15 June 1925: Arsenal buy Highbury
If ever there was a time of one era ending and another beginning the early summer of 1925 was it.
On 11 May Arsenal advertised for a manager. Herbert Chapman, who had just won the league with Huddersfield, and whose team had smashed Arsenal 5-0 at Highbury on February 14, applied for the job. We don’t know for sure why he applied – maybe he had talked with Sir Henry on February 14, or maybe he fancied London, or maybe he wanted to prove himself again, or…
Knighton worked out his notice and left on 16 May 1925. Chapman’s Huddersfield were on a tour of Scandinavia, and returned on 4 June, and there was clearly then some talk between Chapman and Sir Henry Norris even if there had not been earlier.
On 8 June the Football League voted to change the offside law to two defenders behind the ball, rather than three. (A couple of matches experimenting with this had been tried at Highbury in recent weeks).
Sir Henry Norris then opened discussions about the transfer of Charlie Buchan. This was before Chapman signed for Arsenal – but Buchan claimed later that he was told about the transfer possibility by Chapman, which suggests the discussions started before the Scandinavian tour, and included the option of buying Buchan. Maybe Chapman made signing Buchan one of his demands for taking the job.
On 10 June Hudersfield’s directors met with Chapman to discuss the move to Arsenal, and on 10th or 11th June 1925 Chapman called Sir Henry to accept a job offer. Arsenal then bought a house in Hendon for Chapman and his family and they moved in the following year.
Then on June 15 Arsenal announced that they had bought Highbury and some extra land from the College that was leasing it to the club. Until this point Arsenal had been leasing the ground, meaning that at the end of the lease the club could be forced to leave the ground, pull down the stadium, and return the site to that of a recreational area.
On Monday 22 June 1925, exactly 32 years to the day after Jack Humble took the chair for the first ever AGM of the newly formed Woolwich Arsenal Football and Athletic Club Ltd, Herbert Chapman took up the job of Secretary Manager of Arsenal FC. An iconic moment if ever there was one.
14 June 2014: Sir Chips Keswick announced as Arsenal’s new chairman
By Tony Attwood
Sir Chips Keswick replaced Denis Hill-Wood as chairman on this day in 2014, ending the Hill-Wood domination of the club, which started with the coup which threw Sir Henry Norris off the board in 1927.
Denis Hill-Wood was the third generation of his family to serve as chairman of Arsenal going back to his grandfather, Samuel Hill-Wood who ousted Sir Henry Norris in the infamous 1927 takeover of the club.
In 1961 Arsenal had appointed Denis Hill-Wood as chairman and he opened his tenure by replacing ex-Arsenal player George Swindin who had taken Arsenal down into the lower parts of the league. It certainly looked as if Swindin needed to go but replacing him with Billy Wright who was just as bad and quite often even worse as a manager was a disaster.
Wright’s one success was the signing of Joe Baker who was the top scorer in three of his four seasons, but the fact that in the last of those three top scoring seasons Baker scored but 13 goals shows how far the club had sunk.
After that season Wright was sacked and Bertie Mee was given the job which brought three trophies in two seasons, and rescued Denis Hill-Wood’s football reputation (as long as one forgets about the awful decline in the club that happened in Mee’s last four years.)
After Dennis Hill-Wood passed on, his son Peter was appointed but as with his forebears, again sacking the manager became the order of the day and seemingly the only measure the board could think of, when the supporters got a bit uppity.
However, it could be said that at least at this time the board and the Hill-Wood family had one good idea. For having themselves appointed only a couple of managers who could win the league, they issued 1100 new shares and sold them to David Dein. And Dein showed himself to be the man who did what the Hill-Woods could not do. He brought in a man who could win Arsenal the league: Arsene Wenger.
Following a heart attack in 2012 Hill-Wood retired from the board. There was much written about the 90 years of Hill-Woods at the club, and about Peter Hill-Wood being the longest-serving director and chairman, but nothing about the way the family’s coup had forced Sir Henry Norris, the man who saved Arsenal in 1910, moved the club to Highbury, and brought in Herbert Chapman, off the board and out of the club.
As in every battle, history is written by the victors, and is not always written well. Or accurately.
13 June 1910: The deadline day for Arsenal
Following Arsenal’s financial collapse, the Football League made it clear they wanted Woolwich Arsenal’s finances sorted out by the date of its AGM, 13 June 1910, which meant the new investors needed to be in place by then.
Thus the board now sent out a letter to all the people who had applied for shares in the first attempt to refinance the club, stating that anyone who applied for five or more shares and who bought now, would have the guarantee that not only would Woolwich Arsenal stay in Plumstead for a year, if the club then moved William Hall and Henry Norris would then buy back the shares at face value (£1 each), if so required.
Thereafter (although it is difficult to know the date) Henry Norris extended the date to which he guaranteed to keep Arsenal at Plumstead from one year (as agreed with the League Management Committee) to two years.
Unfortunately, neither supporters nor local businesses nor anyone else stepped up to support the club and Norris and Hall were now in charge and the new share register was drawn up. This showed Hall and Norris having 240 shares each along with some other shareholders.
Although there were numerous financial matters to handle, Henry Norris also started to consider the club he had just taken over, and on 8 June he had a meeting with Arsenal’s manager George Morrell to say that his job was safe despite missing relegation by just one place and two points in the season just finished.
This was a pivotal moment. Had Henry Norris not stepped up at this point and put his own money forward, there really was no one else waiting in the wings. The club owed vast amounts of money, and without a financial saviour it would have closed at the end of that day.
12 June 1980: The strangest Arsenal transfer ever.
Clive Allen was signed by Arsenal from QPR in one of the strangest transfers ever. He never played for Arsenal in the league (although he played in three pre-season friendlies) and moved to Crystal Palace in a swap deal for Kenny Sansom before the season began.
He played three games for Carlisle in 1995/6 and NFL for the London Monarchs in 1997.
11 June 1925: Herbert Chapman joins Arsenal
The story of Arsenal’s post-first-world-war era is that Sir Henry Norris refused to allow Leslie Knighton to buy players, but allowed Chapman to buy anyone he wanted. That at least is how it is generally reported – not least because a lot of Knighton’s autobiography is a justification of Knighton’s time at Arsenal, and contains such allegations.
In effect if Knighton was told anything it was to keep the top level of Arsenal transfers at something around half the world record. To put that in context, today that would mean “no transfers over £45m.”
But there is more – and this might be the key issue with regards to transfers. In late 1924, Syd Hoar – a winger joined Arsenal from Luton of the Third Division South for £3,000 – over half of the then British transfer record.
This makes a mockery of Knighton’s self-proclaimed limitation on transfers and it is also interesting that in reality Chapman did not go in for wholesale changes. The regular core of his team was made up of the players that Knighton left behind. About 17% of the playing positions in Chapman’s first season were taken with newly introduced players.
And yet remarkably while Knighton was fighting relegation with this squad, Chapman took the team up to second in the league – their highest ever position – working a near miracle mostly with a squad that had, the previous season, just avoided relegation.
10 June 1910: Supporters given the chance to buy Arsenal
Press reports on this day confirmed that Henry Norris was willing to sell his Woolwich Arsenal shares to supporters. It was also confirmed that the last share issue itself had failed because local people were not taking up the offer.
On this day the Kentish Independent printed a letter from Norris explaining why he was helping Woolwich Arsenal, and expressing his willingness to hand the club over to anyone else who thought they could do a better job. The appeal fell on deaf ears.
Thus it was that the club found itself in a state of flux with only a small percentage of the shares in the new company that would run Arsenal, being sold – and with the biggest single percentage of those going to Norris and Hall not because they wanted a majority, but because few others were willing to buy..
That then was the backdrop to the meeting on Monday 13 June 1910: the Football League’s Annual General Meeting.
Hall and Norris had already made it clear to anyone who was interested that they were acting simply to save the club – and they continued to do this even when a few days later Archibald Leitch, the architect who was one of the old company’s biggest creditors reneged on an agreement with George Leavey (the chairman of the old company) and now submitted a bill for £1317 for his work on the Woolwich Arsenal ground. (That would be around £140,000 in today’s money). Which was a bit cheeky since it appears he hadn’t actually done the work he was commissioned to do by the club.
That meant that Norris and Hall now had to pay that bill, as well as all the others.
So this muddled and seemingly hopeless situation was the background to the AGM of the Football League on Monday 13 June 1910. And it was at that meeting Henry Norris gave a guarantee to the League that he would see to the survival of Woolwich Arsenal FC and pay off all the creditors so the club could continue in the league for the 1910/11 season.
It was an incredibly expensive and extraordinarily honourable move, and one that earned considerable favour with the League. It should have earned the heartfelt thanks of every Arsenal supporter then and since, but sadly life isn’t like that.
9 June 1986: Keown sold to Villa after Graham decideds he’s not good enough to play for Arsenal.
Martin Keown signed for Arsenal in 1980 under Terry Neill and made his début during Don Howe’s reign, went on loan to Brighton in 1985, and then was transferred to Aston Villa after George Graham had come to power. He was re-signed by Graham near the end of his (Graham’s) reign, and then strode into his pomp as a player of supreme brilliance. He played 311 league games for Arsenal after his return, including one against Manchester United which none of us will ever forget.
If a player ever showed desire, commitment and utter, total and absolute belief in our club it was Martin Keown having a nice little chat on September 21 2003 with that Van Nistelroy fellow. To take the issue of a player cheating, and of him being supported in this endeavour by the ref, and let the player and the world know what he thinks takes courage, and Martin showed it that day.
He was, and forever will be, one of us.
Martin was born in 1966, and won nine trophies with Arsenal as well as getting 43 caps for England. He now works for Arsenal as a coach and scout, and is a pundit on a whole variety of stations. He is also playing this season for Wembley FC in the FA Cup, which is wonderful.
He joined Arsenal in 1980 as a schoolboy and after the Brighton affair started out for Arsenal for the first time on 23 November 1985 but only got 22 games before Graham moved him on. Villa were in a state of near terminal decline, having won the league and Euro Cup they were within a couple of years fighting relegation and sacking managers. Martin played for Villa in the second division and got them back into the first, before being sold to Everton. They meandered around mid-table and eventually Graham brought Martin back.
The club had Linighan, Bould, Adams and Keown at this time and at first Martin missed out on the Cup Double (he was cup tied) and the Cup Winners Cup final. But then came Mr Wenger.
Martin won the Double in 1998 and 2002 and of course won the league in 2004. His last season gave us all a lot of good feeling for him as he was regularly brought on in the last ten seconds of a match in order to qualify for his 10 games to get a medal. Quite often as he would prepare to come on at the end, one of the other subs would run on instead and then feign surprise that it was Martin and not he who was being invited to play for ten seconds.
He subsequently had a few games for Leicester and Reading, before finally retiring from playing – at least until this season’s FA Cup (an issue we recently covered on Untold) wherein he will play with Ray Parlour and have David Seaman as goalkeeping coach. The only black spot in this bit of fun is the fact that Venables is involved – Venables who utterly ignored Martin’s claim for a position in the England team.
Although of course I don’t know Martin at all, I love the way he talks on TV, his calmness and knowledge, and the fact that he has never tried to push himself as a big time operator. After retiring, for example, he went to coach for Newbury FC, and I believe he also coaches the Oxford University team. OK not my favourite University but still, a great thing to do, without fuss, just done because he lives there and he can help. And of course he is giving guidance and thought to Arsenal’s defence.
And now the roll call of honours – the roll call of a man who was shipped off to the sinking Aston Villa, but a man who never once stopped believing.Every one of these honours is with Arsenal – the other clubs never got a look in.
- Premier League: 1997–98, 2001–02, 2003–04
- FA Cup: 1997–98, 2001–02, 2002–03
- UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup: 1993–94
- FA Community Shield: 1998, 1999, 2002
8 June: Amidst Arsenal upheaval the offside rule changed
It was one of the most odd coincidences. Just after Herbert Chapman joined Arsenal, the offside rule changed – a rule which Chapman then exploited to develop a new approach to football. Here’s the timeline.
On 11 May Arsenal advertised for a manager. Herbert Chapman, who had just won the league with Huddersfield, and whose team had smashed Arsenal 5-0 at Highbury on February 14, applied. We don’t know for sure why he applied – maybe he had talked with Sir Henry on February 14, or maybe he fancied London, or maybe he wanted to prove himself again, or…
Meanwhile Leslie Knighton worked out his notice and left on 16 May 1925. Chapman’s Huddersfield were on a tour of Scandinavia, and returned on 4 June, and there was clearly then some talk between Chapman and Arsenal even if there had not been earlier.
And on 8 June the Football League voted to change the offside law to two defenders behind the ball, rather than three. (A couple of matches experimenting with this had been tried at Highbury in recent weeks).
Sir Henry Norris then opened discussions about the transfer of Charlie Buchan. This was before Chapman signed for Arsenal – but Buchan claimed later that he was told about the transfer possibility by Chapman, which suggests the discussions started before the Scandinavian tour, and included the option of buying Buchan. Maybe Chapman made signing Buchan one of his demands for taking the job.
On 10 June Huddersfield’s directors met with Chapman to discuss the move to Arsenal, and on 10th or 11th June 1925 Chapman called Sir Henry to accept a job offer. Arsenal then bought a house in Hendon for Chapman and his family and they moved in the following year.
Around June 15 Arsenal announced that they had bought Highbury and some extra land from the College that was leasing it to the club. Yet another new era was starting.
On Monday 22 June 1925, exactly 32 years to the day after Jack Humble took the chair for the first ever AGM of the newly formed Woolwich Arsenal Football and Athletic Club Ltd, Herbert Chapman took up the job of Secretary Manager of Arsenal FC. An iconic moment if ever there was one.
7 June 2013: David Bentley leaves football behind
David Bentley, once of Arsenal, who had earlier in his career pushed for a transfer away from Arsenal, in order to get the games he felt he deserved, was released by Tottenham on this day in 2013, and heard of no more in football.
Bentley came to Arsenal aged 13. He played as a centre forward, a number 10, central midfield and wide midfield. He was an under 21 international too. He played his first game in January 2003, as a sub in the FA Cup but after that season he went on loan to Norwich who were relegated on the last day of his season there.
In May 2004 he played for Arsenal in the Premiership. It was his one start in the league.
By the summer of 2005 he had put in a transfer request, as he admitted he was fighting to overcome a serious gambling habit. But there were no takers at his salary, and with his outspoken approach to football, so he went to Blackburnin January 2006, and immediately scored a hat trick for them. It looked like his problems were over.
On 27 February 2007 he signed a new contract which made Mark Hughes (then Blackburn manager) say, Bentley was “a great talent with a big future”.
But it was never going to be enough for Bentley to play in a Lancashire town for a club with limited support (much of the time the club played with the upper tier of one stand shut, because of the smallness of the crowds), and in the summer of 2008 Bentley started talking about the need to join a bigger club. He went instead to Tottenham.
The transfer took place on 31 July 2008 Tottenham paying £15m plus £2m performance fees. Of this £7m went back to Arsenal as part of the deal that Blackburn had signed with Arsenal when they bought him.
He was utterly full of himself when he scored what we must all agree was a truly remarkable goal in the 4-4 draw between Arsenal and Tottenham on 29 October 2008 but that was the high point. By June 2009 he was talking again to other clubs. Greener grass, anything is better… it seems to be always the same. By 2011 Tottenham were trying to recoup some of their money by loaning him out again.
On September 2012 he went on loan for FC Rostov in Russia, but an injury there, as with injuries in earlier games elsewhere, cut his time short and attempts by other clubs to sign him (for example QPR) failed amidst talk of seriously high wage demands.
On 15 February 2013 he went back to Blackburn on loan and played in the FA Cup fifth round at Arsenal. On 7 June 2013 he was released by Tottenham.
Later he set up his own restaurant. He is since said to have invested in a restaurant with Alex Oxlade Chamberlain and other businesses in Spain and England and done a job-swap TV show.
6 June: Arsenal supporters’ fundraising committee refuses to hand over the money it raised
All through the first half of 1910 the fans of Woolwich Arsenal ran a fund-raising committee based in Rotherhithe. But then having raised what seems to have been a fair amount of money, at a meeting on 6 June, the committee resolved not to hand over any of the money it had raised to Henry Norris and William Hall, pending further developments. Instead they applied for shares in the new limited company set up to rescue Arsenal.
This was a canny move in that the money so invested would be safe, for if the new company failed to get off the ground, the money would be returned to the committee. They were thus using their funds to help get the new company operational, without putting the money at risk – at least not unless the company successfully took over the club, but then folded.
Meanwhile the number of employees at the Royal Arsenal factories continued to decline, in particular as the closure of the torpedo factory began, as it was moved to new premises in Greenock. This hit Arsenal FC particularly hard since the “torpedo boys” were avid supporters of the club, and had been at the forefront of establishing noisy, excitable and sometimes (as in the case of a visit to Nottingham Forest where the stand was set on fire) downright dangerous away support.
In fact it was not just Woolwich Arsenal among the London clubs who were seeing a downturn in attendances, but also Fulham.
Chelsea, on the other hand, who were the club with by far the biggest stadium in the country, announced by way of contrast with Arsenal and Fulham, they had made a profit of £1945 for the year. And that in the year they were relegated.
The reason was not on the pitch, but attendance figures – Chelsea were the best supported club with an average attendance of 28,545 despite regularly being threatened with relegation. Arsenal were the worst in the first division with an average of 10,390. The extraordinary point is that Chelsea were the top supported club in a season in which they were relegated.
Their ground, Stamford Bridge, was built as a football ground in 1905 and was initially offered to Fulham, who turned the opportunity down. But what particularly helped Chelsea was not a regularly large number of supporters in the ground, but the fact that for their very big games (most particularly against Tottenham and Arsenal, there was in reality no limit to the number that could attend. A couple of 60,000 attendances in the season worked wonders for their average.
By late June Arsenal clearly needed to be getting ready for the new season, but this activity was being held up by the amount of time it was taking to resolve issues surrounding the company’s debts. Worse on15 June 1910 Woolwich Arsenal factories had started to lay off men due to a long-term downturn in armaments work following the end of the Boer War.
On 27 June Athletic News carried an article saying Woolwich Arsenal did not yet have a full squad of players, and although this was not a total disaster (since pre-season training did not start until August) it meant that many of the most promising young players who might be available were being signed elsewhere.
It was looking bleak.
