100 seasons in the top division: after the first trophies

03.10.2025 16:03

Our last article was

100 seasons at the top. Arsenal 1930-31; the goalkeeper accused of smuggling

A list of all the articles on the 100 seasons of Arsenal in the top division is given at the foot of this piece. In summary, Arsenal were elected to the First Division upon its expansion in 1919, and after missing relegation by one place in 1925, the manager Leslie Knighton was sacked and Herbert Chapman brought in to replace him.

Having taken Arsenal to second place in the league in his first season, and to their first cup final in his second season, Chapman undertook a two-year comprehensive rebuilding programme for the club, which saw them win their first major trophy – the FA Cup – in 1930. This was followed by the club’s first-ever league title in 1931. That was the club’s 12th season in the 1st Division.

Or to put it another way – in the eight seasons under Chapman, with him taking over a club that just missed relegation by one place, Arsenal had won the league once, the FA Cup once, come second in the League once, and been beaten FA Cup finalists once. In short, from a club that was just missing relegation, Chapman created a club in which in half of their seasons they either won or were runners up in one of the two main trophies.

But there was more to 1930/31 season than being Arsenal’s first ever league title. Arsenal were undefeated in their first nine league games (winning seven, drawing two) in which they scored 29 goals. And they had a similar run at the end of the season, winning seven, drawing two).

Arsenal also scored 127 goals in 42 league games (3.02 a game). By way of comparison in the Unbeaten Season, Arsenal’s goalscoring record was 1.92 goals a game – and that with a much relaxed offside rule.

But to return to Chapman, here’s the final table for Arsenal’s first-ever league title in 1931.

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Arsenal	42	28	10	4	127	59	66
2	Aston Villa	42	25	9	8	128	78	59
3	Sheffield Wednesday	42	22	8	12	102	75	52
4	Portsmouth	42	18	13	11	84	67	49

In nine of these league games, Arsenal scored five goals or more. Their highest scoring game was a 9-1 win over Grimsby, just two games after they beat Blackpool 7-1. Their worst defeat was 5-1 away to Aston Villa.

And mentioning Aston Villa makes me want to deviate for a second. As I write this history, I regularly do my best to check facts, and it was while doing this that I wanted to check the story that around this time Chapman offered to resign as manager from Arsenal.

I typed into Google, as I often do, my question, and at the top of the usual Google search results, I got an AI answer which read:

“Herbert Chapman offered to resign from Arsenal in April 1929, but the board rejected his offer, believing he still had unfinished business at the club after they had just won their first league title under his management. He had successfully led Arsenal to their first silverware and a league title just the season before.”

And I mention this because it is totally untrue that in April 1928 Arsenal had “just won their first league title under his management” In 1927/28, Arsenal came 10th in the league and reached the semi-final of the FA Cup. Thus far, Arsenal had won neither trophy, their successes starting, as shown above, in 1930 with the FA Cup and 1931 with the league. I’m very sure of those facts, and would suggest, if I may, that at least on this topic (although I have found on many others too) AI is not all it is cracked up to be.

Worse, Arsenal’s history has indeed repeatedly been miswritten, either our of carelessness, or deliberately in an attempt to put the club down. This appears to have started around the time of the move to north London, and continued for many years after and in many cases, the source of the errors was the autobiography of Leslie Knighton, the manager who was sacked to make way for Chapman. That book, as we have noted before, was written in 1947, without any access to any Arsenal documentation, and, of course, 20 years after Sir Henry Norris passed away.

Knighton’s multiple claims about his achievements can be taken with a pinch of salt (he never won a single trophy in his entire career), especially that in which he claimed Sir Henry told Knighton that sacking him and bringing in Champman was Sir Henry’s greatest mistake. Knighton, in fact, left the club in 1925, finishing one place above relegation. The following season, Chapman took the club to second in the first division. Why would anyone regret sacking the man who just missed relegation and bringing in the man who would give Arsenal its first trophies?

So as we have seen in 1931 Arsenal won the league for the first time. And now we ask, how did they develop their triumph in 1932?

Not surprisingly, the team remained much the same as the season before, except that after two games Harper, the goalkeeper who had, the previous season, come in to replace Keyser (the keeper who it seems was also engaged in smuggling). However, Chapman only used Preedy for 11 games, before returning to his second choice of Harper for the last ten games of the campaign.

Thus, Arsenal finished the 1930/31 season with Keyser having played 12 games in goal, Harper 19, and Preedy 11. The new season began with Harper in goal once more, but this time he only lasted two matches and was replaced by Preedy for 13 games. But then he was replaced in turn by Frank Moss, who completed the season by keeping goal for the remaining 27 games. And thus, finally, it seems Chaman had found a goalkeeper he could trust.

In 1931/2 Arsenal won neither the league (coming second) nor the FA Cup (being defeated finalists). This is often noticed, but perhaps more to the point is the fact that this is the season when Chapman finally delivered the basis of his team that would go on winning, and winning. Ten of the players played 35 games or over, and when a player was changed, it was only due to injury, not (as had previously been the case) due to a problem with the player’s performance.

Below is the list of articles in this series, with the most recent article appearing first. If you want to follow the series from its origins, please go to the article at the bottom of this list: The election

Партнёры Smi24.net

Все новости за 24 часа

Музыкальные новости

Агрегатор новостей 24СМИ