Ahead of its 127th anniversary, the visionaries who founded Arsenal Football Club in December 1886 would surely – were they still alive – be gratified to see their team top of both the Premier League and Champions League Group F in November 2013.
Of course, neither of those hugely popular money-spinning competitions could have been predicted by the small band of munitions workers who decided that their lives in the Dial Square workshop of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich would be enhanced if they formed a football team for their regular recreation.
Yet from those humble Victorian beginnings on the banks of the Thames in south-east London a world renowned sporting institution evolved. Via a pivotal move north of the river, the club’s sustained success in the higher echelons of professional football has spawned a rich panoply of unforgettable characters, matches, venues, glorious achievements and milestone events that help define Arsenal fans around the world with a specific cultural identity.
To a greater or lesser extent, most of those fans absorb and can recite as naturally as breathing key chapters of their club’s history. They revel in expanding and testing their Arsenal knowledge; it’s part of what being a supporter of the Gunners is all about. So too is banter with fans of rival clubs, although in recent seasons Gooners have been taunted by the media cliché: ‘It’s [so many] years now since Arsenal won a major trophy’.
There are encouraging signs that manager Arsene Wenger’s current squad will soon silence that refrain by lifting silverware; but even in the barren years Gooners are able to point to a catalogue of honours and records – and a galaxy of star players from every decade – that put those of most other clubs squarely in the shade.
After all, this a club that has won 13 English top-flight championships, 10 FA Cups, two League Cups, two European trophies, 12 Charity/Community Shields and an unsurpassed three domestic ‘doubles’. It’s a club that has contested 31 major cup finals, is currently participating in an unrivalled 88th consecutive season in the top division of English football, and is embarked upon a remarkable 16th successive Champions League campaign. It’s one whose ‘Invincibles’ went the entire 2003-04 League season unbeaten, and whose famous colours have been worn by no fewer than 818 different players in competitive first-team matches since the 1880s.
It’s a history that’s touched and continues to touch generations of people across diverse boundaries of age, class, nationality and ethnicity, all bound by a common passion for the Arsenal.
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