Arsenal Football Club History

On this day
19 April 1904: Bradford City 0 Arsenal 3 making it 91 scored, 22 let in – a goal difference of +69 – equalled only in 1934/5 but never bettered. Coleman scored to make it 23 league goals for the season. Arsenal drew the last match 0-0 to secure promotion.

19 April 1919: The semi final of the highly controversial London Victory Cup match at Highbury. Sir Henry Norris was outraged by Fulham’s manipulation of the situation and ultimately resigned as a director of the club.

19 April 1935: Arsenal 8 Middlesbrough 0. Amazingly it was the third time Arsenal scored eight in a league game and in each Drake got at least three. This time he got four. 45,719 watched the fun. Rogers (2) Bastin and Beasley got the other goals. It was Rogers first game.

19 April 1957 Good Friday 11am kick off Arsenal draw 1-1 with Blackpool before 50,000 + crowd at Highbury. Many came to see 42 years old Stanley Matthews play ‘for the last time’ – wrong by 8 years. David Durie of Blackpool and Mike Tiddy of Arsenal refused to play on religious grounds – both were lay preachers.

19 April 1965: Arsenal 3 Blackpool 1, made it three home games in a row with under 20,000 present. Baker got two of the goals to give him 25 in 42 league games. The result left Arsenal 9th, 16 points behind the leaders.

19 April 1965: Perry Groves born in Bow – so no doubt of him being a cockney. He was the nephew of Vic Groves who played for Arsenal in the 50s and 60s. He was also George Graham’s first signing (from Colchester).

19 April 1972: Arsenal 2 Stoke 1. FA Cup semifinal replay. George and Radford scored and took Arsenal to successive cup finals for the first time ever.
19 April 1976: Last game for Brian Kidd. He played 37 league games in the second of the two seasons he was with Arsenal, scoring 11, before returning to Manchester, but this time with City.

19 April 1980: Liverpool 1 Arsenal 1, in the League. Arsenal’s previous two games had been draws with Liverpool in the FA Cup. There was then a game against WBA before two more attempts to resolve the cup games, as Arsenal ultimately did.

19 April 1999: Arsenal beat Wimbledon 5-1 as Kanu scored his first league goal for Arsenal (he had scored in the cup on March 6). Parlour, Vieira and Bergkamp plus an own goal completed the rout in front of 37,982.

19 April 2006: Arsenal v Villareal, Champions League semi-final. Toure scored the last Highbury goal under floodlights while a squirrel on the pitch led to comments about the squirrel having more Champions League experience than Tottenham.

19 April 1997: Vieira kicked the ball out as Stephen Hughes was down injured. Blackburn took the throw and deliberately sent it behind the defence, chased it down, got a corner and scored. Blackburn shrugged off the Arsenal protests and gained a 1-1 draw

2 Likes

Will look it up but im sure it was Chris Sutton involved in that Blackburn goal…
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/freezeframe-arsenal-1-1-blackburn-1997

Gone downhill ever since… :henry2:

Happy Birthday Perry Groves.
No7 is LIAM BRADY

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/11/throwback-thursday-tottenham-vs-arsenal-may-3rd-19.html

Oh behalf of myself and I’m sure all on here , great posts SLAG . Really enjoyed trips down memory lane .
Excellent work bud .
Keep up the entertaining posts , some of which made me tingle with wonderful memories.

Btw
I remember BBC1’s SportsNight doing a century look back at the Arsenal and Ted Drake was on there . If I remember correctly, he was at Southampton and the Arsenal wrote to his father asking if Ted would like to join the Arsenal. I also seem to recall Ted was working on his fathers ice cream stall .
How times have changed.

3 Likes

Absolutely loving your posts SLAG, they’re probably my favourite thing about this forum at the moment. Don’t stop!

3 Likes

20 April 1889: Arsenal beat Spartan Rovers 8-0. In the course of 30 days of friendlies they also had 9-0, 6-1 and 7-2 victories

20 April 1908: Arsenal 1 Sheffield W 1. Final game for each of Gordon Hoare, James Ashcroft, James Bigden and James Sharp with Arsenal having finished 14th.

20 April 1912: Rangers 0 Arsenal 0. This appears to be the first game between the two sides, who later set up regular friendlies through the efforts of Herbert Chapman.

20-23 April 1914: The word ‘Woolwich’ was officially dropped from the club name as Woolwich Arsenal became (for a while) The Arsenal.

20 April 1964: Dave Bacuzzi transferred to Manchester City. He had played 46 league games and two FA Cup games across four seasons. He also won the Football Combination with Arsenal, and later became a manager in Ireland.

20 April 1966: Sunderland 0 Arsenal 2; one of only two wins for Billy Wright in his last 16 games in charge. During that run Arsenal scored just 12 goals. Skirton and Sammels scorte.

20 April 1968: Sunderland 2 Arsenal 0 made it two wins in 16 for Bertie Mee and left the club 12th in the League. But Arsenal won all of the remaining five games in the League in the season to offer some hope.

20 April 1971: Arsenal 1 Burnley 0. Charlie George scored to give the 9th straight win (during which run only one goal was conceded), and this with McNab and Storey absent playing for England! Arsenal went two points ahead and Burnley were relegated in the 38th league game of the first Double season.

20 April 1973: Eddie Hapgood died of a heart attack while attending a sports forum in Leamington Spa aged 64. His autobiography “Football Ambassador” was the first ever such book. So ground breaking was the book that Sir Stanley Rous, who went on to become president of FIFA wrote the introduction.

20 April 1983: Norwich 3 Arsenal 1. League debut for Colin Hill, last game for George Wood. Hill went on to have just one season for Arsenal as a regular full back, while Wood ended a three year spell with 60 league games and a move to Crystal Palace.
(Wood was one shit keeper)

20 April 1995: For the second year running Arsenal reached the CWC Final after losing 2-3 but beating Sampdoria on penalties in the semi-final. Wright scored on the hour but it looked like Arsenal were going out until Schwarz got the second on 88 mins. Dixon, Hartson and Adams scored penalties to take Arsenal through.

20 April 2000: Lens 1 Arsenal 2; Arsenal went through to Uefa Cup final after drawing 0-0 in the first leg. Henry and Kanu got the victory.
(Police were over the top at this game, batons drawn and used)

20 April 2011: Tottenham 3 Arsenal 3. Arsenal had lost at home to Tottenham in the league, but won away in the League Cup before this game. Walcott, Nasri and Van Persie scored to make it 16 games unbeaten in the premier league.

20 April 2013: Arsenal beat Fulham 1-0 at Craven Cottage in the fourth of 10 consecutive away wins. Giroud was sent off and Mertersacker scored only goal.

20 April 2014: In a match delayed by advertising hoardings blowing across the pitch, Ramsey and Özil returned after long lay-offs as Arsenal easily beat Hull away, proving if it needed proving, how important these two players were. Ramsey scored and Podolski got two

5 Likes

I was so up and about on this day 17 years ago when we won at Lens. From memory the round before it Ray Parlour scored a hat trick at Werder Bremen lol.

1 Like

I didnt have a match ticket but went anyway…one of my mates found a ticket on the floor outside the ground, so he got in. Word at the time was the local Turks(this was not long after the 2 Leeds fans were murdered) were going to have ago at us…OB were in over kill mode…They battered 3 Belguim gooners in town, threw one against a shop shutter lifting him off the ground to do it…got some pictures of OB outside the ground being heavy handed… Top trip though…


In this pic(this is the entrance to the ground)…OB are hitting people from behind gate with battons…Wankers…Remember some old boy getting cracked across head.

1 Like


8 Likes

21 April 1880: Birth of Charles McGibbon. He was the 7th centre forward of the 1909/10 season and came with no league experience but scored three goals in the last four games of the season to ensure Arsenal continued in the first division.

21 April 1908: Hearts 1 Arsenal 3. With the league season having finished the day before with a home game against Sheffield Wednesday, Arsenal immediately boarded a train and started a crazy tour of eight matches in nine days in Scotland.

21 April 1917: James Maxwell died in action against the Turks (fighting with Indian troops/Black Watch in 51 Division) in the Samarrah Offensive. His body was not recovered and no grave is known.

21 April 1930 Leicester City 6 Arsenal 6: the all time record top league score, Four goals for David Halliday, but that wasn’t enough to get him a place in the cup final. 21 April 1930 was also the last first team game for Dan Lewis. Despite being blamed for the 1927 cup final defeat he played over 30 times in each of the next three seasons.

21 April 1936: The demolition of the old East Stand at Highbury began. even though Arsenal had two more home games (against Chelsea and Leeds) to play. The new stand was opened on October 24, 1936.

21 April 1959: Arsenal 0 Rangers 3 – part of the continuing run of games between the clubs which was initiated by Herbert Chapman.

21 April 1963: Jock Rutherford died. He had already retired twice from football when he came back for a third and final time in January 1926 under Chapman to become the oldest man ever to play for Arsenal. Over 40,000 turned up for the Chelsea game, despite the building work.

21 April 1964: Don Howe signed from WBA for £42,000 – a record for a full back. He played on until 1967 when he became chief coach moving to caretaker manager in 1983.

21 April 1970: Sammy Nelson made his international debut for N Ireland v England. He played 51 times for the Province, all while with Arsenal except the last four (when he was with Brighton).

21 April 1971: Peter Storey’s international debut for England v Greece. He played 19 times for his country between 1971 and 1973.

21 April 1979: Derby County 2 Arsenal 0. One of nine Arsenal games in 32 days, but despite this high level of activity Arsenal nevertheless went on to win the cup.

21 April 2001: Arsenal 4 Everton 1, as Arsenal moved to being runners up for the third year running. This was also the start of the longest ever sequence of scoring in home games. It lasted until November 2003.

21 April 2002: Arsenal 2 Ipswich 0. One of the 13 consecutive victories; League match 34 of the 3rd Double season. Ljungberg got both goals. The result left Arsenal one point clear at the top of the league with one game in hand.

21 April 2009: Arshavin scored four in 4-4 draw at Anfield. The crowd was 44,424. If only 20 more had turned up everything would have been four-square.

6 Likes

Maradona is a gooner

Paul Vaessen RIP… His book is a good read…

Maybe we should give hi a call, even in his current condition still might do better than some of our squad members!

1 Like

@Ashgooner1 dont know how long ago this was taken but it looks quite recent

2 Likes

Brilliant SLAG .
Thank you for posting. I was watching the '89 game the other week wondering why happened to Theo Foley .
I can’t help it but I’m a George Graham era gooner . There was something about the club then .
Keep up the brilliant posts SLAG .

Did you see Graham Rix suffered a heart attack the other week ?

3 Likes

Whats the book called mate.

1 Like

Love that. Class.

1 Like