Chapman’s first season at Arsenal: the changes he made

By Tony Attwood

This is episode 23 of the series celebrating 100 years since Herbert Chapman joined Arsenal in 1925.  The series so far….

• 1: Taking over from failure
• 2: Approaching a 100th anniversary at Arsenal of mega-importance.
• 3: The Arsenal that Knighton left behind
• 4: Knighton is removed
• 5:  A  new manager
• 6: What happened to Chapman at Leeds?
• 7: Success at Huddersfield, and concern at Arsenal
• 8. Why did Chapman leave successful Huddersfield
• 9: Arsenal wait for the right moment
• 10: Why Knighton had to go
• 11: Chapman – the man who moved from club to club
• 12: “What made him such an amazing manager
• 13: The Man of Revolutions in a period of no rights
• 14: Chapman reforms Leeds City and is banned from football for life
• 15: The making of Huddersfield Town
• 16: What went wrong at Leeds?
• 17: Chapman banned from football for life, but football goes on
• 18: Chapman wins the league at Huddersfield
• 19: Chapman leaves Huddersfield and replaces Knighton at Arsenal
• 20: How Arsenal moved from 20th to 2nd in one season under Chapman
• 21: Herbert Chapman at the Arsenal: Success did not come at once
• 22: Herbert Chapman at the Arsenal: the changes made for the 1st season

By Tony Attwood

As we have been seeing in recent articles, Arsenal were not a strong team with a big reputation when Chapman agreed to take over the management of the club in 1925.  Rather they were a team that had been considerably under-performing – and indeed had also in recently years been seriously declining.

Indeed since joining the 1st Division at the end of the First World War, Arsenal had come (in chronological order) 10th, 9th, 17th, 11th, 19th and 20th.  And the decline of those final two seasons in that sequence cannot be put down, (as Chapman’s predecessor Knighton suggested), to a lack of transfer funds, for as the records show, Knighton was indeed spending money on players of his choice.   What caused Sir Henry Norris, the chairman, to turn against his club manager was that as the money was spent, so the results still declined (and we might remember the financial danger that spelt for Arsenal – the club that had built themselves a ground that could hold 70,000 spectators.

In finishing 20th in the league in Knighton’s final season did not get Arsenal relegated (the 21st and 22nd clubs in the final table went down) but it was the failure of the Knighton transfers to turn around the decline of the previous season that was the final straw for owner Lt Col Sir Henry Norris.

Here is the final table from Knighton’s last season at Arsenal.  It was of course two points for a win and one for a draw in those days with goal average (goals scored divided by goals conceded) rather than goal difference (goals scored minus goals conceded) separating clubs on the same number of points.

 

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
3	Bolton Wanderers	42	22	11	9	76	34	55
4	Liverpool	42	20	10	12	63	55	50
5	Bury	42	17	15	10	54	51	49
6	Newcastle United	42	16	16	10	61	42	48
7	Sunderland	42	19	10	13	64	51	48
8	Birmingham City	42	17	12	13	49	53	46
9	Notts County	42	16	13	13	42	31	45
10	Manchester City	42	17	9	16	76	68	43
11	Cardiff City	42	16	11	15	56	51	43
12	Tottenham Hotspur	42	15	12	15	52	43	42
13	West Ham United	42	15	12	15	62	60	42
14	Sheffield United	42	13	13	16	55	63	39
15	Aston Villa	42	13	13	16	58	71	39
16	Blackburn Rovers	42	11	13	18	53	66	35
17	Everton	42	12	11	19	40	60	35
18	Leeds United	42	11	12	19	46	59	34
19	Burnley	42	11	12	19	46	75	34
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

 

Thus not only were Arsenal clearly not a strong team with a big reputation when Chapman took over, they were in fact a team that had been voted into the first division after the war ended and which was now just clinging on to their position in that top division.   Chapman had the job of taking the club up the league and securing Arsenal’s place in the elite – thus filling the ground, rather than have it surviving on the income from crowds in the low 20,000s.

But more than that Chapman, and of course everyone else, knew that in the final Knighton season, not only had the club missed relegation by one place, but that also the second half of the final Knighton season had been awful.  From 1 January onward Arsenal had played 22 League games and won just four of them, all at home.   There had been one draw, and 17 defeats.  Put another way, on 1 January Arsenal had been eighth in the league, six points behind Huddersfield in second place.  By the end of the season Arsenal were just one place above relegation.

Indeed looking back at these results we can see that more than anything else Arsenal were on occasion taking advantage of any fortune that came their way.   Burnley, who Arsenal did defeat almost at the end of the season were themselves another candidate for relegation; a team which won only one of their last 11 games of the season having by far the worst defence in the league that season.

So how did Chapman turn the team that came so close to relegation into a team that came close to winning the league, and indeed do that within his first season at Arsenal?

One thought might be that Chapman changed the entire team for the 1925/6 season, but that was not the case.  In fact, in 1924/5 half of the ten players most regularly used by Arsenal in that season, were still a part of the team in 1925/6.   As per the advert for a new manager, Chapman did not spend a fortune on new players.   The table below shows the top players for 1924/5 and the number of games played in 1925/6 in the League.   And in seeing this we must remember that in 1924/5 they were one place above relegation.  In 1925/6 they were second in the league.

 

Player	1924/5	1925/6	Position
Andrew Lynd Kennedy	40	16	Left back
Jack Butler	39	41	Centre half
Bob John	39	26	Half Back
Alf Baker	32	31	Right back/Right half
William Milne	32	5	Wing half
Henry Woods	32	2	Centre forward
James Howie Ramsay	30	0	Inside forward
James Brain	28	41	Inside right
John Hardy Robson	26	9	Goalkeeper
Joseph Toner	26	2	Outside left

 

Lookin at what Chapman did with the team he inherited we can divide them into four groups… (And of course we should remember that this was long before the notion of substitutes was introduced.  The eleven players that started the game, were the eleven who finished the game (minus the very few taken off because of injury – and that happened only rarely.   Real men, it was felt, played on regardless.) 

Bought or promoted from reserves and played: Parker, Hulme, Buchan, Baker

Retained as regulars:  Butler, John, Hoar

Fairly regular under Knighton, given more games Brain, Blyth, Mackie, Neil, Haden

Dropped completely or almost completely by Chapman: Woods, Milne, Ramsey, Toner, Robson  Kennedy.

Now this is a fairly major set of changes in a club – and yet despite this Arsenal rose to second in the league from the position of having been almost relegated the season before.   And the explanation for that must come in part from the fact that Chapman did not look at the team that had just missed relegation and decided to change it.  Many of those players stayed on.  He changed the way the players played.

The final Knighton game had a line-up of

Lewis

Mackie     Kennedy

Milne Butler  Roe

Rutherford   Brain  Wood  Ramsay  Woods

What we can see is that only four of the team from the end of the previous season made it into this game: Kenedy, Milne, Butler and Ramsey.   And in fact, only four of the players in this game played in the final match of Chapman’s first season at Arsenal: Butler, John, Buchan and Ramsay.

 It was in short an enormous turnaround both between the end of last season and the start of 1925/6, and again between the start of the season and the end of Chapman’s first campaign.    And perhaps not a surprise that Arsenal should lose to Tottenham in this first Chapman game at Arsenal, given that Tottenham had finished eight places above Arsenal in the previous season.   

However in that first Chapman season matters turned themselves around considerably as Arsenal finished the season in their highest-ever position to date, of runners-up while Tottenham finished 15th, winning only three more away matches all season, shows that with all these changes of personnel and positions, Chapman knew exactly what he was doing.