- 1906/7: the unexpected arrival of another team from the south
- 1905/6: Arsenal profitable and stable while representing the south
By Tony Attwood
Woolwich Arsenal were elected to the Football League as its first southern club, for the season 1893/4. Since then they had survived financially, brought professional football to one corner of London (while initially other clubs firmly turned their backs on professionalism), and although in the early days the club did not win anything in terms of trophies the club had survived. Crowds had on occasion reached 30,000 and could have gone higher had it not been for the restrictions imposed by the size of the ground.
They had also overcome the issues of the location itself – Plumstead was not the easiest place to get to – and of course the continuing presence of the Southern League clubs in London and other nearby locations was still tempting fans in other directions.
But Arsenal survived as a professional club, and in fact such was the success of Arsenal that other clubs not in the Football League had started to take notice, and it was at the end of the 1907/8 season that the drama really began. For at the end of that season two clubs applied to leave the Southern League and join the second division of the Football League.
These clubs were Tottenham Hotspur who finished seventh in the Southern League and and Bradford PA who had finished 13th. Both were accepted into the Football League – and this was particularly interesting for Tottenham, as they had been refused entry to the Football League in 1900 at which time they had just won the Southern League.
And indeed Tottenham’s eventual election to the League was itself not without controversy. At the end of the previous season three clubs from the Southern League (Bradford Park Avenue, Queens Park Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur,) had applied for election to Football League, thus revealing quite clearly how far the status of the Football League had grown over the years.
It appears that Queens Park Rangers then withdrew, although I don’t have details quite what was going on, and Bradford PA were successful in the subsequent ballot (undoubtedly supported by other clubs from their region), and they replaced Lincoln City (who themselves were considered to be out of the way, and not in a location as easy to get to, or as attractive to players, as London.
Indeed it does seem (but this is speculation on my part) that the voting clubs took into account the crowds the applicants were getting, the ease of the journey to their ground, and perhaps above all, the attraction of the city for the players and directors on a night out But there was also the vision of how the new club’s arrival would aid the Football League’s determination to be seen as the national league, and not a league that was subservient to the Southern League.
In this regard London had a particular advantage in that it clearly had the largest population of any urban area. Indeed the 1901 census showed London with a population of around 4.5 million (and indeed over 6.5 million for the greater London area). The population of Lincoln at the time was under 50,000.
Tottenham had entered the Southern League in 1896, having been refused entry to the Football League that year, but after they won the FA Cup in 1901, their status was enhanced. and the move to a new ground improved their standing even more. Having been the only non-league side to win the FA Cup Tottenham moved into the Football League in 1908.
But for 1907/8 the Football League Division One contained but one London club – Woolwich Arsenal. Soon after the season started Phil Kelso resigned as manager, although stayed on until a replacement could be found . His resignation came with only three of the first 10 league games of the season being won, And things didn’t improve – Arsenal only won seven of the first 20 games, also gong out of the FA Cup in their first round.
While the away league game to Chelsea was watched by over 60,000, home attendances sometimes slipped below the 10,000 mark. The London derby against Chelsea (the first ever such game being on 9 November 1907) bucked the trend but otherwise the crowd responded to Arsenal’s decline, and Arsenal’s decline to 14th suggested that finally the bubble had burst, and that the much more accessible Chelsea ground was where Londoners would go for their football entertainment.
And yet for the following season 1908/9 there was hope – and not just from another couple of games against Chelsea. – for Arsenal ended up sixth in the league – their best achievement so far, and not exceeded until Herbert Chapman turned up – by which time of course Arsenal were at the infinitely more accessible Highbury.
Yet what actually helped Arsenal in 1908/9 was something very strange. Manchester City finished 19th and were relegated on 34 points and Woolwich Arsenal got 38 points. So you might write the story of the season as being a narrow escape for the Reds. But in fact Arsenal came sixth in the league!
Yet few in the crowd were enthralled, not least when they realised that Manchester City who came 19th and were relegated scored 15 goals more than Arsenal.
In fact it wasn’t just Arsenal that was realising that games could be won, or at least drawn, by having a very tight defence that exploited the off-side rule Leicester Fosse conceding 102 goals didn’t quite get it, but Bradford City who missed relegation simply on goal average conceded only 47 goals , ten fewer than Everton who came second in the league.
In short, managers were starting to get the hang of the tactics that were the heart of the off-side rule – but of course the lack of television coverage of games meant that most managers did not pick up on the tactics of clubs such as Bradford City until they played them – and sometimes not even then!
Arsenal appear to be one of the teams that realised how the rules could be used to their advantage which helped give them their sixth position – their best position in the first division thus far. But still, only five clubs scored fewer goals.
The fact that only 20,000 turned up for the home game against Chelsea shows what the fans’ view was opf the tactics. They were not the only club to use the approach, and not the only club to suffer a decline in crowd numbers. The novelty of a local league team was wearing off. And I suspect the notion of having a real local rival (which Arsenal didn’t really have at the moment) first emerged.
| Club | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Manchester United | 38 | 23 | 6 | 9 | 81 | 48 | 52 |
| 2 | Aston Villa | 38 | 17 | 9 | 12 | 77 | 59 | 43 |
| 3 | Manchester City | 38 | 16 | 11 | 11 | 62 | 54 | 43 |
| 4 | Newcastle United | 38 | 15 | 12 | 11 | 65 | 54 | 42 |
| 5 | The Wednesday | 38 | 19 | 4 | 15 | 73 | 64 | 42 |
| 6 | Middlesbrough | 38 | 17 | 7 | 14 | 54 | 45 | 41 |
| 7 | Bury | 38 | 14 | 11 | 13 | 58 | 61 | 39 |
| 8 | Liverpool | 38 | 16 | 6 | 16 | 68 | 61 | 38 |
| 9 | Nottingham Forest | 38 | 13 | 11 | 14 | 59 | 62 | 37 |
| 10 | Bristol City | 38 | 12 | 12 | 14 | 58 | 61 | 36 |
| 11 | Everton | 38 | 15 | 6 | 17 | 58 | 64 | 36 |
| 12 | Preston North End | 38 | 12 | 12 | 14 | 47 | 53 | 36 |
| 13 | Chelsea | 38 | 14 | 8 | 16 | 53 | 62 | 36 |
| 14 | Blackburn Rovers | 38 | 12 | 12 | 14 | 51 | 63 | 36 |
| 15 | Woolwich Arsenal | 38 | 12 | 12 | 14 | 51 | 63 | 36 |
| 16 | Sunderland | 38 | 16 | 3 | 19 | 78 | 75 | 35 |
| 17 | Sheffield United | 38 | 12 | 11 | 15 | 52 | 58 | 35 |
| 18 | Notts County | 38 | 13 | 8 | 17 | 39 | 51 | 34 |
| 19 | Bolton Wanderers | 38 | 14 | 5 | 19 | 52 | 58 | 33 |
| 20 | Birmingham City | 38 | 9 | 12 | 17 | 40 | 60 | 30 |
19th and 29th placed clubs were relegated.
