26 June 1972 Frank Stapleton signed
Frank Stapleton signed from school as an apprentice (having tried his hand first with Man U) and played his first game in 1975 against Leicester in a 1-1 home draw. It was Mee’s last season as Arsenal finished 17th in the league.
Normally newcomers who have moved up from the A team can be found to have popped in and out of the team for a year or team before settling down, but Frank played virtually every game in 1975 until February. He ended the season with 23 league starts and four goals. The following season under Neill he played 40 league games, three FA cup and six League Cup matches scoring 17 goals.
His striking partner was MacDonald – the man who made way for him was John Radford.
Frank played in the three cup finals of Neill’s reign, scoring in the Cup win over Man U. He played 300 times and scored 108 goals for Arsenal.
However despite Arsenal’s form improving (the three cup finals were followed by a third place in the first division in 1981) he wanted to leave and was sold to Man U (who had previously rejected him) for a tribunal set fee of £900,000. He won the cup twice more, but not the league title – Man U coming 3rd and 4th or lower in the seasons he played for them. He left Manchester in 1987, after scoring 78 goals for the club in 365 matches.
After that Frank played for a range of clubs:
- Ajax 3 games
- Derby County, 10 games
- Le Havre, 18 games
- Blackburn Rovers,81 games
- Aldershot,1 game
- Huddersfield Town, 5 games
- Bradford City, 68 games (player manager)
- Brighton and Hove, 2 games.
The 1991-4 period with Bradford City saw the club rise from mid-table to just outside the play-offs. Despite this improvement he was sacked in 1994 – the following year the club sank back to mid table although they were promoted to the second division in 1996 eventually reaching the Premier League in 1999.
After this Frank coached New England Revolution in the MLS and then in 2003/4 worked under Sam Allardyce as forwards coach at Bolton.
As a player he also played 71 times for Ireland and scored 20 goals. It is said that he insisted that he should be released for all international games – no matter how that impacted on his commitments to the club that paid his wages. As such he became captain of Ireland for the 1986 world cup qualifiers and the 1988 Euro finals.
25 June 2020: Arsenal return to top two form
After the three month shut down of football in England because of the coronavirus outbreak, Arsenal had re-started their season with two defeats. However in the third match on this day they finally gained a win – 0-2 away to Southampton. This was the start of an 11 match run in which Arsenal won 8, drew 1 and lost 2. In a reversal of earlier form, Arsenal were unbeaten at home in this run.
But what was ignored by commentators generally was that this run was a continuation of a trend which had begun after Christmas Day and ran for the last two thirds of the season.
Across the final 24 games of the campaign Arsenal had the second best record of any club in the league winning 14, drawing five and losing five, thus notching up 47 points.
That was of course still a long way behind Manchester City but it was, across those 24 games, two points more than Manchester United got, five more than Chelsea, nine more than Liverpool and ten more than Tottenham.
Because the media refused to acknowledge this dramatic turn around in form, it continued to put forward the notion that Arsenal had had the most dreadful of seasons, highlighting of course the fact that in the following campaign Arsenal would not be in Europe for the first time in 25 years.
In doing so the media conveniently forgot to mention that all the other “top six” clubs had had prolonged periods outside of the European places, and for Arsenal this was the first time without a European place since before Mr Wenger took over.
24 June: The unluckiest day to move to or from Arsenal
24 June is one of those days where few if any of the transfers arranged have turned out to be positive for player or club. This even extends to players with birthdays on this day! And transfers….
On 24 June 1949 Bryn Jones transferred to Norwich as player coach. He remained there for just two years before returning to north London as a newsagent.
On this day in 1962: Brian Sparrow born in Bethnal Green. He played for Arsenal twice and went on loan to Wimbledon, Millwall, and Gillingham before settling with Crystal Palace.
Arturo Lupoli was born on this day in 1987. He started out with Parma and as an under 21 scored an unbelievable 45 goals in 22 games. In 2004 he moved to Arsenal as a scholar with Parma getting £200,000 compensation. However he never managed to settle and at the last count had played for 17 different clubs the latest being Virtus Verona of the 3rd division in Italy.
On 24 June 1999 Stefan Malz signed from 1860 Munich for £650,000. He went on to play six times in the league in the next two years, before moving on to 1. FC Kaiserslautern.
Then two years to the day after signing from Munich, Stefan Malz was transferred to Kaiserslautern for £580,000. After finishing his playing career at FSV Oggersheim he went into management from 2005 to 2008 but seemingly not since.
Moving on, on 24 June 2014: Arsenal sold their rights in Carlos Vela (secured under a buy-back option) to Real Sociedad for around £12m. He had played 29 times for Arsenal and had had five different loan deals before the transfer was agreed in 2012. This move ended the saga. In 2018/19 he played for Los Angeles having also played 72 times for Mexico.
Finally on 24 June 2015 Arsenal bought Vlad Dragomir from Poli Timișoara. He did not make it at Arsenal and in 2019/20 he was playing for Perugia.
After that we seem to have given up on 24 June.
23 June 1976: It’s Patrick Vieira’s birthday
Patrick Vieira born in Dakar, Senegal. Qualifying for French citizenship he played for Cannes, and made two appearances for Milan before they unexpectedly released him, and Mr Wenger bought him, while he was still managing in Japan. On 11 June 2018, Vieira was appointed as the manager of OGC Nice. On 4 December 2020, OGC Nice announced Patrick Vieira was no longer the manager of the club after a run of 5 losses in a row in all competition and elimination from the group stage of the Europa League.
My opening memory was Arsenal v Sheffield Wednesday on 16 September 1996. Bruce Rioch had been removed from his position and the unknown (in Britain) Arsene Wenger had been put in his place. Thus far we had won 2, drawn 2, and lost 1 under Pat Rice. Mr Wenger was still in Japan seeing the season out, showing us for the first time how honourable a man he is. And we heard that there were already signings done in his absence.
Which was a sign of what was to come. Here was a man who knew everything about football. He knew Arsenal, he knew Milan, he knew Patrick. And he knew Milan were making one hell of a mistake by leaving Patrick to rot in the reserves. So he ordered the club to buy Patrick Vieira, for £3.5m.
Of course we’d never heard of him, and a reserve player for that price didn’t sound groundbreaking. We were , frankly, hoping for a bit more.
Worse, Patrick was injured when he came to us, so we didn’t see him. Anyway, with a team of Seaman, Dixon, Winterburn, Jensen, Bould, Linighan, Platt, Wright, Parlour, Harston and Merson we knocked Sheff W around 4-1 (a Wright hat trick).
Then into this match came Patrick as a sub for Platt. We watched this man mountain come in, and sat there with mouths open. And I remember, saying to Roger: “Look at that new guy Vieira. He’s just taken total control of the centre. He’s running the team and the match, and he’s only been playing for 5 minutes.”
That was the impact Patrick made. It was extraordinary from the start. I even once met him – and was amazed at just how huge he was. Me, 5 feet 8 inches. Him towering up to the sky.
He won three League trophies and four FA Cups. After leaving us he made the awful error of going to Juve, who were relegated for their part in “irregularities”. Patrick played 107 times for France and won the World Cup and Euro 2000 with them. And we bought him for £3.5m.
Perhaps most of all we remember that Patrick was the captain of the Invincibles – the greatest Arsenal team ever. And to round off my personal tribute, I remember also of course the final game of that amazing season. We had won the league, and just needed a draw against relegated Leicester to become unbeaten. Sir Alex had made comments to the fact that he remembered being in a Rangers side unbeaten all season who had lost the last game. As if there was a comparison.
But, of course, we went one-nil down at half time. I was shaking – literally shaking – through the half time. Couldn’t even have a drink. I just sat there thinking, this can’t happen. And then, if I recall it right, Henry got the penalty and Patrick scored to give us the winner.
One last memory. 28 March 2006 – he played against us in the Champs League. That was the moment Robert Pires tackled him, and got the ball – and from that moment we went on to score. Sorry Patrick – but if you must leave Arsenal, these things happen.
Patrick played 407 times for Arsenal and scored 34 times. I don’t kid myself that ex-players would ever read my ramblings – but still, it feels good to pay my compliments to one of the Masters.
22 June 1925 Herbert Chapman takes up his post at Arsenal
On 10 June Hudersfield’s directors had met with Chapman to discuss his potential move to Arsenal, and on 10th or 11th June 1925 Chapman telegrammed Sir Henry Norris to accept a job offer. Arsenal then bought a house in Hendon for Chapman and his family.
Around June 15 Arsenal announced that they had bought Highbury and some extra land from the College that was leasing it to the club. Yet another new era was starting.
On Monday 22 June 1925, exactly 32 years to the day after Jack Humble took the chair for the first ever AGM of the newly formed Woolwich Arsenal Football and Athletic Club Ltd, Herbert Chapman took up the job of Secretary Manager of Arsenal FC. An iconic moment if ever there was one.
On 15 August 1925 a crowd of 11,406 came to Highbury for a pre-season practice match. On 22 August at the second such game 13,269 turned up. Interest was indeed growing in what the club might become – after the poor final season with Knighton in charge..
But then on 29 August the season kicked off with…. a 1-0 home defeat to Tottenham. Using much the same team as collapsed last season under Knighton Chapman then produced four wins and two draws, ultimately taking Arsenal to its highest ever position in the league thus far to finish the season in 2nd. It was also the season that saw the dramatic change to the way in which Arsenal lined up. Although trophies did not come immediately, changes were afoot.
21 June 1995: Dennis Bergkamp arrived from Inter
Dennis had played just 52 league games during his time in Italy. He had been constantly attacked by the press in Italy where a column highlighting the worst mistake of the weekend’s games was named Bergkamp della settimana
He had started as a pro player under Johan Cruyff in 1986 and was a sub in the 1987 Cup Winners Cup final that Ajax won and went on to be Dutch player of the year twice. Then he went to Inter for £12m – the second highest transfer in the world at the time.
What happened then should be a lesson to the under 10s who run many of the Arsenal blogs. The word went around that Dennis was no good after his scoring rate went down. The press and the fans united in tormenting him. His form declined – what a surprise.
Fortunately Arsenal could see a bargain when it was sitting there, and two seasons on from the move to Inter, Dennis came to Highbury for £7.5m.
For seven games he didn’t score – but then he did against Southampton (I can still remember the way he took it, and then turned around in pure and absolute relief). He played next to Wright, and even people like Alan Hansen came to see him as a great player.
Then along came Arsène Wenger and the combination was perfect. He became PFA Player of the Year and in September 97 he became the first and (I think) the only player to have come first, second and third in a goal of the month competition on the BBC.
But if you want an Arsenal memory it is the goal of the season during 2001/02 campaign, against Newcastle….
Pires to Bergkamp on the edge of the penalty box, back to goal. Flick with the inside of he left, the ball goes one way round the defender and Dennis goes the other way, collects the ball and scores. Bergkamp of the Week, Month, Year, Century.
He played right up to the end of our time at Highbury, he had Dennis Bergkamp day, his friendly match on 22 July 2006 was the opening game at the Ems, and in 2008 he was voted second greatest Arsenal player of all time, just behind Henry.
20 June 1966: Bertie Mee takes over
On this day Bertie Mee became Arsenal manager. After the experience of taking a very high profile ex-footballer as manager, Arsenal had tried this again with Billy Wright but the result had been a disaster.
This time, instead, they sought to repeat the success of Tom Whittaker by promoting the club’s physiotherapist.
And just as with Tom Whittaker, the plan worked for a while. Bertie Mee brought Arsenal its first European trophy, as well as the first league and cup double, but quickly after that the success faded away and within a few seasons Arsenal were flirting seriously with relegation.
Worse Mee had a vision of football getting ever small, and spoke of reducing the first team squad to 18 players, and abandoning the two youth teams totally.
Tom Whittaker delivered two league titles and one FA cup, exactly the same as Herbert Chapman and George Allison.
19 June 2009: Thomas Vermaelen signed from Ajax for £10m
This was the only significant signing for Arsenal this summer.
But apart from signing a very good player the transfer was of interest because over time it helped highlight how Arsene Wenger made the books balance at Arsenal – something that was essential in these days of paying off the stadium debt.
At this time two players left Arsenal: Adebayor went to Manchester City for £25m on 20 July. He had cost just £3m three years earlier, and as a quick profit sale must rank alongside Anelka who moved from £250,000 to £25m also in three years. Three years after joining City he was told he was not part of their plans and could leave.
So a fine deal with Arsenal for a player who was already causing problems.
Nine days after taking Adebayor Manchester City also took Kole Toure for £16m. He had cost £150,000 in 2002.
In short Arsenal made £32m profit for those two players. In the case of Vermaelen he moved on to Barcelona for £17m – but remained injured for most of this time there.
17 June 1922: Bob John signed from Barry Town
And if you want a simple fact about Bob John it is that he played for Arsenal 470 times – more than any other player up to the cessation of football in 1939.
He was born on February 3, 1899 in the Welsh town of Barry, near Cardiff. By 1920 Bob John was playing for Caerphilly (just for accuracy not Caerphilly Town which was a different team,) who came bottom of the second division of the Southern League and then left the league. They returned a couple of seasons later but did not finish the fixtures, ultimately ceasing to exist.
From Caerphilly Bob moved to Barry AFC (again, not Barry Town as sometimes said – the club changing its name after Bob John left them) – again in the Southern League. The club was a centre for rising new Welsh players, and they have had over 50 internationals play for them.
Arsenal signed Bob in January 1922 for £750, and as such is recorded as the most successful of Leslie Knighton’s transfers. He made his first team début on October 28 that year in a 2-1 defeat at home to Newcastle and went on to make 24 league appearances that year, taking over the number 6 shirt from Tom Whittaker.
By 1923 he was playing for Wales (against Scotland, 17 March 1923) and eventually totted up 15 caps – a very notable total in an era when international sides tended to play little more than three games a season.
Bob John played in the losing cup final of 1927, and started finding himself playing in a team with Herbie Roberts, Joe Hume, Cliff Bastin and of course Charlie Buchan. He got his cup medal in the winning final of 1930, and of course was in place for the whole of the magnificent 30s. He even managed to score in a cup final (1932) although on that occasion we lost.
Having won the league in 1931, Bob John broke the club appearance record held by Percy Sands of 327 games (April 2nd 1932), before going on to get his second and third winners’ medals in 1932 and 1933. He then became very much a senior player, and lost his place when George Allison signed Wilf Copping. But he stayed with the club, often dropping down to the reserves in later years, but continuing to advise and support the younger players who were joining the club. He had, after all, be there and done it.
He later worked with various club as a coach or trainer, and died in his birth town of Barry in 1982, at the age of 83. His shirts from the 1927, 1930 and 1932 Cup Finals are in the Arsenal Museum.
16 June: Arsenal create football’s first feeder club
During the inter-war period many first division clubs hit on the idea of taking over non-league sides and running them as “Nurseries”. Perhaps by coincidence or perhaps as a result of some copycat activities, all three of the north London teams in the 1930s had nursery clubs in Kent. Tottenham were linked with Northfleet United, Clapton Orient with Ashford and most famously, Arsenal with Margate.
At this time the school leaving age was 14, but the youngest a man could be signed as a full time pro was 17. This meant that clubs either had to take youngsters onto the groundstaff (something many of the lads didn’t fancy) or risk losing them to other jobs. The nursery club was an ideal arena in which the youngster could train as an amateur and have his development monitored while working elsewhere.
Quite why Arsenal chose Margate is not known. It might have been a nod in the direction of Arsenal’s 19th century origins in Kent, although we might also note that it was also the place where manager George Allison’s daughter attended a local school.
As Major Sir Samuel Hill-Wood was quoted as saying in the Isle of Thanet Gazette in 1934: “In the past we have suffered very much because we have been unable to take likely boys of eighteen or nineteen found by our scouts. We could not play them. Perhaps unfortunately our second team is at the head of the London Combination year after year, and we dare not experiment with the team. It would only offend players hoping to get their Combination medal. What we wanted was some club willing and good enough to teach our young players for us. We can and do find lots of promising young boys but they must have somewhere to play and be taught.”
But let’s go back to the start and trace the history.
The first link I have found between Arsenal and Margate dates from the summer of 1930 when Gerard Keizer was signed from non-league Margate, and immediately thrust into the first division side where he stayed for 12 games, of which we won 8, drew 3 and lost 1.
Keizer was Dutch. He had joined Ajax aged 16 and by the time he was 20 he was their reserve keeper. In fact Keizer was registered with two clubs (allowable since he was an amateur and the clubs were in different countries). Apparently he would fly back to the Netherlands on Saturday nights to play for Ajax on Sundays although quite what a player who was capable of keeping goal for Arsenal was doing playing for Margate, is a little hard to fathom.
The next connection comes in 1933 when ex-Arsenal striker Reg Tricker moved to Margate. After that in June 1934 Margate and Arsenal reached an agreement through which Arsenal would loan promising players to Margate for them to get some experience playing competitive matches.
Arsenal provided the manager (Jimmy Ramsay) and the chief coach (Willie Arbuckle) and chief scout for the club and paid 60% of the wages. Margate Town Council meanwhile spent significant funds improving the ground, (undoubtedly seeing the publicity as a way of promoting Margate as a holiday and day trip resort). Arsenal also explained the situation by saying that with the club winning the Football Combination each season, and players there valuing their championship medal, it would be unfair on those reserve players to find their chances of a medal being reduced by having youngsters given a run out – so instead the youngsters would go to Margate.
Reg Lewis is perhaps the most famous player to have made his name there, while Mal Griffiths and Horace Cumner also came through the ranks and later played for their countries. Eddie Hapgood was among many who played for Margate while recovering from injury.
In addition Arsenal either loaned or transferred Charlie Preedy and Jack Lambert to the club to help bolster the team and provide training support. Jack Lambert then went on to be manager of the club and was certainly in that position by 1936. By that time Horace Cumner and Mal Griffiths who both became Welsh internationals, were in the team. Cliff Bastin and Eddie Hapgood also trained there while recovering from injuries.
However after Ashford played Clapton Orient in the FA Cup in 1934/5 season protests about match fixing were made and the FA eventually banned linked clubs from entering the Cup from 1937 onwards.
This decision caused a major problem for Margate. On the pitch they were a huge success winning almost every competition they entered. They even reached the third round of the FA Cup one year before losing to first division Blackpool. But in terms of league games they always lost money. In fact a good Cup run was Margate’s only hope of financial survival and without it, the club was doomed.
So it was that also in 1937 Arsenal announced they would be pulling out of the arrangement as it was costing them too much money. Margate left the Southern League and returned to the Kent League and at the end of the 1937/8 season the arrangement was ended, just as Herbie Roberts was about to become Margate’s trainer.
True, for the friendly against Boulogne in January 1938 Margate took 800 supporters with them. But the average home crowd about that time was 2,000, and that just wasn’t enough through the turnstile each week for the run of the mill matches.
When the Cup ban came into being the partnership ended and Arsenal entered their own A team in the Southern League, playing at Enfield.
The last major connection between the two clubs came in 1989 when Arsenal played a friendly at Margate to celebrate 60 years of football at Hartsdown Park
Some nursery clubs did continue into the 1950s although most league clubs subsequently followed the Arsenal model of creating an “A” and “B” team as a home for their up and coming talent.
