Having starred for Everton and Chelsea either side of World War II, towering England centre-forward Tommy Lawton was one of the finest centre-forwards of his generation.
Latown won two Golden Boots, lifted the league title at Goodison Park and netted 20 times in 19 caps for the Three Lions before stunning the football world when he dropped down to the Third Division to play for Notts County in 1947 aged just 28.
While his time at Meadow Lane was successful, his international appearances dried up and in 1951, he would join second-tier Brentford for a then-club record fee of £16,000. The iconic forward played for the Bees a season and a half, including a brief spell as the club’s player-manager, but the forthright Lawton criticised the club for selling future West Ham and England manager Ron Greenwood, and future Match Of The Day host Jimmy Hill.
But that friction would lead to a top-flight swansong with Arsenal in November 1953 at the ripe old age of 34, when most footballers, according to the man himself, “are fit for the knackers yard.” Manager Tom Whittaker, who had previously enjoyed success with veterans including Joe Mercer and Ronnie Rooke, took a punt on the old stager, and he would play 53 league matches for us, scoring 13 goals.
Arguably, Lawton’s most historic match in an Arsenal shirt came not in N5, but almost 2,000 miles away in Moscow. In 1954, with the Cold War at its height, we announced our forthcoming trip to play Dynamo Moscow. The ensuing clamour for tickets in the Soviet capital rivalled that which had greeted the news of Dynamo’s famous goodwill British tour nearly a decade earlier in November 1945, whom Lawton had faced during his Chelsea days.
Lawton, whose newspaper and football magazine columns were read across the globe, was the most famous member of the Arsenal delegation that embarked on the journey east in October aboard two special British European Airways Viscounts, which Lawton labelled “a flying luxury hotel,” but after swapping those in Prague, the players then boarded two ramshackle aircraft for the onward journey.
Lawton likened that to “saying goodbye to civilisation.” Due to poor weather, they landed in Minsk, 400 miles from Moscow. The travel-weary players caught up on some sleep, and trained prior to the match at Dynamos Stadium on the following day. Lawton later informed journalists about the less-than-delicious chicken soup the players were given on the final leg to Moscow, “which made our stomachs turn.”
The nimble Dynamos showed no mercy towards the weary Gunners and ran out 5-0 winners. In his media work, Lawton was effusive in his praise of our opponents, noting that English football could learn much from their hosts' mix of breathtaking speed and crisp passing. Coach Mikhail Yakushin - a former hockey player – encouraged his players to be as two-footed as possible, even suggesting that learning to write clearly with both hands would create a pliable mindset.
The result was chastening, but during our 1994 interview, wing-half Alex Forbes recalled the aura which surrounded Lawton. “In Moscow, the Russian supporters were clamouring to get close to Tommy. They were desperate to shake his hand and get his autograph. He was like a Hollywood film star to them.”
Even at the ripe old age of 35, the veteran Tommy Lawton was a star turn on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.