King George V

Burnley 1914

1923

 Arsenal 1930

Manchester City 1934

King George V was the first reigning monarch to attend an FA Cup Final (1914). He put in a number of appearances during his 26 years on the throne.

His presence at the Wembley fiasco in 1923 was said to have contributed to the relative restraint demonstrated by the 200,000 plus crowd. 

Herbert Chapman: Football Revolutionary?

 Mr Chapman with Arsenal players on the golf course in 1929. L-R: Unknown, Tom Parker, Alex James, David Jack, Herbert Chapman. David Jack with a cigarette , Alex James with plus fours that are about the same length as his football shorts.

Herbert Chapman was undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the development of Association football. Here is a link to a paper by Tony Say of the University of Warwick entitled
Herbert Chapman: Football Revolutionary? It's a good read.
http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/SportsHistorian/1996/sh16h.pdf

Some of Chapman's most notable tactical innovations are given some historical context- maybe not so much revolution as evolution.

Situation Vacant

Arsenal Football Club is open to receive applications for the position of Team Manager. He must be experienced and possess the highest qualifications for the post, both as to the ability and personal character. Gentlemen whose sole ability to build up a good side depends on the payment of heavy and exorbitant transfer fees need not apply.

Athletic News  11.05.25 

Swansea Town v Arsenal 1926

Joe Sykes and mascot 06.03.26.
http://gottfriedfuchs.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/swansea-town-v-arsenal-1926.html

Arsenal's first FA Cup match

Arsenal's first FA Cup match was played at The Manor Ground, Plumstead on 05.10.1889.
The club were at this time still known as Royal Arsenal.

The opponents wre Lyndhurst, who played at Denmark Hill (Surrey). Lyndhurst were members of the Surrey FA and featured in the semi finals of the 1888-89 Surrey Cup.They also comperted in the London Senior Cup. (There is a town in the New Forest called Lyndhurst but the two are not connected). 

GK	Fred Beardsley	England
	A Nottingham Forest player who moved to London to work at the Arsenal (munitions factory). He played in Arsenal’s first ever match and was responsible for the use of the red kit, a set of hand me downs from Forest.
FB	Peter Connolly	Scotland
	An early star of the side. He died of TB aged 28.
FB	‘Jack’ or ‘Jamie’ McBean	Scotland
HB	Morris Bates	England
	A relocated team mate of Beardsley’s at Nottingham Forest. Known as Iron head- he was an early practitioner of the booming headed clearance.
HB	David Howat	England
	Played 300 games for the club and was in the first league match.
HB	Bill Julian *	England
	Julian, who later played for Tottenham Hotspur enjoyed a long career as a coach in The Netherlands.
F	William Scott	Scotland
	Previously played for Forfar Athletic.
F	Richard Horsington	England
	Another import from Swindon Town.
F	Humphrey Barbour	Scotland
	Played for Third Lanark.
F	Hope Robertson	Scotland
F	Jimmy Meggs	?

*Some sources have Harry Offer in place of Bill Julian- Offer (England) had previously played for Swindon Town and went on to join Southampton St Mary’s.

Arsenal ran out winners by 11-0. The scorers were Barbour (3), Scott (3), Meggs (2), Robertson (2) and Horsington.
In the 2nd Qualifying round Arsenal drew 2-2 (away) with Norwich's Thorpe FC before progressing to the next round via a walkover. 
FA  Founder members Crusaders were beaten 5-2 (aet) at Plumstead.
The cup run came to an end on 07.12.89 when Arsenal went down 5-1 at home against The Swifts (Slough). Swifts had reached the FA Cup semi finals 3 times in their history, but dissapeared in a merger in 1890. 

Arsenal

A  football signed by the Arsenal team of 1936.  The signatures are:

 Norman Sidey
A centre half (which was now a central defensive position rather than a playmaker), he played 45 games for Arsenal (1932-38).

Bobby Davidson
The man who had to shoulder the onerous billing of being the next Alex James. Davidson played
63 games and scored 15 goals (1935-1937) but had the reputation of being a  'difficult personality' and moved on to Coventry City.

George Male
The fullback played 321 games for Arsenal (1930-48) He captained England 6 times in his 19 international appearances. 

Alex James
Among the greatest footballers of all time, James was the man who developed the role of the inside forward into something more approaching the modern midfielder. 

George Cox
In 2 seasons Cox played 7 games for Arsenal. He then moved on to Fulham, but his career never really took off.

Peter Dougal
A peripatetic Scottish inside forward whose many clubs included  FC Sete in France.

 Jackie Milne
A versatile winger, playing either left or right, Milne was at the club from 1935 to 1937 and played 54 games, scoring 19 goals .

Bob John 
Welsh international (15 caps) half back. John was with Arsenal from 1922 to 1937, making 470 appearances.  

Cliff Bastin
By the age of nineteen Bastin had won a League title, the FA Cup and been capped for England, making him the youngest player ever to achieve all three. 
He played 399 games for Arsenal having joined from Exeter City as a 17 yr old.  An outside left, he won  21 caps. He suffered with deafness.

 Les Compton.
A full back and later a centre half, he represented England twice and was associated with Arsenal for 22 years, playing over 250 matches. 

George Allison (Manager)
Given the unenviable task of succeeding the most innovative manager in the history of football Mr Allison did a more than decent job. An old school secretary manager with little involvement in coaching or tactics he led the Gunners to 2 league titles and 2 FA Cup wins.  In the 1939 film The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, he had the prophetic line: It's one-nil to the Arsenal. That's the way we like it.


 Joe Shaw (Assistant Manager)
Shaw had joined Arsenal as a player in 1907. On retiring in 1922 he joined the coaching staff and became caretaker manager when Herbert Chapman passed away. He oversaw the winning of the 1933-34 League title.

Arsenal players on a training walk.This form of fitness preparation has now fallen out of favour. 

Bert Freeman

Bertram Clewley Freeman played a total of 321 league games, scoring 198 goals. He won 5 England caps between 1909 and 1912, scoring 3 goals. He scored the only goal of the 1914 FA Cup Final when Burnley beat Liverpool.
He began his professional carer with Aston Villa, but transferred to Woolwich Arsenal without ever having made a first team appearance. 
In 1908 Freeman was released by Woolwich Arsenal and joined Everton. This proved to be a shrewd bit of business on Everton's part, as in the 1908-09 season Freeman became the League's top scorer, with 38 goals in 37 games.  
Freeman scored 61 goals in 86 games for Everton (including 6 hat tricks). 
In 1910 he moved to Burnley, and was the  top goalscorer in the Second Division in both 1911-12 (32 goals) and 1912-13 (31 goals).

Imports

Hiden

In 1930 Herbert Chapman was very keen on signing Rudolf Hiden for Arsenal. 

We have seen how Glasgow Rangers had imported Karl Pekarna (sadly the Scottish public did not witness the full extent of his undoubted talents) and Tottenham Hotspur had flirted with the recruitment of the French goalkeeper Pierre Chayriguès from Red Star in 1913.
Hiden was probably the best goalkeeper in the World. In May 1930 the 21 year old had impressed in a 0-0 draw with England in Vienna.  Chapman, ever the progressive, had strong connections with Hugo Meisl and the sophisticated world of Danubian coffee house football culture. 
The transfer of Hiden to Arsenal from Wiener Athletiksportclub was opposed by both the players' union and the Football League. They lobbied the Ministry of Labour to prevent the deal, based on the argument that for Arsenal to employ Hiden would be a simple case of taking a job from an Englishman and giving it to a foreigner. 
The combined forces of the Football Association, The Football League, the player's union and the Ministry of Labour ensured that the Hiden transfer was never completed. Hiden moved to Racing (Paris) in 1933. His first name became Rodolphe and he earned 1 cap for France in 1940.
On 1 June 1931 the  FA Council approved the following:
A professional player who is not a British-born subject is not eligible to take part in any competition under the jurisdiction of this Association unless he possesses a two-year residential qualification within the jurisdiction of the Association.
This move reflected the attutude expressed by senior FA councillor and Football League Management Committee member  Charles Sutcliffe in August 1930 ; The idea of bringing foreigners to play in league football is repulsive to the clubs, offensive to British players and a terrible confession of weakness in the management of a club. It will be a bad day for club managers when they have to cultivate team spirit in a team of players where some would not understand a word said to them.

In the 1930-31 season Arsenal did feature a foreign goalkeeper-Gerrit Keizer of the Netherlands. 
Keizer had joined Ajax as a 16 year old. He moved to England to study the language in 1930, playing as an amateur for Margate Town (he was registered with Milwall but never turned out  for the Lions). Keizer's status as an amateur seems to have diffused any protests regarding his playing in England.  Chapman signed Keizer for Arsenal, but the extent of his first team career was 12 matches from August to October 1930. The following season he appeared 17 times for Charlton Athletic in Division 2 . Before moving back to Ajax (he was first choice goalkeeper for 15 years, making over 300 appearances) he was briefly on the books at Queen's Park Rangers. 

Keizer

Tottenham Hotspur and Woolwich Arsenal on Tour, 1912

Spurs at Leipzig

When the 1911-12 season ended on April 29th Woolwich Arsenal were in 10th place in Division 1 and Tottenham Hotspur in 12th. The famous North London rivalry had yet to come into being, as Arsenal were still based in Plumstead (South East London). In May 1912 both clubs embarked on tours of central Europe (Germany, Austria-Hungary) and played each other in an exhibition match at Vienna arranged by Hugo Meisl. 

Tottenham Hotspur
12.05.12	Hull City	2	0	Tottenham Hotspur	Brussels
	The Belgian Charity Cup- Beddeker Cup Hull City retaining the trophy.
16.05.12	VfB Leipzig	1	3	Tottenham Hotspur	Leipzig
	The hosts were Mittel-Deutschland champions and had made the semi-finals of the national championships.
20.05.12	Wiener Sport Club	2	5	Tottenham Hotspur	Vienna
24.05.12	Woolwich Arsenal	4	0	Tottenham Hotspur	Vienna
	An exhibition match for a solid silver cup and medals.
27.05.12	Ferencváros	1	4	Tottenham Hotspur	Budapest
	Fradi were the champions of the Budapest league, winning 14 out of 18 games and having a goal difference of 57.
28.05.12	Hungary	2	2	Tottenham Hotspur	Budapest
	The Hungary and Austria teams were preparing for the Olympic Tournament at Stockholm.
30.05.12	Hungary	3	4	Tottenham Hotspur	Budapest
02.06.12	Austria	3	0	Tottenham Hotspur	Vienna
	Both Austria and Hungary featured in the second round of that summer's Olympic tournament- Hungary had a bye in the first round and lost 7-0 to Great Britain in the second. Austria beat Germany 5-1 before losing 3-1 to the Netherlands. They went on to meet in the final of the consolation tournament, Hungary winning 3-0.
Woolwich Arsenal
11.05.12	Hertha BSC Berlin	0	5	Woolwich Arsenal	Berlin
12.05.12	Viktoria 89 Berlin	2	2	Woolwich Arsenal	Berlin
	1911’s German National Champions.  Former Tottenham player Jack Brearley took up the coaching position at Viktoria at about this time.
16.05.12	Deutscher FC Prag	1	4	Woolwich Arsenal	Prague
19.05.12	Ferencváros	1	2	Woolwich Arsenal	Budapest
22.05.12	Grazer AK	0	6	Woolwich Arsenal	Graz
24.05.12	Woolwich Arsenal	4	0	Tottenham Hotspur	Vienna
26.05.12	SK Rapid Wien	2	8	Woolwich Arsenal	Vienna
	Rapid were the Austrian League champions…
27.05.12	Wiener Sport Club	0	5	Woolwich Arsenal	Vienna
	…and WSC had finished the season just one point behind Rapid.
29.05.12	Sp Vgg Fürth	0	6	Woolwich Arsenal	Fürth
	Fürth were managed by Billy Townley , the former Blackburn Rovers player.

It was Arsenal's second visit. They had toured Belgium, Netherlands, Germany  and Austria -Hungary in 1907.  Tottenham were of course old hands at the touring lark. Having visited Austria -Hungary  in 1905 they had since played in Belgium, South America and Germany.