By Tony Attwood
Arsenal has given a lot to English football across the ages. So a little group of us, not having any football of interest to watch (this being an international weekend), decided to make a list of what people such as Herbert Chapman and Arsene Wenger gave Arsenal.
It’s far from being a perfect list, and if you are interested in it, I suspect you will be wanting to delete some of our topics, and relace with others, but it amused us this Sunday morning…
- Growth comes from reform not revolution.
If there was one lesson from Chapman it was this – and it is interesting that Wenger adopted a similar approach.
In the four seasons before Chapman joined Arsenal, the club had come 17th, 11th, 19th and 20th in the first division. (At this time the 21st and 22nd placed club were relegated). In the FA Cup Arsenal had gone out in the first round (twice) the second round, and one reached the quarter finals.
In terms of goal scoring Arsenal were consistently in the negative having a goal difference of -1 in 1923, -23 in 2024 and -12 in 2025. Not exactly encouraging.
Yet the difference between those final seasons under Knighton as manager, and the first season under Chapman was extraordinary.
In 1924/5 Arsenal won 14 games in the league. In 1925/6, the first season under Chapman, Arsenal won 22 games. The number of defeats in Knighton’s final season was 23. Chapman cut that in half (almost) and took in down to 12 in his first season.
Goals too changed. Knighton’s team got 46 goals in his final season. Chapman’s team knocked in 87 in the following campaign!
But the biggest most incredible change was that of the league position. There were 22 clubs in the 1st division at this time, and the bottom two went down. Knighton just avoided relegation, with the club ending up in 20th position. One season later under Chapman Arsenal finished 2nd in the league!
In the FA Cup there was also progress. Under Knighton the club went out in the very first round. One year later the club made it to the quarter finals.
Now it might be thought that all this was arranged by Chapman buying in lots of new players, but this was not the case, and this cane be best understood by looking at the leading goal scorer. In 1924/5 Knighton’s leading goal scorer was Jimmy Brain with 15 goals. The following season the top goal scorer for Arsenal was the same player, except that instead of knocking in 15 goals, he scored 37!
The point about this was that Chapman, on coming to Arsenal and being given a free hand did not spend a fortune on transfers, but instead changed the system of play somewhat and also spent time with the players explaining to them how they could improve their game.
Here is the league table for 1924/5 at the end of the season. Separating teams on the same number of points at the time was undertaken by calculating goal average which involved the goals scored (the “F” column) by the goals conceded (the “A” column)
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GAv | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | Leeds United | 42 | 11 | 12 | 19 | 46 | 59 | 0.780 | 34 |
| 19 | Burnley | 42 | 11 | 12 | 19 | 46 | 75 | 0.613 | 34 |
| 20 | Arsenal | 42 | 14 | 5 | 23 | 46 | 58 | 0.793 | 33 |
| 21 | Preston NE (R) | 42 | 10 | 6 | 26 | 37 | 74 | 0.500 | 26 |
| 22 | Nottingham FoR (R) | 42 | 6 | 12 | 24 | 29 | 65 | 0.446 | 24 |
Chapman was hardly given a budget for transfers, and beside that, few players were really that keen to move to a club that had just come 20th in the league, even if they had missed relegation by seven points. And indeed Arsenal had only won two of their last ten games
But the transformation to the next season was extraordinary. In Chapman’s second season Arsenal won six of their last seven games, inclduing ending the season with a 0-4 away battering of Tottenham Hotspur.
As a result Arsenal came 11th in the league. Obviously nowhere near getting promotion but a really dramatic improvement on the season before.
| Pos | Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GAv | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Liverpool | 42 | 18 | 7 | 17 | 69 | 61 | 1.131 | 43 |
| 10 | Aston Villa | 42 | 18 | 7 | 17 | 81 | 83 | 0.976 | 43 |
| 11 | Arsenal | 42 | 17 | 9 | 16 | 77 | 86 | 0.895 | 43 |
| 12 | Derby County | 42 | 17 | 7 | 18 | 86 | 73 | 1.178 | 41 |
| 13 | Tottenham Hotspur | 42 | 16 | 9 | 17 | 76 | 78 | 0.974 | 41 |
It does indeed show what a different a season and a new manager can make!
