For details of the videos sorted by club, and videos in the order we published them, plus our 21 golden great videos please see here.
On this day in Arsenal’s history: a 2-2 draw with Palace – the video
26 October: A forgotten, but staggering Henry goal scored on this day in the unbeaten season
When we think of the unbeaten season we tend not to think of going 1-0 down to Charlton, but it is worth remembering now just to see the Henry equaliser.
25 October: the Ox has fun with the Villa defence
This is one of a series of videos presented day by day commemorating great Arsenal games.
This video comes from 25 October 2016.
Arsenal beat Man City away 0-3 on this day: the video
Arsenal score 7 on this day in 2007 – watch the video
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21 October 2008: Fenerbahce 2 Arsenal 5 – the video
If you are a regular reader you will know that for the past year we have been running a story for Arsenal on this day. That series now continues on our companion Arsenal History Society website – and of course all the past episodes of Today of All Days are still on this site.
But having completed a year of that series we are moving over to something different: a historic video of each day.
Here is today’s episode.
20 October 1990: Man U 0 Arsenal 1 – Arsenal deducted two points.
Arsenal started the 1990/1 season well, and indeed this turned out to be the trial run for the unbeaten season – we only lost one league match all through the season.
The first nine games of the season resulted in six wins and three draws – the ninth game on this day being a 1-0 away win against Manchester United.
That last game was the one where most of the players got involved in a fair bit of pushing and shoving and the ref lost control. I seem to recall him running around quite a lot, blowing the whistle quite a lot, and trying to pull players apart quite a lot. He would have been better off just stepping to one side, blowing twice, and then walking off, if he really thought it was the “mass brawl” that the press subsequently described it as.
There was an enquiry afterwards, and the FA decided to remove two points from Arsenal and one for Manchester United. Quite why there was this difference, quite why this suddenly happened having never happened before, and quite why other teams that engaged in much the same sort of behaviour were not punished in this way was never explained.
Players could have been suspended, Highbury could have been closed for a match or two… anything. But for the first, and I think the only time, the clubs had points deducted for not controlling their players.
And yet that sort of fracas was not uncommon. Odd that, that they should pick on Arsenal.
The deduction of points appeared in the league table on 17 November for the first time. Of course straight after the Man U game, no one quite knew what if anything would happen. We had, after all, seen it so many times before.
So the table after the Man U game but before the points deduction had Liverpool top by four points from Arsenal in second, with Tottenham in third.
After the deduction on 17 November the gap between the top two was even bigger and it seemed that the two points removal was the final straw. True both Liverpool and Arsenal were unbeaten but Liverpool now had 37 points and Arsenal 29 with Tottenham still in third on 25 points.
Liverpool’s start that season of 12 wins and a draw was indeed extraordinary and the press were writing the season off after just 13 games – Liverpool had won it, might as well stop now was the line most commonly taken.
But this was the season in which Arsenal won the league with games to spare, with Liverpool playing an afternoon televised match, failing to get the win they wanted, and Arsenal then playing the evening game against Man U (who had to give Arsenal a guard of honour at the start) with everyone singing a certain plaintive refrain about what could be done with the two points, over and over again, not just before the game but all the way through and for about an hour after.
It was nothing to do with Arsenal being champions, but a commentary on where the League could place the two points that had been deducted.
19 October 1974: when Arsenal and Tottenham were the bottom two in the 1st Division.
The autumn of 1974 was not a good time to be a fan of a north London club. On 16 October the result was Manchester City 2 Arsenal 1, the crowd a paltry 26,658 and Arsenal were looking like relegation candidates. The only relief was to know that Tottenham were in just as bad a position.
Tottenham recorded its lowest home crowd since the second world war (12,813, for the draw with Carlisle) while Arsenal went back to the bottom, after nine games without a win. At least our crowd size had not (yet) shrunk as low as theirs.
So it was that on 19 October Arsenal (bottom of league) played Tottenham (one from bottom) in front of 36,194. Tottenham won 2-0. Arsenal remained at the foot of the table while the bottom six also included QPR and Chelsea.
Quite when Arsenal last played Tottenham while being bottom of the league no one could remember – if it had ever happened before that is.
After the game the bottom six in the first division read, Chelsea, Leicester, Tottenham, QPR, Luton, Arsenal – it was not the time to be from the south. Worse, with Man U having gone down last season, the notion that somehow Arsenal, in the top league longer than any other club, could be “too big to go down” was clearly a nonsense.
Alan Ball changed his tune from just a few weeks before and suggested Arsenal were just “not good enough”, but it wasn’t that simple. The injuries to George, Armstrong, Rice, Kelly, Nelson, Ball, and McNab, plus the poor form of Blockley, were all part to blame.
But also so was the policy of Mee, and presumably the board, of keeping the number of first teamers low. He had got away with it, when in seasons like the Double Season, they could use a tiny number of players. But injuries do come around, and the club knew that the good run of few injuries would not last forever. A good management and directorial team prepare for what can happen, and in the case of injuries they most certainly did not do that.
Perryman and Chivers scored for Tottenham from far post headers, and Tottenham found it easy to work through Arsenal’s newly attempted open and positive style, but they won’t have fooled themselves. They were in trouble too.
Of course in the end it got sorted out. On 24 October Arsenal announced they had finally Terry Mancini bought from QPR with Arsenal reportedly offering far more than it would have taken to prize Mancini out of west London.
And with Mancini in the team finally relief came on October 26 as Arsenal beat West Ham 3-0 at Highbury. That 41,004 turned up was really something of a surprise. Maybe we all just thought it could never be that bad again.
So, after 12 games in a row without winning and a month sitting in the relegation zone Arsenal finally got a result – and a decent crowd as well. McNab came back, and Mancini made his debut. They both made a difference.
