By Tony Attwood
A list of the previous articles in this series, which celebrates Arsenal’s 100 seasons in the top division, can be found at the end of the article
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Herbert Chapman’s first match in charge of Arsenal on 29 August 1925, after his surprise move to the club earlier in the summer of from Huddersfield. Quite why he moved from a club with which he had just won the league twice to one that had only just missed relegation, has never been explained, since neither Chapman nor Arsenal’s chairman, Sir Henry Norris, wrote an autobiography. But we might take it that having paid off the cost of moving the club to Highbury and having established that crowds of 40,000+ could be achieved, Sir Henry really was able to offer Herbert Chapman not only a much higher salary than he was getting in Huddersfield, but also more money for transfers.
There is also little doubt that Chapman would have found London a more condusive area to live in than Huddersfield, a town which (although it might seem strange to say it today) was a centre of left-wing radical politics, and of the calls for equality for women. Chapman showed himself through his life to be both a conservative and a Conservative, and would have found north west London, where he made his home, a much more conducive arena for himself and his family.
On taking over at Arsenal, Chapman started by using the players already at his disposal, and this was indeed logical since there were no thoughts of “transfer windows” in those days, and scouting was much more primitive an affair 100 years ago than it is now. But this also means that Chapman had the luxury of seeing the players he had at his disposal before choosing to enter the transfer market – although that didn’t stop him making a move immediately for Charlie Buchan.
Here is Chapman’s first-ever starting XI at Arsenal.
Robson
Mackie Kennedy
Milne, Butler, John
Hoar, Buchan, Cock, Ramsay, Turner
Only Buchan had not played for Arsenal in the previous season, although Cock had just played two games for the team the previous March. In fact Cock played in just this one game under Chapman, and that was it. He was moved on later in the season to Clapton Orient.
Buchan’s move was a strange transfer, given that the player was 34 years old, and that substitutes were decades away from even being thought about as a concept in football. But his story is one that fairy tales are made of, not least because he was born in the home of Arsenal: Plumstead, and actually signed as an amateur for Arsenal at the age of 18, playing in the reserves. Then Sunderland spotted him and he signed for them in 1911.
He played for that team for 14 years, winning the League in 1913 and and becoming an England international. In his first season, he played 39 league games and scored 19 goals.
Thus Chapman, in fact, did not completely change the Arsenal team at once, but made his changes gradually, and by the last game of the season his selected starting XI was
