{"id":7636,"date":"2023-03-24T18:35:17","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T18:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=7636"},"modified":"2023-03-28T11:50:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-28T10:50:57","slug":"herbert-chapman-an-appreciation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=7636","title":{"rendered":"Herbert Chapman: An Appreciation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color:#fff;display:inline-block;font-family:Roboto,sans-serif;color:#a7a7a7;font-size:11px;width:100%;max-width:421px;\"><div style=\"padding:0;margin:0;text-align:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1360167330\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div><div style=\"overflow:hidden;position:relative;height:0;padding:141.09264% 0 0 0;width:100%;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/1360167330?et=MBFWiupXQP19FA0fdoisnQ&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=QNLY9QwS1Xoy_0jNeUM4HoA847awuhmuNxzbjgunA4U=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;\" width=\"421\" height=\"594\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I take such pleasure from Dr F.&#8217;s literary contributions to this fine establishment that when he suggested during the World Cup that I pen a monograph on Herbert Chapman for this interlull, it would have been ungenerous to decline. So, with the editor&#8217;s indulgence, here goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Herbert Chapman was our first great manager. I will go further. He was the first great manager of any club and our greatest manager. Only Arsene Wenger approaches him in our pantheon, although Mikel Arteta, who has uncanny echoes of Chapman, may one day join them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his book on the evolution of the manager, a role as we understand it today, that Chapman created, Barney Ronay describes him as arriving from the future. What he brought with him was the warp and weft of the game decades hence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Among Chapman&#8217;s innovations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>shirt numbers;<\/li><li>white balls and hooped socks for better visibility;<\/li><li>the white sleeves on our shirts;<\/li><li>tactics;<\/li><li>floodlights;<\/li><li>club branding (Gillespie Road Tube station renamed Arsenal);<\/li><li>picking the team;<\/li><li>rubber studs;<\/li><li>physical conditioning;<\/li><li>player nutrition;&nbsp;<\/li><li>European matches and learning from great continental coaches like his friend Hugo Meisl (the FA frowned on that; bad form mixing with Johnny Foreigner, old boy).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsene Wenger could be considered another time traveller who revolutionised how the game would be played and managed. But even in arriving from the future, Chapman was first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>North to South<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many outstanding managers, Chapman&#8217;s playing career was modest, a journeyman forward as the 19th century became the 20th. Eventually, he washed up at some Southern League club in the Middlesex marshes. Always in the shadow of two more successful footballing brothers and approaching his 30th birthday, Chapman decided in 1907 that it was time to pursue the engineering career for which he had studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, a twist of fate saw him appointed player-manager at Northampton Town, a former club in the Southern League. A growing reputation as an innovative coach \u2014 and success \u2014 brought a move to Leeds City in the old Division 2 in 1912, where some sketchy allegations of war-time financial impropriety by the club resulted in a lifetime ban from football. After resigning from Leeds in 1919, he supervised a coal and coke works but was laid off at the end of 1920. A month later, Huddersfield Town, having made the ban go away, appointed Chapman &#8216;secretary&#8217; as managers then were often called in a fair reflection of the nature of their job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In May 1925, Arsenal posted an advertisement in the Athletic News:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>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 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The outgoing manager Leslie Knighton had spent exorbitantly but to poor effect (sound familiar?). Arsenal finished two places off relegation in 1923-24 and one place off in 1924-25. With Chapman having buffed up his CV with an FA Cup and two successive Division One titles, Arsenal&#8217;s chairman Sir Henry Norris was so determined to secure him that he doubled Chapman&#8217;s Huddersfield salary and bought him a detached house in Hendon, then a leafier outer suburb of London than now.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An English Heritage Blue Plaque adorns the red and white painted house at 6 Haslemere Avenue, east of the A41 from the Brent Cross shopping centre. Another first: no one connected with football had previously been so honoured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Chaos to control<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman arrived to find a club in chaos on and off the pitch (again, sound familiar?). A return to Division 2 looked increasingly likely, while financial problems were undermining the long-dominant Sir Henry.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman seized the opportunity. He would pick the team (previously the chairman&#8217;s or directors&#8217; prerogative), set the tactics (typically a task, such as it was, of senior players), and decide who would be bought to fit his unconventional way of playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arsenal was what we now call a project, and there was no doubt about who was the project manager. Chapman was charismatic, a great motivator and held his players in thrall, but he was a firm disciplinarian. Woe betide anyone that did not buy into his plan (yet again, sound familiar?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>WM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman applied his engineer&#8217;s mind to the scoring of goals. He believed these could be reliably manufactured with teamwork, discipline and organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He did not invent the concept of the centre half dropping between the full backs; many teams experimented with that in response to a new offside law. Yet, he alone saw how to exploit the space this created in midfield by changing how wing halves and inside forwards played. He systemised this as the WM formation, converting the ubiquitous 2-3-5 pyramid into the 3-2-2-3 that every English team would play until 4-2-4 took hold in the late 1950s.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>WM was designed to space players around the pitch and retain possession through quick passing (&#8216;combination play&#8217;), creating gaps through which his forwards could counterattack at speed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was a tactical revolution and a prototype of Arteta&#8217;s positional play. Take a still image of Arsenal when Zinchenko moves into midfield alongside Partey with Xhaka and \u00d8degaard ahead, Saka and Martinelli out wide up front and Jes\u00fas in the middle, and you can trace a perfect W and a perfect M on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then as now, the rapid passing and movement the formation demanded required fit players. Trainer Tom Whittaker was critical. Not the typical bucket and sponge man of the day, but a qualified physiotherapist, he introduced physical conditioning science to the game. If you think Bukayo Saka has bulked up, you should have seen what Whittaker did to transform a reedy vegetarian ex-milkman, Eddie Hapgood, into a strapping full back at about the same age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>5-year Plan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The project engineer also had a five-year plan to rebuild the team.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>His first addition was veteran Sunderland centre-forward Charlie Buchan. Plumstead-born and an amateur with Woolwich Arsenal&#8217;s reserves in his teen years, Buchan was acquired to be Chapman&#8217;s right-hand man as captain and, like newly bought Joe Hulme and Jack Lambert, to bolster an attack that had scored just 86 league goals in its previous 84 league games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman also had an eye for raw talent, such as Cliff &#8216;Boy&#8217; Bastin, spotted as a 17-year-old playing for Exeter. Bastin is still the youngest player, at 19, to have won a league title, the FA Cup and an England cap. Chapman made Bastin the perfection of another of his innovations, the inverted winger, a fast, direct forward who cut in from wide and scored goals (think Martinelli or Bobby Pires, but better looking). It was Bastin&#8217;s club record of 178 goals that Ian Wright broke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hapgood and George Male, both fixtures in the Arsenal and England sides in the 1930s, were two other future greats signed as teenagers. But Chapman spent on stars how and when needed. He made David Jack the first five-figure signing in world football at \u00a310,647 10s 0d (Google the old money, younger &#8216;holics). For his Martin \u00d8degaard-like orchestrator, Alex James, Chapman arranged a &#8216;job&#8217; at Selfridges department store to supplement the maximum wages the club could officially pay him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Chapman&#8217;s first season in charge, Arsenal finished second behind Huddersfield winning its third successive title. The rebuilt attack doubled goal production. The defence, little changed, was as porous as before. Yet more goals scored than conceded brought wins (funny that!).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The defence would not start to be rebuilt until the 1929-30 season when the Eddie Hapgood-Herbie Roberts-George Male back three was first put together. Before that, there had been three seasons of mid-table finishes, although also a first FA Cup final \u2014 the infamous loss to Cardiff City in 1927.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in 1930, in line with the five-year plan, Arsenal won its first major trophy, the FA Cup. The first league title followed in 1930-31, and another in 1932\u20133. In the intervening season, we did the &#8216;almost&#8217; double &#8212; second in the league and beaten FA Cup finalist. Chapman had made Arsenal the dominant team in England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He had also made Highbury the finest stadium in England, building the West Stand to keep fans dry and coming to games in all weathers \u2014 Arsenal needed gates of 40,000 to break even \u2014 and the marbled East Stand to overawe opponents. Even the famous clock was his idea and a rebuff to the FA for preventing him from installing a 45-minute countdown clock that, ever the showman, he thought would add to the excitement of watching games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Dynastic greatness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman died unexpectedly in January 1934 in his Hendon home after developing pneumonia following a scouting trip up North. He was fifty-five and at the height of his powers. He died with his team <em>en route<\/em> to a third title in four years, secured under reserve team coach Joe Shaw, who became caretaker manager for the remainder of the season.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To me, what makes Chapman our greatest manager is that he was dynastic. He was succeeded by the club&#8217;s managing director, George Allison, and then Whittaker. By the time Whittaker died of a heart attack in 1956, Arsenal had won another five league titles and two more FA Cups, all won by identifiably &#8216;Chapman teams&#8217;. How many more might there have been had World War 2 not stopped football for seven seasons with the team in its pomp?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chapman stares back at us from grainy black and white photographs from 80 years ago, portly, suited and serious, looking more like the successful owner of an early 20th-century Northern engineering works than the first coming of the modern manager. But look again, and you will see the spirit and soul of the club we are today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images I take such pleasure from Dr F.&#8217;s literary contributions to this fine establishment that when he suggested during the World Cup that I pen a monograph on Herbert Chapman for this interlull, it would have been ungenerous to decline. So, with the editor&#8217;s indulgence, here goes. Herbert Chapman was our first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7636"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7646,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7636\/revisions\/7646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}