This article is part of a series celebrating 100 Arsenal seasons in the top division – a record achieved way ahead of any other club. The 100 record was achieved by being in the Premier League in 202/26, Arsenal having been elected to the league in 1919/20.
The full index of articles so far publsihed in the series is published here
By Tony Attwood
1952/3 really was the conclusion of an era in one sense, although the club, the manager and team continued thereafter of course. Tom Whittaker achieved in this season what his two illustrious predecessors had also achieved in their terms as manager. For both Herbert Chapman and George Allison had delivered to Arsenal two league titles each, and an FA Cup win each. And so it was that in 1952/3 Tom Whittaker equalled that record of two titles and an FA Cup. After which he continued in charge of the club until 1936 when sadly he passed away before he could deliver more trophies, or indeed take a long and much deserved retirement.
He was thus like Chapman a man who took Arsenal to trophies, but died in office. And he was the last of the trio of great managers who transformed the club that had been rescued and promoted by Sir Henry Norris.
However, I am getting ahead of myself for 1952/3 was Tom Whittaker’s final year of triumph – his second league trophy and we need to consider this.
That Arsenal had not won the title in 1951/2 was a great disappointment, for with just three league games to go at the end of that season, it looked like Arsenal would be the first ever team to win the League and Cup double. But defeats in each of those games meant Arsenal won nothing, largely due to the fact that they approached the penultimate game of the season with the entire first-choice front line injured. Indeed, it was the failure of Arsenal to win either trophy in 1951/2 which led to the common belief that the Cup and League double which had last been won by Aston Villa in 1896/7 was now impossible.
The League programme, which had been 30 games in Aston Villa’s double season, was now 42 games, and that, combined with the extra rounds in the FA Cup, made the whole programme simply too big for one team to win both major trophies. In fact afte Arsenal’s failure to win the Double in 1952, it was often said that clubs deliberately focused on one trophy rather than both, and the League began to try and legislate against clubs playing weakneed sides in League matches, if it was felt they were saving their best players for the cup. Arguments then arose as to whether certain players who were dropped were really injured.
But perhaps it was also a sense of injustice that then drove Arsenal on in 1952/3. There was still to be a hiccup in the league, and they went out of the Cup in the sixth round, but Arsenal won the League, and so Tom Whitaker equalled the career record of his illustrious predecessors with two league titles and an FA cup win for Arsenal
But the league title was close – in fact, it was won on goal average by 0.1 goals. (Had goal difference been used to separate teams on equal points, the gap would have been much clearer – Arsenal were ahead on goal difference by eight goals.
In fact both Arsenal and Preston North End had equal records, winning 21 games, drawing 12 and losing nine, and it meant Arsenal had won the league seven times since Chapman transformed the club from near-certainties for relegation. Before Arsenal’s rise under Chapman and his successors, only Aston Villa and Sunderland had won the league more times – each winning it six times by this date. But both had each won at least three titles in the 19th century, when competition was far less vigorous. In fact Villa had not won it since 1910 and Sunderland since 1936 with half of their titles also being in the 19th century. Arsenal were the team of the 20th century – at least by this time.
For Arsenal had now won the title seven times in 22 years, and in seven of those 22 years, there was no football because of the war. Thus in effect, Arsenal had won the league seven times in 15 football seasons, something that was utterly unheard of. What’s more, the celebration had to be that of the club, not the individual managers, because Arsenal’s success had come under three different managers.
If ever there were policy decisions that were utterly vindicated, it was Henry Norris’ move of the club from Plumstead to Highbury, which effectively multiplied the average attendance at home matches threefold. Although one could also add to this the dismissal of Leslie Knighton as manager and the appointment of Herbert Chapman as his replacement. Surely there never was a greater change in a club’s approach than via that change of management.
The fact that the dismissal of Knighton, the appointment of Chapman and the move from Plusstead to Highbury were all the doing of Sir Henry Norris would imply in most situations that Norris would be hailed as one of the greatest, if not the absolute greatest, administrators the club has ever had. And yet he was removed from the board and indeed banned from football in 1929 for “financial irregularities.”
As we look back, we can see Norris’s failings were two-fold. One was that he was not diplomatic – he tended to know what needed doing and he did it, sometimes without waiting for approval. This brought him huge success in the First World War where he rose from being a volunteer sergeant exploring why no recruits at all had come from the town of Worthing to being head of recruitment and then conscription, as well as the man who overssaw demobilisation after the war.
He was knighted for his wartime work and, he then used the techniques that had been so successful in wartime to take Arsenal up the league. But while he had had the full backing of the King and Prime Minister in the First World War, in peacetime, he found he had fewer allies, and the board at Arsenal, filled with men each seeking their own personal advancement, turned against him. With his wife’s health suffering, the family moved to the warmer climate in the south of France, and the family lived out their life there, leaving the new board to build on the financial and footballing success Norris had brought to the club with the move to Highbury and the engagement of Chapman.
And success there was with the title that Arsenal took in the year we are now considering – 1952/3 – Arsenal had moved in a very short period (when one recalls there was no football from 1939 to 1946) to seven league titles and three FA Cups in 16 season – an utter unprecedented run of success.
Indeed, when Arsenal won their 7th title in 1953, no other club in the entire history of the league had won the league seven times. The nearest challengers were Aston Villa, who had won five of their six titles in the 19th century when competition was a lot less. Indeed, by the time that any team equalled the total of seven league titles, Arsenal had already claimed their eighth title.
This was the legacy of Sir Henry Norris, who not only resuced to club from closure in 1910, and moved it to Highbury in 1913, but also had the foresight to bring in Herbert Chapman as the club’s manager. And it was clearly on the foundations that were laid in these earlier times that Arsenal’s run of league titles was built: titles that came along in 1931, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1938, 1948 and 1953.
That final title in 1953 was the tightest of all, although Arsenal would have won it even if the goal tally had been based on goal difference (Arsenal had a GD of +_33 to Preston North End’s +25) rather than goal average. In terms of goal average (goals scored divided by goals conceded) Arsenal were on 1.156 while Preston were on 1.417.
Thus whichever way it was calculated, Arsenal were champions in 1953/4 – and were the club that had won the most titles of any English club up to that point.
But then it all stopped. There were no more FA cup finals, no more league titles, and even a league cup final in 1968 and another in 1969 were lost (the latter most humiliatingly to Swindon Town) until 18 years after Tom Whittaker won the league in 1953 by the narrowest of margins, Bertie Mee suddenly did the utterly impossible.
The story continues.
