (the only time this had ever been achieved by the club) but a combination of drawn games in the semi-final against …

Why every successful Arsenal manager in history should have been sacked

By Tony Attwood There is a clamour by journalists and their lapdogs in the blogettes at the moment for Arsene Wenger to be sacked because of the allegedly poor start to the 2015/16 season, in which his side has won one, drawn one and lost one. I’ve just published a review of managers sacked this …

1893: the first Arsenal pre-season

by Tony Attwood I started this series of articles about Arsenal’s pre-season campaigns simply because I couldn’t find a comprehensive record anywhere else and I kept wanted to check details.  I could see the results of friendlies, of course, and separately the transfers, but no overall view of what happened in each pre-season. But now, …

1981 Arsenal pre season: the pressure of expectation overwhelms.

By Tony Attwood Towards the end of the old season… On 11 March 1981 Peter Nicholas signed for Arsenal from Crystal Palace for £400,000.  He never really made the impact hoped for and after just 60 league matches he returned to Palace, before moving on to Luton, Aberdeen, Chelsea and Watford.   He made his first appearance …

1982: Arsenal try to get beyond one goal a game.

By Tony Attwood The 1981/2 season ended fairly poorly.   There was hope that in Stewart Robson Arsenal had found another talented youngster after he appeared on 2 January 1982  when he became Arsenal’s youngest FA Cup player.  Unfortunately the match ended Tottenham 1 Arsenal 0 in the FA Cup 3rd round and I think the …

1983 pre season: the horrors of being an Arsenal supporter

By Tony Attwood Oh the horrors of being an Arsenal supporter in the early 1980s! 1982/3 was part of the era of Liverpool dominance  – they won the European Cup, League Cup and the First Division.  It was also the era in which all players who qualified to play for England played in England.  And …

1984 pre-season: real hope but Arsenal fade away.

By Tony Attwood Despite the doom and gloom surrounding football in relation to falling attendances and press hysteria over hooliganism (which certainly existed as next season showed, but which was not as rampant throughout the game as the press made out) there was optimism at Arsenal that the club might at last have a team …

1985 pre-season: it was most certainly not the best of times

By Tony Attwood This article continues our series on pre-seasons.  There is an index to all the articles at the end. 1985 was football in crisis – at least according to the media – and in one major instance because of the media. Millwall fans created some havoc at Kenilworth Road, which led to highly …

Crystal Palace v Arsenal Sunday 16 August 2015 – The Match Officials

Untold Arsenal is still being erratic so here is the post we would have posted this morning.  It will transfer onto Untold Arsenal just as soon as I can do it.  When we have problems there are always details on Twitter @UntoldArsenal and the piece is published here and on our Facebook site www.facebook.com/untoldarsenaltoday   …

Untold Arsenal under attack again, FA up to its dirty old tricks again.

By Tony Attwood If you have been reading Untold Arsenal for a while you might remember a time when the site went down as we came under repeated attack from someone who really didn’t like the way we poked our noses into the bits of football that most of the media shy away from. And …

Problems with Untold Arsenal; where we’ve now gone.

Sorrry if you have been having difficulty getting onto Untold Arsenal yesterday and today. I’m trying to get things fixed, but in the meantime have put the last article, which seemed to cause a lot of the problems, on the Untold Facebook site  and I will continue to publish there until the problems are resolved. The …

Ernie Tuckett: Arsenal and Margate, and a tragic early death.

By Tony Attwood   Ernest William Tuckett to some degree is one of Arsenal’s mystery men although I have just about patched together most of the information that there is available in public records. He was born on 1 January 1914 in Lingdale according to Hayes, or 1 March 1914 according to Smith and Russell …

A Memorial to the founders of Arsenal’s Highbury dynasty: the launch of a new campaign

A Memorial to the founders of Arsenal’s Highbury dynasty Today, 8 August 2015, Arsenal History Society is launching its new campaign: a campaign to invite the club to erect a memorial to the founders of Arsenal’s Highbury Dynasty in the area that surrounds the Emirates Stadium. Every Arsenal supporter knows about Herbert Chapman – and …

1986: George Graham’s first pre-season. A slow start indeed.

By Tony Attwood On 22 March 1986 after reports circulated that the board were seeking to appoint Barcelona manager Terry Venables in his place. Don Howe resigned as manager 10 years to the day after Bertie Mee had resigned.  Steve Burtenshaw took over. Normally of course managers walk out or are sacked when things are going badly …

1987: six without a goal, 10 without a victory, the first signs of the famous back five

By Tony Attwood Arsenal had just won their first trophy since 1979, by winning the league cup on 5 April 1987, but even before that win Arsenal had tried to reform their major crisis: a complete lack of goals. Thus on 26 March 1987 Alan Smith signed and was then loaned back to Leicester for the remainder …

When did we last win every game pre-season?

By Tony Attwood, AISA Arsenal History Society This article started out as a search for another season in which Arsenal won every pre-season game.  It has ended up covering the history of pre-season matches – but yes, there has been one pre-season previously in which every game was won. Of course, no one regulates pre-seasons, …

After winning the league at Anfield, how did the summer of 1989 go?

1989 gave Arsenal its most famous end of season triumph of the modern era – replicating the achievements of 1 May 1953 by winning the league in the last match of the season.  It was the club’s first league trophy in 18 years. But then what?  What happened that summer and into the new pre-season? …