We want our Arsenal back: time to choose – « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month

By Walter Broeckx and Tony Attwood

As I started following Arsenal in a season where they finished 7th in the league I find it sometimes hard to understand the “we want our Arsenal back”.

Because for me “my Arsenal” is something from the 70ties. And for someone else it might be something of the 60ties.

People sometimes forget easily and think that Arsenal always has been a top 4 team. Well we weren’t at all.

In the period 1905 – 1995 we finished 24 times in the top 4 in 90 years of top division football. Since 1997 we always finished in the top 4.

So what Arsenal do we want back? The one before 1997? To help you pick “your Arsenal” that you want back I will now show you our league position since 1905.  Just look and think which Arsenal you want back….

Do you want the 66 times back we finished outside the top 4. Because well that is in general “our Arsenal”.

So it is time to say which Arsenal you prefer.

There is also the question of ownership implied in this issue of “our Arsenal back”.   There was an Arsenal run by members of the local community – it was the Arsenal until 1893.  If you know your Arsenal you will know that this was the year the club split and the more middle class clique forced the club out of its ground, and set up Royal Ordnance Factories FC.   They entered the Southern League and lasted just a few seasons.

Arsenal continued but from that point on as a limited company – it could still be “our Arsenal” for anyone who wanted to join for the price of £1.  Indeed a committee even selected the team and as the review of managers on the Arsenal History site shows, they did quite well

In 1910 Arsenal went into administration, and this is where the picture changed.  After the arrival of Henry Norris there were dominant shareholders who directed the club, but it was still possible to be part of “our Arsenal” because Norris spent three years trying to sell the club back to the local supporters through £1 shares.  Anyone who did buy a share and held on to it would have done rather well.

But when the local faithful failed to support the club with shares, he moved Arsenal to Highbury, and again offered shares in the club (with discounts for entry if you bought a share – see the first programme at Highbury in 1913).

But in reality with the dominant shareholding of Norris and his associates “our Arsenal” died in 1910, and it became a club run by a benefactor – and this is how it has been for the past 102 years.

Just how far back do you want to go?

You can read more about this in three books: