There is an interesting piece on the Guardian web site today (30 October 2009) which has a commentary about Arsenal’s promotion in 1919.
It repeats the age old stories about the “fixed” promotion which are by and large lifted from the Tottenham Version of History.
I’ve written a reply which is now on the Guardian web site, but thought you might like to read it here…
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How sad that even here you re-run the old Henry Norris stories without checking up on the real details. Fortunately a new book MAKING THE ARSENAL is published today as a start of a much overdue attempt to set the record of the whole period leading up to this event straight.
Here is what happened.
In the 1914/1915 league season there had been wholesale match fixing – particularly at the end of the season and both Liverpool and Manchester United were found guilty by the FA.
But no punishment was laid down because the season struggled to a close in war time, and matters were held over until 1919.
Arsenal had finished 6th (not 5th as many reference books wrongly state, because they work out the goal average in the 1950s manner, not the way it was done earlier in the century) and there was a meeting to decide on the new set up, as you say, expanded by two clubs.
The League proposed ignoring the match fixing scandal and simply relegating two teams and promoting four. But that would let Manchester U and Liverpool off the hook and both the relegated clubs and others in Division II were not going to have that.
The League did not want to relegate or expel Manchester or Liverpool because their base had always been in the north, and they were being challenged in the south by the Southern League which at the time was a serious rival to the northern Football League. Besides Manchester U had by then opened Old Trafford (opened in 1910) which held 70,000 people and had won league and Cup in the past.
Compromises were set up but Sir Henry Norris (he was knighted for his work in the war) said no compromise, and rallied the relegated clubs and the top six.
The League then offered Norris a deal in which the bottom two would go down (including Tottenham) and the top two of Division II go up, as normal. The two other teams going up would be those who had given service to the Football League.
Arsenal were nominated at this point, because they were the first professional team in London, and had stood up to the FA when the FA ordered all other teams not to play Woolwich Arsenal except in the FA Cup. As a result Arsenal joined the League, instead of the Football League,. and brought professional football south. Norris accepted, and Arsenal went up.
This sort of deal was not unusual – in 1905, in an attempt to get more London professional clubs into the Football League, Chelsea were given a place in the League even though they had no team, no club, no support, no history of playing ANY matches at all. All they had was a lease on a greyhound racing stadium.
I hope that makes it a little clearer.
Tony Attwood. Editor: the Woolwich Arsenal blog. www.woolwicharsenal.co.uk
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