This series takes a look at what was happening to Arsenal and in the world around them on this day at one point in Arsenal’s past.
18 October 1997. Arsenal were top of the league. But then…
But then, Arsenal started a run of just two wins in eight matches with Crystal Palace 0 Arsenal 0. This was also Alberto Mendez’ league début in the 11th game of the season.
This was followed by a second goalless draw – this one at home against Villa.
After that we lost 3-0 to Derby, before getting a home win against Manchester United by the odd goal in five.
That was our first win in four, but then the league form continued its downward spiral with two more defeats (with Arsenal not scoring a goal).
A 1-0 victory over Newcastle gave momentary relief but then it was back to the defeats on 13 December with a 1-3 home defeat to Blackburn.
There was a Boxing Day win against Leicester 2-1 but then a draw away to Tottenham rounded off the Christmas period. Arsenal ended the year in sixth, 12 points behind the league leaders, Manchester United.
And as far as the media were concerned that was it for Arsenal. Another season of a spot of promise (we were top of the league on 18 October remember) but then collapse. Same old Arsenal.
It didn’t quite work out like that though. 1997/8 was the season of Arsenal’s second Double.
17 October 1970: Arsenal hammer Everton 4-0 as things look interesting
League Match 17 in the 1970/71 season on 17 October. Arsenal beat Everton 4-0. Kennedy got two, Kelly got one and Storey the penalty.
This was a match of considerable importance.
First, it was a match of swagger and style and a thumping win over the reigning champions. Second it was the third match since the awful 0-5 defeat away to Stoke; and those three results were
Beat Nottingham Forest 4-0 (home)
Drew with Newcastle (away) 1-1
Beat Everton 4-0 (home)
Now this in itself was important because the press, always keen to knock Arsenal, had been saying that the 0-5 reverse to Stoke had shown that Arsenal thus far had been flattering to deceive. The two 4-0 wins and the creditable away draw showed this was not the case.
Third, it was the start of four successive wins as we beat Everton, Coventry, Derby and Blackpool.
Fourth it was part of a 14 match unbeaten run which included 11 wins and just 3 draws.
And fifth it was a period when goals came from everywhere. In addition to those scoring in this match Armstrong, Graham and Radford all knocked them in, and it looked like even if more injuries came (Charlie George did not return to the side until February) Arsenal could score from all parts of the pitch.
The crowd believed in Arsenal too. 50,000 turned up for the Everton game and 43,000 for the next home game against Derby. These were high numbers for a club that but a few years earlier had been used to 20,000 more than 40,000
It was in fact, the core of the winning of the double. Indeed much of the success of the club that season can be put down to the follow up to that 5-0 reverse against Stoke.
In fact the oddity of that scoreline can be seen from the facts of the matches around that game:
September 19 beat WBA 6-2
September 26 lost to Stoke 0-5
October 3 beat Nottingham Forest 4-0
October 10 drew with Newcastle 1-1
October 17 beat Everton 4-0
16 October 1974: for Arsenal it was the worst of times.
On this day Arsenal, lingering at or near the foot of the table all season, faced Man City away. The result was disappointing, being Manchester City 2 Arsenal 1, the crowd a paltry 26,658.
This was a terrible night to be a follower of north London football and the only relief was to know that your main rivals were having just as hard a time of it as you were.
Both Arsenal and Tottenham looked relegation in the mouth as 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.
Arsenal actually took the lead on 15 minutes, but then yet again made the classic mistake of doing an Ipswich (as the saying went at the time) and pulling everyone back into defence. Richie Powling did his best in the centre of that defence, but he didn’t look up to the task, and it was not surprising that Manchester City were able to seek some revenge for that second Saturday of the season when Arsenal had actually looked rather promising.
There was worse to come with a north London derby up next. For this game the foot of the first division looked like this before the match on 19 October.
P
W
D
L
F
A
GAv
Pts
21
Tottenham Hotspur
12
3
1
8
14
20
0.70
7
22
Arsenal
12
2
3
7
12
18
0.67
7
The crowd was poor: 36,194 – for the north London derby – and the result completely awful from our point of view: Tottenham 2 Arsenal 0.
And really it showed that the trouble with football is that the moment it looks like it can’t get any worse, it gets worse. 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. It was not a good time to be in North London.
15 October 1932: George Male’s first appearance as a right back v Blackburn.
The story is that Male didn’t believe he could play right back but a chat with Chapman convinced him he “was the best right back in the country”. And so he turned out to be.
In 1927 he had a trial as a 16-year-old in a reserve team friendly against Tottenham on along with eight other triallists. Arsenal lost 2-12!
He finally joined as a player in 1929 and left in 1948 making 318 appearances – which would have been many more had it not been for the intervention of Germany. But he didn’t actually leave the club until 1975.
Male played his first match in the 7-1 victory over Blackpool on December 27, 1930. He started out on the left wing as a deputy for Bob John and he played just three times in our first championship winning season, and nine the following season, including in the 1932 cup final (which was a surprise, caused by an injury to Alex James). But he was still a minor player getting only two games that season and nine in 1931/2.
However then Herbert Chapman moved him to right back (shades of Arsene Wenger here I think – seeing a player in one position and thinking he can play in another), he became a regular and between October 1932 and December 1934 did the seemingly impossible of playing 100 consecutive games. He is later said to have recounted to a journalist how he went into Chapman’s office thinking he was going to be transferred, only to find that the manager was wanting to convince him that he was about to become the best right back in the country.
That might seem something and a half but it was only the start. He went on to become Arsenal captain and England captain from the mid-30s until the outbreak of war when he was just 29. By then he had played in a side that had won four championships and the FA Cup. He had also won 19 caps for his country and was captain six times.
During the war years, he played nearly 200 matches for Arsenal, as well as serving in Palestine with the RAF.
He was also present at Arsenal to watch the double victories in 1971, before retiring in 1975.
After that he went to Canada where he had family, and died in February 1998, aged 87.
14 October 1997: Arsenal’s fastest ever sending off
On 14 October 1997 son Crowe who played 3 times for England’s under 20s, came on as a sub and was sent off 33 seconds into his debut in a league cup which ended Arsenal 4 Birmingham 1.
In the same game Jehad Muntasser came on two minutes before the end, and was transferred soon after, giving him the shortest ever Arsenal career.
Crowe went on loan to Palace, moving on to Portsmouth, Grimsby, Northampton and other clubs before closing his career at Corby Town in 2013. Muntasser played in Serie B and C in Italy and became a major force in helping children affected by the 2011 Libyan revolution.
Other débutantes in the game were Manninger, Upson, Vernazza, and Mendez
13 October 1928: Arsenal smashed the world transfer record with the purchase of David Jack
David Jack was purchased by Herbert Chapman for £10,890 – a world record.
That much is undeniable, but quite how the event came about is not so certain, because three completely different stories are told. One from Arsenal secretary Bob Wall came in his autobiography, “Arsenal From The Heart” which was published in 1969 – over 40 years later. This is the most famous tale and it relates to Herbert Chapman getting the negotiators from Bolton drunk, and then signing the deal.
Curiously Herbert Chapman never mentioned the transfer, even though he had a regular newspaper column during his time at Arsenal.
Tom Whittaker who was the club trainer at the time was in the process of writing an autobiography when he passed away. It was published later, and he tells of a chaotic situation in which the Arsenal negotiators went for a few drinks, then went to see Jack to tie up the deal but couldn’t find his house. They therefore postponed the talks until the next day when the deal was done. No fee is mentioned.
George Allison’s autobiography was published within weeks of him retiring from the club and so is the most reliable document. He says that he went with Chapman to negotiate a price for the player and were told the cost would be £13,000. However after a meal with the Bolton men, and a few drinks, the figure came down to £11,500.
Of course without access to the Arsenal board minutes we can’t quite be sure of what the price was that was paid, but the tale does show that many of the reports from earlier times, just like now, need to be treated with caution.
12 October 1996: Arsene Wenger takes control of his first match.
Wenger’s first match in charge of Arsenal was against Blackburn Rovers. Arsenal won with two goals from Ian Wright, making it four wins in a row during the Rice/Wenger handover period. Here’s the team
By the time of this first game, Arsène Wenger had said that he thought the Arsenal board were “crazy” for appointing him, and that he had previously been considered for the job in 1995, when they gave the job to Bruce Rioch instead. Rioch lasted a year.
Tony Adams on hearing the news of the appointment had said something along the lines of “He’s French, what does he know about English football?”
Later Mr Wenger replied to the old anti-foreigner sentiment in English football by saying, “I believe I contributed to the change in attitude about foreign managers. That can look pretentious but I don’t think it is at all. I can show some articles where people tried to prove that the foreign managers can never win an English championship. That has changed and I have certainly contributed to that. But I am also one of the few who also defends English managers.”
He also reflected on whether he could have done what he has done at another club instead of Arsenal. He said, “I don’t believe I could only have done that at Arsenal. But I believe I was lucky to find at Arsenal the support I found and that is important for success….
“I was quite successful in the clubs where I worked before [Nancy, Monaco, Grampus Eight], but I have always found support where I worked.”
He became of course the most successful manager in terms of major trophies with ten, and the longest serving not only in years but also number of games (nearly twice as many as Bertie Mee).
His results in terms of win percentage is way above the other managers who delivered over 100 games (Herbert Chapman in 403 games delivered 49.88% wins while Wenger’s in 954 games was 56.92%.
You can read all the stats concerning all our managers in the managers’ file.
But let’s leave the final comment to Tony Adams, who was Wenger’s captain at Arsenal from 1996 until 2002. When he (Adams) retired he had the presence of mind to come out and admit his mistake, saying “At first, I thought: What does this Frenchman know about football? He wears glasses and looks more like a schoolteacher. He’s not going to be as good as George [Graham]. Does he even speak English properly?”
11 October 1986: Arsenal 3 Watford 1.
Why a defeat of Watford might be consider to be a major event is something that needs explaining.
But the point is that having lost two of their first three league games of the season, Arsenal went on a run of one defeat in the next 28 games while progressing in the League Cup to the final.
Indeed it was only an away defeat to Manchester United and the famous 1-0 down, 2-1 up semi-final with Tottenham that brought the run to an end as the team clearly focused on ending the years without a trophy.
Runs come in different shapes and sizes, but the notion, as propagated by the media in 2021/2 that losing the first three games of the season while several members of the squad were suffering from coronavirus meant that the manager and half the squad should be sacked, was certainly not something based on historical information.
10 October 1936: Arsenal slip to 17th, proving this was not always the golden era.
In the 1930s Arsenal won the league five times and the FA Cup twice and thus we think of the 1930s as a time of endless glory – but just as now, Arsenal could have ups and downs.
On this day in 1936 Drake scored his third goal of the season – but it was his eighth game and this was not the sort of return rate that had taken the club up the table in previous seasons.
It is true that even as early as one third of the way through October no team was unbeaten, but it was clear, as it had been throughout the decade that any team that could master the away games issue would stand a good chance of winning the league. This is exactly what Chapman had done, repeatedly taking Arsenal’s away form up to the level of the side’s home form. But now Arsenal were at best, a modest performer away from home, and the fact that they had not scored in three away games suggested that even “modest” was an exaggeration for them when not at Highbury.
Worse, the image of Arsenal as the great team of the decade – the team that would not only win trophies, but overcome the rapid “fade” effect that was dominant at the time that meant that one season’s champions were next season’s average team. Sheffield Wednesday, Aston Villa, Everton, and even last season’s runaway champions Sunderland had all suffered.
Thus on 3 October Arsenal were needing to buck their current away form and the possibility to do that came with an trip to Manchester United. Man U had been promoted with Charlton at the end of the previous season, but while Charlton were flourishing, Man U were in difficulty. They were 17th, but such was the bunching of the table, that they were only one point ahead of the team at the bottom, Leeds United. But then, Arsenal themselves were only one point ahead of Man U.
And so it turned out, as for the fourth away match running Arsenal failed to score. Indeed Arsenal’s last away win was on March 4. Including this game Arsenal had now won 0, drawn 3 and lost 7 of their last 10 away games. This was Arsenal now in serious decline, and questions were raised about how much Allison could bring to the team, and how much he was still reliant on the quickly fading set of players that Chapman had left him.
And remember this was the glorious 1930s.
But that weekend football was by and large forgotten, especially by Londoners, as on 4 October the nation was appalled to receive the news of the Battle of Cable Street between Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (who dressed in uniforms that were based on those of the Blackshirts), and anti-fascist demonstrators.
On 10 October Arsenal were thankfully (in terms of results thus far) back home, but playing the team that had been one of Arsenal’s main challengers in the early part of the decade: Sheffield Wednesday. The one hopeful factor however was that although Wednesday had stayed at the top longer than most (Champions in 1929 and 1930, and then third in each of the next three seasons), Wednesday’s decline, once it had started had been ever more rapid than Arsenal’s. They had only just escaped relegation last season and were now currently 16th, just one place above Arsenal but with the same number of points.
Like Arsenal Wednesday had a poor away form, with just one point gained so far, but as luck would have it, they chose this day to get their second away point, in a 1-1 draw. Drake scored his third goal of the season – but it was his eighth appearance and this was not the sort of return rate that had taken the club up the table in previous seasons.
As a result Arsenal remained 17th in the league and for their next game were facing the side newly promoted with Man U – Charlton. And it was away from home, on October 17. Charlton were unbeaten at home, and Arsenal had still (as we have noted) not even scored a single goal this season outside of Islington.
It rather makes this season’s form look quite reasonable!
9 October 1926: Arsenal under Chapman slip down to 14th
I think that some supporters (and indeed journalists) imagine that when Herbert Chapman took over Arsenal it was immediate glory and trophies, just as it was when Arsene Wenger joined the club.
But in fact, although the first season saw Arsenal rise to their highest position in the league thus far (2nd) this success was not built upon, and September of Chapman’s second season (1926/7) ended with Arsenal sitting in 11th position in the League having won three, drawn three and lost two games.
The prime problem was in attack – the team had scored just 13 goals – which in the context of the change in the offside rule the previous season in order to encourage goal scoring, was modest indeed. Arsenal were 12th.
On 2 October Arsenal faced Newcastle at home and were 0-2 down after 15 minutes.
But this time, despite an injury to Baker, Arsenal repaired the damage in the second half and got a 2-2 draw. However this season Newcastle were a modest mid-table team, and Arsenal’s struggle to beat them was not taken too kindly.
For the game on 9 October away to Burnley the team was the same as gained the draw with Newcastle. Going into this game Arsenal still had not won away this season, and this continued against the middle of the table team, with Arsenal losing 0-2. Arsenal slipped down to 14th.
However although the papers contained letters of complaints from fans (no radio phone ins in those days) there was no wholesale demand for Chapman to go. His success as manager of Huddersfield remained in the memory, although there is no doubt that after taking the club to runners’ up place in his first season, Chapman had been expected to go on and deliver Arsenal their first trophy this season.
But at this point Chapman now did when things were not going well – he arranged a friendly game. This one, on the following Monday (11 September) saw Arsenal win 4-0 which gave everyone some hope even though the club was now 14th in the league.
Next up was West Ham at home – WHU being 19th in the league but with two wins and two defeats away from home thus far. Young stayed in the team and Haden returned in what turned out to be a 2-2 draw. Lambert scored his first ever goal for Arsenal, Brain got the other. The Times said the game was one of the best seen, and noted that it was played at a stupendous pace.
However the result meant Arsenal were now solidly mid-table and hopes of building on last year’s achievements were fading fast. They had scored under half as many goals as Leicester City at the top of the table.
So it was something of a pleasant surprise to the 27,846 who turned up on 23 October to watch Arsenal v Sheffield Wednesday to see Arsenal win 6-2. Haden got two, and then Brain got four in the second half. It lifted Arsenal up to 10th – and the feeling seemed to be that although this was not as good a last it was a lot better than under Knighton.
