Arsenal’s 100 seasons in the top division: signs of improvement

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The full index of articles in this series on 100 seasons in the top division is published here

By Tony Attwood

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We concluded the last episode of this series by reflecting on the fact that what Arsenal clearly needed was a new approach on the pitch, an approach which could lift morale among the team and the supporters.

Indeed, it was a view that noted that 1975/6 delivered nothing remotely like this as the club concluded the season 17th in the league. And that was just five seasons after winning the Double.

Bertie Mee had announced his decision to leave the club even before the end of the 1975/6 season, and the crowds dwindled to alarmingly low numbers.

Thus, Arsenal needed a new manager, and the choice was a surprise: Terry Neill. A surprise because he was just 34 – very young for a manager – and a surprise because he had been manager of Tottenham. Worse, he was not recognised as a winner of trophies.

Thus he needed to start with a bang, and he did just that, signing Malcolm Macdonald, while selling John Radford to West Ham, and then later in the season selling Alan Ball, first on loan to Hellenic and then permanently to Southampton. In came Alan Hudson.

And this looked rather promising as Macdonald obliginglyg raced to the top of the goal scoring chart for the league, and after nine games Arsenal’s league position was unrecognisable from the season before – one point behind the leading three, with a game in hand over the two clubs in second and third.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Liverpool	9	6	1	2	14	7	13
2	Manchester City	10	4	5	1	15	10	13
3	Middlesbrough	10	5	3	2	7	6	13
4	Arsenal	9	5	2	2	16	10	12

And then just as everything looked fine, Arsenal lost 5-1 to Aston Villa, and 4-1 to Leicester City, By 25 October, the club was 10th and showing a negative goal difference in the league table.

The fact was that the performances were erratic. A 5-3 away win over Newcastle was followed by a goalless draw with Newcastle. Next came a 3-1 win against Manchester United, followed by draws against Tottenham and Leeds.

But that was not the worst of it. A goalless draw with Sunderland on 5 February was followed by two more games in which the club failed to score. Results were three defeats, followed by three draws and then a further defeat. True, Arsenal remained mid-table, but it was more down to the erratic nature of the results from elsewhere rather than any progress on Arsenal’s part.

Eventually, on 2 April Arsenal did get a victory again (3-0 against Leicester ) and this was followed by two more victories, including 1-0 against Tottenham. There was a little uptick towards the end of the season, but a 2-3 defeat to Manchester United in the final game showed everyone just how much there was to be done if Arsenal were going to get anywhere near their achievements of the start of the decade.

For the fact remained that while in January Arsenal had been fourth, they finished eighth, 14 points behind Liverpool at the top of the table – although remarkably Arsenal had scored two more goals than Liverpool, leaving them the third highest scorers in the league, not only scoring more than Liverpool at the top, but also more than Manchester City in second.

There was also an administrative change this season in that goal difference now separated clubs on equal points, rather than the unwieldy goal average, and anyone who bothered to look would have found Arsenal 13th in the goal difference table, on -5. It was a figure that showed clearly that it was indeed the defence that needed some work doing. Having Macdonald in the forward line was working – what Arsenal needed was to reduce the number of goals conceded. True, they only let in five in one game, but there were three games where they conceded four, and that was clearly too much.

In attack, although Radford had gone, the cub now had Staplement and Macdonald, with Liam Brady behind them, showing exactly what a genius on the pitch he was. O’Leary, also still a teenager, was adding considerable strength to the defence, while the emergence of Rix near the end of the season suggested that there was now real progress in the Arsenal team, replacing the years of decline under Mee after the double.

There was also one other item of interest for Arsenal supporters in the final table… Tottenham Hotspure who had finished eight places above Arsenal in the previous season, now finished at the very foot of the table and were relegated. They conceded an astonishing 72 goals in the season – astonishing both for the era and for the fact that in the previous season they had finished eight places above Arsenal.

If there was a positive note to Arsenal’s performance, it was that Macdonald had got 25 goals in the league while Stapleton had scored 13. These developments and the aforementioned arrival of Rix, which had been noticed by a number of fans, if not by the press, suggested that a new Arsenal team was evolving.

The season ended with talk in the air about Arsenal making further signings – including a new goalkeeper – it being noticed that Arsenal’s defence was not of the best. Goal difference had only just been introduced, and although there was a touch of pleasure to be had in noting that Arsenal had a positive GD (as compared to -5 the previous season), it was still a long way short of the achievement of the champions, Liverpool.

In fact, although the media of the day were not into noticing such issues, those who studied the statistics did notice that Arsenal were among a clutch of teams that scored more than the eventual champions Liverpool, but had only just crept into positive figures in terms of goal difference. Liverpool were indeed winning by having a very solid defence, and it did not make them a particularly attractive team.

So, although there was no trophy (and not even close as Arsenal finished 8th in the league), the club now had Macdonald and Stapleton as the front line. Rix was looking promising, and Willie Young looked as if he took any opposition player moving past him as a personal insult.

In looking back at the seson there was also a consensus that if Arsenal could only avoid another run of six consecutive defeats as they got in the early part of 1977, the club could seriously be thought of as challengers in the league.

Although it was also agreed that it would require a bit more than that, as Arsenal finished 14 points behind the eventual league winners, Liverpool, but at least there were signs of improvement in attack if not in defence.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
8	Arsenal 1977	42	16	11	15	64	59	5	43
17	Arsenal 1976	42	13	10	19	47	53	-6	36

Another seven points added next season could take Arsenal up to 50. Still not enough to win the league, of course, but nevertheless an improvement. And in fact, as we will see in the next episode in the following season, they didn’t win the league, but they did improve once again.

Arsenal’s 100 seasons in the top division: signs of improvement

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