As we head into 2025/26 hoping to make our global fanbase proud by clinching a 14th championship, extending our record haul of FA Cups or lifting a first Champions League, 100 seasons ago, Arsenal Football Club was a very different club.
No major honours had been won following our formation in 1886 as Dial Square, and we were still settling into our north London surroundings after switching from our previous south-east London home of Woolwich in 1913.
That year had seen us relegated for the first time in our history, and we only found ourselves back in the top-flight by virtue of a controversial vote held ahead of the Football League resuming for the 1919/20 season, after being halted for World War I.
We were still six years away from Herbert Chapman’s arrival and revolution of the club - and indeed football itself - but his predecessor was just getting started himself.
Unlike now with Mikel Arteta entering what will be his seventh season at the helm, we went into 1919/20 with a new face leading the team - and indeed the majority of the club. Leslie Knighton held the position of secretary-manager and was in charge of selecting the team, all the way to posting out season tickets to supporters!
Our chairman at the time was Sir Henry Norris, and Mikel wouldn’t have appreciated his restrictive transfer policies. Knighton would imply in his autobiography that Norris put a strict cap of £1,000 on transfer fees and refused to sign any player under 5'8" tall or 11 stone.
While we now source some of the best talent from around the globe, before the 1919/20 season kicked off, we lost our all-time record appearance maker to Southend United.
Centre-back Percy Sands played 350 times for us between 1903 and 1919 despite combining his professional career with a second job as a schoolmaster. Combining two jobs is something our current record holder David O’Leary wouldn’t have to worry about, who would far surpass Sands’ haul with 716 appearances, albeit with an extra domestic cup competition and European matches to supplement his total.
A number of players did come back to us having played pre-war, such as Jock Rutherford, Wally Hardinge, Joe Shaw, David Greenaway, Angus McKinnon, Billy Blyth, Charlie Lewis and Frank Bradshaw, but with restrictions from the Knighton had to be shrewd in the transfer market.
Alf Baker and Clem Voysey were signed from amateur teams, while goalkeeper Ernie Williamson arrived from Croydon Common. One similarity between then and now is transfer dealings with Brentford, as Harry White arrived from the Bees 106 years before Christian Norgaard made the same trip.
All four made their debut against Newcastle United on the opening day of the new campaign, which would be the first competitive game since the Great War ended, and the first top-flight match played at Highbury.
40,000 packed into a single stand on the east side as well as banked terracing surrounding the remainder of the pitch, 20,000 less than attend matches at Emirates Stadium these days, which now exists just half a mile away. The majority left disappointed with a 1-0 defeat to the Magpies, who back then were one of the country’s biggest clubs.
However they kept coming back and the club registered the third-highest average attendance in the country in 1919/20, with 55,000 being the largest crowd against Aston Villa in January. The club also showed a community spirit still prevalent now by giving away free seats to men wounded in the war, who could have picked up a matchday programme just like our supporters do today.
We competed against nine clubs we will face in the Premier League in 2025/26, but none of those would go on to lift the championship trophy that season. That honour fell to runaway winners West Bromwich Albion, who finished nine points ahead of Burnley in second place, in the days of two points for a win.
The Baggies would net a remarkable 104 goals that term from 42 matches, while we mustered 56. While years have seen us develop a reputation for recording huge scorelines, such as the 7-1 success against PSV Eindhoven last season, our biggest wins in the 1919/20 campaign were 3-0 home successes against Sheffield United and Bradford Park Avenue.
The latter came on the final game of the campaign as Knighton rounded off his first campaign at the helm in 10th position - a position at the time that our supporters would have been satisfied with seeing as they had last seen us finish sixth in the Second Division.
White would be our top scorer with 15 strikes to his name, as he attempted to chase down John Coleman at the top of our all-time goalscoring charts, who bagged 84 between 1902 and 1908 - a far cry from Thierry Henry’s current record total of 226.
First Division table 1919/20
**Team**
**P**
**W**
**D**
**L**
**F**
**A**
**Pts**
West Bromwich Albion
42
28
4
10
104
47
60
Burnley
42
21
9
12
65
59
51
Chelsea
42
22
5
15
56
51
49
Liverpool
42
19
10
13
59
44
48
Sunderland
42
22
4
16
72
59
48
Bolton Wanderers
42
19
9
14
72
65
47
Manchester City
42
18
9
15
71
62
45
Newcastle United
42
17
9
16
44
39
43
Aston Villa
42
18
6
18
75
73
42
Arsenal
42
15
12
15
56
58
42
Bradford Park Avenue
42
15
12
15
60
63
42
Manchester United
42
13
14
15
54
50
40
Middlesbrough
42
15
10
17
61
65
40
Sheffield United
42
16
8
18
59
69
40
Bradford City
42
14
11
17
54
63
39
Everton
42
12
14
16
69
68
38
Oldham Athletic
42
15
8
19
49
52
38
Derby County
42
13
12
17
47
57
38
Preston North End
42
14
10
18
57
73
38
Blackburn Rovers
42
13
11
18
64
77
37
Notts County
42
12
12
18
56
74
36
Sheffield Wednesday
42
7
9
26
28
64
23
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