Recent posts in this series
- 1954/5 and 1955/6: Whittaker’s final seasons, and still no more tophies
- 1953/4: the Arsenal collapse begins
- Arsenal 1952/53. Whittaker fulfils his destiny but then Arsenal collapse
- 100 years in the top division: Arsenal 1951/2; losing the cup final
By Tony Attwood
In the season 1952/3 Arsenal won the league, which must have seemed at the time, as just a continuance of an incredible run that began with the club’s first ever trophy in 1930. Just as there was an amazing transformation from 1924/5 when the club missed relegation to the second division by just one league place, and then rose to one from the top in the next season, so another revolution then took place.
The fist revolution, as I am sure we all know, and perhaps you will have read in earlier episodes of this series, was instigated by Sir Henry Norris persuading Herbert Chapman to leave Huddersfield Town – the club he had transformed into league winners, and to come to Arsenal and do the same again. And after a second-place finish in 1925/6, and a defeat in the FA Cup final the following year, plus a couple of years of rebuilding, Arsenal took football by storm. The record of wins and cup finalists was extraordinary for any team, but for a team that had never won anything before, it was indeed unbelievable….
- 1930: FA Cup winners for the first time
- 1931: League champions for the first time
- 1932: League runners-up and FA Cup finalists in the same season
- 1933: League champions for the second time
- 1934: League champions for the third time
- 1935: League champions for the fourth time
- 1936: FA Cup winners for the second time
- 1938: League champions for the fifth time
- 1948: League champions for the sixth time (after 7 years without football during the war)
- 1950: FA Cup winners for the third time
- 1952: FA Cup finalists for the fifth time
- 1953: League champions for a record seventh time
But then, as the saying goes, all good things come to an end, for after 1953, there was nothing except for the desperate news that on 24 October 1956, Tom Whittaker had passed away. Whittaker had, like his illustrious predecessors Chapman and Allison, won the league twice and the FA Cup once with Arsenal The table at the time of his sad passing read…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester United | 13 | 10 | 2 | 1 | 34 | 19 | 22 |
| 2 | Tottenham Hotspur | 13 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 40 | 19 | 19 |
| 3 | Blackpool | 13 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 38 | 24 | 19 |
| 4 | Burnley | 14 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 23 | 15 | 18 |
| 5 | Leeds United | 14 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 24 | 18 | 18 |
| 6 | Birmingham City | 13 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 28 | 17 | 17 |
| 7 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 13 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 34 | 22 | 15 |
| 8 | Arsenal | 14 | 7 | 1 | 6 | 31 | 25 | 15 |
… with Arsenal having just won their last three league games, scoring a total of 13 goals in so doing, and seemingly setting out a marker of what the rest of the league could expect from here on. It seemed like a sign of what was to come.
However, football, like everything else, waits for no one, and Arsenal needed an immediate replacement – and that was Jack Crayston. Crayston had played 207 games for Arsenal but was injured in 1943 in a wartime game against West Ham and had then had to quit playing.
In June 1947 he became assistant to Tom Whittaker and now, in 1956 follwoing the passing of Whittaker, Crayston was appointed, initially as caretaker manager and then on 21 December 1956 as permanent manager. Arsenal were eighth in the league but only four points off Tottenham in second place. Expectations were very high.
The start of his tenure, following the passing of another Arsenal manager while in the job (Chapman, you may recall, had also passed away while Arsenal manager), was middle of the road, with two wins, two draws and two defeats in his first six games. But the new manager then took Arsenal on a run which meant that by the start of the new year, Arsenal had got up to third in the league, although they had played a couple of games more than the league leaders, Manchester United.
But of course, all things will come to an end sometime, and the winning streak did not continue, although the club did make it to the sixth round of the FA Cup as they had done the season before. Arsenal finished fifth in the league, and this was seen as a perfect springboard for a return to the sort of league position Arsenal had experienced pre-war. Here’s the table3 after Arsenal had played their last game.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester United | 42 | 28 | 8 | 6 | 103 | 54 | 64 |
| 2 | Tottenham Hotspur | 42 | 22 | 12 | 8 | 104 | 56 | 56 |
| 3 | Preston North End | 42 | 23 | 10 | 9 | 84 | 56 | 56 |
| 4 | Blackpool | 41 | 21 | 9 | 11 | 92 | 65 | 51 |
| 5 | Arsenal | 42 | 21 | 8 | 13 | 85 | 69 | 50 |
Now of course, the normal reaction to finishing fifth these days is for a club to seek to keep much of the team together but bring in a few newcomers to give the side that extra boost in both attack and defence. But the club declared itself unable to do this, because of the cost in previous years of rebuilding the ground following the wartime damage and its use by the military. Eventually, following a long period of discussions with the government over the issue as to how much the government would contribute to the rebuilding of the ground (having, of course used the ground during the Second World War with Arsenal moving to Tottenham’s ground at that time) the rebuilding was undertaken.
But the 1957/8 team looked pretty much the same as the Arsenal 1956/7 team. Arsenal still had a top scorer in David Herd, who the club had signed for £10,000 in Tom Whittaker’s time at the club, and who had become a regular first-teamer in 1956/7. And in fact, in 1960/1 he scored 29 goals, the most for an Arsenal man since Ronnie Rooke. Indeed, he had scored 33 league goals in 1947/8 and was the league’s top scorer as Arsenal won the league for the sixth time.
However, now even his exploits were enough to make Arsenal look like serious title challenges and having scored 68 goals in 88 games, he had moved to Crystal Palace in 1949.l
So a dismal end to the 1957/8 season of three draws and a defeat in the last four league games left Arsenal in 12th – the same position as they finished in, in 1953/4.
But at that time there was still hope, since Arsenal had in the past won the league immeiately after a poor season, the year before. There were indeed those who remembered coming 13th in 1947 and then winning the league in 1948. Except that it did not emerge. Since last winning the title in 1953, Arsenal had sunk to 12th in 1953/4, and here they were once again in that position in 1957/58. True, Tottenham had not built on their previous season, but they were still third in the league at the end of the campaign – a long way ahead of Arsenal. And so after two and a half seasons in the job (he had taken over in 1956 after the death of Tom Whittaker), Jack Crayston resigned as manager, leaving Arsenal 12th in the league.
His biggest problem was that of finding new players, with most players from northern clubs being very aware of the acute housing shortage and hence very high price of accommodation in London, and with all players being on a league-imposed maximum wage no matter where they were in the country. Further, with Arsenal having won the league seven times (more than any other club at that time) there was an expectation that the club would do well, irrespective of such issues as finances, repairs of the ground and problems with transfers.
But what made matters worse was that in January 1958 Arsenal had lost 3-1 to Northampton Town, and a lack of progress in the cup the following season (they went out to Sheffield United of Division 2 in the fifth round) was a comment that was now often thrown at the club.
Arsenal’s position of 12th in 1957/8 was their worst in 38 years, and given the defeat to Northampton Town in the FA Cup Jack Crayston resigned at the end of the season. At the time, he had no other club to go to, but did later move on to Doncaster Rovers, where he stayed until he retired in 1961. He did, however, have a long and, one hopes, enjoyable retirement, passing away in 1992 at 82.
And in fact, the problem for Crayson was one that would have beaten most managers – the club were in decline but needed every penny they could get to rebuild their ground and
