100 years of Chapman part 18: Chapman wins the league at Huddersfield

Celebrating 100 years since Herbert Chapman Joined the Arsenal

Herbert Chapman consistently maintained that while he was manager of Leeds City FC he had no idea of the financial machinations going on at the club (if there ever were such things – and it was never proven that there were), and nor did he have the power to countermand the directors’ decision not to hand over the financial documents to the League when the League demanded them.

Such a claim was backed up by the defence of the Leeds City FC board which claimed that the documents demanded by the League were private and confidential.  If that were true, then there was no way in which Chapman would have had access to them anyway.

But such delicacies of logic, along with any notion of reasonableness or fairness, were as nought to the football authorities of the day, and so Herbert Chapman was banned for life after eight games at the opening of the 1919/20 season, and Port Vale took over both the results (and hence points) of Leeds City thus far, and played their fixtures for the rest of the season.    

Indeed it is worth noting that only one other club has ever been expelled for financial irregularities and that was Bury FC in 2019.  That club was then reborn and now plays in the North West Counties Football League Premier Division, where at the moment as I write this (February 2025) they are top.  Promotion will take them into the Northern Premier League, which will mean Bury will be in level eight of the pyramid.

Meanwhile, after Leeds City were kicked out of the league the playing staff was auctioned off and they were purchased by nine different clubs. 

Chapman did not appeal against his lifetime ban from football until 1921, when it Huddersfield Town came looking for a new manager, and it appears that it was Huddersfield Town FC that actually organised the appeal against the life time ban, and conducted the case for Chapman.   Chapman was appointed assistant manager, although contemporary reports all make it fairly plain that it was clear from the start that he would be the manager in due course.  In fact the manager at the time, Ambrose Langley resigned at the end of the season, and Chapman slipped into the job he had effectively been doing to an increasing degree from the day of his return.

In that first season in which Chapman returned part way through, Huddersfield finished 14th; a modest position.   But it did mean that by the time Chapman officially became manager in the summer of 1921 he was already fully bedded into the job, and knew exactly what he wanted to do.  And indeed he achieved it: for although Huddersfield only finished 14th in the league (out of 22) missing relegation by seven points and a superior goal average. they won the FA Cup for the only time in their history at the end of Chapman’s first season there.   Manchester United, we may notice in passing, were relegated to the second division.

The club’s unique journey in the FA Cup began with games against Burnley and Brighton and Hove Albion, both of which required replays (Brighton at that time playing for only their second season).  After that it was another drawn tie with Blackburn Rovers (Huddersfield winning the replay 5-0), followed by a victory over Millwall, who had also only just joined the League in 1920, before a semi-final win over Notts County and a 1-0 final victory over Preston.  Of these clubs, only Preston were a first division club and they finished 16th, just below Huddersfield.

In the League Huddersfield had indeed improved their league position by one place, ending the season in 14th, but of course no one noticed that very much.  The Cup was indeed the great prize – and for good measure Huddersfield also won the Charity Shield as it was then called (this being before the time in which the Charity Commissioners confronted to League over its lack of records of which charities actually benefitted from the takings at that game).

For Huddersfield the FA Cup was not only a first trophy for manager and club, it was the start of Huddersfield’s greatest ever period as a club, and it was achieved initially through a major reforming of the club’s defence, for in 1921/2, the cup winning season, Huddersfield had scored 53 goals and conceded 54.  The following season there was a modest growth in goals scored, but it was the overhaul of defensive methods that took Huddersfield up to third in the league.  

This was somewhat surprising as the attack however had shown only a slight improvement from its collapse upon joining the top tier.   In their final season in the second division, in which the club had won promotion, they had scored a very impressive 97.  In the first division, this had shrunk to 42 but then in the FA Cup winning season had recovered slightly to 53.  In the following season, 1922/23 Huddersfield Town improved the attack again to reach 60 goals, and more significantly improved the defence to take the goals conceded down to 32.   As a result Huddersfield moved from 14th in 1921/22 to 3rd in 1922/23.

That was however just the start, for in 1923/24 Huddersfield Town won the league for the first time.  And then with Chapman still as manager in 1924/25 that triumph was repeated.  And this was achieved without massive expenditure on players, simply because Huddersfield Town didn’t have the money to do that, because again, the crowds were simply not there.

And this is an important point to remember when Chapman moved to Arsenal.  Sir Henry Norris, the owner, made it clear in his advertising that he wanted a manager who could win on tactical changes, and that was what Chapman revealed he could do at Huddersfield as he moved them from being a mediocre second division team to Cup Winners and then 1st division champions.

But through all these triumphs it was clear that Huddersfield had a problem, for in that season of the first league title the highest home attendance was only 33,178 for a game against near neighbours Burnley.  The lowest crowd was reported as 6,000 for a game against Newcastle on 27 February. 1924.

And that game was significant because at the time it was played Huddersfield Town were in the top four in the league, just five points behind Cardiff City who were currently at the top.

What of course no one knew was that Huddersfield were about to start a run of 14 games in which they only lost one and went on to win the League title.  But even so, it suggested that it was going to be hard to fill up their 60,000-capacity stadium, no matter what.

Chapman of course stayed to the end of the season, but the fact that on 21 April for that game against Burnley noted above when Huddersfield were third, and a win could take them top they still only got 35,000 in the ground, showed that fulsome support for the club was always going to be unlikely no matter what they did.  Here’s the table before that game…

Huddersfield dutifully won that game 1-0 and so went top of the league for the first time ever, in a ground only two-thirds full.

I’ll end this episode with the full league table at this point, as it is interesting in the light of what happened just over a year later.

The series continues