Arsenal win the League
Arsenal won the First Division Championship by drawing with Huddersfield 1-1 with four games to go. Arsenal then lost one and drew two of the remaining games before winning the final match 8-0.
After the game (and remember this was the era of two points for a win, not three) Arsenal had a lead over Manchester United of seven points, with United only having three games to play. It was all over.
Indeed for many fans it would have looked all over on March 29 when Arsenal beat Middlesbrough 7-0, but this was the day when it all finally happened.
So here was the league table after the games on 10 April 1948
| P | W | D | L | F | A | Av | Pts | ||||||
| 1 | Arsenal | 38 | 22 | 11 | 5 | 72 | 30 | 2.40 | 55 | ||||
| 2 | Manchester United | 39 | 17 | 14 | 8 | 72 | 46 | 1.56 | 48 | ||||
| 3 | Burnley | 38 | 17 | 12 | 9 | 51 | 40 | 1.27 | 46 | ||||
| 4 | Preston North End | 38 | 18 | 7 | 13 | 60 | 59 | 1.02 | 43 |
The results, after becoming champions in the second post-war league, quite amazingly were…
- Lost to Derby at home 1-2. 52,000 turned up for this match to celebrate the title, and probably not that many really minded the defeat.
- Drew with Portsmouth away 0-0
- Drew with Manchester City away 0-0
- Beat Grimsby Town home 8-0. 35,000 saw the last game of the season.
This was an absolute triumph for Tom Whittaker in his first season in charge. That great and faithful servant to the club George Allison, had taken charge for the first post-war season (1946-7) but it had not been a success for him. We opened with a 6-1 defeat by Wolverhampton Wanderers, and although we recovered after that, finishing 13th in the league was not exactly what was expected from the club that had dominated the 1930s.
Even the FA Cup gave Allison no respite, as we went out in the 3rd round to Chelsea after two replays.
In fact 1947/8 was no better for Arsenal in the cup as we went out to Bradford 1-0 at home, and we put out pretty much the first team.
But the league triumph was what Arsenal wanted, to show that they could still do it in the post-war era as they did it in the 1930s.
Our top scorer was Ronnie Rooke with 33 league goals from 42 games, including four in the final match against Grimsby.