100 Seasons in the top division part 5: slippling down the league 1921/2
By Tony Attwood
- 100 seasons in the top division: It’s time for us to hope history repeats itself
- 100 seasons in the top division. 1: The Election
- 100 Seasons in the top Divison. Part 2: The opening season
- 100 seasons in the top division: Part 3 – the first north London league derby
- 100 Season in the top division Part 4: Oh no its all going wrong.
We left Arsenal at the end of the last article, bottom of the league, having played 12 and lost nine of those games. Worse, the last four games showed just two goals scored by Arsenal and eight conceded.
These were desperate moments, and it must be remembered they were the responsibility of the new post-war manager Leslie Knighton who some 25 years later claimed in his autobiography that none of this was his fault at all. Those memoirs were serialised in the sunday papers and placed all the blame for the team’s problems on Sir Henry Norris, who by then was long since buried (he passed away in the same year as Herbert Chapman) and so could not offer any reply.
We’ll obviously look in more detail at the remaining years of Knighton’s tenure as Arsenal’s boss but for now we’ll continue with Knighton’s third season at Arsenal, and in the next game on 5 November Arsenall were to play Birmingham, who were 16th in the league. And it is worth pausing at this moment to have a look at the lower reaches of the first division table before this game.
What makes this table so interesting is that all three London teams were in the bottom five places as can be seen. I’ve also extended the table upwards a little to include Birmigham who Arsenal played 5 November 1921, and then again as was the convention at the time, on 12 November. Here’s the table before the games on Guy Fawkes Day.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | Birmingham City | 12 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 17 | 18 | 10 |
| 17 | Bradford City | 12 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 15 | 23 | 10 |
| 18 | Tottenham Hotspur | 12 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 16 | 17 | 9 |
| 19 | West Bromwich Albion | 12 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 11 | 16 | 9 |
| 20 | Chelsea | 12 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 18 | 9 |
| 21 | Cardiff City | 12 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 13 | 20 | 8 |
| 22 | Arsenal | 12 | 2 | 1 | 9 | 9 | 21 | 5 |
It was results such as these clubs had delivered so far that gave rise to the general view that London and indeed southern teams couldn’t play football because the “high life” of living in London meant that the players became soft and unable to withstand the rigours of the game as northern players could.
And indeed this feeling was added to by Arsenal’s away record wherein, before this match, they had played six away games, drawn one and lost five. The goal tally was scored four conceded 13 as we can see in this comparison of the season thus far..
| Pos | Team | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | Birmingham City home | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 10 | 8 | 6 |
| 22 | Arsenal away | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 13 | 1 |
Sadly I have no report on the game to explain how Arsenal managed to ge a 0-1 away victory but we do have a bit of a clue
Joe North joined Arsenal as an amateur from Sheffield United in October 1919 after the First World War. The club obviously thought enough of him as he became a professonl in December. In 1920/21 he played eight games for Arsenal’s first team as centre forward but only scored twice.
For the start of 1921/22 he moved to inside left. However he returned for the 12th game of the season at home to Huddersfield (then in all-conquering form) and Arsenal lost 1-3. But North did get Arsenal’s consolation goal.
Perhaps because of this, he kept his place and scored again in the 1-0 away win over Birmingham, which ended the run of four consecutive defeats. And he scored again in the return match on 12 November at Highbury, where Arsenal beat Birmingham again, this time 5-2
North did get another run of three games in December, but without scoring, and that was the end of his Arsenal career. He was sold to Reading in May 1922., and subsequently played for Gillingham, Norwich and Watford. He did, however, have a greater fortune with cricket, where he played for Middlesex between 1932 and 1937 and later became an umpire.
But although Arsenal were still struggling, North was part of what we must see as Arsenal’s mini-revival of three wins, two draws and one defeat in November and early December 1921.
Unfortunately, it was then three more defeats and a draw, which left Arsenal, on 27 December, following a 3-4 defeat away to Cardiff, still isolated at the foot of the table…
| Pos | Team | Pld | W | D | L | GF | GA | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Sheffield United | 11 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 15 | 12 | 10 |
| 20 | Chelsea | 11 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| 21 | West Bromwich Albion | 11 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 22 | Arsenal | 11 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 12 | 13 | 9 |
There was, however, one chink of light, as on New Year’s Eve, as Arsenal finally got another victory, their first in seven games with a 2-0 away win over Chelsea who as we can see from the table above, were struggling themselves. But after over a quarter of the season, Arsenal were bottom of the league and two points from safety.
And there was a slight distraction ahead because, then as now, the first division clubs joined in the FA Cup at the start of the new year. Arsenal were drawn away to Queens Park Rangers of the Southern League – a league they had won for the second time in 1911–12. Arsenal were expected to beat them.
The story will continue in the next episode.