At Arsenal FC's historic ground, Highbury, on March 4th 1933, Herbert Chapman, the legendry manager of The Gunners from 1925-34, ordered a change in kit style, to stimulate interest and therefore success. The traditional all dark red shirts (below) were changed to red shirts with white sleeves. https://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/the-arsenal-kit
Well, the logic didn't work straight away, for in their last match in the old kit, Arsenal thumped Blackburn Rovers 8-0 at Highbury, a convincing "farewell". In their new strip, at Highbury again, they lost to Liverpool 0-1.
On March 11th they drew away at Leicester 1-1, then lost the next two games v Wolves and Newcastle, both 1-2. BUT from April 1st (yep, April Fool's Day), Arsenal won the next five; 5-0, 4-3, 4-2, 2-0. 3-1. For their last game of the season, on April 29th, was at home, against Chapman's old club, Huddersfield Town, This ended 2-2. Their last fixture was at Sheffield United where they lost 1-3. Colour convincing??
Arsenal were the top club in this era: Cliff Bastin, to the left wearng the old kit, played there from 1929-47, scoring 150 goals in 350 games.
First Division positions were: 1930-1 1st// 31-2 2nd// 32-3 1st// 33-4 1st// 34-5 1st// 35-6 6th// 36-7 3rd// 37-8 1st// 38-9 5th//. WAR
They were FA Cup winners in 1929-30, beating Chapman's Huddersfield, then runners up in 1931-2 and won the FA Cup again in 1935/6.
Mind you, Arsenal from 1970-1, have been top flight champions or have been in single figure positions in the First Division and Premier League, every season except for 1973-4-5-6, 1982-3, 1992-3, 1994-5 ** and in 2020-1 are 10th at the moment-Covid affected!
** Wegner, of course, was the manager 1996/7 to 2017/8.
References: Wiki of course....but many other websites and some local knowledge too!
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3994718670252035536/3868622030500126015
No comments:
Post a Comment