Today’s headline anniversary comes from 1902.
A complete index of Arsenal’s anniversaries for the month can be found here.
29 November 1890 Jimmy Charteris had his leg broken in two places in a scratch match played in frost and snow and consequently never played again, highlighting the awful consequences of playing during a singularly bleak winter
29 November 1893: James Boyle signed from Celtic having won a cup medal when he played in the Glasgow Cup Final in 1891, Celtic’s first major honour. He seems to have been one of the many engineers who travelled south looking for work at the Woolwich factories.
29 November 1896: Joseph Powell died after breaking his arm in a match at Kettering, as a result of tetanus and blood poisoning. After his death Arsenal played a friendly against Aston Villa on 7 December 1896. The proceeds of the match, £137 8s 6d (about £12000 in today’s money) were given to his widow who was pregnant with their second child.
29 November 1899: Alexander Main début in friendly v Eastbourne. Having played for four Scottish clubs in the previous season he travelled south and signed for Woolwich Arsenal. His first league game was 25 December 1899 away to Lincoln.
29 November 1902: Arsenal organised an archery competition and raised about £1,200 by selling 80,000 competition tickets. (The total income from the 1901-02 season was £5600). The police advised the club that they were organising an illegal lottery and charged Arsenal’s manager. Harry Bradshaw, was found guilty, and fined £5. Woolwich Arsenal, though kept the proceeds.
29 November 1913: First appearance for Robert Benson. He had played 19 times for Southampton before leaving to move to Sheffield United (then in the First Division) for a fee of £150 and played for them 283 times before joining Arsenal.
29 November 1918: Lt Col Sir Henry Norris, the man who had, at the start of the war, been simply Mr Norris, and who was now Chairman of the Ministry of Labour’s Advisory Committee on demobilisation, started his campaign to become an MP.
29 November 1919: Arsenal played the return match against Notts County and drew 2-2 in front of 6000. The club stayed 10th, but the best news was that Pagnam yet against scored (Buckley getting the other goal). That was five goals in the last four league games.
29 November 1920: The rationing that was imposed during the war was finally ended with the removal of restrictions on the sale of sugar.
29 November 1924: First appearance by Sidney Hoar away to Cardiff – a 1-1 draw. Arsenal were a comfortable 11th in the league after this game, but a disastrous second half of the season saw them only just avoid relegation.
29 November 1924: Bolton 5 WHU 0 making four defeats and one draw for WHU. This is noteworthy as Arsenal manager Knighton claimed 22 years later that WHU were the most fearsome team of the era, and he had to drug the Arsenal team to get them hyped up enough to play against the club.
29 November 1926: Miners voted on whether to return to work; the majority said no, but their union rules required a two thirds majority for a strike, and this was not achieved. The last element of the general strike was over..
29 November 1930: Chelsea 1 Arsenal 5 The third game in four in which Arsenal scored five. Across these four games the scorers included Lambert (7), Jack (5), Bastin (4).
29 November 1934: Prince George, Duke of Kent married Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. This was the last occasion of a foreign-born princess marrying into the British royal family and the wedding was the first to be broadcast live on radio – a matter of even greater excitement than the Arsenal manager doing a commentary on England while his own players were hacked to pieces.
29 November 1941: Arsenal 3 Reading 1 in the wartime London League. It was the penultimate game in a run of 14 in which Arsenal won 12, drew one and lost one.
29 November 1946: First appearance for Joe Mercer. Everton, his previous club, did all they could to stop him going back to say goodbye to friends at the club, even though the player continued to live in the north west and just travelled to Arsenal for games!
29 November 1947: After 17 games without a defeat Arsenal lost 0-1 to Derby. Despite the result Arsenal were still five points clear at the top of the league.
29 November 1967: Colin Addison sold to Sheffield Utd. He later became a manager, working with a most varied list of clubs including: Hereford, Durban City, Notts County, Newport County, Al-Ahli, Celta Vigo, WBA, Atletico Madrid, Cadiz, Hereford Utd, Al Arabi, Badajoz, Merthyr Tydfil, Scarborough, Yeovil Town, Swansea City, Forest Green Rovers, and Barry Town.
29 November 1975: Arsenal lost away to WHU 0-1, with 31,012 in attendance. The result ended Arsenal’s best run of the season although the WHU goal appeared to much of the crowd to be offside, as it did to most of the Arsenal players, and ultimately to the TV audience on Sunday. However Keith Coleman of West Ham distracted the ref by going down pretending that Kidd had punched him. A clever if wholly ungentlemanly ploy.
29 November 1977: 25,922 saw Arsenal beat Hull City of the second division 5-1 in the League Cup. Brady, Stapleton and Macdonald scored in the first half, After scoring five Arsenal eased up, and at the death conceded a penalty. Picking the ball from the net was the only time Jennings touched it all night.
29 November 1983: Arsenal lost to Walsall 1-2. Ian Allinson made his debut after moving from Colchester United in October. Alan Sunderland made his final appearance before moving to Ipswich Town in February 1984. The defeat was effectively the last straw in Terry Neill’s managerial reign.
29 November 1998: “Perhaps we gave our fans too much by winning the Double. Once you’ve eaten caviar, it is difficult to go back to sausages.” Arsène Wenger on this day. Fortunately there was still more caviar in the fridge.
29 November 2006 After a fine September/October which included five consecutive wins, the 2-1 defeat to Fulham made it 1 win, 2 draws and 3 defeats in last six, after which a small group in the crowd declared Song was not fit to wear the shirt.
29 November 2009: Arsenal lost 0-3 at home to Chelsea, having lost 0-1 to Sunderland the previous week. Curiously the next two defeats were in consecutive matches in January, and then it happened for the fourth time – two consecutive defeats in April.
29 November 2011: Arsenal went out of league cup 0-1 to Man City. Arsenal played Man C three times in the season, all ending 1-0, twice to Man C and once to Arsenal.
29 November 2017: Although suffering from huge levels of negative coverage in the press Arsenal made it 3 league wins in a row and 5 wins in 6 games by beating Huddersfield 5-0. The match however was not reported at all by BBC Radio 5 which instead spent much of its programme discussing a goal by Rooney.
29 November 2018: Arsenal played Vorskla in the Europa League in a game moved to Kiev following the declaration of martial law. Arsenal won 3-0 (Smith Rowe, Ramsey and Willock) with Medley, Gilmour and Saka making their debuts.
29 November 2019: Unai Emery was sacked as manager, and replaced by Freddi Ljungberg who took temporary charge of the club. He had a 55.13% win rate, making him the third most successful manager in terms of percentage win rate, in Arsenal’s history. The only two to beat him are Mikel Arteta (57.22%) and Arsene Wenger (57.25%)
