Arsenal at the start of the 20th century: the first promotion to Division 1

 

Recent articles in this series…

• Arsenal 1899/1900: keeping professional football alive in the south
• 1898/9: Home form is great but why is away form so dodgy?
• Arsenal’s early seasons: 1897/8
• Arsenal’s greatest achievements: the strugle to break even and rise up the league
• How Arsenal Matchday Culture Changed Over Time

By Tony Attwood

9th, 8th, 7th, 10th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 7th.

That was the final placement of Arsenal in Football League Division 2 from their first season in the league, playing as a professional club, and indeed as the only professional club in the south of England.  It was a series of results that ran until 1901.

As you can see from these results, Woolwich Arsenal FC had not in any way flirted with being kicked out of the league (which was the fate that befell a number of clubs that ended in the bottom three), but neither had they come close to getting promotion into the Football League Division 1.

And there could be no real thought that somehow the fact that they were in the south was mitigating againsts them (although as we explained earlier, the away games all consisted of long and quite often tiresome journeys) for there was no real progress in the FA Cup either wherein more local teams might be played.

Arsenal entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1889/90, generally competing in the last of the qualifying rounds for their first (and as it turned out, often last) cup match of each season.  In the first 14 years of entering the FA Cup, Arsenal were knocked out of the competition in either the qualifying rounds or the first round proper (this being the point at which the other clubs from the second division of the League, and the first diviion clubs, also joined in).

In short, Woolwich Arsenal ended most seasons in middle or upper mid-table in the second division, and their FA Cup history suggested that this was more or less where the club deserved to be.   The extra travel they had to endure for away games in Division 2 league matches undoubtedly didn’t help them, but Arsenal were not massively disadvantaged or misplaced.  All the signs pointed to them being a mid-range second division club.

At least that is how it was up until 190, as Woolwich Arsenal regularly finished as a solid mid-table club for the most part, ending up 7th or 8th in the league.

But then something rather extraordinary happened, for in 1901/2 Arsenal finished fourth in Division 2 – their highest ever position in the league.  Not high enough for the club to qualify for promotion or even for the play-offs, but certainly this was sthe best result they had ever achieved.

1901/2 was the club’s ninth season in the league, and previously they had finished in a solid but somewhat unexciting mid-table position.  And a careful review of the season before the breakthrough of 1901/2 gave no hint as to what was about to happen.  Except perhaps for one thing – for in 1900/01 Arsenal played fewer games than before.   In the previous four seasons they had played in either the United League or the Southern Combination as well as the second division of the Football League.   

But in 1900/01 there was no alternative league for Arsenal to play in, alongside the second division of the Football League.    And so they played fewer games.  This most certainly put a strain on the club’s finances, since its only source of money was the entry fee that supporters paid, but in terms of improving player fitness and well-being it was a good (if unplanned) move.

Such a theory for the transformation of Royal Arsenal that was about to happen is appealing, except for one thing: the fact that the players did not have a second professional division to play in alongside the Football League Division 2 did not lead to an improvement in their performances immediately.  For in the first season in which Arsenal did not have these extra games in addition to those played in the Second Division of the Football League, Arsenal came 7th.  This gave them a recent record of finishing positions that read:  10th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 7th – a typical Royal Arsenal run of positions in the second division.

But then in 1901/2 Arsenal finished 4th in the second division, just one place short of promotion and their best achievement.   Better still, this improvement continued, and the following season, they made it, coming second in Division 2 in the 1903/4 season, and thus getting promotion to the first division for the first time in the club’s history.

So what did Woolwich Arsenal do in 1903/4 that they had never done before, and which took them up to the highest football league in the land?   As it turns out, the anser was simple: they had discovered how to score goals.  A lot more goals.

This was achieved by the club putting out a team with no just one potent goalscorer, but in fact a previously unheard of (in terms of Royal Arsenal and Woolwich Arsenal) three goal-scoring attackers: Tim Coleman, Tommy Shanks and Bill Gooing. 

And indeed, having three such players not only meant that the Royal Arsenal players always had a player to pass the ball to when in an attacking position, it also meant that the standard approaches to defence which virtually every club in the League utilised, no longer worked.    The big centre half had in the past marked the centre forward in these early days of football, but now Arsenal were effectively playing with three centre forwards who combined to score for 66 of the club’s 91 league goals under manager Harry Bradshaw. 

Overall Arsenal scored 91 goals in 34 Division 2 league games and came second in the league.   But that was not all  – they also played in the London League and scored another 24 goals in 12 matches therein.