Every Arsenal supporter with a sense of history knows that Herbert Chapman defined football management as we recognise it and might agree with me that, to this day — the 80th anniversary of his death from pneumonia 12 hours before a match against Sheffield United at Highbury — he remains arguably the greatest of them all.

Less widely appreciated is that Chapman had spent two years in the white shirt of Tottenham. It was his longest spell at any club during a journeyman forward’s career that began at Ashton-under-Lyne in the Pennine foothills and ended when, having left Spurs in 1907 to become player-manager at Northampton, he decided to hang up his boots the following summer.

At White Hart Lane he had played alongside Vivian Woodward, one of England’s leading strikers of all time and a figure prominent among the host I was privileged to study while writing The Life & Times of Herbert Chapman, whose publication is timed to coincide with the sad anniversary; the great man expired a couple of weeks before what would have been his 56th birthday.

Woodward was an old-fashioned amateur in that he practised as an architect while playing at the top level. Having captained Great Britain to a gold in both the 1908 and 1912 Olympics, he designed the main grandstand at the Antwerp stadium built for the 1920 event.

His England scoring figures — 73 goals in 53 matches — would be the record if amateur internationals were taken into account. Chapman wasn’t in Woodward’s class. Until it came to management. First at Huddersfield and then Arsenal, he built teams that became champions three years running; no one had done that before.

But in London he built more than a team. He made Arsenal the most prestigious club in the world, with a stadium befitting such status. On January the 6th, 1934, it fell silent. Chapman’s final derby had been a draw at White Hart Lane. The return at Highbury came soon after his death. Arsenal were beaten 3-1. The players seemed to have lost all appetite for the game. They regained it in time to take the title. He would have approved.

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