100 years at the top. 1948/9 – expectations are high and Brazil beckons

Series written by Tony Attwood, AISA Arsenal History Society

We have now codified an index to the series so far, and that full index is published here

Arsenal won the league in 1947/8 but there was a warning at the season’s end in that Arsenal only won two of their last eight league division one games of that season. Of the rest, four were drawn, and two were defeats (one at home and one away).

However, there was a final hooray as Arsenal won the last game 8-0, although something of the sort might have been expected given that Grimsby, whom Arsenal defeated in that game, finished the season bottom of the league, 14 points from safety, and so were duly relegated.

The subsequent shuffling of the team for 1948/9 suggested that all concerned knew that changes had to be made. For in 1947/8, the title-winning season, the first-choice players (taken from across the season) were

Swindin

Scott Barnes

Macaulay L Compton Mercer

Roper Logie Rooke Lewis Compton McPherson

But that generalised line up hides a growing number of injuries and player movements with players often being played out of their favourite position. And indeed the new season did not begin as well as might be expected of champions, as Arsenal won just one of their opening six games – that a 3-0 home win over Stoke City, who the previous season had been a very average mid-table side.

Indeed so poor was the start that by 10 September 1948, the previous season’s champions – Arsenal – were down in 13th.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Portsmouth	6	5	1	0	14	2	11
2	Derby County	6	3	3	0	11	6	9
3	Charlton Athletic	6	3	3	0	12	7	9
4	Sunderland	6	3	2	1	13	11	8
5	Newcastle United	6	3	2	1	15	13	8
6	Birmingham City	6	2	3	1	9	4	7
7	Wolverhampton Wanderers	6	2	3	1	13	8	7
8	Liverpool	6	2	3	1	11	7	7
9	Manchester City	6	3	1	2	9	7	7
10	Manchester United	6	3	0	3	14	10	6
11	Blackpool	6	2	2	2	10	12	6
12	Preston North End	6	2	1	3	16	12	5
13	Arsenal	6	1	3	2	6	5	5

True there were distractions – such as the announcement of a new club crest with a new motto – roughly translated as Victory Through Hamony. But that concept seemed in short supply at least until late October, when four successive wins without a goal scored against the club brought some renewed hope.

A further run of good form in February, when 13 goals were scored across three successive games, with only one goal going in at the other end, once more brought hope, but these were followed by no less than seven matches without a win.

But four victories in the last five games meant that Arsenal did recover enough to come in fifth, although this was achieved without any sense of Arsenal being likely to get another title, and going out to Deerby County in the fourth round of the FA cup didn’t help the mood (although it had been improved somewhat by knocking out Tottenham 3-1 in the previous round).

So yes, looking back through the season, supporters could argue that there were signs that Arsenal could return to the peak of their form, including the good run of results up to mid-November, which saw Arsenal rise to fourth, just three points behind the leaders Derby, with 17 games played. But then a defeat to Newcastle at home saw the team run through the rest of the year with just one win in eight games. This meant Arsenal dropped to ninth by the time attention turned to the FA Cup. A 3-0 home win in the third round against Tottenham brightened the mood, along with a 5-3 league win at home over Sheffield United and two more results in which Arsenal scored five, in the next four games, took Arsenal back to third in the league. But then seven games thereafter without a win removed any hope of retaining the title, or even of coming in the top three.

And yet with the wartime servicemen now almost all returned home to civilian life, there clearly was a great desire to see the dominant north London team, as the last three home games showed, each achieving crowds of 50,000 plus.

Thus Arsenal finished fifth, but hope remained for the future, not least because they were, for much of the season, the top scoring team in the league. In this regard, Arsenal slipped away near the end of the campaign but still had on many occasions, both a defence and an attack to be reckoned with.

Ultimately, Portsmouth won the league for the first time and Arsenal were fifth, never offering serious hope that the title of the previous season could be retained. But the club had absolute faith in Tom Whittaker, an Arsenal man through and though. The gap between Arsenal and Portsmouth was indeed significant…

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Portsmouth	42	25	8	9	84	42	58
5	Arsenal	42	18	13	11	74	44	49

but there was a belief – an expectation even – that Arsenal could rise up was more. This was the team that had dominated the 1930s and surely it was time now for them to become once more the team of the decade. The 50s beckoned.

To balance this expectation Tom Whittaker had expressed the view that 1948/9 was a rebuilding season, rather than a season that could take the title-winning campaign of 1947/8 and go on to even greater heights.

And there was some controversy too with an argudous pre-season tour of Brazil in the summer of 1949, which included a number of goal-mouth “altercatiions” leaving the players mentally exhausted and physically battered and bruised. Yes, it was said, Arsenal were now a worldwide phenomenon, but that would count for nothing unless they started winning trophies again. And of course in those days there were only two trophies. The League in which Arsenal came fifth, and the FA Cup in which they were knocked out in the fourth round.

The feeling was clear: it had to be better in 1949/50.

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