Morning guys.
Arsenal released the 2026/27 squad photos a couple of days ango and the absence of William Saliba has caused a little bit of a stir. For anyone who has suffered a really bad back problem, sitting down for a photoshoot is one of the last things one would want to do. It’s not just the sitting but the time it takes. Honestly, no Saliba equals no fuss in my opinion. It’s just the media looking for something negative when they nothing else to write about Arsenal.
The Champions League fixtures this served up a hefty defeat for Man City at home against PSG together with big victories for both Liverpool and Aston Villa which are being celebrated in the back pages. Of course it doesn’t matter who they defeated because sometimes that becomes irrelevant. Unless it’s Arsenal beating the minnows of course. Bournemouth had a great result last night in the Europa League. Playing European football for the first time ever this season, they defeated Sturm Graz 3-0 making it two wins in two for them. Forgive me, they are one of my now local clubs and I feel obliged to show interest.
We have a few tasty fixtures left this month. On Sunday we face Nottingham Forest in Robin Hood land, then we’re off to Germany to play Bayern Munich on Wednesday. Bayern will of course be without Michael Olise as he’s suspended having been sent off on Tuesday. Bayern conceding three goals to Viking is encouraging, especially having seen the way Jurrien Timber, Ebe Eze and Bukayo Saka tucked away their goals against Lille.
After Bayern comes Everton at The Emirates on the 24th before playing Fleetwood Town the following Tuesday. Four games in nine days is going to test what is already an injury hit squad. At least the Fleetwood match should allow a few younger players to come into the side. One of the players I’d like to see in that one is James Scanlon who has just enjoyed a positive international break with Gibraltar. He’s 20 years old now, just two days younger than Myles Lewis-Skelly.
Nottingham Forest and their red shirts giveaway to Arsenal many years ago. The alleged quote from the late Brian Clough back in 1980:
That lot play in red because of us. They nabbed a set of shirts off us years back when they were strapped for cash.
Well, it’s a myth, an untruth.
Arsenal.com has an article this morning which explains the real story.
The truth is rather different. Fred Beardsley didn’t write to Forest back in 1886 asking if the club could help out Arsenal in terms of giving them a kit but what he did do is suggest to his teammates that they should wear red shirts (the suggestion was that he already owned one), but the shirts didn’t come from Beardsley’s former stomping ground.
In a Coventry Evening Telegraph interview in June 1936, Danskin said that following the name change from Dial Square to Royal Arsenal:
It was necessary that new shirts should be bought. It was then that I was instructed to get samples and prices, and as a result we changed our colours to the now-famous red shirts which have been worn ever since.
This original kit comprised a dark red shirt with long sleeves, a collar and three buttons down the front. Danskin also revealed that they were bought from a gentleman’s outfitters in Wellington Street in Woolwich, which should have forever dispelled the urban legend surrounding the origin of our famous red shirts. But instead, it has been incorrectly passed down from generation to generation of Arsenal fans.
Just goes to show doesn’t it, if something is repeated enough, regardless of whether it’s truth or fabrication, it can be believed. I once nearly believed that Arsenal were rubbish..
Catch up in the comments.
Fingers crossed Potter.
Morning all.
New post up now..
If you ask A.I about Spurs upsetting the clubs before Norris got Arsenal promoted , the whole story is there including their attempts to break the league up after the match fixing between Liverpool and Man Utd in 1915.
I have ditched Firefox and am now using Microsoft Edge , hopefully it will work a bit better. Sorry to disappoint but I am back.
When English football resumed in 1919 after WWI, the Football League decided to expand the First Division from 20 to 22 teams. [1, 2]
3. Exposing Match-Fixing (The Backlash)
During their 1919 campaign to avoid relegation, Tottenham attempted to gain league support by exposing a high-profile 1915 match-fixing scandal between Manchester United and Liverpool. Instead of gathering sympathy, this aggressive interference alienated Spurs from many powerful northern and fellow southern clubs, who viewed them as arrogant and self-serving, further isolating them politically during the crucial 1919 vote. [1, 2]The 1915 British football match-fixing scandal is one of the most notorious integrity crises in sporting history. It took place on Good Friday, 2 April 1915, during a First Division match between Manchester United and Liverpool at Old Trafford. [1, 2]
The primary motive, the chaotic events on the pitch, and the long-term fallout shaped English football for decades.
💰 The Motive: Wartime Desperation
By April 1915, World War I had been raging for months. It was widely known that the Football League was about to suspend professional football at the end of the 1914/15 season. Fearing a total loss of their livelihood and summer wages, players from both teams met secretly in Manchester pubs to hatch a plan. [1, 2, 3]
They decided to rig the match for financial survival, settling on a 2–0 victory for Manchester United. This specific scoreline attracted massive 7–1 betting odds from bookmakers. Conveniently, the win would also help a struggling Manchester United avoid relegation to the Second Division. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Match: Farce at Old Trafford
The game itself was so visibly rigged that it caused immediate public outcry and suspicion from spectators and journalists alike. [1]
Ultimately, United’s George Anderson scored both goals to secure the exact 2–0 result the conspirators needed. [1, 2]
⚖️ The Verdict and Lifetime Bans
The Football Association launched a massive investigation, concluding in December 1915 that there had been a “conspiracy to defraud bookmakers”. The FA completely exonerated the club directors and officials, placing the entirety of the blame on the individual players. [1, 2]
Seven players were issued lifetime bans from football: [1, 2]
Stuart ànd I have said the same thing, Rico, that since 1919, Arsenal have not been relegated.
I didn’t say Arsenal had never been relegated.
As Kev pointed out below, Arsenal were very much the trailblazers for the South.
The original 12 were 6 clubs from the Midlands, 6 from the North-West, and it took until 1931 for Arsenal to become the first Southern club to win the First Division title, 43 years after league football had started.
Winning the title in 1931, 43 years after Preston won the very first one in 1889, in spite of a North, North-West and Midlands bias in the league structure, Arsenal became only the 13th different club to win it.
By the time of the enforced break for WWII, only 14 different clubs had been crowned Champions, and Arsenal were the only southern club to win it until Portsmouth won it in 1949.
Southern clubs all told have only won a combined 24 titles between them and 14 of those are Arsenal’s.
Spurs are currently neck and neck with Pompey on two.
And it’s not Stuart 😜
6’ 6” Stuart.. lol
Well, one of you is wrong….
Arsenal are the only club in the top flight not to be relegated since our ‘promotion’ in 1919, Rico.
Everton are the longest serving after us, being relegated and promoted back in the mid-1950’s, and being one of the original twelve, have played the most top-flight football.
In that respect they have seriously under-achieved, compared to neighbours Liverpool.
We suffered it once, Rico. The 1912-13 season. Got back to the old First Div in 1919 and have not left it since. Flirted with relegation in the 1920’s and then again in my teenage years in the mid ’70’s but hold the record for the longest unbroken period in Englands top league. Long may it continue.
Gosh, Meslier is a tall lad.
I might look him up 😂
In 1970 we signed Peter Marinello for what was then a record fee of £100,000.
Apparently he now lives in some little seaside town in Dorset, Bournemouth I believe. 😉
One of a few clubs never to be relegated I think Dennis.
Me too Kev, me too.
Funny re “the Bank of England” though Cicero as we’ve never been huge spenders until more recently.
We have also been known as “The Bank of England” club because of the wealthy and titled members of the board.
I also read that Tottenham had upset some of the other Division One clubs over some issue, that I can’t recall and were seriously disliked by a few whilst Woolwich Arsenal had been the first southern club to join the Football League and therefore had that positive history behind them.
I don’t think that Arsenal were generally disliked until the 1930’s when the term ‘Lucky Arsenal’ was oft used to try and explain why Arsenal won games after being under a lot of pressure. Of course the tactical naivety of the reporting played its part and that continues to be a factor up till today. That is many football journalists are frankly dumb.
Also there was a lot of social unrest in the 1930’s following the crash and depression of 1929 and Arsenal were seen as a rich southern intruder into the northern and midlands club’s’ territory of football excellence. In other words they never forgave us for winning ‘their’ league title 5 times in that decade.
But I love it when they hate us, because that means we’re good…
*Sorry for the typo’s, that should read ‘..Henry Norris’ influence…’ and ‘..justified that status..’
Yes Rico, bitter Spurs fans still mention it today.
They hate that we moved from Woolwich to the more prosperous side of the Thames to show them how a real club operates, and as you mention, in the last league season before WWI (1914-15), Arsenal finished 5th in Division Two, and immediately upon the resumption of football in 1919, had been ‘voted’ by a ‘league management commitee’ to be part of the newly expanded First Division (from 20 to 22 clubs), ahead of Barnsley (3rd), Wolves (4th), and Spurs, who finished bottom of Div 1.
Thanks possibly through the inlfluence of Henry Norris.
We’ve justified that statuls though because we’ve never been relegated since.
Thanks Kev, just thought it funny on a slow day. 😜
Isn’t that supposed to be why we are so disliked Cicero?
…or another explanation, he was redoing his homework as the dog are the original. 😄
We may not have rigged games in the early days, but it is widely believed that Arsenal fixed the election to the 1st division so that we took the place that had been awarded to Spurs. The first clash of the North London rivals. 😉
Saliba’s absence from the team photo can probably be due to him doing his rehab in some warm weather location.
Or, as the club confirmed to the Standard, he had a doctor’s appointment and so was not available.
I see there’s some nonsense going around that William Saliba could be off to Real Madrid for a record fee? Apparently Arsenal being interested in a Bayern defender and Saliba’s absence from the photo-shoot adds up to his departure…
Saliba is under contract until 2030, I’d say a fee in excess of £100m is the only way Arsenal would even think about it and Real aren’t paying that for a defender!
Great post Rico, yes the legend or myth that Forest gifted Arsenal a set of red shirts has been around as long as I can remember, logic should tell you that at the time Forest would have been as strapped for cash as Royal Arsenal were and unlikely to be able to afford such a gift. It’s like the story that Newton Heath/Man Utd and Liverpool fixed matches back in the day so that both stayed in Division One, unfortunately it’s true!
https://www.football365.com/news/man-city-ffp-uefa-punishment-leaked-7-to-10-year-ban
Arsenal.com
The origins of Arsenal’s kit tell a great and unusual story.
In 1886, before the Club became professional, a small group of Nottingham Forest players, Fred Beardsley, Bill Parr and Charlie Bates, joined Dial Square FC (the Club’s first name) and brought their old red kit along with them.
Working to a tight budget, the Club decided the most inexpensive way of acquiring a strip was to kit out the team in the same colour as the ex-Forest players. This original kit comprised a dark red shirt with long sleeves, a collar and three buttons down the front. The shirt was worn with white knee-length shorts and heavy woollen socks with blue and white hoops. The goalkeeper wore the same attire apart from the shirt, which was a hand-knit cream woollen polo neck jumper.
It was this dark red kit that the team wore during their first season at Highbury in 1913/14. Beardsley, Parr and Bates’ generosity in providing shirts and inspiring the Club to play in red encouraged several other teams to follow Arsenal’s lead.
One of the most famous examples is Sparta Prague, whose president, Dr Petric, visited London in 1906. He returned home to Czechoslovakia after having watched Woolwich Arsenal and was so inspired by the kit that he demanded his team play in the same colours. Today, Sparta Prague continue to play in the same dark red kit, not dissimilar to Arsenal’s 2005/06 redcurrant.
Doesn’t bother me either Dennis, just thought it was funny.
We did, I have one of them tucked away safely in hope that one day it’ll make me a millionaire…
The question then becomes if Arsenal were a club who started out wearing the rich blood-like red, who and what were those plum kits of 2005/06 dedicated to?
Didn’t we wear plum kits with the gold O2 logo, 2005-06, Rico?
I have to say, Rico, a bit of myth-busting is okay, but in this particular incident, I didn’t mind the ‘story’ of borrowing our first shirts, it was a harmless fun story that nobody used as a stick to beat us with.
Victorian England, before cars (and electricity for most?), when football clubs were just starting out and helping each other on that journey.
Debunking the myth removes the spirit of comraderie and bon amie, where people believed they once had a minor connection now have nothing.
Of course truth matters, but some stories just add an extra layer of character.
All this flipping make-believe stuff, crikey Rico, you’ll be telling me Harry Potter isn’t real next!
Plus, Forest were in a plum kit whereas ours is proper red.
Hi Dennis, apparently not. No borrowing, no giving them to us. Just Cloughie being a toad..
Hi Rico.
I’m the same, I believed the myth of Arsenal having to borrow their shirts from Nottingham Forest.
The ‘story’ was obviously passed down through the generations, and it doesn’t help if no-one provides evidence of David Danskin’s interview with the Coventry Telegraph.
We may have borrowed them initially for one game, decided that we liked the colour, and then went to Wellington Street, Woolwich tailors with our own different design.
I doubt if Cloughie knew the full facts since it would have been almost a century earlier, so he was buying into the myth and playing to the gallery, as he always used to love doing.
As a die-hard socialist, he’d never have been a good fit for the Arsenal job.
Good morning Cicero, all.
I too believed the kit story, should have realised Cloughie was fibbing.. lol
Good morning Rico, well that’s one myth busted. I confess I always believed it.
I wonder if the story that Sir Henry Norris sold the team bus in order to pay his chauffeur’s wages is also a myth.
I think it’s true that he bought the Highbury site cheap from the Archbishop of Canterbury.