Arsenal Football Club is an English professional
football club in
North London that plays in the
Premier League. One of the
most successful clubs in English football, they have won 13
First Division and Premier League titles and 10
FA Cups. They hold the record for the longest uninterrupted period in the English top flight and are the only side to have completed a Premier League season
unbeaten.
Arsenal was founded in 1886 in
Woolwich and in 1893 became the first club from the south of England to join
the Football League. In 1913, they moved north across the city to
Arsenal Stadium in
Highbury. In the 1930s they won five League Championship titles and two FA Cups. After a lean period in the post-war years they won the
League and FA Cup Double, in the
1970–71 season, and in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century won two more Doubles and reached the
2006 UEFA Champions League Final.
Arsenal have a long-standing rivalry with neighbours
Tottenham Hotspur, with whom they regularly contest the
North London derby. Arsenal are also the third most valuable club in the world as of 2010, valued at $1.2 billion.
HISTORY
Arsenal Football Club started out as Dial Square in 1886 by workers at the
Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, south-east London, and was renamed Royal Arsenal shortly afterwards.
The club was renamed again to Woolwich Arsenal after becoming a
limited company in 1893.
The club became the first southern member of
the Football League in 1893, starting out in the
Second Division, and won promotion to the
First Division in 1904. The club's relative geographic isolation resulted in lower attendances than those of other clubs, which led to the club becoming mired in financial problems and effectively bankrupt by 1910, when they were taken over by local businessman
Henry Norris.
Norris sought to move the club elsewhere, and in 1913, soon after relegation back to the Second Division, Arsenal moved to the new
Arsenal Stadium in
Highbury, North London; they dropped "Woolwich" from their name the following year.
Arsenal only finished in fifth place in 1919, but were nevertheless elected to rejoin the First Division at the expense of local rivals
Tottenham Hotspur, by reportedly dubious means.
Arsenal appointed
Herbert Chapman as manager in 1925. Having already won the league twice with
Huddersfield Town in 1923–24 and 1924–25 (see
Seasons in English football), Chapman brought Arsenal their first period of major success. His revolutionary tactics and training, along with the signings of star players such as
Alex James and
Cliff Bastin, laid the foundations of the club's domination of English football in the 1930s.
[8] Under his guidance Arsenal won their first major trophies – victory in the
1930 FA Cup Final preceded two League Championships, in 1930–31 and 1932–33. In addition, Chapman was behind the 1932 renaming of the local
London Underground station from "Gillespie Road" to "
Arsenal", making it the only Tube station to be named specifically after a football club
.
Chapman died suddenly of
pneumonia in early 1934, leaving
Joe Shaw and
George Allison to carry on his successful work. Under their guidance, Arsenal won three more titles, in 1933–34, 1934–35 and 1937–38, and the
1936 FA Cup. As key players retired, Arsenal had started to fade by the decade's end, and then the intervention of the Second World War meant competitive professional football in England was suspended.
After the war, Arsenal enjoyed a second period of success under Allison's successor
Tom Whittaker, winning the league in 1947–48 and 1952–53, and the FA Cup in 1950. Their fortunes waned thereafter; unable to attract players of the same calibre as they had in the 1930s, the club spent most of the 1950s and 1960s in trophyless mediocrity. Even former
England captain
Billy Wright could not bring the club any success as manager, in a stint between 1962 and 1966.
Arsenal began winning silverware again with the surprise appointment of club
physiotherapist Bertie Mee as manager in 1966. After losing two
League Cup finals, they won their first European trophy, the
1969–70 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. This was followed by an even greater triumph: their first League and FA Cup
double in
1970–71.
This marked a premature high point of the decade; the Double-winning side was soon broken up and the following decade was characterised by a series of near misses. Arsenal finished as First Division runners-up in 1972–73, lost three FA Cup finals, in 1972, 1978 and 1980, and lost the
1980 Cup Winners' Cup final on
penalties. The club's only success during this time was a last-minute 3–2 victory over
Manchester United in the
1979 FA Cup Final, widely regarded as a classic.
The return of former player
George Graham as manager in 1986 brought a third period of glory. Arsenal won the League Cup in 1986–87, Graham's first season in charge. This was followed by a League title win in 1988–89, won with a last-minute goal in the
final game of the season against fellow title challengers
Liverpool. Graham's Arsenal won another title in 1990–91, losing only one match, won the FA Cup and League Cup double in 1993, and a second European trophy, the
Cup Winners' Cup, in 1994.
Graham's reputation was tarnished when he was found to have taken kickbacks from agent
Rune Hauge for signing certain players,
and he was dismissed in 1995. His replacement,
Bruce Rioch, lasted for only one season, leaving the club after a dispute with the board of directors.
The club's success in the late 1990s and first decade of the 21st century owed a great deal to the 1996 appointment of
Arsène Wenger as manager. Wenger brought new tactics, a new training regime and several foreign players who complemented the existing English talent. Arsenal won a second League and Cup double in 1997–98 and a third in 2001–02. In addition, the club reached the final of the
1999–2000 UEFA Cup (losing on penalties to
Galatasaray), were victorious in the 2003 and 2005 FA Cups, and won the Premier League in 2003–04 without losing a single match, an achievement which earned the side the nickname "
The Invincibles";
in all, the club went 49 league matches unbeaten, a
national record.
Arsenal finished in either first or second place in the league in eight of Wenger's first eleven seasons at the club, although on no occasion were they able to retain the title.
As of 2009, they were one of only four teams, the others being Manchester United,
Blackburn Rovers and
Chelsea, to have won the Premier League since its formation in 1992.
Arsenal had never progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the
Champions League until 2005–06; in that season they became the first club from London in the competition's fifty-year history to reach
the final, in which they were beaten 2–1 by
Barcelona.
In July 2006, they moved into the
Emirates Stadium, after 93 years at Highbury.
COLOURS
For much of Arsenal's history, their home colours have been bright red shirts with white sleeves and white shorts, though this has not always been the case. The choice of red is in recognition of a charitable donation from
Nottingham Forest, soon after Arsenal's foundation in 1886. Two of Dial Square's founding members,
Fred Beardsley and
Morris 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 shirt was redcurrant, a dark shade of red, and was worn with white shorts and blue socks.
In 1933 Herbert Chapman, wanting his players to be more distinctly dressed, updated the kit, adding white sleeves and changing the shade to a brighter
pillar box red. Two possibilities have been suggested for the origin of the white sleeves. One story reports that Chapman noticed a supporter in the stands wearing a red sleeveless sweater over a white shirt; another was that he was inspired by a similar outfit worn by the cartoonist
Tom Webster, with whom Chapman played golf.
Regardless of which story is true, the red and white shirts have come to define Arsenal and the team have worn the combination ever since, aside from two seasons. The first was 1966–67, when Arsenal wore all-red shirts;
this proved unpopular and the white sleeves returned the following season. The second was 2005–06, the last season that Arsenal played at Highbury, when the team wore commemorative redcurrant shirts similar to those worn in 1913, their first season in the stadium; the club reverted to their normal colours at the start of the next season.
In the 2008–09 season, Arsenal replaced the traditional all-white sleeves with red sleeves with a broad white stripe.
Arsenal's home colours have been the inspiration for at least three other clubs. In 1909,
Sparta Prague adopted a dark red kit like the one Arsenal wore at the time;
in 1938,
Hibernian adopted the design of the Arsenal shirt sleeves in their own green and white strip.
In 1920,
Sporting Clube de Braga's coach returned from a game at Highbury and changed his team's green kit to a duplicate of Arsenal's red with white sleeves and shorts, giving rise to the team's nickname of
Os Arsenalistas.
These teams still wear these designs to this day.
For many years Arsenal's away colours were white shirts and either black or white shorts. Since the 1969–70 season, they have worn yellow and blue, but there have been exceptions. They wore a green and navy away kit in 1982–83, and since the early 1990s and the advent of the lucrative replica kit market, the away colours have been changed regularly. During this period the designs have been either two-tone blue designs, or variations on the traditional yellow and blue, such as the metallic gold and navy strip used in the 2001–02 season, and the yellow and dark grey used from 2005 to 2007.
As of 2009, the away kit is changed every season, and the outgoing away kit becomes the third-choice kit if a new home kit is being introduced in the same year.
Arsenal's shirts have been made by manufacturers including
Bukta (from the 1930s until the early 1970s),
Umbro (from the 1970s until 1986),
Adidas (1986–1994), and
Nike (since 1994). Like those of most other major football clubs, Arsenal's shirts have featured sponsors' logos since the 1980s; sponsors include
JVC (1982–1999),
Sega (1999–2002),
O2 (2002–2006), and
Emirates (from 2006).
STATISTICS AND RECORDS
David O'Leary holds the record for Arsenal appearances, having played 722 first-team matches between 1975 and 1993. Fellow
centre half and former captain
Tony Adams comes second, having played 669 times. The record for a
goalkeeper is held by
David Seaman, with 564 appearances.
Thierry Henry is the club's top goalscorer with 226 goals in all competitions between 1999 and 2007,
having surpassed
Ian Wright's total of 185 in October 2005.
Wright's record had stood since September 1997, when he overtook the longstanding total of 178 goals set by winger
Cliff Bastin in 1939.
Henry also holds the club record for goals scored in the League, with 174,
a record that had been held by Bastin until February 2006.
Arsenal's record home attendance is 73,707, for a
UEFA Champions League match against
RC Lens on 25 November 1998 at
Wembley Stadium, where the club formerly played home European matches because of the limits on Highbury's capacity. The record attendance for an Arsenal match at Highbury is 73,295, for a 0–0 draw against
Sunderland on 9 March 1935,
while that at Emirates Stadium is 60,161, for a 2–2 draw with Manchester United on 3 November 2007.
Arsenal have also set records in English football, including the most consecutive seasons spent in the top flight (84 as of 2010–11) and the longest run of unbeaten League matches (49 between May 2003 and October 2004).
This included all 38 matches of their title-winning
2003–04 season, when Arsenal became only the second club to finish a top-flight campaign unbeaten, after
Preston North End (who played only 22 matches) in
1888–89.
Arsenal also set a Champions League record during the 2005–06 season by going ten matches without conceding a goal, beating the previous best of seven set by
A.C. Milan. They went a record total stretch of 995 minutes without letting an opponent score; the streak ended in
the final, when
Samuel Eto'o scored a 76th-minute equaliser for
Barcelona.
PLAYERS
HONOURS
Domestic
- Winners (13): 1930–31, 1932–33, 1933–34, 1934–35, 1937–38, 1947–48, 1952–53, 1970–71, 1988–89, 1990–91, 1997–98, 2001–02, 2003–04
- Runners-up (8): 1925–26, 1931–32, 1972–73, 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2002–03, 2004–05
- Runners-up (1): 1903–04
- Winners (10): 1930, 1936, 1950, 1971, 1979, 1993, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005
- Runners-up (7): 1927, 1932, 1952, 1972, 1978, 1980, 2001
- Winners (2): 1987, 1993
- Runners-up (4): 1968, 1969, 1988, 2007
- Winners (12): 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934, 1938, 1948, 1953, 1991 (shared), 1998, 1999, 2002, 2004
- Runners-up (7): 1935, 1936, 1979, 1989, 1993, 2003, 2005
European
- Runners-up (1): 2006
- Winners (1): 1994
- Runners-up (2): 1980, 1995
- Winners (1): 1970
- Runners-up (1): 2000
- Runners-up (1): 1994
Arsenal's tally of thirteen League Championships is the third highest in English football, after
Liverpool and
Manchester United,
while the total of ten FA Cups is the second highest, after Manchester United.
Arsenal have achieved three League and FA Cup "
Doubles" (in 1971, 1998 and 2002), a record shared with Manchester United,
and in 1993 were the first side in English football to complete the FA Cup and League Cup double.
They were also the first London club to reach the final of the UEFA Champions League, in 2006.
Arsenal have one of the best top-flight records in history, having finished below fourteenth only seven times. Arsenal also have the highest average league finishing position for the period 1900–1999, with an average league placing of 8.5.
In addition, they are one of only six clubs to have won the FA Cup twice in succession, in 2002 and 2003.
