100 seasons in the top division: towards the title

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In the previous edition of this series, I included a table which showed that although the management of Arsenal by Leslie Knighton ended in disaster in 1925, after which he was dismissed and replaced by Herbert Chapman, and although Chapman took the club to an unprescedent second in the league, and a cup final in 1926 and 1927 progress in the journey toward winning either the league title or the FA Cup was not consistent thereafter.

And I think this is a point that needs making because sometimes I feel that it is assumed that Arsenal simply appointed Chapman and then started winning everything in sight. This was not the case..

After that second-place finish in 1926, the club finished seventh in 1927. That decline in league position was indeed excused by the Cup final appearance for the first time that year, but thereafter, in1927/28, the club under Chapman did not see progress. In the FA Cup, Arsenal did reach the semi-final again (obviously for the second season running) but were knocked out by Blackburn Rovers in front of a very modest crowd of 25,000 at Leicester.

This was in fact a season of two halves, for by 31 December 1927 the top of the first division table read…

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Everton	23	13	6	4	63	32	32
2	Huddersfield Town	22	12	4	6	53	35	28
3	Leicester City	24	11	6	7	53	40	28
4	Arsenal	21	10	5	6	45	40	25

A home draw with Tottenham was, however, played on Monday 2 January in front of just 13,538, something that was completely predictable because of course there were no floodlights, so it kicked off at 2.15pm, on a regular working day. Worse, it marked the start of a real Arsenal slump, for in the remaining 21 games (ie half the season), Arsenal only won six games. And I think this is worth noting, for quite often Chapman is seen only as the great saviour of Arsenal. He was of course, right, which is why your author here came up with the idea of having statues around the Arsenal ground, starting with one of Chapman looking up at the stadium as if to say “I did that”. He did indeed “do that” by turning Arsenal from a club facing relegation into cup and league winners, but we should not lose track of the fact that he didn’t do it all at once. Thankfully, Arsenal FC listened to the argument, and subsequently started the development of the statues project.

Curiously, Chapman chose to stay with his same team through this dire 1927 run. Indeed nine of the players who played in the opening game on 25 August 1927 played in the final game (a 3-3 draw with Everton on 5 May 1928).

Bastin was still there at centre forward and he got 25 goals in the league for the season. And Arsenal’s goal scoring tally was still in the 80s (compared with 46 in Knighton’s last season), but the defence that Knighton had made so tight, was now shipping goals by the dozen. From 58 goals conceded in Knighton’s last season, the number had risen to 63 in Chapman’s first campaign (in which the club finished second) and then on to an astonishing 86 goals let in, in each of 1926/27 and 1927/28.

Now this is interesting that, both because of Chapman’s subsequent success both in the league and the cup, and because of the foundations that he laid in terms of the great Arsenal adventure in the 1930s. Yet we must note that this total disaster in defence is virtually never mentioned, although it was the cause of the decline from second place in 1925/26 to 11th and 10th in the next two seasons. There was of course no thought of relegation, but there most certainly was a drop to mid-table obscurity.

It was indeed only in 1928/9 that Chapman really got a grip on the defence and the number of goals conceded declined from the 86 of the two previous seasons to 72 – a drop of almost 20%. The goals scored were still not back at the 1925/26 season’s achievement of 87, when Arsenal were runners-up, but not far off, as Arsenal scored 86 in 1926/27. And we should note that this compared with the 46 scored by the club in the final Knighton season.

In short, the goals were there – but unfortunately at both ends! And for Chapman the issue was simple: either he had to get the team to score even more goals or somehow that defence, which had escalated from conceding 58 while just missing relegation under Knight to 86 in each of 1926/7 and 1927/8 had to be tightened. In short, by increasing the goal scoring of the team, Chapman’s defence had weakened by the same amount!

Fortunately, there was a solution, for after the cup final defeat of 1927and the cup semi-final defeat of 1928, Chapman started to get the players he needed.

Now in the 1920s, transfer movement was a much smaller activity than that which we are familiar with today as we can see by the players that Chapman brought in year on year.

And because I haven’t seen this set out fully before, I will set out below the transfers that Chapman achieved year by year. In looking at this, we should also remember that Sir Henry Norris resigned as chairman and left Arsenal in 1929.

Season	Player	1st team games	1st team goals
1926/7	Jack Lambert (forward)	148	93
	Herbie Roberts (centre half)	297	4
1927/8	William Patterson (keeper)	15*
	Arthur Meeson (keeper)	0
	Eddie Hapgood (left back)	393	3
1928/9	David Jack (inside forward)	208	124
	Charlie Jones (left wing)	144	5
	Bertie Diaper (midfield)	0	0
*1929/30	Joey Williams (right wing)	22	5
	David Halliday (centre forward)**	15	8
	Dan Lewis (Goal keeper)	142	0
	George Male (right back)	285	0
	Cliff Basic (let wing)	395	178

*Sir Henry Norris left the club

**:Left the club as he lost his starting position to Jack Lambert

And so as we celebrate 100 seasons in the top division, below are the final table positions for the last year of Knighton’s regime (*) and the first six seasons under Chapman, leading up to, of course, the first Arsenal title in 1931.

Season	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pos
1924–25*	42	14	5	23	46	58	20th
1925-26	42	22	8	12	87	63	2nd
1926–27	42	17	9	16	77	86	11th
1927–28	42	13	15	14	82	86	10th
1928–29	42	16	13	13	77	72	9th
1929–30**	42	14	11	17	78	66	14th
1930-31	42	28	10	4	127	59	1st

** Arsenal won the FA Cup.- the club’s first major trophy.

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