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English Football Legends Series

Herbert Chapman was one of the most successful and influential managers in the history of English football.

Herbert Chapman

Clubs Managed:
Northampton Town, Leeds City, Huddersfield Town, Arsenal

Honours:
League Championship, 4
FA Cup, 2

Playing Career

Like many great managers, before and since, Chapman's own playing career was undistinguished. Among others, he played for Northampton, Sheffield United and Tottenham, mostly as an amateur.

In 1907, he quit football to pursue a career in engineering.

At the time, his old club Northampton Town, were looking for a manager. Chapman recommended his Spurs team-mate Walter Bull, but Bull declined and suggested that Chapman take the job himself.

Northampton Town

Chapman subsequently changed his mind about retiring and became player-manager of Northampton Town. Within a short space of time he transformed the team from perennial strugglers, to Southern League champions.

Leeds City

In 1912 he was offered the job at struggling Second Division team Leeds City. Again, Chapman was successful in turning an ailing club around taking City to the brink of promotion.

However, football was then suspended due to the First World War and, shortly after it resumed, Leeds City were wound up due to financial irregularities.

Huddersfield Town

Chapman was one of five club officials to receive a life ban, but he successfully appealed and moved to Huddersfield Town side in 1920.

Within four years he'd transformed the ailing Yorkshire club into League champions.

"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."
Advertisement Herbert Chapman answered to become Arsenal manager

Arsenal

After retaining the title in 1925, Chapman applied for the vacancy at Arsenal. The Gunners had been fighting relegation for the previous two seasons and with limited funds for transfers it seemed a strange move, but Chapman was up for the challenge.

His first move was to recruit veteran forward Charlie Buchan, and together the two devised the revolutionary WM formation, a radical departure to the rigid 2-3-5 formation that most teams used.

With Buchan as captain, Arsenal finished second in 1925/26, behind Chapman's old club, Huddersfield Town.

However, this proved a false dawn, and they spent the next 5 years as a mid-table team.

In 1929/30, they finished 14th, but won the FA Cup, the club's first major trophy.

That win laid the foundation for a decade in which Arsenal would dominate English football, winning five league titles.

Death

Sadly, Chapman would only see the first two of those triumphs.

On 30 December 1933, Arsenal played out a goalless draw with Birmingham City, to put them 4 points clear. They were well on the way to a third straight title, but this would prove to be Chapman's last game in charge.

On New Year's day he travelled to Yorkshire to watch Sheffield Wednesday, Arsenal's next opponents. He returned to London complaining of a cold but was well enough to watch an Arsenal third team match.

Soon after, his illness became suddenly worse and he developed pneumonia. He died in the early hours of 6 January 1934 and was buried four days later at St Mary Parish Church, Hendon.

Legacy

Herbert Chapman died before Arsenal confirmed their third championship, but The Gunners league title wins of 1935 and 1938, and the FA Cup victory in 1936, owed much of the groundwork he laid.

But his influence spread far beyond 'on-field' success. He was hugely influential in the development of the game.

As well as his tactical innovations, he instituted the use of physiotherapists and masseurs, he was an early advocate of floodlights, and of the use of white footballs and numbered shirts.

He even proposed a Europe-wide club competition more than twenty years before the European Cup started.

At Arsenal, he added white sleeves to the previously all-red shirt, and is credited with successfully campaigning to have London Underground's Gillespie Road station re-named as Arsenal.

These were just some of his many innovations

He also had an uncanny knack in the transfer market, signing the likes of Cliff Bastin, David Jack and Alex James.

In 2003, Herbert Chapman was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his impact on English football.

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