Recent articles in this series
- Arsenal finally gain promotion to the First Division
- Arsenal at the start of the 20th century: the first promotion to Division 1
- Arsenal 1899/1900: keeping professional football alive in the south
As we have seen in the last episode of this series, finally on 3 September 1904 Arsenal, having joined the league and played their first ever league match on 2 September 1893 in Division 2, were now in Division 1. London, which had largely ignored the professional Football League, preferring to give its attention to the Southern League (which had been formed in 1894 in response to Arsenal joining the Football League) , was now at last forced to take notice. Woolwich Arsenal, I might add, had applied to have their reserve side play in the second division but this was refused by the other members of the Southern League.
And as if to make the point that The Football League was indeed a national affair, the fixture makers gave Arsenal, Newcastle away as their first ever 1st Division game. It was the longest journey they had to make all season.
Arsenal lost that opening game, and in fact failed to win any of the first three games in Division 1 without scoring a single goal. They lost the opener 0-3 to Newcastle on 3 September 1904, drew their first Division 1 home game with Preston 0-0 and lost the third game to Middlesbrough (away) 0-1. It wasn’t until match number 4 on 24 September 1904 that Arsenal, the club that would go on to have the all-time record of consecutive seasons in the top division, won their first Division 1 league game. 1-0 at home to Wolverhampton. No one could have any idea of what might follow!
But this was a tough season for Arsenal, yet the club did recover enough to come 10th our of 18 clubs – and it was this decent performance that undoubtedly helped encourage the division to vote for expansion at the end of the season, as the size of the league increased from the 18 clubs in 1904/5 to 20 the following season.
What is more, just a few years after almost going out of business because of their debts, Arsenal made a profit in 1904/5, and this despite undertaking major work on the Manor Ground as the promotion to the top flight had itself generated a lot of positive media coverage. The “Spion Kop” (the original Spion Kop that is – other clubs copied the name later), was opened in time for the first league game of the season. Archi Leitch was also employed to do some refurbishment work on the existing stands. On the pitch, Archie Ducat – a player whose name was to become synonymous with Arsenal, played at centre forward for the last ten games of the season.
Arsenal finished 10th out of 18 clubs in their first ever season in Division One, which was seen as a most positive achievement – not least as a way of advertising professional football in the south.
And no one could be in any doubt of the importance not just of Arsenal to the First Division but also the First Division to Arsenal. For Arsenal made a profit of over £1600, just five years after almost going out of business because of their debts. Both their first and last home games gained crowds of 25,000 (all crowds at this time were presented in round numbers only) and it seemed that with Woolwich Arsenal finishing tenth in the league, their financial future was safe – at least for a while.
And perhaps we should also mention the friendly against a team representing Paris which Arsenal won 26-1, as an indication of how far ahead of the rest English football now was. And also we should note the extraordinary evolution of away support. What started out as a small number of dedicated fans travelling by train with the team to occasional away games, was now boosted by the advent of Division 1 matches into a once a fortnight party which generally took the opposition by surprise.
There were of course at this time, no “away sections” and the Arsenal fans simply poured off the train and into the ground, turning each match into their own celebratory event, having reached a part of the country none of them had ever seen before. This “invasion” undoubtedly helped boost the crowd for the away game at Aston Villa on Boxing Day to an estimated 40,000, while on a number of occasions crowds were estimated at over 30,000 – a figure only reached once in the previous season, for a home FA Cup match with Manchester City.
Arsenal concluded the season in a very respectable 10th place with 12 wins and 13 defeats However with just 36 goals they were the lowest scoring team in the league, scoring just half the number of goals league winners Newcastle United achieved. That surely needed to be addressed.
But perhaps more to the point for those overseeing the club, Arsenal made a profit – something that was greatly celebrated when contrasted with the fact that the club had almost gone out of business during the Boer War at the start of the century, because of the decline in crowds at that time.
Woolwich Arsenal, tenth in the first division, and in profit gave the club its most positive feeling to date, and showed to the country at large that professional football cold flourish in the south as much as in the north. It was a message that left the Southern League clubs looking nervously over their shoulders.
