100 years ago we were 10th in the 1st division, exactly as now!

by Tony Attwood

As you may have heard the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association recently held an event at Islington Town Hall to celebrate Arsenal’s 100 years in the top division of English football.  We had ex-players, club directors and fans all mingling – it was a very jolly affair.

As our part of the celebrations, we’ve published a whole series of reports, including the most detailed analysis ever of the events surrounding Arsenal’s election to the top division in 1919.

And occasionally through this season we’re looking back to see just what happened in that momentous first season of 1919/20.

1919/20 was the first season of professional English football after the suspension of the league for four years for the duration of the first world war.   Arsenal had a new manager – Leslie Knighton – and had been established in north London for just two seasons when football was abandoned because of the war.

Given that Arsenal had spent those first two years at Highbury in the second division, no one was quite sure how the first post-war season would pan out, but through the autumn things looked ok.

The names of the clubs 100 years ago are familiar to us today – in fact the only clubs that were in the first division 100 years ago who are no longer in the league were Bradford PA (at that time 11th) and Notts County (then 17th, and who lost their place in the League last season).

So a satisfactory start for Arsenal, but in the coming weeks (as 100 years later) things went off the boil somewhat with a set of results that look rather similar to those 100 years later…

Date	Game	Res	Score	Crowd
04 Oct 1919	Arsenal v Blackburn Rovers	L	0-1	30,000
11 Oct 1919	Everton v Arsenal	W	2-3	35,000
18 Oct 1919	Arsenal v Everton	D	1-1	30,000
25 Oct 1919	Arsenal v Bradford City	L	1-2	35,000
01 Nov 1919	Bradford City v Arsenal	D	1-1	16,000
08 Nov 1919	Arsenal v Bolton Wanderers	D	2-2	30,000
15 Nov 1919	Bolton Wanderers v Arsenal	D	2-2	20,000
22 Nov 1919	Arsenal v Notts County	W	3-1	25,000
29 Nov 1919	Notts County v Arsenal	D	2-2	6,000
06 Dec 1919	Arsenal v Chelsea	D	1-1	50,000
13 Dec 1919	Chelsea v Arsenal	L	3-1	60,000

Two wins in 11 games!

Most clubs provided rounded numbers to record the crowd at the ground, and we can see the huge difference between the traditionally small crowds at Notts County and the great attraction of the Chelsea game.

Clubs played each other home and away in consecutive games for most matches – a habit that was started in 1919 and abolished for the 1924/5 season after several matches had been disrupted by altercations that started in one game, being carried on in the return match one week later.

All the games were of course in Division 1 – there were no League cup or European games to distract the clubs. also then as now Arsenal joined the FA Cup in January.  But there were 22 rather than 20 clubs in the league, thus giving each team four more matches during the course of the season.  The season also started later (the last Saturday in August) and ended earlier (at the start of May).

And there was another incident in this period 100 years ago which is of interest to us, for on 13 October 1919 Leeds City of the second division were expelled from the Football League.

To take in the detail of the story we have to go back a little to 9 October when the FA who had been investigating Leeds City FC (previously managed by a certain Herbert Chapman) stated that the club could not play its game against South Shields the following Saturday because of “irregularities”.

Herbert Chapman had managed Leeds prior to the war but like so many others had taken up war work in local industry during the conflict. He had returned to Leeds City and resumed his work after the war, but before the League commenced in August 1919 he resigned (for reasons unclear), moved to Selby and apparently gave up football to become a superintendent at an oil and coke works.  What is notable is that this action occurred despite the fact that he had had some success with Leeds taking them towards promotion in his first two seasons, although slipping back in the highly disrupted 1914/15 season.

However Leeds had been reported by some former players of paying “guest” players who had appeared for them in war time friendlies – something that was clearly not allowed under the war time rules although appears to have been commonplace.

But the evidence that Leeds had been breaking the rules was largely hearsay, coming particularly from Charlie Copeland who had been with Leeds City since 1912 but had fallen out with the club over the issue of a pay rise.

Leeds City were summoned to a meeting on 26 September 1919, and ordered to hand over their books, but they refused to do so on the grounds that the Commission had no legal right to demand them.

And so in the arbitrary way that it often deals with these things, the Football League removed Leeds City from its membership, and banned five officials, for life, including Herbert Chapman, (although there was no evidence that he had colluded in the payment of players and he was not called to any of the meetings or hearings).

The fixtures of Leeds for the season were taken over by Port Vale, who bizarrely were able to count the eight games Leeds City had played (four wins two draws and two defeats) as their own! Leeds City was wound up, the players sold, but then a new club with the same directors owning the same ground and called Leeds United, was set up. They were admitted to the league for the 1920/21 season. Grimsby were ejected from the league to make room.  How wonderful the ways of the League.

This seems to have been on no concern for Herbert Chapman and he continued with his job, but in the economic turmoil that existed post-war, his fortune took a downturn when in late December 1920 he was laid off from his job at the coke works.

Things looked rather bleak, but Chapman was then approached by Huddersfield Town to be assistant to Ambrose Langley, who had played with Herbert Chapman’s brother Harry at The Wednesday (where Harry had made over 200 appearances).

Working with the support of Huddersfield, Chapman then appealed against his life ban, using the most obvious of evidence that since he had been helping the nation’s war effort during much of the war, and had not been involved with the club, and since the League had no idea when any illicit activity had taken place (since it hadn’t seen the records) they couldn’t possibly know that there was a case against him. He strongly denied that he had been involved in, or knew about, any payment to guest players.

He was allowed to return to football.

So we come to 10 December and the table 100 years ago…  Teams in bold are those who are above us in the 1st division at the moment.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GAvg	Pts
1	West Bromwich Albion	17	12	0	5	48	25	1.920	24
2	Burnley	18	10	3	5	28	25	1.120	23
3	Newcastle United	18	9	4	5	24	16	1.500	22
4	Sunderland	17	10	2	5	32	22	1.455	22
5	Chelsea	17	8	3	6	25	18	1.389	19
6	Middlesbrough	18	7	5	6	24	28	0.857	19
7	Manchester United	16	6	6	4	27	19	1.421	18
8	Manchester City	17	7	4	6	42	36	1.167	18
9	Bolton Wanderers	18	7	4	7	32	29	1.103	18
10	Arsenal	17	5	8	4	27	26	1.038	18
11	Sheffield United	18	7	4	7	31	31	1.000	18
12	Everton	17	7	3	7	37	33	1.121	17
13	Bradford Park Avenue	17	7	2	8	28	26	1.077	16
14	Bradford City	17	6	4	7	29	30	0.967	16
15	Derby County	18	5	6	7	20	26	0.769	16
16	Aston Villa	17	7	1	9	29	34	0.853	15
17	Notts County	17	5	5	7	26	37	0.703	15
18	Liverpool	17	6	2	9	22	26	0.846	14
19	Blackburn Rovers	17	5	4	8	22	34	0.647	14
20	Preston North End	17	6	2	9	25	40	0.625	14
21	Oldham Athletic	16	5	2	9	22	25	0.880	12
22	Sheffield Wednesday	17	3	4	10	13	27	0.481	10

So there we are.  We are 10th now, and 100 years ago to the day, in the first of our century in the top division, we were 10th then.

We’ll have more from 100 years ago in a later post but you can follow the full story of the whole of the Henry Norris era from 1910 to 1927 in the series Henry Norris at the Arsenal on the Arsenal History Society site.

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