100 years since Chapman arrived at Arsenal. Part 4. Knighton is removed

 

Next season – 2025/26 – will be the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Herbert Chapman at Arsenal.   In this series we are looking back at the surprise arrival of Chapman, and his time at Arsenal.

By Tony Attwood

Previously in this series:

The problem with Knighton was that of the six players who played 30 games in the 1923/24 season only half of them played 30 games or more in the 1924/25 season.  This one simple observation is really a metaphor for Arsenal during the whole Knighton era, for not only did the club sink further and further down the league, so there was no consistent approach to improving matters.   It was a period of endless shuffling around the squad.

But there is a further problem with writing about the Knighton era at Arsenal (the era that immediately preceded the arrival of Chapman) and that is Knighton’s autobiography.   For when Knighton found hisemfl unemployed after the second world war, he turned instead to writing that work.   And because by the time he published it, Arsenal were synonymous with success in football, people were interested in what he had to say.

And it is from this autobiography that most of the discussion about the period in which Knighton was a singularly unsuccessful manager at Arsenal, is founded.  To quote from Wikipedia, “Norris put a strict cap of £1,000 on transfer fees and refused to sign any player under 5’8″ tall or eleven stone.”

Now there is absolutely no evidence to back up these assertions or the many other similar claims made by Knighton).  But it was these accusations and “revelations” that brought was is in effect a thoroughly dull book to life.and earned Knighton the money from a sunday newspaper serialisation.  And with Norris now passed away, and the board that replaced Norris and his team when Norris was forced out of the club, not wanting any of their past action debated, there was no one to contradict Knighton;s assertions, and the publishers both of the newspaper serialisation and of the book itself wanted something that would grab the public’s interest.

Indeed it has recently come to light that none of the board minutes from the period in which Sir Henry Norris was at the club have been saved – so the minutes of the meeting in which Norris was removed are completely missing.  It is impossible to imagine that Norris could have arranged this, since when he was removed the rest of the board would not have allowed him to remove anything belonging to the club.  The implication has to be that it was those who replaced Norris who did not want the details of what had been going on in the club revealed.

But we are of course getting ahead of ourselves, for it was Norris who brought Chapman to Arsenal and who sacked Knighton as Arsenal manager.   And what Knighton failed to dwell upon in his autobiography was the miserable record of Arsenal under him – sweeping it aside as all totally due to Norris’ approach.   And yet one quick glance at what happened in the last year of Knighton and the first year of his successor must cast serious doubt on Knighton’s coverage of history.

For Knighton left the club on the brink of relegation.  In his first year Chapman took Arsenal to second in the league.   Are we seriously to believe that was not at all due to Knighton’s failure as a manager and Chapman’s success?

What in fact happened was that Leslie Knighton, in his autobiography, published over 20 years after his dismissal by Arsenal, as the club had sunk closer and closer to relegation, excused the club sinking closer and closer to relegation was due to his lack of funds.

What he failed to mention was that Arsenal’s income had been sinking during his reign due to the decline in the crowds.  Now we do have to be careful with fan numbers from 100 years ago, as there is no guarantee of their absolute accuracy but all the evidence we have shows that numbers at Highbury had been slipping and in 1924/25 were down to between 20,000 and 30,000 which was seen to be unacceptable for a first division club in London.    After a year of Chapman the crowd figures were approaching double that number – and the reason was simple, as the end of season figures show.

 

Pos Team P W D L F A Pts
20 Arsenal 1924/5 42 14 5 23 46 58 33
2 Arsenal 1925/6 42 22 8 12 87 63 52

 

The series continues….

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