100 years in the top league, Arsenal with Liam Brady

This series of articles celebrates Arsenal’s unique achievement of playing 100 seasons in the top division – which has been achieved in this season of 2025/26.

Recent articles in this series are…

• 100 seasons at the top: 1978/9 and 1979/80; the most painful lesson learned
• 100 seasons in the top division: 1977/78 – the return begins
• Arsenal’s 100 seasons in the top division: signs of improvement. 1976/7

The full index of articles so far is published here 

By Tony Attwood

The 1970s was an extraordinary decade for Arsenal, and maybe the best way to summarise it is through a table (below).   I have not seen this table set out in this way before, which gives me one reason for publishing it, but it does strike me that it shows clearly the extraordinary decline of Arsenal from the triumphs of 1970/71 to the depths of 1974/5 and 1975/6.  And indeed it is a reminder that while clubs can rise to the top very quickly, sinking at the same speed is also possible.

Indeed, as the table shows, it took just four seasons for Arsenal to decline from winning the double in 1970/71 to finishing 16th in the league, going out of the FA Cup in the quarter finals and going out of the League Cup in the second round for the second year running.    Indeed, Arsenal’s plight was not just a dip in form, it was an utter and total collapse as the table below rather graphically shows…

And in relation to what follows, I should explain that FC represents the  European Fairs Cup, competed for between 1955 and 1971, most commonly in its later years by clubs that had just missed out on entry to the European Cup and the Cup Winners Cup.  It was replaced in 1971 by the Uefa Cup.

 

Season	League	FA Cup	Lge Cup	Europe
1969/70	12th	Round 3	Round 3	FC Winners
1970/71	1st	Winners	Round 4	FC Quarters
1971/72	5th	Round 5	Runners Up	Uefa quarters
1972/73	2nd	Semi final	Quarter Fin
1973/74	10th	Round 4	Round 2
1974/75	16th	Quartar final	Round 2
1975/76	17th	Round 3	Round 2
1976/77	8th	Round 5	Quarter Fin
1977/78	5th	Runners Up	Semi-final
1978/79	7th	Winners	Round 2	Uefa R3

 

And indeed it wasn’t until 1977/78 that Arsenal rose to fifth in the league, were beaten FA Cup finalists, and semi-finalists in the League Cup, that there were clear signs that the Arsenal of old were, if not back, at least travelling in the right direction.    Even then, although the final season of the decade saw Arsenal win its first major trophy since the glorious Double season, they did so while going out of the League Cup at the first round, the Uefa Cup in the third round (after six years without any European football) and coming seventh in the league.   So it was an improvement, but nothing similar to the success supporters had witnessed at the start of the era.

What is particularly interesting is that Arsenal went through this very strange decade of triumph, collapse, and something of a return to previous glories, under just two managers.   That does seem rather strange today when clubs are prone to sacking managers who don’t come up to standard every few months, but Arsenal have not normally followed such a trend.

Bertie Mee who gave the club its first European trophy (the Fairs Cup in 1970) and the first double (1971) lasted until he volunatirily withdrew on 4 May 1976,  And it should be noted, that if we exclude the Charity Shield (renamed Community Shield after it was discovered by the Charity Commision that the FA had not been keeping proper records in terms of which charities had actually been getting the money, and how much they had got.) Bertie Meed thus had a very short period at the top but a long decline thereafter.

In total, Mee was manager for 539 games across ten seasons, and won three trophies – the League, the FA Cup and the Fairs Cup.   But these trophies all came in two seasons: 1969/70 and 1970/71.   After that, the club sank. 

Mee’s last three seasons saw Arsenal not only win nothing but also saw them come 10th, 16th and 17th in the League, exit the League Cup in the second round each year, and not get beyond the quarter finals in the FA Cup.    Perhaps even worse, in the third of these seasons Arsenal’s top scorer was Brian Kidd with just 11 goals, while in the last two of these seasons Arsenal were beaten more often than they won, while conceding more goals than they scored.   This was aggain not what the fans expected, or indeed demanded.

Overall, under Mee, Arsenal won 241 of the 539 games he was in charge of (just under 45%), and the big problem for Arsenal and its board was that Mee’s successor, Terry Neill, had a result in terms of winning across his 416 games, which was almost identical.   Neill did indeed win the FA Cup for Arsenal in 1978/79, but he didn’t deliver a league title as Mee had done.   It was starting to feel that although the notion of having people who had Arsenal running through the veins sounded like a good idea, maybe someone from outsider could wake up the sleeping giant that Arsenal had become.

As for Liam Brady, he was invariably our golden star, but he was playing in a team that was not winning trophies, with the exception of the FA Cup in 1979.  And so inevitably, after playing 235 games for the club and scoring 43 goals, he left.  He was considered by most who watched Arsenal as the greatest player of the era at the club.

Brady then moved on to Juventus (with whom he won the league twice), Sampdoria, Inter, Ascoli and finally returned to Ldonon in 1987 to play 89 games for West Ham, giving him a lifetime total of 532 matches and 78 goals.  He also played 72 times for Ireland.  

After retiring from playing, Brady went into management before returning to Arsenal as the head of Youth Development from 1996 to 2013.  He also worked as a TV pundit, retiring from punditry in 2023.

The great tragedy for Arsenal of course, was that as Brady was emerging as a player of the highest quality and ability, Arsenal could not provide a team that could match his extraordinary talents.   But on the other hand, those of us who went to the games at the time, did get to see one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, of all the players of the era.