This series prepares the way for the forthcoming anniversary: “100 Years Since Chapman Arrived at Arsenal.” which will occur in the summer of 2025.
The series is written by Tony Attwood, of the AISA Arsenal History Society. You can find more about AISA on our website.
Previously in this series:
- 1: Taking over from failure
- 2: Approaching a 100th anniversary at Arsenal of mega-importance.
- 3: The Arsenal that Knighton left behind
- 4: Knighton is removed
- 5 A new manager
- 6: What happened to Chapman at Leeds?
- 7: Success at Huddersfield, concern at Arsenal
Part 8: Why did Chapman leave Huddersfield
Chapman’s success at Huddersfield Town – a team that had previously been in the second division and then come 17th and 14th in the first division, before (under Chapman) going even further and winning the FA Cup followed by the league – seems enormous and really quite bizarre. Indeed looking back at the club’s record and the size of its crowds, it seems utterly preposterous. How on earth could they rise from obscurity to an FA Cup win and consecutive league titles?
Indeed one is tempted to think, if Sir Henry Norris had done all that, it would have long ago been written up as a set of events based around bribes and other crooked dealings.
But such allegations have never been made concerning Huddersfield, even though in fact the explosion of success at Huddersfield Town under Chapman was even greater than those facts alone suggest. For it is not often mentioned but at the same time as Huddersfield were winning trophies in their one and only period of football success, so their reserve team and the youth team were at this time each heading their own leagues, again having had no success at all, prior to this.
In short at Huddersfield, Herbert Chapman took a club that had been going nowhere since it joined Division II in 1910, (other perhaps than possibly heading back from whence they came) and made them FA Cup winners and twice 1st Divison
Champions across three consecutive seasons.
Indeed how the Huddersfield Town reserves and youth teams were doing during this period is of course something that is often not mentioned when Chapman’s success at Huddersfield is discussed, but it should be, as Chapman, having signed for a club that had previously won nothing, was not only doing the unthinkable with the first team, but also building a reserve and youth structure that would provide for the club’s future (ensuring that the first team won the League for the third successive season, a year after Chapman had moved to Arsenal). And indeed he was doing all this on crowds averaging 18,500!
And yet it is those very same crowd figures which really reveal why Chapman could be tempted to move away from Huddersfield to another club. For as he clearly saw, he was creating miracles in terms of league, reserve and youth success with very limited funds available for transfers, while two new issues were undoubtedly now starting to face him.
First, having now achieved previously unimagined success with Huddersfield, Chapman was now finding that if he enquired about a player for a possible transfer, the price was going up on the simple grounds that if Chapman wanted the player, “he must be better than we imagined.”
And second, and perhaps more importantly, in some instances, it wasn’t a case of the price going up, but rather the downright refusal to sell to Chapman’s club. For the opposition were all well aware that Huddersfield Town, unlikely as it seemed, were building a side that could take on anyone. Yet they were doing this without the vast amounts of cash, (given the size of their crowds), that other teams had, and so were restricted in who they could buy as the prices rose.
(Chapman did, according to Patrick Barclay’s “The Life and Times of Herbert Chapman,” have a particular technique for getting the players he wanted at reduced prices, which involved approaching the directors of a rival club with an enquiry about one of their best players – knowing that a significant sum would be demanded. After a prolonged discussion which would end in Chapman saying that his club simply couldn’t pay the asking price, he would then enquire – as a second-best option – about the player he really wanted, and as often as not get him at a knock-down price – the selling club being relieved to have kept their best player, and happy to offload someone they thought was second best).
In short, other teams that were looking for players would watch Huddersfield’s moves for certain players and then come in with higher offers, on the grounds that if Chapman wants him, he must be good.
What’s more, as Huddersfield moved from being no-hopers to a club that could win the FA Cup and then the League in successive seasons, prices went up further. It was making it harder and harder for Huddersfield to buy anyone, simply because the crowds at Huddersfield seemed to have reached a natural limit, given the size of the town and so the club’s funds didn’t go up, but the prices being asked for players did.
In short, if Chapman was going to continue to keep his team at the top he needed not only a thriving reserve and youth side (which he now had) but also money to buy in the right players who could become first-teamers, at the asking price. And that he wasn’t getting the money to do that because the crowds were simply not there.
Thus Chapman realised he needed two things: a club that could build its own youth department (which could attract the best young players from miles around) and a club that could afford to pay for transfers when that was necessary.
Arsenal of course, met both requirements. Situated not only in what was by far the country’s biggest city, but also right opposite an underground station that could readily bring young players (often initially accompanied by their parents who also needed impressing) to the training (that at this time was also held at Highbury), was ideal not just to get the crowd size up, but also to attract the sort of players that he wanted. And to persuade parents that the youngster could get to the ground on public transport, on his own, without getting lost!
Chapman knew of course that all players have a price – but as he found once he had created success at Huddersfield, as soon as it became known it was Huddersfield asking, that price was going up. Only a club with a much higher crowd base, and the ability to get ever higher crowds, and which had been underperforming for years, could be able to do the deals he wanted, and cope with the higher price demands which would emerge as and when Chapman delivered the same success at Arsenal, which he had created for Huddersfield.
Thus, overall, while at Huddersfield he faced two difficulties. One was that he could probably go no further at Huddersfield because the crowds which funded football, were simply not going to come to the (now long-since demolished) Leeds Road ground.
The other was that the very top players were reluctant to move to a moderate-sized mill town with a modest stadium. They wanted to be at the heart of the action, and that meant a big city.
And here the attraction of the bit city cannot be over-estimated, for it was a major reason why clubs voted Arsenal back into the first division, on the league’s expansion after the First World War. As some club directors who voted for Arsenal to gain one of the two extra places said informally at the time, the players (and indeed one suspects the directors) from the Midlands and the North liked their night out in London’s West End when the fixture list gave them that – and not just to see the sights of the capital city. (Delicacy forbids any further exposition here of what they got up to).
Thus Chapman, from the off, understood that if he really wanted to make his name in football, and indeed wanted to continue managing a winning side, he needed to be at the heart of the action, and overseeing a club with a much bigger stadium; a stadium that could and would attract much bigger crowds.. And at the same time this had to be a club that was currently underperforming.
Put all this together and Chapman knew that he needed to take on a London club with a stadium that could attract the huge crowds necessary to provide the funds for the transfers he would need to arrange. He thus also needed a very ambitious club owner who would understand how he was working.
In short he wanted the finances and the country-wide publicity necessary to make a league-winning team as he had done at Huddersfield, but one which would then be able to sustain that success in the years to come.
Arsenal it was. They were advertising for a manager, having finally had enough of the failing and excuse making Leslie Knighton, and Chapman knew he was the man for the job. All he had to do was persuade Sir Henry Norris.
