May 2015 – The Arsenal History

28May 2015

Why Sepp Blatter Has To Go – The Arsenal Connection

by Andy Kelly

Anyone with the vaguest interest in football cannot have escaped yesterday’s news of the arrest of seven top FIFA officials on a multitude of corruption charges. For the vast majority of football fans the arrests were a shock, not because of the revelations but for the fact that it had actually happened. For years, FIFA has been the subject of many accusations of corruption, with the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals being the highest profile.

The organisation’s president, Sepp Blatter, has always managed to keep himself distanced from any alleged wrongdoing and continued to be supported by a large majority of members. However, yesterday’s arrests has to see him fall from grace. He has tried to spin the situation by saying that, although this is not good for football, it is good for FIFA that these alleged misdemeanours have been brought into the open so that they can be acted upon. He has tried to distance himself from the men that have been arrested but, and this is a big but, he has a big problem.
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28May 2015

The Arsenal FA Cup Media Day

by Andy Kelly

On Friday 22 May I received a surprise invite to Arsenal’s FA Cup media day on 27 May at the club’s training ground. I didn’t need too much time to consider whether or not I would be attending! This is my story of the day.

The itinerary stated that the first event would be Arsene Wenger’s press conference at 9am. I arrived about 20 minutes before this and was pleased to see some familiar faces in Tim Stillman and Goonerholic. Shortly after, Dave Seager and Darren Berry (a fellow warbler on the Arsenal unofficial 2015 FA Cup final song) turned up to form a quintet of bloggers.

Someone to talk to during the quiet moments

27May 2015

Arsenal’s Complete FA Cup Final Record – updated with all 14 Wins

by Andy Kelly

Last year we thought it would be a good idea to put together a compendium of information relating to all of Arsenal’s FA Cup final appearances on one page so you don’t have to trawl all over the internet to find out the answers to all of those nagging questions.

We’ve updated the article and made some additions. We’ve added a brief match report for each game which we wrote for the Arsenal magazine last year, and most of the programmes for the games. We were hoping to have all of them ready in time for this blog but the later years take ages to scan as they are so big. We’ll add them as we scan them in. Be aware that these later programmes are huge, physically and electronically. With this in mind we’ve shown the file size for each one so you know what you are letting yourself in for. This article was originally posted in 2015 and has been updated to include all subsequent FA Cup final appearances.

Weekly Illustrated 25 April 1936.

26May 2015

Arsenal won the Treble in 1935: Crowd celebrations

by Mark Andrews

The crowd celebrate the Triple Championship win in fine style: 4 May 1935

It is just over 80 years and three weeks to the day that Arsenal’s season ended as champions for the third time in succession.

On 22 April 1935 Arsenal travelled to Ayresome Park and won 1-0. Consequently this defeat of manager George Allison’s old club, Middlesbrough, meant Arsenal had managed to win their third consecutive First Division league championship.

Huddersfield were the only team to achieve the hat-trick previously, and they too had been shaped by Herbert Chapman, though after Chapman’s untimely death Allison had taken charge of Arsenal for the start of this campaign.

Earlier in the season, in March 1935, the anticipated ‘match of the season’ drew an all time home club record of 73,295 as Arsenal entertained eventual runners-up Sunderland who were vying with the Gunners for top spot.

25May 2015

Classic Match Report: Arsenal v WBA – 7 October 1931

by Mark Andrews

Arsenal win consecutive Charity Shields

In the 1930s Arsenal appeared in seven Charity Shields, winning five of them outright. Due to the intervention of the War the Charity Shield of 1939 was not played, meaning Arsenal competed in all but two of the games during that decade highlighting the club’s pre WW2 dominance. This game was the second of the seven the Arsenal played overall.