On February 5th 1931 Arsenal beat Leicester City away 7-2. Lambert got a hat-trick. That win took the club back to the top of the First Division, where they had been for much of the season, and a position at which they stayed for the remainder of 1930/31, thus winning their first ever league title.
On 28 March Lambert again got a hat-trick in the 5-2 away win at Middlesbrough. It was part of an nine match unbeaten run that took Arsenal through to the end of the season.
Jack Lambert played 34 league games that season, all at number 9, and scored an astonishing 38 goals.
I’ve already published a review of the centre forwards the Herbert Chapman used – and from that you can see that Jack Lambert really just had this one great season. A full review of his life at Arsenal has also been published on this site.
1930/31 was in fact Jack Lambert’s year all the way through. Arsenal won their first five games of the season, during which he scored eight goals.
But to move away from Jack Lambert just for a moment, it is perhaps interesting to look at the league table on this day.
P | W | D | L | F | A | GA | Pt | |||
1 | Arsenal | 35 | 23 | 8 | 4 | 111 | 54 | 2.06 | 54 | |
2 | Aston Villa | 36 | 21 | 9 | 6 | 114 | 65 | 1.75 | 51 | |
3 | Sheffield Wednesday | 35 | 19 | 6 | 10 | 88 | 65 | 1.35 | 44 | |
4 | Derby County | 34 | 16 | 9 | 9 | 80 | 63 | 1.27 | 41 | |
5 | Portsmouth | 35 | 15 | 10 | 10 | 71 | 61 | 1.16 | 40 | |
6 | Manchester City | 36 | 16 | 8 | 12 | 66 | 62 | 1.06 | 40 | |
7 | Huddersfield Town | 35 | 15 | 9 | 11 | 72 | 60 | 1.20 | 39 | |
8 | Liverpool | 35 | 14 | 10 | 11 | 78 | 69 | 1.13 | 38 | |
9 | Middlesbrough | 36 | 16 | 6 | 14 | 80 | 74 | 1.08 | 38 | |
10 | Blackburn Rovers | 36 | 14 | 8 | 14 | 74 | 72 | 1.03 | 36 | |
11 | Newcastle United | 35 | 15 | 4 | 16 | 71 | 73 | 0.97 | 34 | |
12 | Chelsea | 35 | 13 | 8 | 14 | 57 | 59 | 0.97 | 34 | |
13 | Sheffield United | 35 | 12 | 9 | 14 | 69 | 67 | 1.03 | 33 | |
14 | West Ham United | 35 | 13 | 6 | 16 | 71 | 77 | 0.92 | 32 | |
15 | Grimsby Town | 36 | 14 | 4 | 18 | 69 | 80 | 0.86 | 32 | |
16 | Leicester City | 35 | 14 | 4 | 17 | 70 | 83 | 0.84 | 32 | |
17 | Sunderland | 35 | 11 | 9 | 15 | 76 | 79 | 0.96 | 31 | |
18 | Birmingham City | 35 | 10 | 9 | 16 | 50 | 65 | 0.77 | 29 | |
19 | Bolton Wanderers | 35 | 10 | 9 | 16 | 52 | 71 | 0.73 | 29 | |
20 | Blackpool | 35 | 10 | 8 | 17 | 61 | 106 | 0.57 | 28 | |
21 | Leeds United | 36 | 10 | 5 | 21 | 60 | 75 | 0.80 | 25 | |
22 | Manchester United | 36 | 5 | 6 | 25 | 41 | 101 | 0.41 | 16 |
This was of course very much the era of two points for a win, one for a draw. Arsenal in the end won the league by seven points from Villa, although Villa did have one moment of glory that season, beating Arsenal 5-1 at Villa Park on March 14th.
Goodness knows what Chapman said to his players, as they had not lost in their seven previous games, but whatever was said, it worked.
Arsenal actually won the league on April 18, with two games to spare, by beating Liverpool at Highbury 3-1, although the crowd was only 39,143. The final home game, a victory over Bolton only saw 35,406 turn up. Arsenal’s top home crowd that season was 56,417 for the game against Chelsea, who were the big local rivals that year, there being no Tottenham H in the top league.
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The books…
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
- Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal – crowd behaviour at the early matches
Other sites from the same team…
- Untold Arsenal
- Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
- The Massage Centre, serving Northants and Rutland
- The weight loss programme: The only guaranteed way to stay fit
-
Untold Dylan – the music, the lyrics, the meaning
The main series on this web site