Celebrating one of the key moments in Arsenal’s history – without Arsenal

 

 

 

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By Tony Attwood

As we all know, Arsenal’s history is extremely rich and varied, with the club being started by a small group of enthusiastic workers in the munitions factory of the Royal Arsenal on the south bank of the Thames, and growing across the years into the leading club that it is today.

And for me, celebrating that rich and varied history which began back in 1886, has, for very many years been as much about discovering and reporting that history as going to matches, and for the past 15+ years, running this blog.

During that time those of us interested in the past of the club have been to the Royal Ordnanace Factories and visited Dial Square where Arsenal first began, and we’ve even been to the remains of the stadium where Woolwich Arsenal played on the south bank of the Thames.

After the move to the new stadium in 2006 three of us met with Ivan Gazidis, then the CEO of Arsenal and I suggested to him that the club should build a series of statues around the new ground to make it feel more like home for Arsenal supporters who had spent years watching games at Highbury.

Not only did he agree but also he took up the idea of a statue of Herbert Chapman looking up at the ground as if to say, “I did that”.

And for anyone remembering that moment, it would have been no surprise to know that yesterday we held another celebration.   A celebration of 100 years since Chapman joined Arsenal.  Again we asked Arsenal to be involved, but sadly they felt they had better things to do, which is to my mind something of a shame, but it is their club, not mine.

So members of the AISA supporters club met at the church of St Mary’s in Hendon, in the Borough of Barnet in north London, where Herbert Chapman was a regular churchgoer and where he is buried.  Indeed his tomb has something of a pride of place in the churchyard, and the church authorities are 100% aware that they have such an important person buried just beyond the entrance to the church building itself. 

It would of course have been good if Arsenal had felt that they too could join in the celebration of Chapman, since he was the man who lifted Arsenal from near-certain reglation to the second division, to become Cup winners and champions of the Football League.   And more than that he laid the foundations of the club winning three consecutive league trophies, although he passed away during that run, and his work was continued by his deputies at the club.

And for me Chapman is very, very much worth commemorating not just because he led Arsenal to the club’s first ever trophies winning both the FA Cup and the League (twice) in  a matter of four years) but he laid the foundations for what was to come. 

For before Chapman Arsenal had never won a major trophy.  But after Chapman the trophies kept on coming, including of course winning the League three times in a row.

So for me the work that was started by suggesting to the club that we should have a statue of Chapman at Arsenal, looking up at the new stadium, has continued across the years and reached its culmination yesterday with the celebration of Chapman’s life, a celebration held in the church which he attended, and by his grave in the churchyard.  And a celebration organised by AISA, who first came up with the idea of statues outside the Arsenal stadium.

It was for me an incredibly moving experience, since I had never been to that church before and thus never seen the tomb or realised just how central the remembrance of Chapman is, to that particular church.

I am sorry that Arsenal FC felt this was not a moment worth celebrating, or indeed even remembering, although they may of course rather belatedly put that right during the coming season.   But it is wonderful to know that 100 years after Herbert Chapman came to the club and utterly transformed Arsenal, his work is continued.

And to show this most graphically I can’t really do anything other than record the final league table for Arsenal in the season before Chapman arrived, and then the league table at the end of Chapman’s first season at Arsenal.  I think from that you can get the idea of just how big a transformation he made.  In each case of course it was two points for a win rather than three…

1925 final table

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Huddersfield Town*	42	21	16	5	69	28	58
2	West Bromwich Albion	42	23	10	9	58	34	56
20	Arsenal	42	14	5	23	46	58	33
21	Preston North End	42	10	6	26	37	74	26
22	Nottingham Forest	42	6	12	24	29	65	24

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1926 final table

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Huddersfield Town	42	23	11	8	92	60	57
2	Arsenal*	42	22	8	12	87	63	52
3	Sunderland	42	21	6	15	96	80	48
4	Bury	42	20	7	15	85	77	47

 

*Club managed by Herbert Chapman