3 September: Arsenal lose their third consecutive game at start of season

 

 

 

 

3 September 1921

On this occasion, Arsenal was not bottom of the league since Cardiff City had also lost their first three games and had a fractionally different goal average.  The bottom five of the first division also included Manchester City and Manchester United.

The papers reported that the team was “decimated by illness and injury” although I can’t find what the illness was that spread through the club – but it could have been another variant to the flu virus that circulated in 1919.

As a result, Arsenal included five players in their lineup on this day, who had not played in the first game just one week before.  The match was a return of the opening day’s game, away to Sheffield United.  They had won 2-1 at Highbury, and now the Blades won 4-1 on their own ground.

Not surprisingly the fourth game of the season, late on Monday afternoon, 5 September, attracted only half the crowd of the game on the opening day, and those who failed to turn up must have been most frustrated, for after three straight defeats, Arsenal won, beating Preston 1-0.  What made it all the more extraordinary was that Preston were unbeaten in their three games up to that point.

But the disasters for Arsenal were relentless, as with the next game on 10 September which was away to Manchester City.  Arsenal were, for the first time in the season able to field the same XI as had appeared in the previous match.  It didn’t help matters much however as Arsenal lost 0-2 to the club that Knighton later claimed had offered him the job as manager prior to the start of the season.

At this time the Islington newspapers were not particularly enamoured with the notion of publishing readers’ letters criticising the local football club.  Such a situation pertained throughout the country: criticising the club was thought to be the preserve of the “expert” commentator on the newspaper’s payroll.  Much as now – but without the outlet of blogs!

But one such critical piece was published under the name “Well Wisher” on 23 September.

The central criticism was the team selection, and the letter asked why the club hadn’t worked harder to replace several players who were (in the writer’s view) obviously reaching the end of their careers.

The letter also mentioned that the club had to pay good fees to bring in good players.   Certainly Arsenal were alert to this given the amount of money Cardiff had paid them for Fred Pagnam.  But they would also be alert to how Pagnam had failed to live up to his goalscoring record once he had moved.  Pagnam was certainly one of the players who was coming to the end of his career when Arsenal sold him for a record fee for the club.

But it wasn’t particularly the goalscoring that was Arsenal’s problem because in the lead up to the next round of matches on 24 September Arsenal had scored 10 goals and were in 10th position in terms of goals scored in the league.  The problem was in the defence where only one club (Stoke) had let in more than Arsenal.

A subsequent article on 24 September criticised Well Wisher’s commentary but attacked in a different direction, saying that Arsenal did not bring through enough of their own young talent. On that day Arsenal played Everton away and got a 1-1 draw, and at last someone other than White got a goal: it was Bradshaw.

Interestingly in this latest public criticism the writer was especially scathing of Arsenal’s policy of playing men out of position and the letter ended with a warning that much more of the kind of displays they’d been forced to watch recently and supporters would go elsewhere.

The Islington Daily Gazette called the lineup for this last match of the month a “reconstructed forward line” and at least Arsenal got a draw: Everton 1 Arsenal 1.  The league table did not make happy viewing.    (League table provided by 11v11)

Team P W D L F A Pts
1 Burnley 7 5 0 2 17 8 10
2 Liverpool 7 4 2 1 9 8 10
3 Aston Villa 8 4 1 3 15 8 9
4 Newcastle United 7 4 1 2 12 9 9
5 Sunderland 7 4 1 2 13 10 9
6 Middlesbrough 7 3 3 1 10 8 9
7 Preston North End 7 4 1 2 12 10 9
8 Sheffield United 7 2 4 1 10 7 8
9 Blackburn Rovers 8 2 4 2 11 9 8
10 Bolton Wanderers 7 3 2 2 15 14 8
11 Manchester City 7 3 2 2 9 10 8
12 Oldham Athletic 7 3 2 2 5 6 8
13 Tottenham Hotspur 7 3 1 3 11 9 7
14 Bradford City 7 2 3 2 12 14 7
15 Everton 7 2 2 3 12 11 6
16 West Bromwich Albion 7 2 2 3 8 10 6
17 Birmingham City 7 2 1 4 13 13 5
18 Huddersfield Town 7 1 3 3 9 12 5
19 Manchester United 7 1 3 3 6 12 5
20 Chelsea 7 1 3 3 4 9 5
21 Arsenal 7 1 1 5 6 13 3
22 Cardiff City 7 1 0 6 6 15 2

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