Arsenal’s 100 seassons in the top division. 1959/60. If we thought it couldn’t get worse, we were wrong
By Tony Attwood
100 consecutive seasons in the top division….
Our last article and the whole series….
- Arsenal in the late 1950s and the hopes of a revival
- The full index of articles so far is published here
The last article published in this series ended ,”Was it possible for this team to go on to win the first title since the glorious years of Chapman, Allison and Whittaker? Certainly, the club seemed to have confidence in its latest manager, Swindin, whose two seasons had ended up with Arsenal 12th and 3rd. There was hope and anticipation.”
Player transfers at this time could take place whenever it was wished rather than in specified windows, but the retain and transfer system meant that a club that did not want its player to leave could simply refuse to engage in discussions, thus effectively keeping the player at the club. In England, the “retain” aspect of the system was finally removed after a decision by the High Court in 1963 in the Eastham v Newcastle United case. The existing system was considered an unreasonable restraint of trade by the clubs, and Eastham, who had been on strike, eventually signed for Arsenal.
Meanwhile, the club brought in Alan Skirton in January 1959 and Mel Charles two months later. After that defender Jimmy Magill was signed from Portadown ( in May 1959 and Terry Neill, a central defender, was signed from Bangor (Northern Ireland) on July 1, 1959, for a fee of approximately £2,500. He would later go on to manage the club.
These changes meant that Arsenal’s team for much of 1958/9 lined up as
Kelsey
Wills Evans
Ward Dodgin Docherty
Clapton Groves Herd Bloomfield Henderson
Although for the start of 1959/60 the lineup was different in terms of the midfield and the goalkeeper.
Standen
Wills Evans
Docherty Charles Ward
Clapton Groves Herd Bloomfield Henderson
The implication of this stability in the team was that the manager and the board felt that the team that had come third in in 1958/9 would now progress, quite possibly to the top of the league. After all the club had been a major force in the 1930s and 1940s and Arsenal at the top was thought to be a natural situation.
But this thought of progress did not take into account what had actually happened to Arsenal since they last won the league in 1953. For since then, during the rest of the decade, Arsenal had come 12th, 9th, 5th, 5th, 12th, and 3rd – which was not a sign of clear or consistent progress.
Whatever thoughts there were of returning to the glory days of Chapman, Alison and Whittaker, the reality was they were now long gone. The board seemed to believe that the rest of the league was simply waiting for Arsenal to reassert themselves, but Crayston and Swindon had shown that winning the league would take more than a few transfers, a good reserve team and a change of manager. And if there was a season that really brought this message home that football had changed, it was 1959/60, when, having come third the season before, that third-place finish turned out to be the pinnacle of Arsenal’s achievements, not the next stepping stone.
For in 1959/60, instead of building on the success of coming third in 1958/9, Arsenal sank down to 13th, and this despite changing the team around many times in order to try and find the magic winning combination. Indeed, by the end of the 1959/60 season, the team was
Kelsey
Wills McCullough
Ward Docherty Everitt
Clapton Henderson Groves Bloomfield Haverty
So, getting on for half the team had been changed. And yet even with those changes, Arsenal sank to 13th in the League… ten places worse off than the season before! Worse from the directors poingt of view, crowds for matches other than London derbies were down to 25,000, and only games against other London teams took the numbers back up to pre-war levels.
Of course, it is true that Arsenal had finished 13th in 1946/7 but this was the season when they were still waiting to get back into Highbury and start developing the club for its post-war future. It was also the season in which George Alison only agreed to be manager on the basis that he most certainly would leave at the end of the season – having previously demanded that he leave the club once the war league was finsihed.
But out of a sense of loyalty and duty, he stayed as manager for 1946/7. Arsenal coming 13th in that season was fully excusable given the circumstancesof but it was absolutely not excusable in 1959/60. For by then Arsenal was firmly settled back in Highbury, with its improved facilities in the North Bank, its established manager and its significant actual and potential support. Below is the 1946/7 final table – with Arsenal home games being played at White Hart Lane.
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Burnley | 42 | 24 | 7 | 11 | 85 | 61 | 55 |
| 2 | Wolverhampton Wanderers | 42 | 24 | 6 | 12 | 106 | 67 | 54 |
| 3 | Tottenham Hotspur | 42 | 21 | 11 | 10 | 86 | 50 | 53 |
| 13 | Arsenal | 42 | 15 | 9 | 18 | 68 | 80 | 39 |
| 21 | Leeds United | 42 | 12 | 10 | 20 | 65 | 92 | 34 |
| 22 | Luton Town | 42 | 9 | 12 | 21 | 50 | 73 | 30 |
What we can see is that although Arsenal were slightly below halfway down the league (not what was expected, but given the circumstances, it could have been worse). The club was in fact only five points above Leeds United, who were relegated. In terms of goal scoring, Arsenal had only scored three more goals than the aforementioned Leeds and had actually conceded seven more than relegated Luton Town. It had been a season for just hanging on.
And if anything, with no league football shown on TV (Match of the Day did not start for another four years and even then was only shown on what was effectively a minority channel, not available in all parts of the country, and not receivable on all TVs) this was a chance for football to create its new golden age.
But 1959/60, instead of being the season when Arsenal could build on its previous success of coming third, and build on its reputation as a leading club following the work of Chapman, Allison and Whittaker, the club went backwards and finished 13th. Worst the end of 1959 saw the club have a run of five consecutive defeats in which Arsenal conceded 20 goals, and had another disaster in the FA Cup, going out to Rotherham United of Division 2, in the third round, after two replays.
Rotherham were playing one league below Arsenal and actually conceded 20 fewer goals than Arsenal in the season – something that the unsympathetic media of the day noticed….
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | Arsenal Div 1 | 42 | 15 | 9 | 18 | 68 | 80 | 39 |
| 8 | Rotherham United Div 2 | 42 | 17 | 13 | 12 | 61 | 60 | 47 |
But what actually made the issue of the FA Cup defeat worse was that having gained a 2-2 draw away from Highbury in the third round 2, in the reply in front of over 57,000 at Higfhbury there was a second draw – this time 1-1. In the second replay at Hillsborough in front of 56,200, Arsenal lost 2-0.
Worse, Arsenal had no excuses. The club used 23 players during the season, but simply could not find a settled, successful team.
Now of course, in such situations today, with a team regularly getting crowds of 30,000 plus, the manager would have either had the decency to resign or would have been removed. And this especially applied in north London, where it was noticed that Tottenham had finished third in the league, just two points off winning the title. But no, Swindin was determined to press on. The ground had been rebuilt and the new cover placed over the north bank, and the potential in terms of the crowd was there, but he had managed to take the club down to 13th. But the manager survived and not just for one season but for two before moving on in quick succession to Norwich City, Cardiff City, Kettering Town and Corby Town. The latter is in fact the nearest club to my home – they play in the Northern Premier League Midlands Division. There is no recognition in or around the ground that at one time, they had the ex-Arsenal manager running the team.
Of course, what no one knew at the time was that Arsenal were still a decade away from the much-desired rebirth of the club, and people do sometimes ask how on earth those of us who went to each game knowing the glorious history of the club, actually put up with watching the club at this time.
The answer is, I don’t quite know.l The nearest I can offer to an answer is that we just go used to it. The final hooray from the magnificent trilogy of Chapman, Allison and Whittaker was the league title in 1953. After that, it was downhill all the way. I suppose in the end we just believed it couldn’t get any worse. But it did. My excuse is simply that I was very young, and didn’t really know any different.