18 September 1999: Thierry Henry came on as a sub scored his first goal for Arsenal
As a result Arsenal beat Southampton 1-0.
He received the ball from Adams, with his back to goal, 20 yards out, turned and shot. Henry said, “My goal today was very important for me. I have missed at least 14 or 15 chances for Arsenal and my confidence was low.” It was Arsenal’s last appearance at the Dell. However Henry didn’t score again until 28 November when he got both goals in a 2-1 defeat of Derby.
The story is that while Henry was playing in Italy he spoke on the phone regularly to Mr Wenger when he was working in Japan, and that contact paid off for on 3 August 1999 he came to Arsenal. £11m he cost. What would the cost be today?
By 2002 he had won us the Double. In 2002/3 he scored 32 goals in all competitions. In October 2005 he broken Wright’s goal record – Ian Wright came onto the pitch before the game and stood in the centre circle to embrace Henry, but then had to wait there for several minutes because Arsenal weren’t ready to come out. I think Wright ended up doing a dance.
It all seemed to have ended on 25 June 2007 when Thierry went to Barcelona for €24 million – but that was not the end of the story because of the process in which Arsenal sell top players to foreign teams for huge amounts of money, and the foreign team doesn’t get that much out of it while Arsenal re-invests the money in younger talent. You’d think other teams would have learned by now, but apparently not.
Henry played 80 games in the two-team league that is Spanish football. His salary was reported £4.6m per season. He was there for 3 years and the total cost to Barca was £35.8m including transfer fees. His goal account dropped to 0.43 per game from the 0.69 he had at Arsenal over a much higher number of games. The cost to Barca was thus £447,000 per game, and considering that a number of these games were as sub, it doesn’t look like a great deal for them. Amazingly he was none the less their top scorer in one of those three seasons!
In July 2010, Thierry went to New York and on 6 January 2012 he signed for Arsenal to cover for forwards who were playing in Africa. He came on against Leeds as a sub, and scored a typical perfect Henry goal. It was one of those “I was there!” moments that stays forever. And ever.
In his last game he came on and scored the winner against Sunderland on 17 Feb 2012.
Quite a guy.
17 September 1934: Arsenal lost to Blackburn who had only won one game and scored just five goals all season.
Before the game Arsenal were fourth in the league with a game in hand. A win was highly expected which would take Arsenal level on points with Sunderland at the top.
In their last game Arsenal had played West Brom who in the previous five games had gained three wins, one draw and one defeat. The result was a 4-3 win to Arsenal, and with Sheffield Wednesday losing and Preston and Sunderland both drawing the win helped Arsenal edge up the table.
For the third league match running the team was the same and for the fifth match running (which is to say, in all five league games played thus far) Drake scored. Bowden, James and Bastin got the other goals.
Next came the match on 17 September away to Blackburn, the only league game played on this day. Blackburn had won just one match up to this point, and scored just five goals (while Arsenal had 20) and Arsenal had already beaten them 4-0 in the third match of the season. It looked like an away banker but Arsenal lost 0-2.
Such a defeat today would have the media howling that Arsenal were in chaos, and that the fact of having had three managers in the past nine months (following the death of Chapman, his temporary replacement by Joe Shaw, and now with Allison in charge) meant the club was set for a fall.
But it was different in the 1930s and the reason for the defeat was acknowledged: following the previous match just two days before Arsenal had to reshuffle the team to cope with injuries sustained in that match. Sidey came in at centre half and John was left half while Marshall replaced Alex James at inside left. It was a reshuffling that simply couldn’t cope with what the papers called the home teams “rumbustious” approach.
Then on 22 September, Arsenal travelled to Sheffield for their match against Wednesday who were currently lying eighth in the league.
Amazingly, the team that had earlier in the month been unable to stop scoring goals, now failed to score for the second match running – the result was a goalless draw. There was a bit of muttering, but wisely not much, since Arsenal went on to win the league by four points.
16 September: Lazio 2 Arsenal 2. After, the teams were to have a meal together but a fight broke out.
The game had followed a series of Arsenal wins in the league the latest of which being on 12 September 1970 saw another win: Burnley 1 Arsenal 2 in front of just 12,675, the lowest league crowd to see Arsenal during the season. Kennedy and Radford scored to make it four wins, three draws and one defeat thus far.
Then, as holders as the Fairs Cup, Arsenal began their defence of the trophy on 16 September. As noted above this first leg of round 1 ended Lazio 2 Arsenal 2 with Radford scoring both goals, but it was not so much the game that was remembered but rather the fact that after the match the two teams went to have a meal together and a fight broke out, with most of the players joining in. The newspapers went berserk on the issue.
As a result on 19 September the talk was still about events in Italy and the club was not at all impressed. Indeed in a move that is very unlikely to be seen again, the Arsenal programme published a letter seriously and directly criticising the Evening Standard’s reporting of the club. Oh for a return to the days when the club spoke out!
Overall however it didn’t do Arsenal any harm, for Arsenal won the game on this day against West Brom 6-2 – the highest score of the season. Arsenal were third.
On 23 September Arsenal played the second leg of the 1st round of the Uefa Cup against Lazio, and Arsenal won 2-0 with goals from Radford and Armstrong. There was no collective meal afterwards.
And then, just as things seemed to be going rather satisfactorily (if not reaching title winning standards), everything fell apart on 26 September with a totally unexpected score of Stoke City 5 Arsenal 0.
But perhaps we’ll leave that for another day.
15 September 1953: Chelsea 0 Arsenal 2.
Having won the league the previous season Arsenal had to wait until this, the 9th match of the campaign for their first win, by which time they were bottom of the league. Both goals came from Lishman.
Indeed Arsenal were not only bottom but two points adrift from the clubs above, having suffered the sort of defeat (1-7 to Sunderland) that Arsenal become more used to dishing out to others than receiving.
Thereafter four changes were made, and away to Chelsea on September 15 we finally got a victory, 2-0, in front of 60,652 fans. The win started the improvement and we won four and drew one of those next five games.
But even so there were still problems such as on October 17 with the 2-5 home defeat to Burnley and January 23 a 1-4 home defeat to Sunderland.
Although Arsenal climbed up the table and ended the season in 12th position, there was still more bad news, for on 30 January 1954 we took on Norwich City of the Third Division South in front of 55767 at Highbury in the fourth round of the cup. And we lost 1-2.
The high scoring defeats were not done either as Arsenal lost 2-5 away to Newcastle on April 17.
Although now forgotten the defeat was, at the time, considered to the biggest upset of the era and of the magnitude of Chapman’s Cup defeat against Walsall. Worse the match was also notable for Alex Forbes being sent off along with Norwich’s Brennan for serious misconduct. And that in an era when sending’s off were very rare indeed.
There was not even an excuse in terms of Arsenal having sent out a reserve team. Every player bar the left back (Lionel Smith) played over 15 games in the league for the club that season – and Smith himself had played over 170 games for the club by that time.
Over the next few seasons Tom Whittaker did start to rebuild the team but in 1956 he died in office of a heart attack before he could complete the task. It would be another 14 years before the club won its next trophy (that being in 1970 of course).
September 14 1974: Chelsea 0 Arsenal 0.
It was perhaps salutary to remember that the first match between Chelsea and Woolwich Arsenal in 1907 brought in a crowd of 65,000 – which was just about all that Stamford Bridge could hold at the time. This time 34,596 turned up.
The game was billed as a “bottom of the table clash” (Arsenal were actually 16th out of 22, it was Tottenham who were at the foot of the table, but these things are of course but mere detail to journalists).
Indeed having created the name the gentlemen of the press hardly bothered to turn up and instead continued their current focus on the ills of the game, which in addition to hooliganism was now deemed to include the upcoming battle between players and clubs over freedom on contract. Somehow it was felt that unlike journalists, these footballing men should not be allowed to negotiate their own salaries, for the sake of their own well-being.
The end of football as we know it was predicted, especially by those not watching the game, although what we were actually witnessing was the end of coherent football journalism.
But for Arsenal these were indeed dark days. And it got worse as for the second year running, we were knocked out of the league cup in the second round, the replay on September 18 ending Leicester City 2 Arsenal 1, in front of a mere 17,303.
By the second half of this poor game Arsenal appeared to be working to a plan of holding the game at 1-1 and then nicking something in extra time. Unfortunately, with five minutes left Leicester got a second, and thus there was no chance to relieve the doom and gloom.
Kidd (who else?) must have thought he had scored heading in a cross from Armstrong but the Leicester keeper performed the sort of save he was known for. Then Brady got a goal, but after that instead of making the game safe, Arsenal slowed the tempo down so much that for a while it looked like no one on the pitch was interested on playing, let alone scoring.
Seeing their chance Leicester picked up their own tempo, and it was clear that Arsenal’s attempt to copy Ipswich’s awful tactics of a few weeks earlier was dangerous beyond measure. The small group of Arsenal fans who made it to the game were appalled. And quite rightly so.
We imagined perhaps that some end to the gloom must come from a home game with Luton on September 21, but no. It ended Arsenal 2 Luton Town 2 with 21,629 hard core fans making it to the game.
The Daily Express headline was “Arsenal are confused” and Bobby Campbell said as much, suggesting that this Arsenal team defended when they should attack and attacked when they should defend.
What Campbell was talking about was his attempt to change the entire style and approach of Arsenal, and the fact that it was taking him longer than he anticipated to get the message home. He spoke of the need for a “consistently aggressive mood”, and from this match it looked like all three attributes were missing. No consistency, no aggression, and with just 21,000 at Highbury, no mood.
Luton, without a win all season, looked like they fancied a draw against a team that hadn’t won in their last six. Kidd, naturally, got both Arsenal’s goals, but with the defenders all looking to attack at the wrong time, it was only the poverty of Luton that kept goals against column down.
Kidd spoke after the match of having a target of 25 goals for the season, which looked like it meant Arsenal might have to try and survive with an all time low league goal tally of around 30 – given that no one else looked much like scoring.
Would we win a game in September? The answer was no, for on September 28 the last game of the month ended Birmingham City 3 Arsenal 1, 25,584 in the Birmingham ground.
Another defeat – but at least someone other than Kidd scored. And Arsenal at last had Ball back in the lineup, although in truth it didn’t really make that much difference.
13 September 1997: Ian Wright broke Cliff Bastin’s goalscoring record with a hattrick against Bolton
Ian Wright signed for Arsenal in September 1991 for £2.50m which at the time was a club record. I’m not sure any of us thought at the time that Wright was worth the club record fee for – but of course we were wrong, as always.
Wright scored on his Arsenal debut v Leicester in the League Cup, and scored a hat trick in his first League match. He won the Golden Boot in the first season at Highbury and scored the last ever goal in the first division. I can remember watching from the West stand near the North Bank as Wright, laying on the ground having fallen in a tackle, propped himself up on one arm, swung his leg and got a goal.
Fortunately I don’t recall 28 August 1993 when his single, “Do the Wright Thing” entered the charts! And thankfully it was only there for two weeks.
Concerning 13 September 1997, Wright scored with a hattrick against Bolton. He’d been waiting for that final goal for a couple of weeks, and in this match, if my memory is right, Bolton scored first. Then in the 21st minute he scored in front of the Clock End and took off his shirt to reveal the “179” record on his tee-shirt – which was unfortunate because he hadn’t broken the record yet. But then Vieira shot, the ball trickled to Wright and he scored from a yard out.
He was always passionate as the incident on 13 December 1997 stays in mind. Arsenal had been defeated by Blackburn at home, and were chanting in the streets outside the ground after the game. Ian Wright leaned out of a window after the game and shouted abuse at the fans who were protesting. He was warned by the police as to his future conduct.
Moving on there was the May 1998 cup final in which Christopher Wreh played, rather than Wright. Sounds strange doesn’t it? But later that month Wright did play for England, which makes the cup final decision all the more interesting.
By 10 July 1998 as Arsenal (by then of course double winners) went to Boreham Wood for one of the traditional openers, it was suggested that Wright was going and he left three days later for… West Ham.
He was our top scorer for six years running, and was part of the Cup Double under Graham in 1993 and was a part of the team that beat Parma in the CWC – although he didn’t play in the final.
He was 32 when Arsène Wenger turned up but Mr Wenger still used him, and he got 23 goals that season, but the injuries associated with advancing years in football slowed him – hence the non-appearance in the cup final.
In July 1998 he went to West Ham but never found his form again. Later at Sheffield Wednesday he trashed a ref’s dressing room after being sent off, but he could still get goals – he scored in his first game at Forest and first at Celtic, although there are reports that the Celtic fans turned on him.
He was a resident fool on Match of the Day for a while, but on 17 April 2008, he left the showing saying that he was used as a “comedy jester”. And although he may be applauded for showing up the nonsense of that programme, he has made himself a regular critic of Arsenal, and of course Mr Wenger. It’s sad that it’s ended like this, because in his prime at Arsenal he was superb.
12 September 1953: Bottom of the league and a game against Norwich
This having been not the best of starts to a season it is perhaps worth looking again at the start of the 1953/4 season – when the club lost six and drew two of its first eight games (including on this day with a 7-1 defeat away to Sunderland).
For what made this terrible start to the season so unexpected was the fact that Arsenal had finished the previous season in 1952/3 as champions.
So what happened?
Our ex-player Tom Whittaker who had taken over from George Allison after the second world war, was still at the helm, and his record from 1947/8 onwards was of the highest order with two championships, two FA Cup final appearances (winning one) and never finishing lower than 6th in the league. Equal to Allison and Chapman.
But that summer Tom was unable to stop the departure of one significant player: Ray Daniel. Daniel had played 41 games at centre half in 1952/3 and yet was sold to Sunderland for a club record fee £30,000. Why (everyone asked) would a player leave the league champions where he was first choice number 5, to join a team that had finished 9th and which was not in the process of any serious rebuilding? (In fact they finished 18th in 1953-54).
It is now known that Sunderland offered Daniel payments far in excess of the maximum wage that was allowed. Sadly Ray Daniel was tempted by a better (although illegal) offer.
The squad also had some other problems. Cliff Holton at centre forward simply lost his touch scoring only 2 goals in the first 6 games he played. It was not until late October when he scored 8 goals in 6 league games that things started to improve.
And so, by 12th September 1953 Arsenal were bottom of the league, two points adrift from the clubs above, having suffered the sort of defeat (that 1-7 to Sunderland) that Arsenal become more used to dishing out to others than receiving.
Thereafter four changes were made, and away to Chelsea on September 15 we finally got a victory, 2-0, in front of 60,652 fans. The win started the improvement and we won four and drew one of those next five games.
But even so there were still problems such as on October 17 with the 2-5 home defeat to Burnley and January 23 a 1-4 home defeat to Sunderland.
Although Arsenal climbed up the table and ended the season in 12th position, there was still more bad news, which is where the Norwich connection comes in. For on 30 January 1954 we took on Norwich City of the Third Division South in front of 55767 at Highbury in the fourth round of the cup. And we lost 1-2.
At least this time around we beat Norwich to secure our first points.
11 September 1893 – the anniversary of our first ever league win (and remembrance of Walsall)
It is curious that Arsenal’s first ever league win should be against the team that ultimately caused our most celebrated disaster of a defeat: Walsall.
In 1893/4 when Arsenal entered the league, Walsall were called Walsall Town Swifts being an amalgamation of Walsall Town and Walsall Swifts – both clubs pre-dating the foundation of Arsenal in 1886.
Walsall TS entered the second division of the League in its first year – one year ahead of Woolwich Arsenal. They survived three seasons but then failed to be re-elected and so left the league, changing their name in 1896 to Walsall.
In our first season the early results were
- September 2 Woolwich Arsenal 2 Newcastle United 2 (home – attendance 10,000)
- September 9 Notts County 3 Woolwich Arsenal 2 (away – attendance 7000)
- September 11 Woolwich Arsenal 4 Walsall Town Swifts 0 (home attendance 4000 – the low number being caused by the match kicking off on Monday afternoon – the crowd for the second half was considerably higher!)
Fortunately, we did not have to wait long for the second victory – for in the next game we beat Grimsby 3-1, but then lost the return match against Newcastle 6-0. Those fans who thought that the journey through the league into the first division was going to be a simple one, were given a real wake-up call.
Woolwich Arsenal finished the season in 9th place, one place and five points above Walsall Town Swifts. We won 12, drew 4 and lost 12.
So on to the other big match against Walsall: Walsall of the Third Division North vs Arsenal; 14th January 1933. In the previous season we had come second in the league and were runners up in the F.A. Cup. At the time of the Walsall game we were top of the 1st Division – and we went on to win it. Walsall on the other hand included a fair number of amateur players in their squad and ended up 5th in the 3rd division north. Yet they beat Arsenal lost 2-0.
So what happened?
To understand that game it is important to remember that at this time both the standard of play and of refereeing in the lower leagues was quite different from that in the first division. Football everywhere was more of a contact sport in the 1930s, and in the third division much of the more “vigorous” conduct went unpunished. With no broadcasters at the games and the only reporters at league matches being from the (inevitably biased) local press, refs by and large let players get on with the game, rather that blow the whistle for every infringement. Besides there were no red and yellow cards, and name taking and sendings-off were rare indeed.
As for the ground, Bernard Joy in his report on the match speaks of how too many fans were let in (it wasn’t all ticket) and how the spectators encroached onto the pitch throughout the match. It was not what the players of Arsenal were used to.
Meanwhile on the same day at the same time Arsenal Reserves played Northampton Town at Highbury winning 5-0. The reserve team included Leslie Compton, Horace Cope, Ray Parkin, Alf Haynes, and Joe Hulme, all of whom played in the first team that season.
And it is this that gives us a clue as to what Herbert Chapman was doing. He wasn’t giving first team players a rest at all. No, he was finding out whether four of his reserves were mentally and physically strong enough to play for Arsenal first team.
One of the four (Norman Sidey) did pass the test and played 45 times for the club. But for the other three it was both their first and last game.
Billy Warnes joined Arsenal as an amateur in 1925. He played in 25 of the 29 reserve games that season before Walsall, leaving the club at the end of the season to go to Norwich City.
Charlie Walsh also joined Arsenal as an amateur and signed as a professional on 11 May 1931. He played in 17 of the reserve games that season before Walsall but left the club almost immediately afterwards, joining Brentford on 27 January 1933.
Tommy Black joined Arsenal on 4 July 1931 from Strathclyde. He was by no means a regular even in the reserves, playing just 16 games that season before Walsall. He was transferred to Plymouth Argyle six days after the Walsall game.
So for three players the experiment was a disaster, but it allowed Mr Chapman the chance to have a bit of a clear out. Sadly however he never had the chance to try the experiment again, for this was his last Cup game before his early death. Had he survived who knows what he might have done next?
10 September 1988: Tottenham 2 Arsenal 3. “A surreal free for all”
Think of 1988/9 and you think of the last game of the season. (Arsenal won the title in the dying seconds at Liverpool, in case your memory is slipping!). It was the first time Arsenal had won the league in 18 years, and the first time the League had not been won by Everton or Liverpool after 8 years of dominance. You might even recall the murmurs of discontent about the number of late dubious penalties that there were in front of the Kop.
But there was an earlier game which at the time caused much conversation and discussion. So for a change, let’s look at the start of 1988/9.
On the opening day of the season Arsenal beat the FA Cup holders Wimbledon 5-1 away. Now because of that FA Cup win a few of us had thought – if Liverpool can be televised live, then the number of odd incidents in their games involving referees not seeing stuff, might be reduced. We didn’t know just how true that was until the end of the season.
Alan Smith got a hat trick in that opening game but when we all poured into Highbury for the first home game against promoted Aston Villa, we lost 2-3. All the fun of the pre-season and the euphoria of the opening victory against the cup holders had gone.
Next up was Tottenham away. Now in those days, with the media never daring once, ever to say that a game was less than stunning, Arsenal were just a side show, and London derbies were always “scrappy affairs” with the report of the match written in general terms before we even kicked off.
But the truth was that Arsenal / Tottenham games were as likely to be exciting as they were to be tense. So although the 3-2 win for Arsenal on 10 September 1988 was not exactly commonplace it was not that unusual. What was unusual was that all five goals came in 12 minutes in the first half.
For the first Tony Adams decided to throw away years of drilling under Graham, and waltzed 40 yards up the pitch before passing to Nigel Winterburn and scoring with a shot from outside of the boot. Who, the pair seemed to be saying, needed forwards?
Tottenham retaliated and Chris Waddle scored. Brian Marwood and Alan Smith gave us a 1-3 lead before Gascoigne, having somehow contrived to lose his boot, still managed to score. 2-3, and that’s where it stayed.
Man of the match however was Paul Davis who was at the time being tipped for England honours (but of course didn’t make it with his country, not least because he was the wrong sort of player for Bobby Robson).
After the game George Graham pronounced that he would sooner win a game 3-2 than 1-0. and everyone took note. But at that time we hadn’t had the season in which Arsenal were the lowest scores in the league, and had the meanest defence in the league.
After three games Southampton were top of the league followed by Norwich City – both on nine points.
9 September 1916: Arsenal played Tottenham at Highbury, in what was a home match for Tottenham.
Arsenal played Tottenham at Highbury, in what was a home match for Tottenham.
At some time in the summer the clubs involved in the London Combination of 1915/16 (the first season of a wartime league) had got together to consider what to do about 1916/17.
It was clear to everyone that the war was not going to finish any time soon, and even when it did finish, it would take time to demobilise the survivors. It would thus leave the clubs struggling to get what remained of their squads back together and find new players to replace those who tragically did not return, or returned injured. All things told, there was obviously a need for a second season of the London Combination – which had been very hastily organised the previous season in two series of games.
In 1915/16, 14 clubs had played in the second edition of the London Combination which ran from February to March 1916. And so at some time during the summer of 1916 a new league was constructed, once more of 14 teams. Croydon Common (who had been in severe financial difficulties even before the war) dropped out and I believe at this point, vanished for good – they certainly did not reappear when the Southern League relaunched in 1919.
At some point the idea arose of each team playing every other team three times with each then having a final fourth match against one of their opponents, to make the complete 40 week season. It was messy, but then this was wartime.
The results show that Arsenal played 12 of the 13 other teams in the League (all except QPR) once in the opening run of games. The QPR games were organised on 25th and 26th December and a home and away basis – exactly had been the process in the pre-war leagues.
This league system did indeed last all the way through until April, but three games in the final round of matches (the “fourth games”) were not played: Crystal Palace v Luton Town, Queen’s Park Rangers v Watford and Southampton v Crystal Palace.
Even though virtually every game was a London derby crowds were to be down, and only four Arsenal games got attendances over 10,000 during the whole 40 week season (two at Highbury, the others at Chelsea and Millwall).
One other change of note was to occur at sometime in the summer: it was decided Tottenham played its home games away from White Hart Lane so that the ground could be used to test out Enfield rifles – the WHL ground being the nearest enclosed but open (to the skies) space to the Enfield factory.
Thus on this day the two north London clubs played each other in front 10,000 – an impressive crowd for a match in the wartime league. Although at Highbury it was indeed a home game for Tottenham.
