The history of Arsenal Football Club between 1886 and 1966 covers the time from the club's foundation, through the first two major periods of success (the 1930s, and the late 1940s and early 1950s, respectively) and the club's subsequent decline in the early 1960s.
Arsenal Football Club was founded in 1886 as a munition workers' team from Woolwich, then in Kent. They turned professional in 1891 and joined The Football League two years later. They were promoted to the First Division in 1904 but in 1910 the club went into voluntary liquidation due to financial problems and were bought out by a consortium of businessmen. New majority shareholder Sir Henry Norris improved the club's financial standing and moved the team to Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, north London in 1913. In 1919, after the First World War, the club was voted into the newly expanded First Division, where they have remained ever since.
It was not until the appointment of Herbert Chapman as manager in 1925 that Arsenal had their first period of major success. Chapman modernised and reformed the club's practices and tactics, and under him and his successor George Allison (who took over after Chapman's death in January 1934), Arsenal won five First Division titles and two FA Cups in the 1930s. After the Second World War, Tom Whittaker continued the success, leading the club to two First Division titles and an FA Cup. After Whittaker's death Arsenal's fortunes gradually declined; by 1966, they were consistently finishing around the middle of the league table and had not won a trophy in thirteen years. This led to the dismissal of Billy Wright as manager in 1966, and the appointment of Bertie Mee.
Early years (1886–1910)
The club was founded as Dial Square Football Club in 1886 by a group of workers employed by the Dial Square workshop at the Royal Arsenal, an armaments factory in Woolwich, which was then in Kent but was incorporated into London in 1889. They were led by a Scotsman, David Danskin, who purchased the club's first football, Jack Humble and, later, former Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Fred Beardsley. Dial Square played their first match on 11 December 1886 against Eastern Wanderers on an open field on the Isle of Dogs, which they won 6–0. The club was renamed Royal Arsenal soon afterwards, reportedly on Christmas Day. Initially the club played on Plumstead Common, but soon sought alternative homes, firstly the Sportsman Ground in Plumstead before moving to the adjacent Manor Ground in 1888. Unhappy with the Manor Ground's poor facilities, the club moved to the nearby Invicta Ground in 1890, before returning to the Manor Ground three years later as the Invicta Ground's rent proved too expensive.
During this period, Royal Arsenal were successful in various local trophies, winning both the Kent Senior Cup and London Charity Cup in the 1889–90 season and the London Senior Cup in 1890–91; they also entered the FA Cup for the first time in 1889–90. A gulf between Arsenal and the professional sides from Northern England soon became apparent, and Arsenal faced the threat of their amateur players being lured away by the money which professional sides could offer; after Derby County had played Arsenal in an FA Cup tie in 1891, they attempted to sign two of Arsenal's amateur players on professional contracts. Royal Arsenal's move to professionalism in 1891 was frowned upon by many of the amateur southern clubs, and they were banned from participating in local competitions by the London Football Association. With friendlies and the FA Cup the only matches available for Royal Arsenal, they attempted to set up a southern equivalent of The Football League, but the move failed. The club changed its name to Woolwich Arsenal in 1893 when it formed a limited liability company. The club was invited to join the Football League in 1893, initially in the Second Division, becoming the first Southern club to enter the League. In response, some of the club's amateur players who rejected professionalism and wanted a workers' team to represent just the Royal Arsenal, broke away to form a short-lived alternative side, Royal Ordnance Factories. Tragedy struck on November 23, 1896, when Arsenal player and first-ever captain Joe Powell died aged 23 of tetanus, having broken his arm tackling a Kettering player.The Lancet December 5, 1896, page 1629 Woolwich Arsenal played in the Second Division for eleven seasons, and generally occupied mid-table positions before the appointment of Harry Bradshaw as manager in 1899; Bradshaw and his signings, including goalkeeper Jimmy Ashcroft (Arsenal's first England international) and captain Jimmy Jackson, won promotion to the First Division in the 1903–04 season. Bradshaw moved on to Fulham in May 1904, before Arsenal had kicked a ball in the top flight. Despite some strong performances in the FA Cup – the club reached the semi-finals in 1905–06 and 1906–07 – Arsenal were unable to challenge for the League title, only twice finishing above tenth place in the First Division between 1904 and 1913. One cause of this decline was the club's ongoing financial problems; despite the boom in football during the early 20th century, the club's geographic isolation, in the relatively underpopulated area of Plumstead (then on the outskirts of urban London), meant that attendances and thus income were low. To stay afloat, Woolwich Arsenal were forced to sell their star players (including Ashcroft, as well as Tim Coleman and Bert Freeman), and slowly started to slip down the table, which compounded their financial situation as crowds fell. By the end of the decade the average attendance at Manor Ground was 11,000, a little over half of what it had been in 1904. The club was close to bankruptcy, and in 1910 went into voluntary liquidation before being bought out by a consortium of businessmen; the largest shareholder amongst the new owners was the property magnate Sir Henry Norris, who was also the chairman of Fulham.
Move to Highbury and the promotion controversy (1910–1925)
Norris was acutely aware of the problems associated with Woolwich Arsenal's location, and was desperate to improve the club's income. First, he tried to merge Woolwich Arsenal with his other club, Fulham. When that was blocked by the Football League, Norris abandoned the merger and looked to move the club elsewhere, eventually picking a site in Highbury, north London. Despite objections both from Woolwich-based fans and residents of Highbury, Norris saw the move through, reportedly spending on building the new stadium, designed by Archibald Leitch, on a divinity college's playing fields. Woolwich Arsenal moved there in the 1913 close season, having finished bottom and been relegated to the Second Division in the 1912–13 season. The club replaced the "Woolwich" in its name with "The" in April 1914, finally becoming plain "Arsenal" in November 1919, although the press at the time continued to refer to them as "The Arsenal" and some still do. The move to Highbury brought about much larger crowds; the average attendance in Arsenal's first season at the new ground was 23,000 (compared to 11,000 at the Manor Ground) and rose further after promotion in 1919, finally warding off the spectre of financial ruin.
The club controversially rejoined the First Division in 1919, despite having only finished sixth in 1914–15, the last season of competitive football before the First World War — although an error in the calculation of goal average meant Arsenal had actually finished fifth, an error which was corrected by the Football League in 1975. The First Division was being expanded from 20 teams to 22, and the two new entrants were to be elected at an AGM of the Football League. On past precedent the two places would be given to the two clubs that would otherwise have been relegated, namely Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. Instead one of the extra places was awarded to Chelsea and a ballot was called for the remaining place. The candidates included 20th-placed Tottenham and, from the Second Division, Barnsley (who had finished third); Wolverhampton Wanderers, (fourth); Birmingham (fifth, later amended to sixth); Arsenal; Hull City (seventh); and Nottingham Forest (eighteenth). The League voted to promote sixth-placed Arsenal, for reasons of history over merit; Norris argued that Arsenal be promoted for their "long service to league football", having been the first League club from the South. The League board agreed; Arsenal received 18 votes, Tottenham 8, Barnsley 5 and Wolves 4, with a further 6 votes shared between the other clubs.
The announcement of the vote reportedly caught all the clubs, except Arsenal, unawares and the affair is a major contributing factor to the rivalry which has fuelled the long-standing enmity between Arsenal and Tottenham. There is also an inconsistency in the argument – if "long service to league football" was the criterion for promoting Arsenal instead of Tottenham then Wolverhampton Wanderers, who finished two points ahead of Arsenal and were founder members of the Football League, would appear to have had a stronger claim. It has been alleged that this was due to backroom deals or even outright bribery by Sir Henry Norris, colluding with his friend John McKenna, the chairman of Liverpool and the Football League, who recommended Arsenal's promotion at the AGM. No conclusive proof of wrongdoing has come to light, though other aspects of Norris's financial dealings unrelated to the promotion controversy have fuelled speculation on the matter; Norris resigned as chairman and left the club in 1929, having been found guilty by the Football Association of financial irregularities; he was found to have misused his expenses account, and to have pocketed the proceeds of the sale of the Arsenal team bus. Regardless of the circumstances of their promotion, Arsenal have remained in the top division since 1919, and as a result hold the English record for the longest unbroken stretch of top-flight football. There appear to be no extant records of the meetings which elected Arsenal to the First Division in 1919, however the book Making the Arsenal proposes a different reason for their election in that year, arguing that match-fixing issues from the final year of football before the war (1914–15) were used by Norris as a weapon in his battle to get Arsenal promoted. He demanded that Liverpool and Manchester United (some of whose players had been found guilty of match fixing) be punished by relegation or expulsion, and threatened to organise a breakaway from the league by Midlands and southern clubs if nothing was done. To placate him the League offered Arsenal a place in the First Division.
The club's return to the First Division was not immediately successful. Under Leslie Knighton, the club never finished higher than ninth, and in the 1923–24 season came close to returning to the Second Division, finishing 19th and only a point clear of the relegation zone. Arsenal did no better the following season, finishing 20th (although the club was a lot safer this time, being seven points clear of the relegation places), which was the last straw for Norris; he fired Knighton in May 1925, and appointed the Huddersfield Town manager Herbert Chapman in his place.
Chapman era (1925–1934)