- We learned a lot, we’ll continue to develop our players, and the future looks bright
- Did Arsenal cheat their way to the title in 2025/26? We look for the evidence.
By Tony Attwood
They try really hard – they really, really do. They so desperately want to convince you that they were here, decades ago, in the old days, the days before Wenger. The days before Chapman even. They are real Londoners, they claim, when really they are not at all. They look in from the outside, not part of the show.
For being a Londoner isn’t just about living in London, any more than being an Arsenal supporter is just about living in N5, N8, N16, N17…, It is much more than that.
For we all know now that most of the people who are Arsenal don’t actually live round about any more. We come from miles away these days, but still this is our home, and actually no one really cares where you live anymore because so many of us have moved so many times, and quite a few people in the ground couldn’t actually afford to live in this part of town anyway.
But Arsenal is far more than that. Far more than just a football team, with an underground station named after the club. A club that was going down to the second division until the owner sacked the manager and brought in Herbert Chapman.
His name (the owner that is) was Lt Col Sir Henry Norris. You won’t ever hear his name in connection with Arsenal, except perhaps here and on the Arsenal History Society website, and you may forget his name again after reading this. But if you do recall him, think of him as the man who took Arsenal to Highbury, the man who turned the religious college that there was on the site into Arsenal’s north Ldpnon groud, the man who persauded Herbert Chapman to become manager of the club, the man who persuaded London Transport to change the name of the underground station from Avenall Road to “Arsenal”, the man who was one of the very great war heroes, and a man whose name was trashed by petty minded people who fancied taking over a north Lpondon club now it was going somewhere.
But do you know who that owner was? The man who took a club that was haemorrhaging money week by week, and who, using his own cash, built a completely new ground for the club where he thought the crowds would do it justice.
A man who went to London Transport and persuaded them to change the name of the local tube station too Arsenal? A man who wass so good at rescuing a club, rebuilding it and then pushing it right up the league that his opponents would do anything to try and destroy his reputation…
You may not, although if you try to recall the name of the man who seemed to be the epitome of greed, you might recall it from a history book.
In fact that man who rescued Arsenal from financial ruin, who paid for the building of Highbury and who brought in Herbert Chapman, is now virtually hidden from Arsenal’s history as the club owners bought into the story that there was something sneaky and awful about Arsenal’s past. There wasn’t at all – it was a thoroughly honourable club, but ultimately even the man who saved Arsenal through investing his own fortune was kicked out as the nouveau riche saw that Arsenal was in Islington ,and Islington was on the up.
And when Herbert Chapman was brought in and took the club to the very top of everything, a club so great that even his successors would keep it in the upper reaches of football, people deified Chapman. But they still couldn’t bear to admit how wrong they were about the man who brought Chapman to Arsenal.
This last season we have just experienced at Arsenal was Arsenal’s 100th season in the top division. A ground record that no other club gets even close to. A record that the club itself hasn’t really wanted to mention, probably because it was a record initiated under the owner that the current ownership has written out of the record books. The man who used his own money to move Arsenal from Plumstead to Highbury, who paid for the new ground to be built, who took Arsenal back to the 1st divisin and kept the club there.
His name is now not mentioned at all, although the reading of the actual history of the times showed that he did nothing wrong. Far from it he was a war hero, and the man without whom there would be no Arsenal, and quite possibly no allied victory in the first world war.
Arsenal today still can’t bear to recognise that man, which is why they couldn’t even bring themselves to celebrate 100 seasons in the top division. A name which, when I write it here, will probably make you think either r”Who?” or “No – I thought he was sa crook.”
But he is the man who saved Arsenal from extinction, was a great war hero, was promoted from the lowest ranks to a Lt Colonel in the first world war, and without whom there would be no Arsenal.
You might recall his name if you have read some of my histories of Arsenal. If not, don’t worry – it is there for you to find.
So as we all celebrate North London Forever, let us not forget the man who brouAht Arsenal from the edge of bankruptcy on the south bank of the Thames and built Highbury Stadium, who volunteered in the first world war as the lowest rank of officer there was, and ended the war as a Leuitent Colonel, and who was then thrown out of the club by petty minded middle class men who thought he was s”not one of us”.
He was of course Henry Norris.
