This series of articles concerning Arsenal’s earliest days playing in Plumstead, begins with the article “Why Arsenal joined the Football League rather than the Southern League” There are one or two other articles on the site along the way, but if you keep moving forward from there you can follow the story of Arsenal’s early years in League football playing in Plumstead.
Recent articles include
- Season 16: 1908/09 – the highest position in the league so far
- Season 15: Arsenal in 1907/08; relegation avoided by just two points
- What Arsenal’s Pre-Season Told Us About What to Expect in 2026-27
- 1906/7: the unexpected arrival of another team from the south
and I pause here to pull together various different factors that circulated around the club and influenced where the club moved next.
By Tony Attwood
In the story so far we have watched Arsenal apply for and gain a position in the Football League Division Two in 1893/4. The League overall really welcomed Arsenal’s arrival, because it was the first sign that the Football League could be a national professional league. Other clubs in the south were strongly against professionalism, but Arsenal was a club of working men, and it seemed appropriate that just as the men working at Woolwich Arsenal expected to be paid, so should those playing for the Woolwich Arsenal club.
Thus the progress of Arsenal through the years has been traced on this site, from that first season when the club finished 9th of 15 through to 1901/2 when they finished fourth, 1902/3 when they were third (just three points away from promotion) and finally in 1903/4 when by finishing second (one point and one place above Manchester United) they gained promotion from Division Two into Division One for the first tim.
The First Division proved to be a more challenging environment but Arsenal came 10th out of 18 in their first season rising to 7th by 1906/7 just seven points below the champions.
But then it began to be clear that things were not all perfectly satisfactory with Woolwich Arsenal. There was criticism of the manager and a new man was appointed (George Morrell in February 1908). But it became apparent to all that the club was losing money and was simply being supported by one local businessman as crowds began to shrink.
Arsenal had one surge up the league in 1908/9 took Arsenal to sixth, the highest position it achieved until Herbert Chapman arrived, but that event was still years ago, and in 1909/10 the money finally dried up as George Levy – the club’s one benefactor, stopped paying the players; wages, and two directors of Fulham FC (Henry Norris and William Hall) took over the club, guaranteeing the players’ salaries . Henry Norris also paid a bill from Archibald Leitch for work on the stadium. That was for £1300 – getting on for a quarter of a million pounds in 2026 money.
And we might pause at this moment to note that this money was given by Henry Norris without any guarantee he would ever get it back. He was a property developer, and a senior figure in the military administration during the first world war, working his way up from the lowest of the ranks. But in this era of who a man was depended more on who he knew and what school he had gone to, Norris was an outsider, and even the bequest of a knighthood could not overcome the way he was treated by those who saw him as a mere property developer (his company effectively built the housing estates that became Fulham) as never one of us.
The work he did in the first world war which took him from the lowest officer level up to Lt Colonel, only made the jealousy that others had of him worse, and it was a tragedy that after effectively rescuing Arsenal FC from financial ruin, he was forced out of the club. It is noticeable that none of the minutes of directors’ meetings of the time have survived, and it seems extremely unlikely that it could have been Norris who removed them – he would have been escorted from the club after the board voted to eject him, without any chance to take any papers with him. Even the minutes of the meeting that voted Sir Henry as he became in response to his war work, are not in the files.
Initially Norris and Hall had put forward a plan to merge Woolwich Arsenal and Fulham as there was no money for player investment. But Arsenal survived, with a lot of credit being given to goalkeeper Hugh Macdonald who played in all 38 games that season. Arsenal avoided relegation by two points, sending Chelsea and Bolton down to the lower tier.
Meanwhile the news from without was just as bad, as the torpedo factor which was the source of much of Arsenal’s support was finally closed and a new factory opened in Greenock. And fate seemed to take a negative hand as guiding light Arthur Kennedy who had for many years been a director, manager, financial secretary and just about everything else died during the course of the season.
Over a dozen players made their debut for the club in 1910/11 and amazingly Woolwich Arsenal did finish 10th out of 20 in the league, a position that did not reflect the desperate state of the club’s finances, but did reflect the players’ and directors’ determination to keep the club alive. Arsenal certainly used every publicity angle they could find including signing Alf Common who years before had gained fame by being the first player to be transferred for £1000 – something that drew outrage from the national press.
Who knows what the manager said to the players after a 3-0 away defeat to Oldham Athletic on 6 March 1911, but whatever it was, or whatever was put into the players cups of tea before the next match, it worked, for Arsenal then went 11 games without defeat and finished 10th in the league, 11 points above relegation, Bristol City and Nottingham Forest going down.
But there was a further problem; crowds were going down, and the finances were getting worse. And there was concern about how much longer George Levy, the chairman who had effectively been bankrolling the club of late, would continue to do so. Indeed it seemed the only things that were going to happen were that Arsenal were going to be relegated, and then quite possibly become financially unviable.
Tottenham had been promoted to the first division in 1909/10 but even that was not helping Woolwich Arsenal’s finances, for although getting on for 40,000 would attend the London derby at Tottenham, the depression that surround Plumstead and the factories there meant that only 18,000 could be drawn to the Arsenal home league match against their only London rivals, (although Arsenal did manage to attract 24,500 for the game in 1911.)
So the crisis was clear: if the club was going to survive, then for 1911/12 it needed something new, or at least something that would attract the crowds if only for the novelty, if nothing else. The trouble was that in the midst of all this, everyone knew that top players would have to be sold.
Arsenal were desperate, and it looked like more desperate times ahead, and the consensus was that Arsenal was teetering on the brink. As we of course now know, Arsenal survived, but no one – except perhaps Henry Norris – knew how it could happen. Certainly George Levy, who had been on the board of Woolwich Arsenal couldn’t see a way through, and as it turned out he resigned as a director in April 1912 – (as it happened three days before the Titanic sailed).
And yet, and yet, although there were still more disasters to come, there was, for the two or three men who could see it, and could believe in it, a real light at the end of the tunnel.
