29 July 1976 and 20 July 1979: Malcolm MacDonald signed, and retired.

MacDonald was signed from Newcastle for £333,333. There was an argument about the price between the clubs and eventually the Arsenal chairman said, “one third of a million and not a penny more.” And so it was.

Then three years to the day after being signed Malcolm Macdonald announced his retirement from football.  There is no doubt that without his injury he could have helped Arsenal to greater things and his loss was a major blow.  His final game was the last game of the 1978/9 season – a 1-1 draw away to Chelsea in which he scored our goal.

After he took over as manager Terry Neill needed to refresh the team, and he did this with such key players as MacDonald (introduced to the first team in 1976/77), Rix (1976/7), Jennings (1977/8), and Sunderland (1977/78).

But sadly, because of his injury, Malcolm MacDonald played just two full seasons for Arsenal, and then four games in his final season (1978/9).

He was born in Fulham on 7 January 1950, and played for Tonbridge, Fulham (signed by Bobby Robson for £1000), Luton Town, Newcastle United and finally Arsenal.   In all he played 84 league games for us and scored 42 goals – a remarkable record.

Curiously, for a man remembered as a centre forward he started as a full back.

With Luton Town Malcolm scored 49 goals in 88 games, which then inevitably led to his move to one of the big clubs: in this case Newcastle.  He scored three goals in his first match against Liverpool – which is what made his reputation there.

In 1975 he scored all five goals in an England victory over Cyprus, but after than only scored one other for his country in a total of 14 games.

He was injured playing against Rotherham in the league cup in 1978 which is what cut his third and final season so short.  He did try a comeback in Sweden but it didn’t work out and he retired aged 29.

Malcolm managed Fulham from 1980 to 1984, after retirement, and Huddersfield in 1987/8.  He had some success with Fulham but could not achieve promotion and Huddersfield were relegated under him.

After football a failed business venture, a divorce and lack of success as a manager clearly affected him seriously and he suffered in his personal life although he then recovered and worked as a broadcaster.

It is reported that he is the President of North Shields FC.

28 July 2000, 2002, 2009. The days of the profitable transfers

Three dates for 28 July, all connected with transfers that were financially incredibly good value for Arsenal.

On 28 July 2000 Marc Overmars and Manu Petit signed for Barcelona.  At €40.6 million Overmars was the most expensive Dutch player of all time but injuries inhibited his style and he rarely showed the quality that he had delivered at Arsenal.  Including wages he cost Barcelona around £4,000,000 a game.

On 28 July 2002 Arsenal signed Gilberto Silva for just £4.5m.  The low fee came because Atlético Mineiro had not paid their players, were banned from transfer deals, and there were problems getting the work permit despite the fact he went on to captain Brazil.

And finally on 28 July 2009:  Kolo Toure sold to Man City for £14m thus making Arsenal a profit of £13,850,000.  He played 82 games for City before being transferred on to Liverpool on a free – thus costing Man City £170,731 per game.  There is a video of Kolo describing his transfer to Arsenal on the Arsenal History Society website

27 July 2005: FC Utrecht 0 Arsenal 3. The first ever unbeaten pre-season

Pre-season games are just about the last unregulated element in an ever more controlled football calendar.

In the early days of football most professional teams played just one pre-season game – in Arsenal’s case the Reds v the Blues, or the first team against the reserves.  The sort of tour that we sometimes see these days before the start of the season was actually arranged in the early days of football at the end of the season.

The modern approach to pre-seasons started in the 1950s: on 4 August 1956 Arsenal played Stuttgart away, putting out the entire first team in what appears to have been our first pre-season game in the modern style.  It ended 1-1, and was the only-pre-season game recorded for that season, although I believe Arsenal did play Arsenal Reserves at Highbury on 11 August in private, with the season starting the following weekend.  So that game against Stuttgart can make a fair claim to being the start of Arsenal’s pre-season in the modern style.

In 1957 there was again just the one match away to Stockholm, but in 1958 the modern approach finally emerged with games against Schalke, Enschede and Young Fellows Zurich (the latter being a team sadly no longer with us).

The notion of starting the season with a series of friendlies then took off and has continued ever since.

When Woolwich Arsenal joined the league in 1893 the regulation was that league football started on 1 September, unless that day was a Sunday, in which case the league started on 2 September.  It was just one of those arbitrary rules that seemed to be adopted by the league in the early days – undoubtedly as a sop to cricket, whose season had been established long before the Football League came along.

In 1896 the rule was changed to so that the first Football League matches would be played on the first saturday in September.   Woolwich Arsenal, noting the new arrangements that year played their first ever pre-season friendly as a league club, on 1 September 1896, beat Rossendale 4-0.

In the early days friendlies were dotted around within the season, which is not too surprising, because most of the clubs Arsenal had played prior to joining their joining the Football League in 1893 were still without a league to play in, and thus just playing friendlies.  And as the earlier AGMs of the London FA and Kent FA had shown, when objection was raised to Arsenal’s move to professionalism, they were very much wanting to continue playing a couple of games a season against the most famous club in the south of England – irrespective of whether they were a professional team or no.

In 1903 Woolwich Arsenal played its first end of season friendly series, expanding this in 1907 to its first overseas tour incorporating Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

End of season games were stopped in 1913 with the club more engaged in getting Highbury ready than in playing friendlies, but they recommenced in 1921, and incorporated tours of Sweden in 1922 and Austria in 1925.  Such end of season affairs continued until the early 1970s.

As for an unbeaten pre-season where there were more than just one or two games, the first I can find ran like this…

• 16 July 2005: Barnet 1 Arsenal 4 (Hleb, Henry, Bergkamp, Hoyte)

• 20 July 2005: SC Weiz 0 Arsenal 5 (Flamini, Henry, Bentley, Bergkamp)
• 24 July 2005: SC Ritzing 2 Arsenal 5 (Bergkamp, Henry, Reyes, Hlev, Larsson
• 27 July 2005: FC Utrecht 0 Arsenal 3 (Pires, Reyes, Henry)
• 29 July 2005: Ajax 0 Arsenal 1 (Lupoli)
• 31 July 2005: Porto 1 Arsenal 2 (Ljungberg 2)

26 July 2010: The AISA Arsenal History Society suggest three statues around the Emirates Stadium.

Coming up with the idea of that there should be statues around the new Arsenal stadium was one of the early major achievements of the AISA Arsenal History Society. 

The idea was not only to give the new ground a sense of being a continuation of Arsenal’s history, but also of helping to solve the congestion problem that arose as friends agreed to meet at a particular entrance.  The notion was people would now say “I’ll meet you at Thierry Henry” etc – and that is what happened.

We also suggested that one of the statues should be of Herbert Chapman looking up at the stadium as if to say “I did this.”   And that’s what we got. 

Of course not every idea that we came up with was accepted: another suggestion was that we should have a statue for Henry Norris who rescued the club in 1910 and moved Arsenal to Highbury. 

The successful blackening of Norris’ name by those who deposed him in 1927, and by scurrilous journalists ever since made that too much of a controversial idea, but the club did take it upon themselves to restore Sir Henry’s grave, and that of Herbert Chapman, and I think that was a very worthwhile gesture.

I did also put the idea forward that if we could not have a statue of Sir Henry there should be some recognition of the triumvirate of other great radical reformers that the club has had, but that one has not yet found favour.  But I am still hopeful that one day it might..

My three nominations were :

Jack Humble: one of the founders of the club who stayed on and became part of the committee that ran the club.  He was the chairman of Arsenal when we entered the league in 1893 and remained as a director through the Norris era, resigning only when the Hill Wood family took over the club and removed all the previous directors.

Herbert Chapman, of course, the man who gave Arsenal its first triumphs, and whose statue we now have opposite the south bridge.

Arsene Wenger, who once more transformed the club, giving us our influx of players from around the world, the new training facilities, the incredible youth project which allowed the club to pay for the new stadium, the Unbeaten Season, three League titles and the record seven FA Cup wins.

Maybe one day.

25 July 1972: Arsenal 2 Watford 0 (Kelly, George).

Playing Watford as the first pre-season game was a tradition of the time as Arsenal shared training facilities with Watford – something which seems hard to imagine these days, but this was the era of cost cutting in football – an industry that was seen to be in terminal decline.  It was the first of four matches before the start of the campaign.

Arsenal had returned to training in July 1972, without a new trophy in the cabinet.  But in the past five years they had won the League, the Fairs Cup, and the FA Cup, had twice been beaten finalists in the League Cup Final, and once beaten in the FA Cup final.  It was quite a time.

Pre-season Arsenal beat Watford 2-0, Lausanne 6-0, Grasshopper 1-2, and then lost 4-0 away to Hamburg.

Arsenal’s problematic player Marinello played in three of the four games.

During the friendly period Arsenal made their one venture into the summer signings market, and on 28 July David Price signed professional forms having joined Arsenal in 1970.  He went on to make his first team début aged 17 in the end-of-season game against Leeds on  9 May 1973.

For the media the main issue was hooliganism and player indiscipline, and the new season kicked off on August 12 1972, with a pitch invasion by the crowd and the arrest of 28 spectators by police.  It was not the biggest football problem of the day however, the game at Chelsea being stopped three times.

On the pitch the league launched its new “clean-up” approach and as a result 53 players were cautioned and three were sent off.  It was also the first venture into a totting up system with multiple dismissals leading to suspensions.

Arsenal had talked pre-season about a new style, and the game was played this was a confirmation of the new Arsenal – a constantly  changing of shape and angle, with attacks built more from the wings in the style of 1970/1 rather than the ball up the centre in the style of 1971/2.  Ball looked more relaxed than in the previous season, alternating between subtle and forceful in a way that left the opposition bemused and it was fitting that he scored the only goal – a penalty.

Arsenal followed this up on August 15 with Arsenal 5 Wolverhampton Wanderers 2, 38,524 watching the game at Highbury.

But the worrying news was that Charlie George missed the game, having declared himself in dispute with the club over his wages.  This was particularly frustrating in that this was not the first time a player under Mee had had a public row with the club over salary, and it suggested that the autocratic regime that Mee was known for needed some flexibility.  Charlie was put on the transfer list.

However Radford and Kennedy were easily able to sweep Wolverhampton aside (both scoring in the first 15 minutes), and Arsenal would have had more had the man of the match not been Parkes in goal for Wolverhampton.  Simpson and McNab added to the fun and Radford got a second.

But the main talk of the day was still the number of players booked.  17 more bookings were reported from the matches played on the 15th and the press saw this as much more important than the actual playing of football.

As for Arsenal fans it was a good start, and this continued with Arsenal 2 Stoke City 0 in front of 42,146.

By the time six games were reached Arsenal were clear at the top, while the bottom two places in the league were occupied by Manchester City and Manchester United.  Ah, happy days..

24 July 2012. Arsenal’s pre-season starts on a ploughed field.

Arsenal played Malaysia on what seemed on TV pictures to be a ploughed field. Eisfeld scored his first goal and appeared to have a bright future with the club.  It was the series of games that was supposed to include a match in Nigeria, but never did. Eisfled moved on to VfL Bochum but his career was blighted by injury.

As for the start of the league campaign that also was uninspiring – a goalless draw at home to Sunderland who seemed to have a 12 man defence (one of whom was the referee) and a goalless draw away to Stoke, for whom the rules of engagement seemed to have little to do with the rules of association football.

But then a 2-0 away win at Liverpool and a 6-1 home victory over Southampton seemed to disappoint the gathered journalists who already had their copy about Arsenal fighting relegation written and presented to their editors.  

For the fans, the thought arose that maybe Arsenal were not going to be doom and gloom all the season

In the end following an away win at Bayern Munich in the Champions League to make it 3-3 (we lost on away goals) a final run in of eight wins and two draws in the last 10 games of the season gave Arsenal fourth.  Which as the media reminded us daily, was not a trophy.

23 July 1865: Henry Norris born

Look around the Arsenal today and you will not find a single mention of Henry Norris.  No statue, no plaque, no picture.

Mention Henry Norris to your average Arsenal fan and either he or she will not have heard of the man or that supporter will say something like “he was a crook wasn’t he?”

Yet in fact, Henry Norris, or Lt Colonel Sir Henry Norris, as he was by the end of the first world war, was repeatedly the saviour of Arsenal.  Just as Jack Humble made the Arsenal by being involved in the club from 1887 to 1927, by being the first chairman of the league club, and by being a constant servant of the club at director level, so Henry Norris made the Arsenal by rescuing the club in 1910 when it was about to fall into oblivion, by having the vision to move the club to Islington  in 1913, by creating there a modern stadium that became the envy of all football, by recruiting Herbert Chapman.

Both men – Henry Norris and Jack Humble risked everything they owned for Arsenal.   Jack Humble did it in 1893 by being a guarantor of the new club – a club that was from its birth under attack from a rival football club (Royal Ordnance Factories FC) who showed they would use every foul means possible to bring down both Woolwich Arsenal FC and its guarantors.

Henry Norris did it in 1910 when he paid out all the money owed by the club as it entered administration.  Not paying out 1 penny or 1 shilling in the pound as was common for companies entering administration – but every single penny that was owed.  All from his own pocket.

And in fact from 1910 to 1927 Henry Norris and Jack Humble worked together and ran the Arsenal.

But for Henry Norris rescuing the club from oblivion in 1910 was just the start –  for knowing that the club had to be moved if it were to survive he signed the lease on the land he wanted to transform into a new ground, personally guaranteeing not only to pay the rent, but guaranteeing also to hand the ground back in its original condition at the end of the lease, if the owner so required.   It was an amazing risk, for he would have been legally required to dismantle our stadium if the owners had demanded it.

And as if this guarantee were not enough, he then had the stadium built, he saw off the opposition from Tottenham who appealed both to the league and directly to the rest of the league for the move to be prohibited.

During the war Arsenal were financially devastated, probably more than any other club, and yet Henry Norris didn’t stop.  He worked endlessly for the war effort (which is how he won both his knighthood and the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the army) and supported the work that he undertook in support of the war effort through his own money.

Ultimately he was in charge of conscription for the army, and then the decommissioning of the conscripts.

Arsenal ended the war massively in debt, and yet he managed to open the club again, in the first division, and take the club forwards, eventually bringing in Herbert Chapman.

So why does he have such a poor reputation that Arsenal have now seemingly disowned him?

There are many reasons, but primarily when Henry Norris was forced out of Arsenal by the League’s ruling on court proceedings, Sir Henry still owned his shares in the club, and through these questioned the way the new directors were running the club by turning up at AGMs and asking questions.   This hardened the already existing split between the new Arsenal under the Hill-Wood family and Sir Henry.  There is no evidence that the Hill Wood family engaged in spreading stories against Sir Henry but they were in power and had influence in the League.

And Norris already lacked friends in the league for exposing the match fixing scandals before the war.  Although the League and FA dismissed his complaints the match fixing reached such a height in 1915 the league took action, but never admitted they were wrong to put Norris down initially.

Lt Colonel Sir Henry Norris 23 July 1865 – 30 July 1934.  Founder of the modern Arsenal.

22 July 2016: Arsenal sign Bolton’s Player of the Year Rob Holding for £2m.

The transfer was met with wholesale derision by the anti-Wengerian mobs who were spurred on by the mass media and their newly emerging small scale blogs.  

Although none of the publications could bring itself to apologise for the abuse by the end of the season when Holding put in a sterling display in the Cup Final to see off Chelsea, it was apparent that this was another Wenger work of absolute brilliance.

Following injuries to centre backs Per Mertesacker and Gabriel Paulistahe was called upon to make his Arsenal debut in the 2016/17 season first game against Liverpool.

After his performance in the game against Leicester City Mr Wenger said in the post-match press conference, “Unfortunately no one speaks about the performance of Rob Holding. You should be happy, he is English and 20 years old. I am sorry he didn’t cost £55 million, so he can’t be good.”

In the 2020/1 Rob played 30 league games, three domestic cup games and five Europa League matches, as the defence totally reformed itself, reducing its level of tackling by almost 50%, and thus cutting down dramatically on fouls given away and yellow cards.

By the end of last season he had played 118 games for Arsenal.

21 July 1898: Tom Whittaker, our fourth longest serving manager, born.

Tom Whittaker born in Aldershot.   His prime interest in his early days was in being a marine engineer, but he was spotted playing football while serving his country, and in 1919 signed for Arsenal.  As Arsenal manager after the second world war, he won the league twice and the Cup once, as did Allison and Chapman before him.

On 2nd February 1927, Arsenal played in an FA Cup 4th round replay against Port Vale having drawn 2-2 four days earlier. According to Tom Whittaker (and remember Whittaker was hardly an unbiased observer in all that followed), “Arsenal were pressing hard, but things were not going just right and old George Hardy’s eyes spotted something he felt could be corrected to help the attack. During the next lull in the game he hopped to the touchline, and cupping his hands, yelled out that one of the forwards was to play a little farther upfield.” Chapman was furious and sent Hardy to the dressing-room.    (Arsenal won 1-0 and went on to the Cup Final for the first time that season).

Immediately after the game (it is said in some sources – but not all, as we’ll see below) Hardy was sacked and Whittaker promoted to the trainer in his place.  It is reported in Whittaker’s autobiography (but could be a myth) that this is when Chapman said to Whittaker, “I’m going to make this the greatest club in the world and I`m going to make you the greatest Trainer in the game.”

But this raises the question: why was Hardy so strongly disciplined for one  misdemeanour? 

Sally Davis in her review of the situation says that “William Hall was called on to exercise his authority as a director to bring the row to an end; he chose to allow Chapman to deal with Hardy as he saw fit.   This is important because in 1925 when Chapman was first appointed, Davis says that Chapman wanted to demote or remove Hardy, whose methods he considered dated.  Sir Henry Norris who was loyal to a fault, would not allow it.  So allowing Chapman to decide the issue was a direct challenge to Sir Henry.

Chapman demoted Hardy as he had wanted to do all along and appointed Whittaker to succeed him.  In refusing to fight this battle the  vice-chairman acknowledged that Chapman now “had authority over football matters.”

According to Davis, Sir Henry “Norris, however , told Chapman that he had exceeded his authority in making this change of personnel.  He was angry that it had happened to Hardy, obviously [as Hardy was seen as a Norris man – and symbolically was the first Norris appointment], and his view was that only the club’s directors had the authority to hire, raise up and cast down,” which of course was true.

There had not been this sort of argument before – but on the other hand no one had told Chapman how to behave before, save at the very start of his appointment when the argument broke out over the same issue: Hardy.

Sir Henry had told Hall to go to Chapman but Hall had felt he was being turned into a messenger boy and resigned from the board of directors.  Sir Henry was now in an exposed position.

In this version of events, Hardy was not sacked at all, but subsequently left of his own volition and thus the episode ended without Norris directly coming in to reinstate him and do what he had not done before: override Chapman.

So Whittaker continued to be the first-team trainer as Chapman wanted, and Chapman’s authority was never again questioned.

But Sir Henry Norris did not forget this moment because in his own letter of resignation to Arsenal’s board in July 1927 he said that “his position as club chairman was now untenable because of the challenges to his authority made by Hall and Chapman.”

But whichever way it happened Hardy left in 1927 to work at Tottenham, before moving on to coach Tottenham’s nursery side Northfleet United.  This version says he died preparing for a Tottenham match v West Bromwich Albion in January 1947.

19 July 2008: Barnet 1 Arsenal 2 (Simpson, Barazite)

The 2008 pre-season had the usual level of comings and goings with Mathieu Flamini, who had had a superb season in 2007/8 moving onto Milan at the end of his contract, Lehmann joining Stuttgart on a free, Gilberto signing for Panathinaikos, Hleb to Barcelona, and Justin Hoyte going to Middlesbrough.

Coming in we had a new physio Neal Reynolds who replaced Gary Lewin, and the signing of new contracts by Sanga, Song, Clichy and Adebayor. Carlos Vela at last got a work permit, Aaron Ramsey came from Cardiff, Nasri from Marseille, and Silvestre from Man U

The club played nine pre-season matches starting on this day…

• 19 July 2008: Barnet 1 Arsenal 2 (Simpson, Barazile)
• 22 July 2008: Szombathelyi Halads 1 Arsenal 1 (Walcott)
• 28 July 2008: Burgenland XI 2 Arsenal 10 (Wilshere 2, Bendtner 4, Vela 3, Walcott)
• 30 July 2008: VFB Stuttgart 1 Arsenal 3 (Vela, Bendtner, Wilshere)
• 2 August 2008 Arsenal 0 Juventus 1 (Emirates)
• 3 August 2008: Arsenal 1 Real Madrid  0 (Adebayor) (Emirates)
• 6 August 2008: Huddersfield Town 1 Arsenal 2 (Watt, Barazite)
• 8 August 2008 Ajax 2 Arsenal 3 (Adebayor 2, Bendtner) (Amsterdam)
• 9 August 2008 Sevilla 1 Arsenal 1 (Vela) (Amsterdam).

So once again Arsenal crammed in both an Emirates tournament and the one in Amsterdam.

And then they were straight into the play off match for the Champions League.  The results were

• 13 August 2008: Twente 0 Arsenal 2 (Gallas, Adebayor)
• 27 August 2008: Arsenal 4 Twente 0. (Nasri, Gallas, Walcott, Bendtner)

As for the season, that had a mixed start, with the encouragement of a 1-0 home win against WBA on the first game being deflated by a 1-0 defeat to Fulham away in the second. 

One thing about being in a pandemic – the pre-season seems a bit less frantic.

Footnote: in 2019/20 Barazite played 14 games for Buriram United in Thailand.