This website traces the history of Arsenal FC from its easiest days. We are currently looking at the period when the club had reached the league but was still playing in South London.
Recent posts…
- Arsenal’s greatest achievements: the struggle to break even and rise up the league – 1896/7
- Arsenal’s greatest achievements: part 3 – marginal improvements 1895/6
In 1897/8 Arsenal came 5th in the league, maintaining their tradition of ending up nearer the top than the bottom of the league, but not high enough to get promotion to the top tier of English football. But they won 16 games out of 30 and drew five: a decent set of results for a club so geographically isolated from the rest of the league.
However once again although they were perfectly able to battle through the preliminary rounds of the FA Cup (beating St Albans 9-0 for example), as soon as they got to the games against other professional teams they suffered, losing in this season equally heavily to Burnley.
And it does strike me that these contrasting results are important – Woolwich Arsenal FC clearly had ambitions – they had after all brought professional football to south London, and had survived where many others had failed. But as yet they could not take that extra step which would allow them to hold their own in the top division, and thus bring 1st division football to London.
But beyond the stark figures of their league position and their games against first division clubs there was another point to note – Arsenal were much better performers at home than away from home season after season, not matter what they tried. And although I don’t have direct evidence to confirm this I suspect a key reason was that of travel. Clubs did not tend to travel the night before a game and stay over in a hotel, because of the cost. And as a result, away performances suffered.
Indeed in this season we can see that Arsenal lost just two games at home but lost seven away. Even more telling, they conceded 13 goals at home but conceded 49 goals away. It may of course have been in part due to the crowd – the south London crowd had a reputation for noise, and indeed letting off fireworks – and this could have intimidated away players.
But whatever the cause the home results from the season speak volumes….
| Date | Opponent | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1 September 1897 | Grimsby Town | 4–1 |
| 11 September 1897 | Lincoln City | 2–2 |
| 18 September 1897 | Gainsborough Trinity | 4–0 |
| 9 October 1897 | Luton Town | 3–0 |
| 16 October 1897 | Newcastle United | 0–0 |
| 23 October 1897 | Leicester Fosse | 0–3 |
| 13 November 1897 | Walsall | 4–0 |
| 27 November 1897 | Blackpool | 2–1 |
| 8 January 1898 | Newton Heath | 5–1 |
| 5 February 1898 | Manchester City | 2–2 |
| 5 March 1898 | Small Heath | 4–2 |
| 19 March 1898 | Loughborough | 4–0 |
| 2 April 1898 | Burnley | 1–1 |
| 8 April 1898 | Darwen | 6–0 |
| 11 April 1898 | Burton Swifts | 3–0 |
Thus Arsenal were still fixed in the second division, and their inability to make progress in the FA and with away games, suggested this was the right level for them, but it also gave a clue as to how matters could be improved. Two thoughts sprang to mind: taking a sizeable number of Arsenal supporters to away matches to make their players feel less isolated, and the need to bring in one or two more players who had experience of the first division, to help steady the team in those away games.
But in regards to the latter, south London was seen by many people from even the northern home counties, and certainly from the rest of the country, as something akin to a foreign land. It was not somewhere that many players were willing to move to.
