They couldn’t have known it at the time, but the Arsenal supporters who streamed into Highbury during the early stages of the 1925/26 season were witnessing the early stages of a football revolution.
Not only had Herbert Chapman just been appointed manager, but legendary forward Charlie Buchan had recently arrived as well, signed from Sunderland for £2,000 plus £100 per league goal scored in his first season.
Buchan, who’d actually started out as an amateur with Woolwich Arsenal, headed to Sunderland in 1911 where he won the First Division title in 1913, and was their leading scorer for seven of his eight seasons on Wearside, plundering 209 league goals, a club record that still stands.
When Chapman casually strolled into Buchan’s sports shop in Sunderland in the summer of 1925 and told him he was signing him for Arsenal, the 33-year-old could scarcely believe what he was hearing. But Chapman swiftly sorted the deal with Sunderland boss Bob Kyle, and Buchan, often described as the best player in the country, headed to N5, where he was appointed our captain.
The vibe surrounding the new Gunners superstar was sensational. Arsenal supporter Leslie Anderson, whom I interviewed in the mid-1990s, recalled: “Buchan had genuine star quality. He was the first Arsenal player to make people think that it was worthwhile getting out of their chair to go and watch them play at Highbury. When he led the team onto the pitch, there was a buzz. Right through the 20s and 30s, Chapman’s purchases of star players boosted crowds to massive levels, and Buchan was the start.”
Buchan was a 1920s-style hero, who’d travel to games on the tube with fans and swapped his thirty-a-day cigarette habit for smoking a pipe. Like many who watched him each week, Buchan had witnessed the horrors of the Western Front 10 years earlier. Drafted to serve with the Grenadier Guards, he’d fought in the battles of The Somme and Passchendaele. In the era of the maximum wage, Buchan was acutely aware of his worth as a high-profile figure. His business interests made him one of the wealthiest players of his generation.
After Arsenal misfired in the early weeks of 1925/26 and the new boy failed to score in his opening four games, Buchan overheard fans criticising him on the tube. Following an embarrassing 7-0 reverse against Newcastle United in October, he vowed to quit Arsenal and return to Sunderland. Yet Chapman realised that in Buchan, he had an experienced player who could help mould team tactics.
In a heated team meeting after the defeat at St James’s Park, Buchan and Chapman pushed through the tactics which would alter the entire course of Arsenal’s history. From now on, Arsenal would employ a “stopper” at centre-half who took responsibility for setting the offside trap from the full-backs, who were pushed more towards the wings. A forward was also developed into a midfield link man to provide balance.
The WM formation would turn Arsenal into the team of the 1930s, and allowed Buchan to rediscover his form. Despite his age, he continued to rattle in the goals, and would spend three seasons in our side, netting 56 times in 120 games, and captained us in our first FA Cup final in 1927 when we lost to Cardiff.
He hung up his boots at the end of the following season, finishing his career with 258 top-flight goals to his name. That leaves him with the sixth-highest total in English football, only behind Jimmy Greaves, Steve Bloomer, Dixie Dean, Gordon Hodgson and Alan Shearer.
With his playing days behind him, Buchan later became a respected journalist and radio commentator, and founded the Football Writers’ Association and Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly, a magazine that sold millions of copies and which he edited for nine years.
That allowed his seismic influence on the game to extend well beyond the two clubs – Sunderland and Arsenal - which he represented with skill and finesse.
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