85 years apart, Arsenal v Middlesbrough. Same round, same score, same date

By Tony Attwood

As coincidences go, this one is fairly near the top of the list of strange and unexpected ones.

15 February 1930: Middlesbrough 0 Arsenal 2 in the fifth round of the FA Cup as Arsenal moved towards the club’s first major trophy.

15 February 2015: Arsenal 2 Middlesbrough 0 in the fifth round of the FA Cup.

I’ve already written on this site about the season 1929/30 in which Arsenal won their first ever major trophy – 44 years after it all started with Eastern Wanderers against Dial Square.

But here is a quick extract from that article, covering the cup run of 1929/30

Round	Date	Against	Score	Crowd
3	Jan 11	Chelsea (h)	2-0	55579
4	Jan 25	Birmingham (h)	2-2	43274
4replay	Jan 29	Birmingham (a)	1-0	47521
5	Feb 15	Middlesbrough (a)	2-0	42073
6	Mar 1	West Ham (a)	3-0	40797
SF	Mar 22	Hull (Leeds)	2-2	47549
SF replay	Mar 26	Hull (Villa Pk)	1-0	46200
Final	Apr 26	Huddersfield (Wembley)	2-0	92486

The draw against Birmingham didn’t inspire confidence, not least because it came after a run of three defeats and a draw in the league, but Cups in those days were generally won by clubs slipping along unnoticed.

So we won the Cup for the first time in 1930, celebrated undoubtedly, and lost the next two league games, before having a holiday and preparing for the greatest season of the era – the league championship of 1930/1.

That season of 1930/1, which is of course covered in other articles, involved such scores as 7-1, 9-1, 7-2, 6-3, and five games in which we scored five.

But the league season 1929/30 was not good and Arsenal finished the season 14th (the league form of Arsenal under Chapman prior to 1931 is sometimes forgotten, and of course doesn’t diminish his massive importance to the club, but we can’t hide the facts.  This was his fifth year at the club and what happened before that momentous .

Indeed in 1929/30 the FA Cup was something of a blessed relief, for between 26 December 1929 and 8 March 1930 Arsenal won just one league match out of the nine played.  Three were draws.

Even worse, on 8 March 1930 the league table looked like this

		Pld	W	D	L	F	A	Gl Av	Pts
1	Derby County	32	18	5	9	68	57	1.19	41
2	Sheffield Wednesday	29	17	6	6	74	37	2.00	40
3	Manchester City	32	16	6	10	73	59	1.24	38
4	Blackburn Rovers	33	15	6	12	86	78	1.10	36
5	Leicester City	33	15	6	12	68	67	1.01	36
6	Leeds United	31	16	2	13	60	45	1.33	34
7	Aston Villa	31	15	4	12	66	63	1.05	34
8	Bolton Wanderers	33	13	7	13	62	55	1.13	33
9	Huddersfield Town	31	14	5	12	47	52	0.90	33
10	Liverpool	32	13	7	12	54	61	0.89	33
11	West Ham United	32	13	5	14	67	63	1.06	31
12	Middlesbrough	32	14	3	15	67	66	1.01	31
13	Sheffield United	33	13	4	16	73	73	1.00	30
14	Manchester United	32	13	4	15	52	63	0.82	30
15	Birmingham City	30	11	7	12	47	45	1.04	29
16	Portsmouth	31	10	8	13	52	53	0.98	28
17	Burnley	32	10	8	14	60	75	0.80	28
18	Sunderland	30	10	7	13	48	61	0.79	27
19	Arsenal	30	10	6	14	48	46	1.04	26
20	Everton	33	8	10	15	56	70	0.80	26
21	Grimsby Town	31	9	6	16	55	74	0.74	24
22	Newcastle United	29	11	2	16	54	74	0.73	24

In those days the bottom two went down, and it was two points for a win.  So Arsenal were in trouble, although with Everton having played three more than Arsenal there was every hope of avoiding the drop.

Thus in looking at two games on the same day 85 years apart there are contrasts.  At the time of the 2015 game against Middlesbrough, Arsenal were fifth in the league, and cup holders.  In 1930 Arsenal had had just one appearance in the Cup final – a defeat to Cardiff in 1927.   In 2015 the manager Arsene Wenger was attempting to become the most prolific cup manager in the modern era having already won the cup five times.  Herbert Chapman had already won the cup once with Huddersfield in 1922.

I write this, of course not knowing the outcome of the 2015 season, but as things stand in February 2015 Mr Wenger is equal with Thomas Mitchell (who was also manager of Woolwich Arsenal for a while but who then fell out with the Committee who ran the club) who won the Cup five times in 1884, 1885, 1886, 1890, 1891 and with Sir Alex Ferguson.

George Ramsay (Aston Villa) is the all time champion – the man Mr Wenger is seeking to emulate, with six cup wins between 1887 and 1920.

So this season we have Arsenal’s cup run as

• Arsenal 2 Hull City 0
• Brighton and Hove Albion 2 Arsenal 3
• Arsenal 2 Middlesbrough 0.

which is not that far away from the scores achieved 85 years ago.  Let’s hope it is an omen.

To conclude, here is the 1930 team (using the conventional style of listing the team at the time – Parker playing right back, Roberts actually playing between Parker and Hapgood, and Jack and James dropping into midfield as the link with the three attackers).  As you can see from the links we’ve done an article on each on of these players – and indeed when you look at this line up it is a classic 1930s Arsenal line up.   Which makes it rather odd that Arsenal could have such a poor run in the league that season.  But then, in football, stuff happens.

Lewis

Hapgood   Parker

 John  Roberts Baker

Bastin  James  Lambert  Jack  Hulme

The goals were scored by Lambert and Bastin.

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The History of Arsenal blog