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Arsenal FC
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Arsenal FC Information
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Arsenal FC History
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Arsenal Football Club (also known
as Arsenal, The Arsenal or The Gunners) is a north London
football club founded in 1886. They play at Arsenal Stadium,
Highbury.
Early years
Arsenal were originally called Dial Square. The club later
changed its name to Woolwich Arsenal, and then to Royal Arsenal,
then back to Woolwich Arsenal again (the original founders were
employed in the "Dial Square" area of the Woolwich Arsenal, an
armaments factory in Woolwich, south London). In 1893 they were
the first southern team admitted to the Football League, a move
partly caused by the refusal of other southern teams to play
them after they turned professional. From 1893 to 1904, Woolwich
Arsenal played in the Second Division of the Football League.
They were promoted to the First Division in 1904.
Woolwich Arsenal were relegated in 1913, the same year they
moved from their south London home to Arsenal Stadium (often
referred to as "Highbury") in north London. Their move away from
this area precipitated the professionalism of Charlton Athletic
- at this point an amateur club, amongst others who filled the
void. With the move came the change of name to "The Arsenal".
The club rejoined the First Division by dubious means in 1919
and have remained in the top division since that time, a unique
feat in England.
This unbroken stretch of top-flight football has come much to
the chagrin and longstanding enmity of Tottenham Hotspur (or "Spurs"
for short) and their supporters, who lost their First Division
place to The Arsenal. The First Division was due to be expanded
and the decision to promote The Arsenal (who came fifth in the
final league season before the war) rather than Barnsley or
Wolves (third and fourth place, respectively), or to not
relegate Spurs (who finished bottom of the First Division), has
been linked to dubious back room deals by The Arsenal's chairman,
and mastermind of the move from Woolwich to Highbury, Sir Henry
Norris.
1930s to 1960s
In 1925, Huddersfield Town manager Herbert Chapman took over at
The Arsenal. Under his leadership, a successful drive to rename
the local tube station, Gillespie Road station, to Arsenal took
place (the old name can still be seen picked out in tiles on the
wall of the station). Chapman's Arsenal won the FA Cup in 1930
and the League in 1931 and 1933. They became the dominant team
English football in the 1930s. It was also during Chapman's era
that the club lost the definite article from its name, becoming
just "Arsenal". It has been suggested by some that Chapman
instigated the change so that Arsenal would be at the top of the
League's alphabetical list, a position they maintain among the
92 top clubs today (however, should Accrington Stanley gain
promotion from the Conference, they will lose it).
Chapman died suddenly in January 1934, but his legacy was
continued by his successor, George Allison, who oversaw the
club's completion of a hat-trick of league titles, and another
FA Cup win in 1936. Such was Arsenal's dominance that in
November 1934, Arsenal players made up seven of the eleven
England players who beat World Champions Italy 3-2.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Arsenal Stadium was
requisitioned as an ARP station, with a barrage balloon
operating behind the Clock End. The stadium continued to operate
as a football ground for the armed forces, often with two or
three games on it every day. During the Blitz, a 3,000lb bomb
fell on the North Bank stand, destroying that stand's roof and
setting fire to the scrap that was being stored on the terrace.
Arsenal played their wartime home games at White Hart Lane,
courtesy of their local rivals Tottenham Hotspur. After the war,
the Arsenal board presented the Spurs board with a cannon as a
gesture of thanks.
The war had cut short the careers of many of the club's star
players, and upon the league's resumption in 1946-47 the club
finished a dissapointing 13th. Allison resigned and was replaced
by Tom Whitaker. Whitaker enjoyed immediate success with the
club, winning the league in 1948 and 1953 and the FA Cup in
1950. However, after these the club went through a barren period,
not winning a trophy for another seventeen years. England legend
Billy Wright managed the club between 1962 and 1966 with little
success, but he was succeeded by club physiotherapist Bertie
Mee, who would lead the club to success in the early 1970s.
1970s to mid-1980s
Mee's appointment at Arsenal heralded a brief period of glory.
The youth team had won the FA Youth Cup in 1966, and players
such as Charlie George, John Radford and Ray Kennedy graduated
to the first team. The team's early signs of promise included
reaching two successive League Cup finals in the late 1960s,
although they lost both times, the second one an infamous 3-1
loss to Third Division side Swindon Town.
Arsenal finally collected some silverware in 1970, when the club
won its first European trophy, the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. After
beating Ajax Amsterdam, one of the strongest teams in the world
at the time, in the semi-finals, Arsenal won the final 4-3 on
aggregate over Anderlecht, after being (at one point) 3-0 down
in the first leg.
The highlight of this period was the club's first FA Cup and
League "Double" win in 1970-71.The League title was won at White
Hart Lane, home of their deadly rivals Tottenham Hotspur, on the
last day of the season; five days later Arsenal beat Liverpool
2-1 at Wembley after extra-time, the winning goal scored by
Charlie George.
Arsenal failed to capitalise on this success, and spent most of
the mid-1970s in mid-table obscurity, brightened only with the
emergence of Irish superstar Liam Brady. However, towards the
end of the decade, under Terry Neill they proved their mettle in
the cup. Between 1978 and 1980 Arsenal had a record-equalling
spell in which they reached three FA Cup finals in a row. They
won just the one, beating Manchester United 3-2 in the 1979
final after United had come back from 2-0 down. Alan Sunderland
scored late on to secure a famous victory.
Arsenal went on to lose the following season's FA Cup final to
West Ham, and the Cup Winners Cup final on penalties to
Valencia. After the departure of Liam Brady to Juventus, the
team entered another barren period for the first half of the
1980s.
The George Graham years
At the end of the 1985-86 season, Millwall manager George Graham
(a former Arsenal player) was appointed as the club's new
manager and it was a beginning of a golden era of Highbury. He
led the club to victory over Liverpool in the League Cup final
during his first season in charge and at the end of his third
season (1988-89) the club won its first league title since 1971
in dramatic fashion. Needing two goals to secure the league
championship against Liverpool, an injury time goal by
midfielder Michael Thomas (who, ironically, later became a
Liverpool player) gave Arsenal a 2-0 win to secure the league
title. Another league title came in 1991, with Arsenal losing
just one out of 38 league fixtures, although they had 2 points
deducted in October 1990 after ten of their players were
involved in a brawl with Manchester United players in a match at
Old Trafford.
By the early 1990s, Arsenal had probably the finest squad in the
English league. Goalkeeper David Seaman, defender and captain
Tony Adams, winger Paul Merson and striker Alan Smith were
capable of competing with some of the best players in England,
if not Europe. The £2.5million addition of Crystal Palace
striker Ian Wright in October 1991 further boosted the squad.
Arsenal completed a unique FA Cup/League Cup double in 1993 (beating
Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 in both finals) although they finished
10th in the inaugural Premier League and scored fewer goals (40)
than any other team in the division.
1994 saw the club win its second European trophy, by beating
Parma 1-0 in the Cup Winners Cup final with a goal from Alan
Smith. But the following February, George Graham was sacked
after nearly nine years in charge after he was discovered to
have accepted an illegal £425,000 payment from Swedish agent
Rune Hauge following the 1992 acquisition of Danish midfielder
John Jensen. Assistant manager Stewart Houston took charge until
the end of the season, and although Arsenal finished a
disappointing 12th in the Premiership they did reach the Cup
Winners Cup final again - only to lose 2-1 to a last minute goal
from the halfway line by Real Zaragoza midfielder Nayim.
The interregnum
Bruce Rioch, who had just guided Bolton Wanderers to a League
Cup final appearance and promotion to the top division after a
15-year exile, was appointed as the club's new manager for the
1995-96 season. He (briefly) broke the English transfer record
by paying Internazionale £7.5million for Dutch striker Dennis
Bergkamp, and the new signing formed an impressive partnership
with Ian Wright.
Arsenal reached the League Cup semi final and finished fifth in
the Premiership at the end of 1995-96, securing a place in the
following season's UEFA Cup and giving hope for an eventual
title challenge. But in August 1996, just before the start of
the new season, Bruce Rioch was sacked by the club's board of
directors after a dispute over transfer funds.
Assistant manager Stewart Houston was once again put in
temporary charge, remaining at the helm for a month, before
resigning to take over at QPR. Youth team coach Pat Rice held
the fort for several games, before making way for the 44-year-old
Frenchman Arsène Wenger, who had guided AS Monaco to the French
league title in 1988.
Wenger's Arsenal
With the advent of Arsène Wenger as manager, Arsenal rebuilt
their squad with a crop of French players seemingly unknown to
all but Wenger. This first batch included Nicolas Anelka,
Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira, as well as the Dutch winger
Marc Overmars. Wenger melded the team with some of the "old
guard", retaining Tony Adams, Lee Dixon, Martin Keown and Steve
Bould, and also keeping on Pat Rice as his assistant. The team
immediately improved under Wenger's management, coming third and
achieving a UEFA Cup place in 1996-97, with six minutes left in
the last game of the season.
Wenger took the club much further, to their second ever double
the following season, after closing a 11 point gap behind
Manchester United. A 4-0 home win over Everton on May 3 gave
Arsenal the title with two matches to spare, making Arsène
Wenger the first foreign manager to win the English league. On
May 16, Arsenal beat Newcastle United 2-0 in the FA Cup final to
complete the double.
Despite the signing of Fredrik Ljungberg in 1998 and Thierry
Henry a year later, a more barren period followed as Arsenal
failed to win anything for the next few years, though they came
close several times; they blew a winning position in the 1998-99
Championship, losing it on the final day, and lost the last ever
FA Cup semi-final replay to Manchester United in extra time,
after a Dennis Bergkamp penalty miss in normal time. They also
lost the UEFA Cup Final in 2000, on penalties to Turkish side
Galatasaray after a 0-0 draw, and the 2001 FA Cup Final to
Liverpool, after leading 1-0 but succumbing to two late Michael
Owen goals.
Arsenal bounced back in the 2001-02 season, as they won their
second double under Wenger, winning all of their final 13
Premiership fixtures. They finished seven points ahead of
runners-up Liverpool, the title secured in the penultimate game
of the season with a 1-0 win over Manchester United at Old
Trafford. The previous weekend, Arsenal had wrapped up their
eighth FA Cup success, beating Chelsea 2-0. Arsenal scored in
all 38 league games and not losing any of their 19 away games.
Henry was the club's leading league goalscorer with 24 goals in
the Premiership.
Arsenal retained the FA Cup in 2002-03, but their joy was soured
by the fact that they had surrendered the Premiership title to
Manchester United when at the beginning of March they had led
the table by eight points; Arsenal lost their title with a 3-2
home defeat at the hands of Leeds United in the penultimate game
of the season.
Arsenal had a record breaking season in 2003-04, winning the
Premiership unbeaten (26 wins, 12 draws, 0 defeats), becoming
only the second team to do so without losing a single game - the
first being Preston North End in 1889. Their rivals for the
title gained revenge in other competitions though, as Arsenal
were knocked out of the Champions League by Chelsea and the FA
Cup by Manchester United in successive games.
The team has yet to register top finishes in the UEFA Champions
League, where they have still not progressed beyond the
quarter-finals stage. This may have contributed to Thierry
Henry's failure to win the FIFA World Player of the Year award
in 2003, although he is the third player to win the PFA Player
of the Year award in two different seasons (after Mark Hughes
and Alan Shearer), and is the first to win the award in two
consecutive seasons. So far, Henry and other key players have
shown loyalty to the team and its manager by renewing their
contracts rather than departing for the likes of Manchester
United and Real Madrid, where they would almost certainly be
paid greater amounts of money than at Arsenal.
Thanks to his success at Arsenal, Arsène Wenger is now rated by
some as the best Arsenal manager ever, while most football
enthusiasts rate him at least as good as Herbert Chapman, Bertie
Mee and George Graham.
Crest
Over the years the Arsenal crest has often been slightly
modified, resulting in a crest which had no author who could
claim the copyright. At the beginning of the 2001/02 season,
Arsenal changed sponsors from Sega Dreamcast to O2 and
simultaneously introduced a new 'modern' crest. This received a
mixed response from fans, some claiming that it had ignored much
of Arsenal's history by removing the blackletter text, the Latin
motto Victoria Concordia Crescit (which means "victory comes
from harmony") and coat of arms. The cannon has also been
reversed; it now points eastward, like the original cannon
crest.
Colours
Arsenal wear a mostly red home kit, in recognition of a
charitable donation from Nottingham Forest. Dial Square's
founding members, F. W. Beardsley and A. J. Bates, were former
Forest players who had moved to Woolwich for work. As they put
together the first team in the area, no kit could be found, so
Beardsley and Bates wrote home for help and received a set of
kit and a ball.
The kit was originally all-red and a much darker, almost purple,
shade than currently used, but in 1933 Herbert Chapman, wishing
his players to be more distinctly dressed, updated the kit,
adding white sleeves and changing the shade to a brighter pillar
box red. The team has stuck with the combination since, aside
from a single season in 1963-64 where they reverted to all-red.
For the 2005-06 season only, the last season that Arsenal will
play at Highbury, the teams' shirts are to be changed to the
original darker red to reflect the colour worn in the first
season at Highbury, in 1913. The colour is similar to that used
by Sparta Prague, who themselves based their shirt's colour on
Arsenal's 1906 kit.
Arsenal's away colours are traditionally yellow and blue,
although they wore a green and black away kit for a short while
in the early 1980s. Since the 1990s and the advent of the
lucrative replica kit market, the away colours have been changed
every couple of seasons; as a result, as well as yellow and
blue, they have also been, at different times, navy blue with
light blue, and metallic gold with navy trim. The current away
kit is an all-blue number.
New stadium
Limitations at Highbury have led the club to monetary losses in
recent seasons despite impressive domestic form. To close the
gap with rivals such as Manchester United, Arsenal are currently
in the process of building a new 60,000 seater stadium at
Ashburton Grove, about 500m southwest, towards Holloway Road.
While this project has been somewhat delayed by bureaucratic red
tape and rising costs, the club has secured financing and hopes
that its new stadium will enable it to continue to develop and
compete at the very highest level of English and continental
football. The stadium will be known until the end of the 2020/21
season as The Emirates Stadium after the club signed the largest
sponsorship deal in English football history with airline
Emirates, worth approximately £100 million over the term of the
deal; Emirates will also become the club's shirt sponsor from
2006 until the end of the 2012-2013 season. |
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Arsenal FC Honours, Trophies & Awards
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League Championships:
13
- 1931
1933 1934 1935 1938 1948 1953 1971 1989
1991 1998 2002 2004 (1998 and later are
Premiership titles)
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FA Cups: 9
- 1930
1936 1950 1971 1979 1993 1998 2002 2003
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European Cup Winners'
Cup: 1
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Three "Doubles": 1971
1998 2002
- One
Domestic Cup Double: 1993
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