100 seasons at the top. Arsenal 1930-31; the goalkeeper accused of smuggling

by Tony Attwood

This is part of the series celebrating Arsenal’s unique achievement of 100 seasons in the top division There is an index to the whole series at the foot of the article.

By Tony Attwood

To put matters simply: Arsenal won their first ever major trophy in 1930: The FA Cup. It was Chapman’s fifth season at Arsenal, which might seem rather a long wait for a trophy, but if we recall that Arsenal had never won either of the major trophies before, it must have seemed worth it. In five years of management under Chapman, Arsenal had moved from almost being relegated under Knighton in his final season (1925), to being runners-up in the league (1926), defeated finalists in the FA Cup (1927), and then in 1930 FA Cup winners. That was the first major Arsenal trophy since the club entered the league as Woolwich Arsenal in 1893.

But of course the great danger of such a trophy is that after it has been achieved the supporters only want, and indeed expect, more and more.

Normally in such situations, fans are disappointed, but not this time. In 1930/31 Chapman followed up the FA Cup triumph of the previous season, with the league title (again for the first time for Arsenal). And there was a real feeling of what was happening from the very start when Arsenal won seven of the first eight league games of the campaign. Indeed, after eight games, the table read as below, (here just showing the top and bottom three)

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Arsenal	8	7	1	0	28	11	15
2	Aston Villa	8	6	1	1	22	11	13
3	Huddersfield Town	8	5	2	1	23	10	12

20	Manchester City	8	1	2	5	11	21	4
21	Sunderland	8	0	3	5	12	25	3
22	Manchester United	8	0	0	8	10	34	0

Arsenal were scoring over three goals a game and had a very settled side, using only 14 players in the first 11 games – something of a rarity in those days, where the tackling was what might be called robust, and the medical facilities were a sponge and a bucket of cold water. This total of 14 players can be compared with the 19 players used in the opening 11 games of the season before.

But the season was not without its incidents. Three goalkeepers were called upon: the first being Keyser. We have examined his strange story on the site before, but I think it is worth repeating here in part, as it reminds us that football in the 1930s was not football as we know it in the 2020s.

Despite only playing in one defeat in the first 12 games of the season, Keyser was suddenly dropped and never played for Arsenal again. And behind that bald statistic is a really odd story. For Gerard Keizer was a player who clearly must have been quite extraordinary, for in the summer of 1930 Herbert Chapman signed him from non-league Margate, and immediately thrust him into the first division side, to play in what became Arsenal’s first title-winning season.

During his time at Arsenal, the club won eight, drew three and lost one. After his last game, a home draw with West Ham, the league table read

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Arsenal	12	8	3	1	34	18	19
2	Aston Villa	12	7	3	2	31	18	17
3	Sheffield Wednesday	12	6	5	1	20	14	17
4	Derby County	12	6	4	2	28	17	16

Keizer was brought in after Dan Lewis, Arsenal’s regular keeper until that point, had suffered a crisis of confidence. Lewis had made the error that cost Arsenal the 1927 cup final, and when he was dropped by Chapman for the 1930 final, it is said that his confidence took such a battering he felt unable to start the new season. Meanwhile, Charlie Preedy, who played in goal in the 1930 final, was not seen as a permanent replacement, and so Keizer was brought in.

Keizer had joined Ajax aged 16 and by the time he was 20 he was their reserve keeper. In fact Keizer was registered with two clubs (allowable since he was an amateur and the clubs were in different countries). Apparently, he would fly back to the Netherlands on Saturday nights to play for Ajax on Sundays. I have seen suggestions (unsubstantiated) that he was undertaking a spot of smuggling on the side, which caused Chapman to drop him suddenly after 12 games.

I must stress I have no evidence to back up this reason for his sudden departure, and of course, it might also be because Keizer never kept a clean sheet during his 12 game spell – although to be fair, that was generally the case with most clubs and most keepers. In fact, even after letting Keizer go, Arsenal only kept three clean sheets all season. They won the league not because of their defence but because they scored 127 goals in 42 games!!

But there were rumours – although of course, 90 years later, it is impossible to know if there is a scrap of evidence supporting these, and maybe Chapman demanded that the player stop playing for Ajax as well as Arsenal, on what should have been his day off.

Whatever the cause, Keyser left Arsenal and moved to Queens Park Rangers before dropping his London connection to become Ajax’s first-choice keeper in 1933. He then played 302 games for the club as they became a dominant force in Dutch football, as well as gaining two Netherlands caps.

In 1945, Keizer flew to London once again to ask Arsenal for help in rebuilding Ajax after the war. Arsenal (themselves seriously affected financially by the war) generously donated a set of playing kits and some footballs.

This was the start of another period of regular trips between Amsterdam and London for Keizer, but in 1947, he was caught with a rather fine collection of five pound notes among the football kits he was carrying, and he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for smuggling (hence the suggestion earlier that smuggling may have been part of the “business enterprise” when playing for both Ajax and Arsenal). Whether this secondary business activity had been going on in 1931 and was the cause of Keizer’s sudden removal from the club we shall never know for sure.

After his release from prison, Keizer went into business and became one of Amsterdam’s leading greengrocers and in 1955 he returned to Ajax as a member of the club’s board. He died in 1980 aged 70 – one of the most colourful characters in Arsenal’s history.

Arsenal’s form hardly deviated during the season and at the end, having used a total of three keepers (Harper and Preedy being the other two) Arsenal won the league for the first time in their history, (having won the FA Cup the season before) and with a record number of points…

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Arsenal	42	28	10	4	127	59	66
2	Aston Villa	42	25	9	8	128	78	59
3	Sheffield Wednesday	42	22	8	12	102	75	52
4	Portsmouth	42	18	13	11	84	67	49

Arsenal now were indeed a club to be reckoned with, and Chapman, having achieved so much at Huddersfield how now proven himself to be a manager who could not only win trophies but also win trophies for a club that had never won anything before.

100 seasons of Arsenal in the top division (the most recent titles appear first – to read the series from the start please go to the bottom link in the set below).

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