In 1892 the professional football club Royal Arsenal FC came under attack.  The enemy was a coalition of the owner of the club’s ground, and a small group of men who had recently lost their places on the committee that ran Royal Arsenal.

The battle between the two camps raged into 1893 and saw the most outrageous acts of bribery and corruption, combined with a vicious campaign of lies and innuendo conducted in the local newspapers.

Eventually those who had lost their places on the Royal Arsenal committee set up their own club to play at the landlord’s ground, forcing Royal Arsenal to move elsewhere.

Only the dedication, determination and sacrifice of a small group of Royal Arsenal men saw their club through, as they created Woolwich Arsenal FC, and took the club into the Football League.

At first the new club was something of a success, gaining promotion to the first division and playing in two FA Cup semi-finals.   It was also an innovator, being the first League club in the south of England and the initiator of large scale away support.

But then a financial hit the club, and once again it was threatened with extinction, only to be rescued at the last moment by the most unlikely of patrons: Henry Norris, a director of Fulham FC.

Norris then took the club on a most incredible journey across the Thames to a new ground that he built.  In just a few months he created a new ground for Woolwich Arsenal – the ground that came to be known as Highbury.

Without Woolwich Arsenal FC and the men who built it, cared for it and nurtured it, there would be no Arsenal FC today.   And yet until now there has never been a single history of the club produced.  Now that omission is rectified with the publication of this book.

It contains a huge level of detail never before revealed, corrects large numbers of errors that have appeared in previous general histories of Arsenal, and includes detailed analyses of the club’s crowd (and the crowd problems that arose at the ground) profiles of the club’s 100 most important players, and details of the club’s progress in both League and Cup.

Cat No: 978 1 86083 787 6