100 seasons in the top division. 1: The Election

Posted on by Tony Attwood

 

 

By Tony Attwood

2025/26 is the 100th anniversary of the appointment of Herbert Chapman as Arsenal’s manager.  Our series commemorating the 100th anniversary began with our article on approaching the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Chapman and continued recently thereafter.  There’s an index to the main 25-part series at the end ot this piece and on our home page– and there are plenty more articles on the topic here as well.

But now I want to turn to the other 100th anniversary that Arsenal celebrate this year, which is 100 seasons in the top division.

This, of course, starts with the election of Arsenal to the top division, following the decision by the Football League to extend the two leagues by two clubs each to 22 clubs per league.   The matter, as with all previous extensions and replacements of clubs was arranged by a vote at the League’s AGM.  On this occasion, the debate was affected by the match-fixing scandal of the last season before the league was shut down for the duration, and there was much debate as to what would happen.

There seems to have been little taste for punishing the clubs most obviously involved in the match fixing, and there was a very strong feeling that Chelsea, who had been relegated as a result of the match fixing by other clubs, should be reinstated.  They therefore got one of the two new places in the First Division.    The second extra place was determined, as had always been the case in the past when the league was expanded, by a vote of League clubs.

The vote took place on 10 March 1919, and it was much later suggested that somehow Arsenal had fixed the vote, although no mechanism for fixing the vote of so many other clubs was ever suggested – and nor was there any suggestion of any wrong doing at the time, in any of the many daily and weekly papers that covered football.

The media did report in full to speech by C E Sutcliffe of the Management Committee about how Chelsea had been relegated through match fixing by other teams and this was a chance to set matters right.   No mention is made in any report of anything being said about why anyone shouold vote for Arsenal for the other new place in the league.

This was undoubtedly because it was perfectly clear what the benefits of having Arsenal in the league were.  First, Arsenal had rigorously supported the Football League rather than the Southern League, even though it cost the club a fortune in expenses travelling to away games across England.

Second, Clapton Orient and Fulham were the only two other London clubs in the league, and the Football League was anxious to get more publicity for itself in the papers, countering the publicity that was given to the Southern League which in division two alone included West Ham, Crystal Palace, Millwall, Watford, QPR, Luton, and Croydon Common.   The clubs in the Football League recognised Arsenal’s dedication to their cause by being the absolute geographic outlier, and so there was a clear level of desire to reward Arsenal for their dedication to the cause, while most other clubs in he city had followed Tottenham’s lead by playing in the Southern League.

Various newspapers and weekly magazines covered the details of the vote, all said it was a secret ballot and not one paper mentioned any speech by or on behalf of Arsenal.  The only speech in fact, was about the need to make sure Chelsea did not suffer from the match fixing scandal, which they would do if the league table was allowed to stand with no expansion.  So Chelsea and Arsenal were elected to Division 1, without any fuss.

But more than that, what is often not reported is the fact of the voting figures for a team to take over the one remaining spot (Chelsea having thus been elected without any votes against).  The votes were Arsenal 18, Tottenham 8, Barsnley 5, Wolverhampton 4.  Even if there were some fixing of the vote, for which there is no evidence, it would have involved a significant number of people – which again makes it very strange that not a word about it came out.  Here is the voting list

 

Club Votes received
Arsenal 18
Tottenham Hotspur 8
Barnsley 5
Wolverhampton Wanderers 4
Nottingham Forest 3
Birmingham City 2
Hull City 1

 

Very detailed reports of the meeting in The Sportsman, Athletic News, Daily Mirror and The Times the following day made no mention of any suggestion of vote rigging. They did report that Football League Management Committee member C.E. Sutcliffe made a speech stating that the expansion would give them an opportunity to do right by Chelsea. It would seem strange if a similar speech in favour of Arsenal were made by the League President and somehow all the media failed to report it.

As things stand, Arsenal have not been relegated from the top flight of the English game since, the only club in continuous membership 1919.  And thus, taking into account the fact that games were not played during the Second World War, we come to the 100th consecutive season since Arsenal were elected.

There is however one other factor.  If we look at the vote totals we have 41 votes – which given that in the last season before the cessation of football, there were 40 clubs, is strange.  There is no commentary on this either in the newspapers or the official report of the FA, and my best estimate is that one or more of the five new clubs being elected to the league at this meeting cast a vote.  Those newly elected clubs were Stoke City, Coventry City, South Shields, Rotherham County and West Ham United.   Glossop, a league club at the time, failed to get enough votes as was ejected from the League.

So there we are: Arsenal were elected into the First Division in 1919, as the League were keen to fight off the advances of the Southern League, and happy to reward the club that had in pre-war years remained loyal to the Football League, and rejected the advances of the Southern League, despite the obvious financial advantages there would have been in siding with them.

Here are the articles from the previous series celebrating 100 years since the appointment of Chapamn.  We’ll now continue with this series on 100 seasons in the first division by looking in the next article, at what happened to Arsenal in their first two years in the top league.

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