Herbert Chapman at Arsenal. How his arrival affected the crowds

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11:08

By Tony Attwood

If you have kindly followed the series on 100 years of Herbert Chapman at Arsenal, you will have noticed that I stopped the series when we got to Chapman joining Arsenal in 1925, as I waited for our celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the great man’s arrival before now picking up the story of 1925/6 – Chapman’s first season at Arsenal.

The overview of that first season is published here, and it concluded with the comment that “in his first season, Chapman not only took the club to an unprecedented second in the league, while he also more than doubled the number of goals scored from two seasons before (although with some help from the change in the rules about off-side).”

So the question we need to ask now is exactly what did Chapman do? Or put another way, how on earth did he achieve such a change.

We know of course, that he brought in players who had not played with Arsenal before. But it was not just a case of bringing in new players, because although Knighton, the previous manager, wrote in his autobiography 20 years later that he was forbidden from signing players, this was not at all true. Knighton did bring in new players – but as a result, in Knighton’s final season, Arsenal sank to one place outside the relegation zone. His transfers in fact, were mostly utter failures.

Meanwhile, in 1924/5 Huddersfield scored 69 goals and Arsenal just 46. But in the following season, when Chapman moved from Huddersfield to Arsenal, Huddersfield increased their goal scoring to 92 – an increase of 23 goals scored – a rise of 33% undoubtedly due to the change in the offside rule. Arsenal however, increased their goals scored tally from 46 to 87 – an increase of 41 goals or an utterly staggering 89%. And again, some of that would be down to the offside rule, but also a lot would be due to Chapman, his players and his tactics.

Of course, it can be quite reasonably argued that Arsenal had far more ground to make up, but even so the change is dramatic as we can see by looking at the two tables.

First 1924/5.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Huddersfield T 1924/5	42	21	16	5	69	28	58
20	Arsenal 1924/5	42	14	5	23	46	58	33

And now 1925/6

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Huddersfield T 1925/6	42	23	11	8	92	60	57
2	Arsenal 1925/6	42	22	8	12	87	63	52

Thus Arsenal moved from one place above relegation to one place below winning the league while almost doubling their goals scored.

But there is a second point here. Because of the change in the off-side law which reduced the number of players there had to be behind the forward when the ball was kicked towards him, one would expect more goals. But what we might also expect is that the clubs would concede more goals, as obviously the rules applied equally to each side.

But while Huddersfield Town’s goals against tally more than doubled when the offside rule changed, Arsenal’s goals against tally went up by just nine per cent. Clearly, Chapman knew how to rework the defensive line to avoid a massive increase in the number of goals conceded. The Huddersfield Town team that he had left behind were still good enough to win the league, but they were now letting in only three goals fewer than Arsenal.

Put another way, Arsenal were adapting their playing approach to the new rules, while Huddersfield were simply keeping on dong what Chapman had taught them to do.

What this in effect meant is that while in 1924/5 Arsenal had the 12^th worst defence in the league, letting in twice as many goals as the Champions, in 1925/6 Arsenal had the second best defence in the league, letting in just three more goals than the champions.

These two figures combined show the radical transformation that Chapman introduced – it was of course, largely all about scoring goals, and thus all about attracting the crowd, but it was also about winning matches, and that meant totally transforming the way the defence played.

And this brings us to the key point about Chapman. Yes, we talk about the players he brought in and how he transformed the squad, but it was more than that. Throughout his time at Arsenal, Chapman focused on tactics – and this in an era when the game was primarily about the players, not about the team.

Now, whether or not Chapman and Norris sat down together and agreed on the strategies that transformed the club of course, we don’t know, but I rather suspect they did, for the simple reason that Sir Henry Norris alone was bankrolling the club. He knew that Arsenal needed to fill their 60,000 capacity ground, and he knew that meant winning, scoring goals and playing positive, attractive football.

In Knighton’s final season, the top crowd of the season was 51,000, and as you might expect, it was against Tottenham. But the lowest were just 12,000 against Nottingham Forest and worse, 10,000 against West Ham.

Arsenal were by no means a poorly attended side in 1924/5 compared with other teams (although if you are checking on details, you might want to avoid Google’s AI information which is not only inaccurate in terms of details, actually reports on clubs in lower leagues as being in the 1^st Division).

Attendance figures for matches 100 years ago are not as reliable as now, but using the best figures we can find, Arsenal’s average attendance in 1913/14, the first year at Highbury seems to be around 30,000. The following season, which was played in wartime, that figure dropped understandably to 10,000.

In Knighton’s final season, obviously at Highbury, the average gate was 29,751. In Chapman’s first season it was 35,233. That’s an increase of 18% which, considering Arsenal moved from just outside the relegation zone to second, doesn’t seem much – but it does reflect the era. Football supporters tended to go to every game except those played mid-week in the afternoon, when obviously many were at work. So although yes, the total support rose by an average of 5,482, that rise was indeed encouraging, especially as it meant over 115,000 more paying customers during the course of the year.

Arsenal’s Chapman celebration Day in words and pictures

The on-going series – 100 Years since Herbert Chapman Joined the Arsenal…

Herbert Chapman at Arsenal. How his arrival affected the crowds

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