100 seasons in the top division – 1969/70, and building a new team

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By Tony Attwood

If you have been following my telling of Arsenal’s history, or if you already know your Arsenal history in depth, you will know that the years of Chapman, Allison and Whittaker as managers were years of triumph, each manager winning the league twice and the FA Cup once.

After Chapman, Arsenal had sought to recruit all their managers from within the club, and this had worked until it came to Jack Crayson, who felt he was not suited to the job and could not keep up the Arsenal traditions. As a result, he resigned and left the club after a season and a half.

The club then turned to another ex-Arsenal man, George Swindin, who had led Peterborough United to three successive non-league titles, but his tenure again was not a success. He had no previous experience of signing top players, and indeed, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, he always seemed out of his depth as Arsenal manager. He subsequently moved on to such clubs as Norwich City, Cardiff City, Kettering Town and finally their nearby but lower league neighbours Corby Town, before giving up on football completely.

But meanwhile, Arsenal continued to explore their notion that high-quality ex-players made the best managers (although this was patently untrue in the case of Herbert Chapman and George Allison, so it is not quite clear where such an idea came from). There was also belief in the “Arsenal Way” of doing things, even if no one was quite clear anymore of what that Arsenal Way exactly was. (And indeed the whole premise of the “Arsenal Way” was curious, since Chapman, who had started Arsenal’s run of success, changed every aspect of the club when he became manager).

But Arsenal’s board were still dominated by the notion that whatever Sir Henry Norris had done in order first to turn a failing second division club from south of the river, into regular trophy winners, and then (with the appointment of Chapman) had turned them into league winners, had to be wrong. And this for no reason other than because it was a Norris idea. And so theBoard latched onto the notion, which Norris had never thought to be valid, that an ex-player could both handle the constant publicity that an Arsenal manager had to face, and be an innovator of tactics. Put those two together, it was argued, and Arsenal would win the league again.

In effect, Arsenal were looking for Chapman II, but such a man was (not surprisingly) not available. And thus they had brought in the most famous ex-player of the day, Billy Wright. Yet as the seasons went by and the club slipped from 7th, to 8th to 13th and 14th, and as stories of Wright’s excessive alcohol intake started to spread, it became clear once more that not only had the appointment been wrong, but also the policy itself was flawed.

However, the Arsenal board still had the view that Arsenal were special and different, in some ill-defined way, and so the notion of yet again appointing one of their own survived. Which is what brought in Bertie Mee, as we saw in the last episode. It was quite probably the last desperate throw of the dice with the notion that if this didn’t work, well, no one was quite sure what might work.

In his third season with Arsenal – 1968/9 Mee took Arsenal up to fourth in the league, the highest for ten years, and into the League Cup final for the second successive season. This time the final was against Swindon Town (who that season came runners-up in Division III). And again, as in the year before, Arsenal lost the final to a lower league team. But although performances tailed off somewhat at the end of the season, Arsenal did finish fourth in the league – their highest position since 1958/9.

Most certainly, part of the league success came down to Mee’s ability to keep his team fit. Indeed, nine players played over 30 league games each – something that was extremely rare. It seems that he knew when a player was saying he was fit and feeling fine, when it fact that wasn’t the case. His background as a physio was paying dividends.

But, that of course, on its own, was not enough. Arsenal were the team that had regularly won trophies in the 1930s, but had still not won anything since 1953. The League Cup was certainly considered a minor trophy, but even there, Arsenal had gone down in the final twice.

And so for 1969/70 Bertie Mee kept his job, despite the loss to Swindon, and he introduced some new players, Rice and George came into the side, and Radford, who had been playing at outside right for much ofthe previouis season, appeared first at outside left and then in November suddenly moved across the centre forward. He finished the season with 12 goals – Arsenal’s top league scorer.

Meanwhile, Peter Storey, who had played in the forward line at the start of the season, went back to his old position of right back. Finally, in mid-winter, Peter Marinello took up the outside right place and played 14 league games.

Given the level of shuffling of players and the amount of experimentation in terms of who could play where, it is not surprising that Arsenal’s results were not of the best, and that 12th position in the league, combined with early exists in the FA Cup (to Blackpool) and Eveton (in the League Cup, both after replays), did not give Arsenal or any us fans anything much to get excited about.

And although we now of course all know what happened next, it is just possible, through looking back, to suggest that us supporters could see what was going to happen. But I am not at all sure any of us did. For indeed, there were a lot of criticisms concerning the level of chopping and changing in the team in 1969/70. 23 players were used (compared with 16 the previous season) as the media talked of the need for a settled side.

Up to 25 October 1969, things were pretty awful, and a goalless draw on that day in front of just over 22,000 in Highbury resulted in Arsenal being 14th in the league, having won three, drawn nine and lost five. Worse, Everton at the top of the league had scored three times as many goals as Arsenal (39 for them, to 13 for the Gunners). The only good thing about all this was that Arsenal had conceded just 18, only five more than the leaders.

Of course there was no real fear of Arsenal going down, but Arsenal had just gone eight games without a win, scoring just six goals and the team was endlessly chopping and changing.

We know now of course that things did get better, starting with a 5-1 win over Crystal Palace on 1 November, but the side was changed regularly, both because of injuries and because of Mee’s determination to get the right team, no matter what.

And it is interesting to see the players who made their first steps in the first team during this ill-fated season: Nelson, Kennedy, Storey… etc etc.

But more than this we might note that while in 1968/9 Arsenal used 16 players in the First Division and cup games, in 1969/70 the total was 23 – that is 43% more.

So Arsenal came 12th the league and went out the FA Cup and the League Cup in the third round, and it all seemed to the media reporters that this was just the same old Arsenal, back to the days of Billy Wright. What the club needed, we were told, was a proper manager.

And of course, as you might realise, having seen that this article has been about 1969/70, that is exactly what we had. It was just that he was using 1969/70 to get the side that he wanted, together.

Here’s the final table for 1969/70, which I think is worth holding in mind when one considers what happened next.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Everton	42	29	8	5	72	34	66
2	Leeds United	42	21	15	6	84	49	57
3	Chelsea	42	21	13	8	70	50	55
4	Derby County	42	22	9	11	64	37	53
5	Liverpool	42	20	11	11	65	42	51
6	Coventry City	42	19	11	12	58	48	49
7	Newcastle United	42	17	13	12	57	35	47
8	Manchester United	42	14	17	11	66	61	45
9	Stoke City	42	15	15	12	56	52	45
10	Manchester City	42	16	11	15	55	48	43
11	Tottenham Hotspur	42	17	9	16	54	55	43
12	Arsenal	42	12	18	12	51	49	42

I just wonder if anyone placed a bet on Arsenal winning the league the following season.

100 seasons in the top division – 1969/70, and building a new team

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