28 September 2002: Leeds 1 Arsenal 4 – the game that broke two scoring records at once

On this day Arsenal beat Nottm Forest’s record of 22 away games without defeat. 

Olivier Dacourt of Leeds commented on the team,”We’re all fighting for second place now. It was demoralising. They just pass and move, pass and move. You find yourself working for nothing.”   

Arsène Wenger called the performance as “edging nearer to perfection… We are playing great, Total Football.   Danger comes from everywhere.” 

Leeds manager Terry Venables said: “Manchester United have been exceptional for 10 years – but I’ve not seen anything as good as that.”  

Arsenal also beat Chesterfield’s 72 year old record of scoring in 47 consecutive league games set between December 1929 and December 1930 in the Third Division north in which Arsenal player Jack Lee, who was transferred to Chesterfield in 1928, was very much part of Chesterfield’s run.  

28 September 2002. Arsenal beat the record of away games without defeat

They always score!

Leeds 1 Arsenal 4.   Arsenal beat Nottm Forest’s record of 22 away games without defeat.  Olivier Dacourt of Leeds commented on the team,”We’re all fighting for second place now. It was demoralising. They just pass and move, pass and move. You find yourself working for nothing.”   

Arsène Wenger called the performance as “edging nearer to perfection… We are playing great, Total Football.   Danger comes from everywhere.” 

Leeds manager Terry Venables said: “Manchester United have been exceptional for 10 years – but I’ve not seen anything as good as that.”  

Arsenal also beat Chesterfield’s 72 year old record of scoring in 47 consecutive league games set between December 1929 and December 1930 in the Third Division North in which Arsenal player Jack Lee, who was transferred to Chesterfield in 1928, was very much part of Chesterfield’s run.  

26 September 1919: Herbert Chapman banned for life from football.

In an event of supreme importance in relation to what happened in the future, Leeds City were summoned to a meeting with the League and ordered to hand over their accounts, but refused to do so on the grounds that the Commission had no legal right to demand them.  The League then removed Leeds City from its membership, and banned five officials for life, including their manager, Herbert Chapman.

Herbert Chapman had managed Leeds prior to the war but like everyone else had taken up war work in local industry during the conflict.  He had returned to Leeds City and resumed his work after the war, but before the League commenced in August 1919 he resigned, moved to Selby and apparently gave up football to become a superintendent at an oil and coke works.  We have no explanation from him as to why he did this – and it is notable that this action occurred despite the fact that he had had some success with Leeds taking them towards promotion in his first two seasons, although slipping back in the highly disrupted 1914/15 season which was of course played during wartime.

Leeds were reported by some former players of paying “guest” players who had appeared for them in war time friendlies – something that was clearly not allowed under the war time rules.

However the evidence that Leeds had been breaking the rules was largely hearsay, coming particularly from Charlie Copeland who had been with Leeds City since 1912 but had fallen out with the club over the issue of a pay rise.

After Leeds refused to hand over their accounts the Football League removed Leeds City from its membership, and banned five officials, for life, including Herbert Chapman.  There was no right to appeal.

The fixtures of Leeds for the season were then taken over by Port Vale, who bizarrely were able to count the eight games Leeds City had played  (four wins two draws and two defeats) as their own!   Leeds City was wound up, the players sold, and then a new club with the same directors owning the same ground and called Leeds United, was set up.  The League immediately admitted them for the 1920/21 season.  Grimsby were ejected from the league to make room.

Meanwhile Herbert Chapman in late December 1920 he was laid off from his job at the coke works but was then approached by Huddersfield Town to be assistant to Ambrose Langley, who had played with Herbert Chapman’s brother Harry at The Wednesday (where Harry had made over 200 appearances).

Working with the support of Huddersfield, Herbert Chapman then appealed against his life ban, won the case and so after just over a month’s unemployment he became an employee of Huddersfield Town on 1 February 1921, soon replacing the incumbent manager.

Had he lost that case, Arsenal’s future might well have been rather different.

25 September 1909: Arsenal’s keeper Hugh MacDonald was injured in 3-2 victory over Chelsea.

That may not sound too momentous an occasion but it is interesting that despite the fact that the injury left him seriously immobile he nevertheless played in the next game, and conceded seven.  It shows that the club at Plumstead did not have a full-time backup keeper, not least because there was no reserve matches for them to play in.  

Hugh McDonald was a goalkeeper who signed from the Scottish club Beith in the 1905/6 season.  He is one of hundreds of players who played for Arsenal and whose lives and histories are now forgotten.

But Hugh McDonald deserves to be remembered – and he is a player of whom we really ought to know more.

McDonald was born in 1884 and died aged just 36 in 1920.  He worked his way around a range of Scottish clubs (Ayr Westerlead, Maybole, Ayr Academicals, and Beith) before coming to Woolwich.  Beith were a Scottish Football Combination club (roughly around the level of a third division in Scotland, which they later joined).

In 1905/6 he played two games for Arsenal, before moving on to Brighton and Hove Albion of the Southern League, Oldham Athletic (who were elected into the football league 2nd division in 1907 but were in local Manchester non-league football in 1906) and Bradford Park Avenue (who won the Southern League in 1907/8 and gained entry to the football league.)  He was back at Woolwich for the 1908/9 season when he played in every game.

Thus he had been developing as a player around the clubs, before hearing that Arsenal were again on the lookout.  But we must remember that at this time, the movement of players was massive.  There was no “loan” system, and transfers could happen any time at all.  Through the summer players were either not paid or only paid half wages, and so had every inducement to travel and find any sort of work to keep going.

There was a huge amount of rumour about work at the time, and undoubtedly Woolwich Arsenal benefited from this, since there were always stories that the armaments factories were recruiting.  This was a period when invasion stories were everywhere – there was ever increasing feeling that Germany was about to attack across the North Sea, all the popular magazines ran stories about how village postmasters were actually Germans in disguise, and how the nannies of the rich in London were all again, German spies.

In such an environment it was inevitable that people would believe that the most famous collection of armament factories in the UK (Woolwich Arsenal) would be building more and more boats in order to counteract the German menace.  There was no real way of checking the stories (no phones of course) so there was the endless movement of young men to Kent, looking for work.  This could well have attracted Hugh McDonald back twice.

The following season he played 36 of the matches for Arsenal – missing two through injury.  

But then at the end of the season he was transferred again – this time to Fulham. 

24 September 1908: Eddie Hapgood, one of our greatest ever players, born in Bristol

Eddie was the ninth of the ten children. He left school at 14, and worked in his brother’s milk round business while playing for St Philip’s Adult School Juniors, in Bristol.   He was then spotted by a director of Bristol Rovers and given a trial but not liking the contract he opted for Kettering Town. 

Eddie left school at 14, and worked in his brother’s milk round business while playing for St Philip’s Adult School Juniors, in Bristol.   He was then spotted by a director of Bristol Rovers and given a trial but not liking the contract he opted for Kettering Town.  He later joined Arsenal and went on to play 440 times for Arsenal, and 43 for England – 34 of those as captain and was at the very heart of our great team in the 1930s that dominated English football.

Eddie Hapgood’s autobiography “Football Ambassador” was the first ever such book – something that is hard to imagine when players now knock off the history of their lives after a couple of middle of the road seasons in the Premier League.  So important and ground breaking was this book that Sir Stanley Rous, who went on to become president of FIFA wrote the introduction.

What makes this book so worth reading is the way it dwells on Arsenal.  Here is a man plucked out of obscurity to play for what was beyond any dispute the greatest team in the world – the team that dominated all football from 1930 to the outbreak of war in 1939.

And there is so much in this book that makes us realise that while some of football has changed out of all proportion, a lot hasn’t.   Eddie signed for Kettering because they offered him the best deal going – £4 a week in the season, £3 a week in the off season, and a willingness to let him carry on working as a milkman in between.   That’s the difference.

But the similarity is there through the fact that after he played his first game for Kettering he was slated by the local press who criticised the manager for buying such a useless player.   Remember the first games of Bergkamp, Henry, Song etc etc?

According to Eddie Hapgood, his interview for a transfer to Arsenal consisted of two questions from Herbert Chapman (with George Allison standing by his side in the offices at Kettering Town).

First, “Do you smoke or drink?”

On receiving the right answer to both the second question was delivered:

“Would you like to sign for Arsenal?”

And that was it.

If you can find a copy of Eddie’s book it is still a great read, and I recommend it.

23 September 1922: Tottenham 1 Arsenal 2. When swearing was a crime, but hitting a player… well…

This game became notorious both for what was called in the media, the roughness of the play and the allegation that the crowd at White Hart Lane unduly influenced a referee’s decision-making.

Tottenham’s forward Walden went off injured after 10 minutes leaving Tottenham obviously a man short for the rest of the game (no subs in ancient days).    With Arsenal having come to play a defensive game (a fairly reasonable decision based on the position of the two clubs at the time near the foot of the league) the Reds (as was Arsenal’s nickname at the time) focussed on a long ball game out of defence hoping to catch Tottenham on the break and exploit their one man advantage.  And it worked, as having held the game at 0-0 at half time, Arsenal then went 2-0 up in the second half as Tottenham tired.

But with ten minutes to go Tottenham got the ball in the Arsenal net.   The referee disallowed it for offside but was then surrounded by the Tottenham team and was “persuaded” to change his mind.  Arsenal obviously protested at this change in the decision, and as a brawl broke out on the pitch Alec Graham punched Tottenham’s Smith.  What one paper then described as “A certain amount of uproar” followed but the game was completed with no more goals.  Arsenal had an away victory at Tottenham and in the space of two games had risen four places up the league away from an unwelcome proximity to the relegation zone.

The FA began an enquiry – to which Sir Henry Norris was of course called.

But what made matters worse was that the League had continued with the policy it had introduced for the first time in 1919/20 of playing the home and away fixtures between clubs in consecutive matches for most of the season.  Arsenal had already played Liverpool, Burnley and Cardiff twice and now having played Tottenham at the Lane, the next match (with the fight on the pitch still the prime talking point of London football) was the return game at Highbury.

The results of the enquiry by the FA are interesting indeed: Smith of Tottenham was found guilty of using bad language and suspended for a month.  Let us just pause at that point – a month’s suspension for “bad language”.  Now given that sentence you might be wondering what Graham got for hitting Smith.  He got a censure for retaliation, and was warned about his future conduct.  But no suspension.

It was in fact the reverse of what we might expect today, and one might wonder why.  The answer I think is “history”; the country had lived through the appalling slaughter of the first world war and violence of course is the heart and soul of wartime.  But in the military one does not swear at a superior officer.  Hence bad language used against the ref was absolutely unacceptable while retaliation was understandable, although worthy of a warning. 

In short the swearing at a person in authority was the crime.  Two working class men hitting each other was… well, everyday.

Tottenham as a club were also warned about the behaviour of their crowd, and were warned of a ground closure if further trouble ensued.  Order had to be maintained.

22 September: the day of four very curious Arsenal games.

22 September is indeed a day of curious games involving Arsenal. We’ve picked just four of them.

1897:  Woolwich Arsenal were playing Loughborough in a United League game when the game was abandoned with 8½ minutes remaining – probably due to failing light.  It was agreed that the remaining minutes be played on 18 December 1897 following the Football League fixture between the two clubs. Ten of the eleven players that played in the first fixture played in the second fixture, with Paddy Farrell playing in place of Frank McAvoy making Farrell Arsenal’s first substitute in a league match!

1917: Arsenal were “away” to Tottenham but because Tottenham played their home matches at Highbury during the war Tottenham chose to play this game at Clapton’s ground.  10,000 turned up and Arsenal won 2-1, making it four wins in a row.

2013: Arsenal 3 Stoke City 1.  Arsenal had lost the first match of the season 1-3 to Aston Villa in highly controversial circumstances, but this was the seventh match in a row subsequent to the Villa game that Arsenal won.  Arsenal ended the season 3rd and Villa 17th showing the first game doesn’t always mean that much. Something that might well come true again in 2021/2.

2019: Arsenal become just the ninth side in Premier League history to win a match despite trailing by both a man and a goal at any point of the match.  Arsenal beat Aston Villa 3-2.  The result meant Arsenal had scored seven in the last three games, but only won one of  them.

Sunday, 21 September 2003: The Battle of Old Trafford

Arsenal went into this game without Sol Campbell, Robert Pires and Sylvain Wiltord, while Manchester United brought out a very physical defensive midfield to hold Arsenal at bay.

The referee’s idea was to control the match by calling fouls whenever he could – usually once every two and a half minutes although he hardly touched the yellow card – until the last minute of the game.

But what really turned a rough match into one that we all particularly recall came with ten minutes to go and Van Nistelrooy jumped onto Patrick Vieira’s back. Vieira fell to the ground and as he did his foot moved towards Van Nistelrooy.  Van Nistelrooy made as much of it as he could by jumping backwards as if being attacked by an army of hooligans wielding horsewhips while returning from a night out in Millwall.

Although Patrick Vieira’s foot made no contact whatsoever with Van Nistelrooy, the Man U player reacted as if the aforementioned imaginary hooligans had actually manhandled him and the referee fell for it, inevitably sending Vieira off for a second yellow card offence.

Then to add insult to injury Diego Forlan fell over in the penalty area as Martin Keown moved in, and once more with the inevitably that seems to best certain officials at certain grounds, the referee gave a penalty.

Lehmann in goal did his usual think of jumping around from side to side and the penalty hit the bar.   Martin Keown approached Van Nistelrooy and gave him a few handy tips on honesty, integrity, decent behaviour, etiquette and how one should not cheat in a match in England.

Lauren, Parlour, Cole and Toure added a few other hints on what is expected on a football pitch in England, before Van Nistelrooy was taken away by Roy Keane.   Giggs, Ronaldo, Neville G, Silvestre, Fortune and Ferdinand all sought to defend the indefensible.

Arsenal however were unbeaten in the match – as indeed they were all season.

20 September 2002: Arsène Wenger said, “Arsenal can go unbeaten all season.”

He followed his comment with this thought: “It’s not impossible as Milan once did it but I can’t see why it’s so shocking to say it. Do you think Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea don’t dream that as well? They’re exactly the same. They just don’t say it because they’re scared to look ridiculous, but nobody is ridiculous in this job as we know anything can happen.” 

Not one journalist ever apologised for the derisory remarks they made after Wenger’s initial comment.

To see the context we might look back to New Years Day 2001 as Charlton Athletic gained their first victory over Arsenal in 44 years.  On 3 February 2001 Dennis Bergkamp scored the only goal at Coventry City to give Arsenal a win.  It was our first away win since November.  The times did not feel particularly wonderful, and yet that opening to 2001 marked (had we but known it) the moment when the world changed.

For there was within a year there was early talk of Arsenal going through a whole season unbeaten away from home.

In 2000/01 Arsenal were FA Cup finalists and second in the league to Manchester United. In 2001/2 Arsenal completed their second double in four years and also that season scored in every single league game – the first team ever to do so.

It was Sylvain Wiltord who scored the goal on 8 May 2002 away to Manchester United that gave Arsenal both the record of being unbeaten away from home while the four goals against Everton on the last day of the season (when it felt like the whole of the North Bank was about to collapse) gave Arsenal the record of being the first team to score in every league game through the season.  Bergkamp, Henry (2) and Jeffers scored.

Arsène Wenger however wanted more and made his “shift of power” speech, referring to the move of power away from Manchester United.  And on 20 September 2002 Mr Wenger suggested his team could remain the whole season undefeated. 

At first everything seemed fine and with the beating of Leeds away 4–1 on 26 September 2002 Arsenal then broke the record for scoring in 47 consecutive games, and the record for away league games without defeat (22).

But Arsenal lost to Everton on 19 October 2002, and then at home to Blackburn on 26 October 2002.  A 1-2 home defeat to Auxerre on 22 October 2002 sandwiched between these two meant three defeats in senior competitions in a row – the worst run in 19 years.

But as we know, Mr Wenger could do things, and Mr Wenger has a sense of humour.  In May 2004 he said…

“Somebody threw me a T-shirt after the trophy was presented which read ‘Comical Wenger says we can go the whole season unbeaten.’ I was just a season too early!”

On a personal note – I’ve still got mine.  Once a year I wear it on a sunny day.  Here’s how it all happened…

Here’s the chronology

• 1 January 2001 Charlton Athletic beat Arsenal for first time in 44 years
• 3 February 2001 Arsenal’s first away win since November
• 8 May 2002 – the unbeaten away record is secured
• 11 May 2002 – Arsenal first club to score in every game
• 20 September 2002 – the “unbeaten all season” speech
• 26 September 2002 – the record of scoring in 47 consecutive games achieved
• 19 October 2002 – the run of three defeats begins
• 7 May 2003 – the 49 starts
• 15 May 2004 – Arsenal beat Leicester to go all season unbeaten
• May 2004 – Mr Wenger is given a comical Wenger tee shirt

19 September 1937: Geoff Strong was born in Kirkheaton, Northumberland.

Being a talented schoolboy sprinter and top athlete he seemed destined from the start to make his living from sport.  He trained as a machine-tool fitter while playing for Stanley United, until he joined Arsenal in a £100 deal in November 1957 aged 20.

Having made a huge impact in the reserves and have undertaken his National Service he played his first match on 17 September 1960, against Newcastle.  Arsenal won 5-0.

His impact was instant, playing 19 league games in 1960/1 and scoring 10 goals.  By 1961/2 he was the first choice often playing alongside Joe Baker and George Eastham.  In 1963/64 Strong and Baker each scored 28 league and cup goals.  Indeed noting just that trio of players it is amazing to consider how Arsenal actually failed to get higher than 7th in the league during Strong’s period in the side.  His total was 69 goals in 125 games.

But this was the era of The Darkness (he was managed by Swindin and Wright) – that long period when Arsenal made no impact on the First Division, and Geoff Strong rebelled against the failure, demanding a transfer to a more successful club.

So in November 1964, Arsenal sold him for £40,000 to Liverpool.  But we had had the best of him – he played 155 games for Liverpool and scored 29 – a scoring rate of 19% compared with over 55% at Arsenal.

However he immediately won the FA Cup with Liverpool – their first win of the trophy, and Liverpool played him in almost every possible position on the pitch, ending up as left back!

Apart from the FA Cup he helped Liverpool reach the European Cup Winners Cup Final the following season, including scoring in the tie against Juventus.  He also gained a championship medal with the side.

When he was sold to Coventry City for £30,000 at the age of 32 Liverpool were said to have sold not one but 10 players, so diverse was his influence.  Strong played at Coventry alongside Jeff Blockley at centre half.  But after an injury he retired in the summer of 1972.

He later ran a hotel-furnishing company on Merseyside and co-owned a pub with Ian Callaghan.   He was voted in at No. 98 on the Official Liverpool FC website poll of players.  In later life he suffered from Alzheimers disease, but continued to be seen at Anfield, although he maintained no connection with Arsenal.

Geoff Strong died on the morning of 17 June 2013 in Southport.