Making the Arsenal

Preparing to meet Liverpool - the great match fixers

Apart from focusing on football one hundred years ago, this site looks back on the major events in history surrounding clubs we are about to play in the present day.

So this obviously is the moment to take a peek at the history of the infamous Reds and one of their misadventures.

On 2nd April, 1915, (Good Friday) Manchester IOU, who at the time were known as Manchester United, took on the club now known as Liverpool Reds (at least that is what one of their owners seems to want to call them) and beat them 2-0.

There was a bit of surprise in this because Liverpool were solidly mid-table at the time and Manchester United were heading for division 2.

What really put the pigeon among the cats (as it were) is that almost immediately the bookies (who in those days more or less ran football, such was the interest in gambling) said that they had taken a great deal of money on the 7-1 odds offered on a 2-0 United victory.

Bookies of course never like to pay out so they said the match had been fixed. Apart from the range of bets their other evidence was that

Liverpool missed a penalty.
As a result of the result Manchester did not go down.

So the bookies refused to pay up and offered a reward for anyone who could unmask the conspirators. The Chronicle took up the challenge and eventually blamed corrupt players on both sides of fixing the match both to get some money and to get Manchester out of relegation.

What with the First World War going on there was no need for a rush job, since football ended for the duration in April 1915. But the League held an enquiry and came up with the result in December of that year that “a considerable amount of money changed hands by betting on the match and… some of the players profited thereby.”

They went after three Man U players – which was odd because only one of the three – Enoch West – played in the game, along with five Liverpool players, and banned them all for life.

But then they added a caveat. By this time the War was over a year old and so the League said that if the men joined the army they would not be punished.

All the men signed up (conscription started in January 1916 so those of military age were forced to go anyway, so there was no merit in the escape clause) but Enoch West continued to contest the sentence. He did not have his ban lifted until he was 59 years old.

However the case did not end there (although most histories leave it at that).

There were a number of anomalies. First, how was it possible to fix a match with an exact score with only one person on the Manchester team being involved? To be sure of the score, surely you needed more than one person playing for Manchester to be playing in the team.

Second, the punishment which was commuted just as the men would have been called up anyway, was bizarre – it was akin to letting everyone off.

Third, neither club received any punishment at all – which was also bizarre given that Manchester United benefited greatly by not being relegated – Chelsea and Tottenham going down.

There the matter rested until the summer of 1919 when the authorities prepared to start up football game. They were of course aware of the continuing rumbles of discontent – Enoch West was still fighting them and running a libel case against them, while Chelsea and Tottenham were claiming that at least Manchester United should be thrown out of the League, and that Liverpool should be demoted.

In a style of management that can be still recognised today, the League tried to cover up the mess by announcing that the First Division was going to be enlarged by two clubs and that therefore Chelsea and Tottenham could apply for re-election to Division I.

But they had reckoned without Henry Norris at Arsenal. Norris said that if this were allowed to pass then the message would go out that match fixing at a club level was acceptable, and that the worse that would ever happen to any club would be that its players would be kicked out – at least until another war came along.

Norris demanded that both clubs should be kicked out of the league. This met with uproar from the norther clubs who dominated the league, at which point Norris announced that he was ready to start a Midland and Southern Football League which would be untainted with the whiff of match fixing. What’s more he would make public the serious deficiencies in the League’s case.

Eventually the League agreed to talk with Norris, and they offered him a deal. The League would deliver the election of Arsenal to the First Division if he let go of his claims that Liverpool and Manchester United be expelled. Norris agreed, and so the match fixing teams stayed in the First Division along with Chelsea, but Arsenal were promoted to the top league, along with the two clubs who ended up first and second before the war in the Second Division.

So as we welcome Liverpool, we should recognise them as one of the two great match fixing outfits. We might also recognise that this year is the 20th anniversary of them last winning the league and much more sadly and infinitely more seriously the 25th anniversary of Heysel Stadium Disaster when their fans attacked and were responsible for the death of numerous Italian fans.

“Making the Arsenal” – the story of Arsenal in 1910 – more details here.

Heroes of the early Arsenal: Frank Heppinstall

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Here is a letter that appeared on Untold Arsenal on 6th February 2010 at 1036, from a Norwegian supporter…

I love Arsenal since 1976. The beste team ever was with Henry, Vieira, Bergkamp and Pires.
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I am finished with Arsenal now because i dont think they will win anything. Today [...]

Chelsea: the biggest fix in the history of league football.

I wrote recently about the old story, still propagated by Tottenham supporters, that somehow Arsenal had stolen a place from Tottenham in Division I in 1919. The article is on this web site if you want to find it – just scroll down after this piece.

And then it struck me that since in the modern [...]

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Researching the history of football 100 years ago, there are some clubs that just seem to be boring, mundane and everyday, but some which sparkle with life. Everton is one of the latter.

Not that the life was all good and jolly – rather as we look at football 100 or more years ago life at [...]

The "fixed" promotion, the corruption and the match fixing. How the Football League does business

There was a rather strange comment on our sister site Untold Arsenal this week in which an Aston Villa fan said that Arsenal supporters have no right to comment on Villa when in fact Arsenal had bribed their way into the first division in 1919.

I must admit I thought that the old Tiny Totts propaganda [...]

Henry Norris fixes Fulham’s promotion and gets ready to bid for Arsenal

By the end of January 1910 Henry Norris – owner of Fulham FC – was firmly established as a man who was talking an awful lot about Woolwich Arsenal FC and its impending demise.

And as always happens in such circumstances journalists went a-digging.

For those that were interested there were plenty of strange things to find [...]

100 years have gone by and we are still beating Bolton by two goals to nil

And so, just as we did twice this year, 100 years ago we beat Bolton 2-0. Not the exact self-same scores of course, because this was the score at the Manor Ground, and we lost the game in Bolton (when Bolton actually did play in Bolton – unlike today) 0-3 back in September. But it [...]

The gulf between the top 2 divisions 100 years ago was as big as today

Woolwich Arsenal v Bolton W, 29 January 1910

After the success last weekend with a victory against low-flying Middlesbrough Arsenal played bottom of the table Bolton for the next home match.

Bolton were one of the original members of the League, having been formed 1874, 12 years before Arsenal. While Arsenal started out as Dial Square, Bolton [...]

100 years ago to the day, Norris expresses his first interest in Arsenal

On 22 January 1910 Arsenal won a league match (a rarity in itself in a rotten season), but events elsewhere overshadowed the win.

However I have a real feeling that very few people actually realised just how desperate things were that weekend – and indeed if one didn’t go to either of the meetings on the [...]

Will Arsenal be relegated? Arsenal v Boro, 100 years ago

There’s no indication that the Woolwich Arsenal players had anything to do with the two momentous meetings held in Woolwich Town Hall on 22 January 1910 – the meetings which set in train the events that ended up with the formation of the modern Arsenal. After all they had a game to play, and they [...]

Without the events of 100 years ago today, there would be no Arsenal

22 January 1910 is a date that should be remembered by every Arsenal supporter, and yet somehow it is just another day. I doubt that many other web sites will remember this day – and indeed even Arsenal FC seem to have forgotten it.

But this was the day, 100 years ago, when when Woolwich Arsenal [...]

Football 1.0 – what did it look like?

Football 1.0 is a shorthand way of defining the organisation of clubs at the start of the professional era.

The defining moment was January 1884 when Preston NE played Upton Park in the FA Cup, and following a complaint from Upton Park that Preston paid their players, Preston were ejected.

Other clubs were also informally paying players [...]

Arsenal in the FA Cup - 100 years ago.

I have a special feeling about 16th January 1910, as it is the day on which Making the Arsenal (the novel) starts its story. Jacko Jones has been sent off to wildest Plumstead (then part of Kent, not a part of London) to watch the FA Cup first round match, Woolwich Arsenal v Watford).

Lacking much [...]

Arsenal plan to drop white sleeves from their shirts - again

There is a story going around that Arsenal are going to come out with another special home shirt, in the same way that they did for the last season at Highbury.

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The story goes that Nike [...]

Arsenal take on Watford in the Cup 100 years ago

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In 1910 there was only a First and Second Division of the Football League, and so the clubs in minor leagues (most prominently the Southern League which had two divisions) played out ties in the preliminary rounds, and then [...]

Arsenal's financial problems: we're not the only ones in trouble.

The main news today (12 January 2010) concerns the further revelations about Manchester United and the way in which their owners have not only led them into unprecedented debt, but how simultaneously they have personally taken £20 million out of the club.

If you have followed my ramblings on the subject of Arsenal 100 years ago, [...]

Stories circulate about Arsenal’s financial problems.

10 January 1910 and the death of Woolwich Arsenal gets closer and closer

The desperate hope at the end of 1909 had been that Woolwich Arsenal could return to the winning streak (well, at least, a non-losing streak) that they had had in late November and early December.

A few good wins, the crowds would rise, and [...]

Preparing for Sheffield United. Woolwich Arsenal in 1910

100 years ago no matches were being postponed so probably the weather was not so troublesome as it was 100 years later. Mind you 100 years ago it would have taken a volcano or fog to postpone a game. Health and safety had not yet been invented.

So next up was Sheffield United away – certain [...]

If we could go back to Arsenal 100 years ago, what would the club look like?

January 1910, and Arsenal played in Woolwich. We were in the First Division, but had never won any of the major trophies, such as the League or the Cup. The nearest we had come to was being in the semi final of the FA Cup two years running.

The ground could hold around 33,000, but [...]

2010: the year of three major Arsenal Anniversaries

Anniversaries come in all shapes and sizes.

Just a month ago, at the end of 2009, we had the 100th anniversary of the first ever league match against Tottenham Hotspur. In 2010 we have three big ones.

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The edition of Arsenal A Complete Record which I have includes a record of [...]

27th December 1909. Woolwich Arsenal vs Liverpool

After two home defeats (against Notts County and Newcastle) in the Christmas period, 1909, Woolwich Arsenal finally managed to salvage a point from a home game, drawing one all in front of 15,000.

It was the very least needed, given that the next match on January 1 1910 was Liverpool away.

The only surprise in the Arsenal [...]