Joe Shaw, our least remembered manager, wins the League with Arsenal

Compiled by Tony Attwood

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Today’s headline comes from 28 April 1934:

28 April 1893.  George Lawrence signed the contract on behalf the Woolwich Arsenal Company with W B Jackson of Royal Arsenal Football Club to transfer Royal Arsenal into The Woolwich Arsenal Football And Athletic Company Limited

28 April 1894: In the space of 32 days up to the final match of the season on this day, Arsenal played 10 friendlies and two league games, with a number of players playing in virtually all of them.

28 April 1897: Arsenal 1 Man City 2.  Last game for James Boyle.  In 1895/6 he started as left half, moved back to the centre, and then for three games played in goal, becoming on 14 December 1895 the fourth goalkeeper in 15 matches for the club.

28 April 1898: Arsenal 5 Tottenham 0.  With the season over for Arsenal this was one of three friendlies in five days – the others being away to Thames Ironworks, and Millwall.  Arsenal also played Tottenham twice in the United League this season.

28 April 1904: Millwall Athletic 2 Arsenal 1.  Southern Pro Charity Cup.  The competition ran from 1901 to 1908, and generally involved seven or eight teams from the London region.

28 April 1906: Arsenal 5 Tottenham 0 (again). Southern Pro Charity Cup semi-final.  Arsenal reached the final of the competition for the first time and went on to win it, beating Reading.

28 April 1908: Rangers 1 Arsenal 1.  This seems to have been the first ever match between the two clubs, and was part of a major Scottish tour by Arsenal of eight matches in nine days!

28 April 1910: With the season over, Arsenal arranged a friendly away to Colchester (where they won 3-2) to try and raise income, as the depth of the club’s financial crisis became clearer.

28 April 1917: Arsenal beat Crystal Palace 4-0, their final home game of the season played in front of a crowd of 4500.   After the match Henry Norris and William Hall took the Arsenal squad out to dinner, at the Holborn Restaurant.

28 April 1920: Bradford Park Avenue 0 Arsenal 0.  Only 7000 turned up for the game.  The result left Arsenal in 11th position and Bradford in ninth.  It was Arsenal’s third draw in a row, with one more to come… at home to Bradford.

28 April 1923:  Arsenal 2 Sheff U 0 completed a nine match unbeaten run to end the season in 11th position.  This run showed promise and gave hope for Arsenal, but it was a false dawn, as the next two seasons showed.

28 April 1924: Burnley 4 Arsenal 1.  Alexander Graham’s last senior game. He played 47 league matches for Brentford and became the club’s assistant manager in December 1925 and later briefly held the position for Folkestone before leaving football.

28 April 1927: John “Jack” Lee played his 7th and last game for Arsenal – Blackburn 1 Arsenal 2.  He stayed with the club one more year, but got no more first team games, leaving this as Jack’s only experience of winning a match with the club.

28 April 1930: Having won the FA Cup for the first time ever Arsenal then proceeded to lose 0-1 at home to Sunderland leaving the club 12th with one game to go.  Also here

28 April 1934: A 2-2 away draw with Chelsea in front of 65,344 was enough to give Joe Shaw the championship and make it two titles in a row for Arsenal.  Charlie Jones last game.  More on Joe Shaw here

28 April 1945: Arsenal 3 Chelsea 0 in the Football League South.  After four successive defeats in which Arsenal conceded 13 goals Arsenal finally got a win.   There was one more match (a draw with WHU) and Arsenal finished 8th but they did win the Football League Cup South

28 April 1956: Cardiff 1 Arsenal 2; Alex Forbes’ last game. He moved to Leyton Orient, then Fulham and finally Gravesend & Northfleet.  After that he worked at Arsenal training the reserves and A team, before emigrating to South Africa when he coached school children.

28 April 1970 Fairs Cup Final; the club’s first European trophy and the first Arsenal trophy in 17 years.  Arsenal 3 Anderlecht 0 (4-3 overall). Kelly, Radford and Sammels scored.  Also here

28 April 1979: Arsenal 1 Norwich City 1.  Arsenal had reached the cup final on 31 March, and the distraction was evident to everyone, as Arsenal won two of their last 13 games.  After losing 5-1 to Villa three days earlier this was almost a decent result, leaving Arsenal sixth in the League.

28 April 1980: Arsenal 1 Liverpool 1.  FA Cup Semi final 2nd replay.  Once more the sides played at Villa Park and as in the previous replay Sunderland scored.  The team was: Jennings, Rice, Devine, Talbot, O’Leary, Young, Brady, Sunderland, Stapleton, Price, Rix.

28 April 1982: George Wood’s final cap for Scotland.  He was given a free transfer to Crystal Palace in May 1983, before moving on to Cardiff, Hereford, Merthyr and Inter Cardiff.

28 April 1984: Don Howe became permanent manager.  Although his win ratio was only fractionally below George Allison, he failed to win any trophies and he left part way through the 1985/6 season.

28 April 2008  Having beaten Derby 5-0 the previous September Arsenal went to Derby and won 6-2. Adebayor got a hat trick while Walcott, Bendtner, and Van Persie supplied the others.

28 April 2014: Arsenal 3 Newcastle 0.  The result meant that for the 18th successive season Arsenal were certain to end up above Tottenham in the league – after 36 out of 38 games played.  The crowd as always sang, “It’s happened again, It’s happened again, Tottenham Hotspur, It’s happened again”.

28 April 2019: Arsenal lost 0-3 away to Leicester amid some very strange refereeing decisions indeed, which included Maitland-Niles being sent off. It meant Arsenal had lost four of the last five games and lost their chance of a top four finish.