The players and the crowds: Arsenal 1938/9

by Tony Attwood

Arsenal used 29 players in the 1938/9 season of whom 12 played fewer than nine league games.  Here is the chart, as usual, along with appearance figures for the previous two seasons by way of comparison.

Player	Position	1938/9 Games	1938/9 Goals	1937/8 Games	1936/7 Games
Cliff Bastin	Outside Left	24	4	41	37
Arthur Biggs	Inside fwd			2	1
Frank Boulton	Goalkeeper			17	25
Ray Bowden	Inside right			10	30
Gordon Bremner	Inside fwd	13	3	2
Edward Carr	Centre fwd	1	0	11
Sid Cartwright	Half back	3	0	6	2
Ernest Collett	Wing half	9	0	5
Denis Compton	Outside Left	1	0	7	14
Les Compton	Centre half	18	2	9
Wilf Copping	Left half	27	0	41	42
Jack Crayston	Right half	35	3	34	32
Horace Cumner	Outside left	12	2
George Curtis	Inside fwd	2	0
Robert Davidson	Inside fwd			5	30
Ted Drake	Centre fwd	39	14	30	29
George Drury	Inside fwd	24	3	11
Andrew Farr	Inside fwd	2	1
Alf Fields	Centre half	3	0
Mal Griffiths	Outside rt.			9
Eddie Hapgood	Left back	39	0	34	34
Joe Hulme	Outside rt.			7	3
George Hunt	Forward			21
Bryn Jones	Inside fwd	31	4
Leslie Jones	Inside fwd	18	0	31
Bernard Joy	Centre half	40	0	29	6
Alfred Kirchen	Winger	27	9	22	37
Reg Lewis	Centre fwd	16	7	4
George Male	Full back	29	0	37	41
George Marks	Goalkeeper	2	0
John Milne	Winger			16	22
David Nelson	Wing half	9	0
David Pryde	Wing half	4	0
Sydney Pugh	Half back	1	0
Herbie Roberts	Centre half			13	34
Norman Sidey	Centre half			3	6
George Swindin	Goalkeeper	21	0	18	19
Winfred Walsh	Outside rt	3	0
Alex Wilson	Goalkeeper	20	0	10	2

Ten players who had played in the previous season did not get a single game in 1938/9.  And ten players who had not played in 1937/38 now got at least one league game.

If we look back to 1930/1 and the very first Arsenal league title we can see that the great survivors throughout the whole of the glorious 1930s were Cliff Bastin, Eddy Hapgood and George Male.

As for the stars of the future, this year’s showing suggested Gordon Bremner, Alex Wilson, perhaps Bryn Jones and most certainly Reg Lewis were the names to consider.  Bernard Joy had secured his position as  the dominant centre half the club needed after the loss of Herbie Roberts.

The players who returned in 1946/7

League football was suspended for seven years meaning that any player aged 27 or over in the 1938/9 season was very unlikely to return for the resumption of the league.

But some players did make it back, and for Arsenal these were

• George Swindin (38) *
• George Male (15) *
• David Nelson (10) *
• Bernard Joy (13) *
• George Curtis (11) *
• Reg Lewis (28) *
• Cliff Bastin (6) *
• Leslie Compton (36)
• Dennis Compton (1)
• George Drury (4)
• Bryn Jones (26)
• Alf Fields (5)
• Ernest Collett (6)

Thus just 13 players of the 29 from the last pre-war season returned.

Those players marked with * played in the opening game of the season on August 31 1946.  The figure in brackets is the number of appearances in the league that the player gained in the 1946/7 season.

 

The crowd

Although this was not Arsenal’s worst league performance in the 1930s it was the first time that Arsenal slipped from being the team with the biggest average home crowd into second position behind Aston Villa.

Here is the list of the teams with the largest average home crowd for the 1930s, with the average crowd figures for divisions 1 and 2 in the final two columns.

Season	Top club for attendance	Top club’s crowd	Div 1 avg	Div 2 avg
1939	Aston Villa	39.932	24.820	18.673
1938	Arsenal	44.045	25.160	18.651
1937	Arsenal	43.353	24.605	17.313
1936	Arsenal	41.960	24.624	14.958
1935	Arsenal	46.252	23.386	13.190
1934	Arsenal	40.750	22.596	12.531
1933	Arsenal	41.958	20.175	13.343
1932	Arsenal	40.547	21.529	12.213
1931	Arsenal	37.106	20.462	13.168
1930	Arsenal	35.537	22.647	13.651
1929	Manchester City	31.715	22.712	14.498
1928	Manchester City	37.468	22.885	14.919
1927	Newcastle United	36.510	22.881	14.108
1926	Chelsea	32.355	22.597	13.257
1925	Arsenal	29.485	21.609	14.405
1924	Chelsea	30.895	22.654	12.682
1923	Liverpool	33.495	23.213	13.474
1922	Chelsea	37.545	27.003	13.030

So Arsenal’s average crowd in the final season before the second world war was 39,102 – they had the second highest level of attendance.  Below are the figures for this final league season, and what we can see is that Villa rose to the top because their crowd figures declined by less than Arsenal’s.

Thus it wasn’t a case of Villa rising up on a tide of popularity, but rather that the Arsenal crowd had got so used to success, that a season in which Arsenal spent most of the time eking out such results as they could from a mid-table position, would not hold the large crowds in place.

It is interesting to compare this chart with today, noting for example how Millwall is up in 11th place.  I have not reproduced the whole chart from the European Football Statistics site but have included all the first division teams, and entered the details for the least supported team, by way of comparison.

No.	Club	Div	Average	Change
1	Aston Villa	1	39.932	-4,8%
2	Arsenal	1	39.102	-11,2%
3	Everton	1	35.040	15,6%
4	Newcastle United	2	32.693	53,7%
5	Liverpool	1	31.422	13,5%
6	Manchester City	2	31.291	-4,2%
7	Chelsea	1	30.999	-8,8%
8	Manchester United	1	30.365	14,0%
9	Tottenham Hotspur	2	29.397	12,6%
10	Wolverhampton Wanderers	1	29.328	-5,5%
11	Millwall	2	27.387	20,3%
12	Sheffield Wednesday	2	27.147	17,4%
13	Sheffield United	2	26.022	18,7%
14	Birmingham City	1	25.528	4,0%
15	Charlton Athletic	1	25.141	-11,3%
16	Portsmouth	1	23.630	3,5%
17	Brentford	1	23.117	-0,9%
18	Bolton Wanderers	1	23.073	-7,8%
19	Stoke City	1	22.535	-9,8%
20	Sunderland	1	21.740	-13,5%
21	Preston North End	1	21.534	-5,0%
22	Middlesbrough	1	21.184	-12,7%
23	West Ham United	2	20.135	-12,5%
24	Coventry City	2	19.506	-24,5%
25	Leeds United	1	19.309	-9,2%
26	Blackpool	1	19.178	-9,8%
27	Derby County	1	19.101	10,5%
28	Fulham	2	18.679	8,5%
29	West Bromwich Albion	2	18.400	-20,7%
30	Blackburn Rovers	2	18.262	23,6%
31	Plymouth Argyle	2	16.735	-9,3%
32	Huddersfield Town	1	16.490	-3,0%
33	Leicester City	1	16.225	-20,5%
34	Luton Town	2	15.327	-3,2%
35	Crystal Palace	3S	14.799	9,6%
36	Southampton	2	14.596	-12,0%
37	Norwich City	2	14.242	-11,5%
38	Cardiff City	3S	14.217	-28,9%
39	Barnsley	3N	13.777	16,7%
40	Burnley	2	13.731	2,5%
41	Chesterfield	2	13.272	-4,3%
42	Nottingham Forest	2	13.033	-12,0%
43	Grimsby Town	1	12.064	-1,8%
88	Accrington Stanley	3N	3.419	-21,3%
	Overall league averages		Overall	Percentage change
.	Total		14.619	-3,1%
.	Division One		24.820	-1,4%
.	Division Two		18.673	0,1%
.	Division Three South		8.654	-12,9%
.	Division Three North		6.329	-4,6%

It was in short a year when crowd totals declined almost everywhere as social deprivation and frightening news of what was to come swept across the country.

As for the post-war era with crowds, Arsenal no longer held top spot – they had an average crowd of 43,266 in the first season back.  That was 10.6% higher than the last pre-war season, but was a long way short of Newcastle, who despite being in division 2 took their attendance up to 49.379 on average.  Arsenal had to wait for their title winning run in 1952/3 to get back to the top of the attendance charts.