By Tony Attwood
Leslie Knighton’s first season as Arsenal manager led to the club finishing 10th in the First Division – just above halfway in fact. Not as good as the club might have hoped, but they had only just come up from the second division, and 1919/20 was a season of clubs trying to get themselves back together after the war, and indeed often a case of finding out which players they still had available.
1920/21 had seen an improvement for Arsenal of one place to 9th and thus 1921/22 was a season of some hope for the club that, now having moved stadia and put a new team together, they could really establish themselves in the top division.
That hope was reflected in the crowd at the first game of the season – 40,00 turned up on August 27 for the hope of a home victory against Sheffield United, not least because United had finished the previous season in 20th just one place and four points above relegation.
A comparison of the two clubs from the 1920/21 season is informative:
9
Arsenal
42
15
14
13
59
63
44
20
Sheffield United
42
6
18
18
42
68
30
True, Arsenal being 14 points above United doesn’t look that majestic, but these were the days of two points for a win, and Arsenal had won 15 games to Sheffield United’s six. True again, if the papers had run a goal difference column (which would have been irrelevant since matters were sorted by goal average and didn’t apply in this case anyway), Arsenal would have been on minus 4 and Sheffield on minus 26.. Arsenal v Sheffield United was Arsenal’s to win, not least because Sheffield United were a mere four points above relegation in the previous campaign.
But in front of 40,000 fans, Arsenal lost 1-2. Again, a reason can be found in the injury to Clem Voysey during the game, which kept him out of football for almost two years (and of course, there were no substitutions in those days). But it wasn’t just that. Shaw the right back, only made it through one more game before being dropped, while Baker, Graham, and Blyth also departed the first team.
In short, four players were ditched after that one game, and Shaw made it five out after the second game. It is not a set of figures that gives one confidence that the manager had spent the summer of 1921 getting to know his best team and training them up for a first division season.
The Arsenal team was
Williamson
Shaw Hutchins
Baker Graham McKinnon
Rutherford, Blyth, White, North, Voysey
By 17 September 1921 the league table showed that while no club was running away with the league (even the top club had lost two out of seven games), Arsenal’s position was as close to rock bottom as made no odds. And remember all the way through this we are talking about Leslie Knighton, the man who claimed in his autobiography that he was unfairly sacked by Arsenal!
1
Aston Villa
7
4
1
2
14
5
9
19
Chelsea
6
1
3
2
4
8
5
20
Manchester United
6
1
3
2
4
9
5
**21**
**Arsenal**
**6**
**1**
**0**
**5**
**5**
**12**
**2**
22
Cardiff City
6
0
0
6
3
14
0
Worse, a crowd equal to that of the opening day was not seen again until 15 October against Sunderland, and once again Arsenal contrived to lose.
Arsenal did improve at the end, winning four and drawing one of the last five games, taking the crowd for Saturday afternoon games back to the 30,000+ mark, and they did get through three rounds of the cup before going out to Preston after a replay. But more had been hoped for.
Yet perhaps the greatest disappointment was with the goal scoring. Reg Boreham had joined from amateur Isthmian League side Wycombe Wanderers at inside left in December and was one of only two players score in double figures in the league.
As for why Arsenal were signing amatuer players from non-league sides, one obvious reason was that Sir Henry Norris was still paying off the debts which he personally had guaranteed for the building of Highbury Stadium. And the second was that players of the day were much more hesitant about packing up from their home in perhaps the north of England and resettling in London, where they knew no one and football was nowhere near as firmly established. These were, we must recall, the days before telephones, and the players would have been put up in a boarding house.
Thus Arsenal were playing in difficult times, and by 29 October the table showed the worst possible scenario….
1
Burnley
12
9
0
3
30
13
18
18
Tottenham Hotspur
12
3
3
6
16
17
9
19
West Bromwich Albion
12
3
3
6
11
16
9
20
Chelsea
12
2
5
5
10
18
9
21
Cardiff City
12
3
2
7
13
20
8
22
Arsenal
12
2
1
9
9
21
5
We might take it that Sir Henry Norris was not exactly pleased. The last thing he needed was Arsenal back in the second division.
The story continues…