John O’Rourke 1945-2016
John O’Rourke: The Arsenal 1960-62
An Arsenal Reserve/Youth player, he had a healthy goal-scoring ratio all through his career as a prolific Centre Forward, even appearing as a male model in Middlesbrough.
Donald Paul Rossiter 1935-2016
Don Rossiter: The Arsenal 1950-54 & 1955-56
A right sided forward, Don Rossiter was an Arsenal reserve team player for two periods in the 1950s. He later became a councillor for the Tories in the Medway area.
Arsenal’s 8th most capped player – No way! Yes, way.
Having previously written blogs on the progression of Arsenal’s record appearance makers and goalscorers, we thought we’d write one about the players who, in turn, have been the club’s most capped player. Just to be clear, this record only includes full international caps that a player has won whilst registered as an Arsenal player so Pat Jennings isn’t included as most of his 125 Northern Ireland caps were won whilst he wasn’t on Arsenal’s books.
Jack Kelsey
Complete List of Arsenal Players to Score Three or More Goals in a Game
Following the Arsenal v Basel Champions League game on 6 December 2016 in which Lucas Perez became the third Arsenal player to score a hat-trick this season, we were asked what is the record for most hat-tricks scored by Arsenal players in a season. And then, what is the record for most number of different players to score a hat-trick in the same season.
Not ones to shirk from very important questions like this we decided to put together a list of all of players to score three or more goals in a competitive match for Arsenal. For the sake of clarity, competitive means Football League, Premier League, FA Cup, Football League Cup, European Cup, Champions League, Cup-winners’ Cup, Fairs Cup and UEFA Cup.
As we all know, football fans love lists so we have two. The first is a season by season breakdown of how many hat-tricks were scored and who the players were, with their individual totals. The second is a list of the top ten players to have scored most hat-tricks. We’ve also included some items of hat-trick trivia. Read More →
Arsene Wenger Gives The Media A Bloody Nose
Today, Arsene Wenger celebrates 20 years as Arsenal manager. It’s been an unusual era that has left Arsenal fans divided on whether or not he should have been in charge for the whole of this period. However, his tenure almost ended within weeks of his appointment.
Arsenal’s Great Danes
Staevnet 1 Arsenal 7
Arsenal: McKechnie, Magill, McCullough, Brown, Ure, Groves, MacLeod, Strong, Baker, Eastham, Armstrong.
53 years ago today Arsenal made their first foray in European competition when they played Staevnet, a combined Copenhagen XI, in the Inter Cities Fairs Cup. The Gunners had qualified for the competition, despite having finished seventh in the First Division, by virtue of the fact that teams above them were not eligible as the cities in which they were based did not host an annual trade fair. Possibly the most obscure qualifying criterion for a football competition. Read More →
Almost a century on, Arsenal’s election back into the First Division in 1919 continues to rankle Tottenham fans. Having shown that the reported events of that year have been the result of idle hands, there was one last tenet that Tottenham fans continued to spout as “the truth.” They have continued to put forth “precedence” as a reason for being wronged. If you don’t believe me you only have to do a simple search.
Deluded sp*rs fan
Today we launch a new page on the website:
Is It True?
Over the last few years we’ve discovered that Arsenal’s history isn’t quite how many historians have recorded it. We’ve written a number of blogs explaining what is wrong and how it came about; some stories have been misinterpreted whilst some have been complete fiction!
Henry Norris – not all bad
There are also some stories that don’t appear to be true but actually are, so we’ve given more detail about them.
Now we have started to collate them into one place so that they are easily accessible.
You can access the page via the menu at the top of any page on the website.
There are still more myths that we know of and we will be adding them to the page as we write about them.
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The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal – crowd behaviour at the early matches
By Mark Andrews and Andy Kelly
Back in 2014 Benfica were one of the teams invited to play in The Emirates Cup. We were asked by Andy Exley to write about one of Arsenal’s previous games against Benfica – the pre-season “friendly” in 1971.
Except it’s a load of old cobblers
One of the stories about Arsenal that Tottenham fans like dredge up due to their seemingly perpetual inferiority complex is that the Middlesex club were relegated in 1928 because Arsenal deliberately lost games to ensure this happened.
Even worse is that it gets an airing in some histories written about Arsenal, even the club’s official history!
So, is it true? Of course not.