100 Arsenal seasons in the top league: Allison takes over

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10:34

By Tony Attwood

For 1946/7, George Allison was persuaded by Arsenal (against his personal wishes) to stay in his position as manager and overse the return of Arsenal’s squad members who had survived the war and who were young enough, still willing and still able to play for the club.

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George Allison had made it very clear to the club that he only stayed on as manager in 1946/7 to help the club out, as clearly, most possible replacement managers for the club were not available immediately upon the resumption of league football in August 1946. The club accepted this and agreed that Allison’s appointment would be for one year only, and it was very much a case of him helping the club out while the club prepared the next manager who would attempt to establish post-war Arsenal as something resembling the team of the 30s. A team which had won the league in 1931, the FA Cup in 1932, the League in 1933, the League in 1934 (despite the untimely death of Herbert Chapamn pat way through the season), the League in 1935, the FA Cup in 1936, come third in 1937 and won the league again in 1938. Five league wins and two FA Cups in one decade for a team that had never ever won anything before that era!

Thus, when Arsenal finished 13th in the league and went out of the Cup in the third round in the season 1938/39, there was no reflection on Allison as manager. Although some supporters now attending games had only known Arsenal as winners, most people realised that the run could not go on forever. After all Chapman had seen his team come 14th in the league, one season. Arsenal, it was felt, would soon recover.

Tom Whittaker had become Arsenal’s first team trainer in 1927, working under Herbert Chapman and had transformed both the training regime and the approach to physiotherapy and was always seen both by Chapman and Allison as central to the club’s rise from the ashes at the end of Knighton’s disastrous time at the club to league dominance.. Indeed, such was his reputation that while still working under Allison, Whittaker also became the trainer of the England team.

During the Second World War, he was a squadron leader in the RAF, and for his missions on D Day he was awarded the MBE. And thus with such a background and experience with the club his appointment as manager in 1947 was no surprise – indeed, it was in order to wait for Whittaker to arrive that Allison reluctantly agreed to continue to manage the club in 1946/7.

The success of Whittaker from the start can be seen by the league table on 22 November 1947 as the table read…

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Arsenal	17	12	5	0	31	8	29
2	Burnley	17	8	7	2	24	11	23
3	Preston North End	18	10	3	5	26	25	23

And it is worth pausing for a moment to compare this with the position of Arsenal after the same number of games in the 1946/7 season – the first after the resumption of football following the Second World War

The table below is taken from 1 December 1946 and reveals just how close Arsenal came to being removed from the first division at that time. Their subsequent recovery to 13th in the league was impressive, and most people looking back at Arsenal’s post-war history tend to see just that final league table. But this table from a few weeks before Christmas showed just how dire the situation was in that first season after the war, as Arsenal realised that the persuading of the pre-war manager, now well into his sixties (and that was seriously old in this immediate post-war era) to continue as manager for 1946/7 was not perhaps their best idea ever. However, although the football results of that year look poor compared with what Arsenal had been pre-war, Allisson’s memory should never be sullied in this regard since it was he who kept the club running, and had it ready for the arrival of Tom Whittaker as manager in 1947.

Pos	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
19	Derby County	16	5	2	9	27	36	12
20	Leeds United	17	5	2	10	26	36	12
21	Arsenal	17	4	3	10	27	40	11
22	Huddersfield Town	17	5	1	11	22	40	11

For his first league game as manager Tom Whittaker kept Swindin, Scott, Bates, McPhearson, Mercer, Lewis, and Logie – six key players from the team that had played for the club at the start of the previous season. So it is not true to say that he totally revolutionised the squad, as soon as he came in.

But he did introduce Macaulay and Roper who each played 40 of the 42 league games, and kept Rooke, who had played throughout the second half of the previous season. In short, Tom Whittaker did not revolutionise Arsenal by bringing in a new set of players.

Whittaker was an immediate success at Arsenal, taking the club to the League title in his first season of 1947/8. One of the major factors in his success was his ability, quite possibly aided by his background in medical issues, including of course, physiotherapy, of keeping his key players fit. Indeed, eight of his team in this season played 35 league games or more in the first season after the conclusion of the war – a remarkable achievement.

Indeed, it is likewise interesting to note that Whittaker also made an apparently illegal approach to sign Stanley Matthews, but Matthews turned Whittaker and Arsenal down in favour of staying at Blackpool.

But Whittaker’s time at Arsenal was cut short as he died of a heart attack in 1956 at the age of just 58. However by then he had achieved enough to put his name on a platform alongside Herbert Chapman and George Allison as one of the three great managers who secured the place of Arsenal in English football history for all time.

He will indeed be remembered always for his extraordinary triumph in 1947/8 which we will turn to in the next article.

The celebration of Chapman’s legacy, held at the church where he is buried

Further articles can be found through the link at the top of each article onto the next piece on this site.

100 Arsenal seasons in the top league: Allison takes over

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