By Tony Attwood
Recently in this series
The full index of articles so far…
Arsenal are now celebrating 100 seasons in the top division of English football (althought it is true the club’s owners are not making too much of this at the moment. And so we are running quite an extensive review of the club across these 100 seasons. In summary of where we have got to thus far, we can note that Arsenal’s football history goes in waves, as set out below…
Phase One: in the final two seasons before Chapman, Arsenal came 19th and 20th in the First Division. At the time, the clubs that came 21st and 22nd were relegated.
Phase Two: Chapman was manager from 1926/7 until he tragically passed away in the 1933/4 season. During that time, Arsenal won the league twice, the FA Cup once, were league runners-up twice and were FA Cup finalists twice.
Phase Three: Under Allison, Arsenal won the league twice, and the FA Cup once – exactly as under Chapman.
Phase Flour: Under Whittaker Arsenal one again won the league twice, and the FA Cup once, and were beaten finalists once.
Phase Five: Under Crayston Arsenal won nothing and were knocked out of the FA Cup in the third round by Northampton Town
Phase Six: Under Swindin, Arsenal again won nothing and in his last three seasons finished 13th, 10th and 11th in the league. To put it simply, there were no signs of progress.
Phase Seven: Under Wright Arsenal finished 7th, 8th, 13th, and 14th and on one occasion were knocked out of the FA Cup by Peterborough United. Thus, when Bertie Mee took up the role of manager in 1966, the club had not only not won either major trophy since 1952/3 and they had had three managers (Crayston, Swindin and Wright) who had got nowhere near a trophy. The success of the Chapman / Allison / Whittaker era was just a whisper from the past. The last trophy was that of 1953. Arsenal were the 1st Division’s “has-beens”.
And now the story continues….
In these circumstances Bertie Mee was a surprise appointment at Arsenal, as although Arsenal were not winning trophies anymore, they were still remembered as a successful club from earlier eras, and it was recalled that their success started with the appointment of Herbert Chapman, who had just had enormous success in winning trophies at Huddersfield Town – a club that had never had any success before.
However, the recent appointments at Arsenal had been nothing short of disastrous, and it was felt that something different needed to be tried. But what the club was clearly not prepared to do was to follow the example of Sir Henry Norris in 1925 when he persuaded Herbert Chapman to leave Huddersfield Town, where he had had great success, to come to Arsenal, who in the previous two seasons were on the edge of relegation.
This time, the issue might have been money, for it is possible that Sir Henry Norris himself financed the club’s transfers under Chapman, the club finances meaning it was hard for the club to pay the sums needed to bring the players Chapman clearly realised Arsenal needed. But I do think there was still a great desire not to be seen doing anything that hinted of a return to the Henry Norris approach. Cergtainly all the minutes of board meetings that Sir Henry had been chair of, and the financial reports from that era, were removed from the club, at some time after Sir Henry left, ano no reference was subsequently made in the club’s histories of the success Norris had had, in turning the club from a bankrupt south Thames second division side, into one of the msot successful first divisiion clubs there had ever been.
And so, eschewing the notion of bringing in a proven manager from another club, as Norris had done with such success, the board was now forced to find a manager with no experience of management. Thus, they turned to the club’s physiotherapist, Bertie Mere- a man everyone at the club knew and liked, and who knew the players personally (as most people tend to talk while being treated on the physio’s couch). The fact that he also had no experience in management seems simply to have been brushed aside. He was part of Arsenal, he knew the players, and the players liked him.
Whether the board even thought about, let alone fully understood, how Mee was to transform the club, and indeed whether Mee himself had a clear plan from the start, cannot be said, but the board pressed on with Mee’s appointment, seeming to argue that in the current circumstances they wanted someone with a very low public profile but a high level of knowledge of club football, the Arsenal club and its values.
Mee had been a footballer himself, but had had his playing career cut short by injury, and it was after that that he trained as a physiotherapist, working with the Army Medical Corps and gaining the rank of sergeant. He had joined Arsenal in 1960.
However, it seems that Mee himself had severe doubts about the job, which apparently he was offered out of the blue, for he insisted on a clause in his contract that allowed him to return as the club’s physiotherapist after a year if things didn’t go well on the pitch. The club agreed and brought in Dave Sexton and Don Howe as his assistants.
Looking back, it seems that Bertie Mee had a much closer understanding of the talents of the players who were coming up through the Arsenal ranks than Billy Wright ever had. Wright had come with the built-in disadvantage of only ever playing for one club (490 games with Wolverhampton Wanderers). with the only other team he ever played for being England (105 games). He came with no managerial experience, and it seems that the whole management adventure was too much for him, as it is reported he became an alcoholic – something he overcame after leaving football to be a media personality.
Of course, it can be understood just why Arsenal would want someone to replace Wright, this time picking a person who was not already a famous personality but who knew the club and its players. Certainly, there was not much in the first team to build success on, but Bertie Mee was aware that the fame of Arsenal had led to the evolution of a youth training programme that was producing the likes of John Radford, Pat Rice, Ray Kennedy, Charlie George and others. Unlike his predecessors, Mee saw the possibilities in such players.
In his first season (1966/7), Bertie Mee took Arsenal up to 7th in the league and the 5th round of the FA Cup. Neither were particularly exciting if compared to the glory days, but after finishing at 13th and 14th in the two previous seasons, this seemed like a step forward.
It also appears that the board made it clear to their new manager that the notion of bringing in famous players from elsewhere was financially no longer possible, and that what the manager had to do was to work with youth players, which Mee was able to do perfectly well, since he had obviously got to know them through his work as the club’s physio.
And in this regard, we have to note that it appears that for some players, the physio acted as something akin to a psychotherapist (which of course, in those days, clubs did not have), wherein, during treatments, they might feel able to express one or two of the problems they were experiencing in the club. The physio, in fact, was the only person in the club who would listen, and so he came to understand the psychological as well as the physical makeup of the players at his disposal, and that undoubtedly affected Mee’s team selections. He knew which players were having a hard time of it mentally, and when to give them a break.
And so, as a result of this unexpected combination of circumstances, Arsenal saw the emergence of new players across the pitch who felt able to express themselves in footballing terms, without the fear that the club might buy a player from elsewhere who could march in and steal their place in the team.
McNab came in at right back, George Graham took the number 9 shirt, while the established players learned not only how much the manager valued them, but how they were expected to help the youngsters coming through. Storey, McLintock, Ure, Neill, Radford and Armstrong had all been regular players the previous season under Wright in a team that finished 14th in the League. Now in 1966/7 they were key members of the team which hauled itself up to 7th. It really did feel as if something was developing within the team and the club.
What was also particularly promising was that the manager never once forgot that there was real talent in the youth setup at Arsenal. George, Radford, Rice and Kennedy were all Arsenal through and through, and although in 1967/8 the club slipped back two places to ninth in the league, the team made it to the League Cup final – a competition Arsenal had refused even to enter in its first years, only going into the event when ordered to by the Football League. It was the club’s first cup final since the defeat to Newcastle in 1952.
1967/8 with its League Cup final defeat 0-1 to Leeds in front of 97,000 at Wembley, was of course a disappointment and shortly after, Arsenal went on a six-match run in the league without a win But five successive victories in the league at the end of the season, although played in front of disappointingly small crowds, showed that there could well be something new and exciting about Mee’s young squad.
For the first summer in well over ten years there was a feeling that Arsenal were moving back towards the big time…
