The story so far…
In 1925 Arsenal’s owner, Sir Henry Norris, having paid off most of the debts of the highly expensive move from Plumstead to Highbury, and of course handling the temporary end of football due to the cessastion of the League in 1915 for the duration of the war, felt it was time now to employ a new manager. A new manager who could build a team that could do justice to the stadium that he had had built in North London, and could build on the support that the club had found in its new home – where the fans had most certainly taken to the club.
It was an appointment that raised some issues – issues which are sometimes mentioned in the history books but often without a fulsome explanation. So here goes…
In his advertisement for a manager Sir Henry indicated that he did not want to employ a manager “whose sole method of improving the team was to pay exorbitant transfer fees.” The emphasis of the word “sole” has been added by me, because in the autobiography of the previous manager Leslie Knighton published over 20 years later, Knighton made the point (which the media then picked up, and to which Arsenal did not respond as to do so would have been to protect the image of Sir Henry) that Chapman did spend money.
Now I do need to interrupt myself here, for subsequent to the arrival of Chapman Sir Henry Norris was removed from Arsenal in a boardroom coup. Sir Henry left the country with his wife who was at the time very ill, and settled in the south of France for her health, and there is some evidence that the directors then proceeded to re-write the club’s history. Thus it was that subsequently, anything that reflected poorly on Sir Henry was certainly not countered or explained by the board that had set up the coup that saw him removed.
But it was quite true that in spite of Sir Henry’s advertisement for a new manager he did say he didn’t want a manager whose sole method of improving the team was through transferring players.
Chapman in fact was a manager who regularly did buy players, which is how he had had success at his previous club, Huddersfield Town, and went on to have success at Arsenal. But he was never a manager who simply said, “We need a new left winger” (or player in any other position). What Chapman had become known for was transforming the way a club could play by introducing new tactics, and then finding players who could play to his new system. Such changes included dropping the centre half-back into a back three line of final defence and having the defenders pass the ball carefully forward through the midfield, rather than hoofing it upfield in the hope that a forward might latch onto the ball before the defenders did.
Thus the very clear implication of this advertisement, and which everyone in football (and indeed in football journalism) at the time understood, was that he wanted a manager who had acted like Chapman at Tottenham and at Huddersfield. A manager who paid attention to every detail in terms of the way the club operated, not just to win things, but to get the crowds in. And in point of fact, there really won only one Chapman – although others were starting to understand what he was doing.
So yes, Chapman did encourage his chairmen to spend money on players and of course Sir Henry knew this. Indeed Northampton’s first-ever transfer fees were paid out during Chapman’s time at the club, and it brought in the players who transformed the club and resulted finally in their winning the Southern League in 1909.
But that was not his sole approach – and that was the whole point of the advertisement’s wording. Chapman, at each club he managed, transformed the whole essence of the club, particularly in terms of team tactics, and it was an approach that brought sensational results.
Now we cannot say for certain that Sir Henry knew that Chapman was the man he wanted, nor that Chapman and Sir Henry had discussions before Chapman moved to Arsenal. But if they did, as seems to be suggested by comments Chapman made before he moved, that he had heard that interesting things were afoot at Arsenal, and certainly in those days there would have been nothing wrong in that. There were in fact no football rules relating to tapping up in the early days of football, not least because most players were contracted to play for a club for as long as the club wanted them. If the club wanted to release or sell the player after a year it could. But that right did not extend to the player who had not right of hand in his notice and transfer to another club. Workers rights were still a very long way away.
Thus if a player wanted to move and felt the club were ready to let him go, he would start looking around for a new club in the last month of the season, or through the summer. Indeed as we have noted Herbert Chapman as a player tended to move to a new club at the end of each season. Managers too tended to be on the same sort of contract as anyone else in work – that is they were employees who could be dismissed.
Indeed many people in the 21st century are rather surprised to find that the first key employment contract law in the United Kingdom was not introduced until the Contracts of Employment Act of 1963. This introduced the right of workers to have a written contract of employment as well as a right to a minimum statutory notice of termination.
Indeed although the National Insurance Act of 1911 had actually ensured that people received benefits if they were unable to work, the norms of employment that we consider obvious today are by and large of recent introduction. For example, until 1944 women teachers could be dismissed from their jobs if they got married, without compensation or notice, and it was not until 1965 that workers gained the right to a severance payment upon dismissal, after a qualifying period of work.
Football of course was tied into this national legislation, and thus in reality, footballers like most workers in the UK did not gain minimum statutory rights until the Contracts of Employment Act 1963.
In the 1920s the tradition was still one in which the manager was an employee who simply selected the team and organised training. But Chapman first as a player-manager then as a manager, stood out from the off, because he was one of the first managers to organise tactics. Indeed it was the lack of organised tactics that allowed the match-fixing scandals of the late 19th and early 20th century to flourish culminating in the outrageous match-fixing by Liverpool players in their 1915 game against Manchester United, which affected relegation to the second division at the end of that season. Indeed it was the partial resolution of that affair which led to the extension of the 1st Division, and ultimately the election of Arsenal to that division in 1919.
Thus Sir Henry Norris, having moved the Arsenal club to north London, built a new stadium and had Arsenal elected to the 1st division upon its extension, and by 1925 having paid off the debts involved in building the stadium, clearly now wanted a manager who would take Arsenal to a position in the league that matched the quality of their new ground. In short, hiring the best manager in the country was the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle that began with the move to Highbury, and which would have been completed much sooner had it not been for the first world war.
