Guest Post – The Early Semi-Finals
Apr 15th, 2015 by 'holic
I think it is something of an omen that prior to our FA Cup match at Brighton our very own North Bank Ned contributed a piece, and he has felt compelled to repeat his generous contribution prior to our Wembley semi-final weekend. We made it past Championship opposition then. It will happen again now. Right? Thanks Ned, you are a top man.
Our first FA Cup semi-final was on March 31st, 1906. Newcastle United beat Woolwich Arsenal 2-0 at Stoke’s old Victoria Ground with goals from Jimmy Howie and Colin Veitch. Though Newcastle were the defending league champions, we had beaten them 4-3 at home in the league the previous Christmas and would draw the return fixture in mid-April. I hope it isn’t a bad omen for this year’s Cup run that we had beaten Manchester United, then a Division 2 side, 2-3 away in the quarters at United’s old Bank Street ground.
Goalkeeper Jimmy Ashcroft had kept three clean sheets in four Cup games before that. He was the club’s first great keeper, with a record 20 clean sheets in the 1903-04 league season, and six in a row in 1901-02, a record only matched by Alex Manninger in 1998. He was sold to Blackburn Rovers in 1908 because the club needed the money.
March 1907 brought a second successive semi-final defeat, 3-1 to eventual Cup winners The Wednesday at St. Andrew’s in Birmingham. Billy Garbutt scored our goal. The Stockport-born outside right played only 65 games for us between 1905 and 1908 before being sold to Blackburn, but went on to a distinguished coaching career with Roma, Napoli, AC Milan, Athletic Bilbao and, most notably, Genoa.
Our first winning semi was against Southampton in 1927, 2-1 in front of a 52,000 crowd at Stamford Bridge. Arsenal legends Charlie Buchan and Joe Hulme scored the goals. It was our first and only competitive game against Southampton until 1966.
Charlie Buchan scored five times in seven cup ties that season in what was his penultimate season. He had been Herbert Chapman’s first signing and captain, though he had turned out as an amateur for Woolwich Arsenal as long ago as 1910. With Chapman, Buchan created the WM formation in the mid-1920s, in which the centre-half dropped back to mark the opposing centre forward and the two inside forwards forwards dropped into advanced midfield roles, turning the traditional 2-3-5 formation into a 3-2-2-3. Joe Hulme would go on to be the first player to appear in five Wembley Cup Finals, four for us and one for Huddersfield at the tail end of his career.
Infamously we lost the 1927 final 1-0 to Cardiff City in a scrappy affair, letting the FA Cup out of England for the first time. Goalkeeper Dan Lewis spilled a shot from Hugh Ferguson into his own net, blamed on the greasiness of his new jersey. Arsenal keepers subsequently started wearing old, unwashed jerseys. Another sartorial note: the Cup Final referee wore a bow tie.
Saturday’s game will be our first FA Cup semi-final against Reading, and only our fourth FA Cup tie against them overall. On all three previous occasions we were drawn away, winning 0-1 (1935, 5th Round, a Cliff Bastin goal), 1-2 (1972, 4th Round, Pat Rice and an o.g.) and 1-3 (1987, 3rd Round, Martin Hayes and a Charlie Nicholas brace). We’ve been drawn as the ‘away’ team again this time.
A 1-4 win on Saturday would do nicely.
45 Responses to “Guest Post – The Early Semi-Finals”
First alcopop
All those great names. Buchan, Bastin, Hulme, Rice, Nicholas … erm, Martin Hayes…
Thanks Ned,
My reply to BTM missed the Guvnor’s cut-off so I post below. But this is cracking build- up material to Saturday. If I am not mistaken we are played twelve , won twelve against Reading do let’s hope it’s not unlucky thirteen.
My two grandsons are visiting the Home of Football with their Saturday team tomorrow. One is already on the right path, I hope the other will realise the error of his ways.
And now my reply to BTM about the PSG game in the last drinks
BTM
Yes with you on Cavani who I am consistently underwhelmed by.In the first half he was free in half an acre and had he not tried to control the ball as if wearing diving boots he had to score. He had a poor World Cup and I really can’t see what the fuss is about. If PSG need home grown players we have several Frenchmen who are better than what they have in the same positions. Debuchy, Koscielny and Giroud. Let’s not tell them
Cynic, I love you. 😉
CL qualification. Again.
Great stuff Ned. I think you’re being greedy with your “1-4 would do nicely”; 0-3 would be fine by me.
COYG
Scratch qualification. Bugger; it’s the Europa League for me.
Top class Ned.
Cavani has been having a poor time in France and has largely been 2nd fiddle to Ibra & his ego. In the right team he’d blossom – in much the same way Giroud & Danny have. That said, I don’t think we need him. The big attraction with the current side is that anyone can score so there’s no primary reliance on anyone. Just ask Theo! 🙂
Nice one Ned, good to see the monks are still poring over their histories.
0-3 would do me too, Pangloss, but I think Ned was looking at the progression of results, which calls for 4 goals in this one.
0-1 would also do for that matter.
Öskar
Hmmm Joe, but can they score when they absolutely have to? That is the question which has been largely unanswered in recent years.
Cavani has never had a good game that I’ve seen, but then I guess I’ve seen possibly 1% of his games, so unfair to judge him. He did hit a cracking volley in today’s game which anyone would have been proud to get on target. On another day it would also have found a gap and been one for the show reel.
Öskar
Thanks Ned,
With regard to Billy Garbutt, I hadn’t realised before now that British coaches were exported to Italy and Spain around that time and became successful. Not too many have been so in more recent years.
UTA.
NG@10: There were many British coaches working on the continent, the greatest of whom was Jimmy Hogan who developed the quick, short passing game in central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. You can draw a straight line from his Austrian ‘Wunderteam’ in the 1930s to the Hungarian side of the 1950s and Holland’s Total Football. Celebrated in Europe to this day (he died in 1974) but rarely in his homeland then or now.
Otd@8: Spot on.
ttg@3: You are right v Reading. Played 12, W12. Three FA Cup wins, three league cup wins and six Premier league victories.
Cheers Ned. Could only get a ticket in the Reading End in 1987. Was very revealing when half the crowd went up when the first Arsenal goal was scored.
Could n’t get 2 for Saturday, so punted my single out to True Storey. Hope those that are going have a great day out.
Fine preview Ned. I like the prediction based on mathematical progression.
Nice if it happened, but like Oskar, 1-0 to the good guys will do fine.
COYGs
Nice work, Ned!
I do of course expect us to win on Saturday. We are in a rather similar position to last year in that we are playing a Championship side that has been struggling somewhat all season and while we nearly mucked it up then it was a rather one-sided affair where we hit the woodwork four times if memory serves me. We were also under much, much heavier pressure then as we were massive favourites to win the cup and anything but winning it would have constituted, in footballing terms, total disaster. We are of course huge favourites to win the semi but with Liverpool playing Villa in the other semi there is not the same expectation that we shall win the whole thing easily.
So what am I trying to say with all this? Well, I don’t know to be honest! But I am starting to be a bit restless, I am really looking forward to Saturday when a bunch of us here will make a day of it with the fun and games starting at noon and then hopefully going on into the night in celebration of having secured a place in the final.
Up the Arse!
@Ned; dat memory lane rouser was very educative nd refreshing;my take for saturday is :arse. 2 – 0Reading! Dat will b more like it considering arsenal recent general scoring median! Up Gonners!!!
Restless and nervous sums me up too. Its a given for a lot that we will win Saturday but of course it doesn’t turn out to be like that. We should know for Wigan last time around nearly killed the dream.
Reading has Steve Clarke and he is making the same noises as jose having worked with him. He already claimed that after beating Arsenal his team only plays after 4 weeks or something. Well well well now that should ensure we beat the hell out of him and his team.
The one factor that maybe less is the pressure on us. There is pressure on us to win but i think the team is far more relaxed than last time and i expect a professional workman like performance. 2-0 to the good guys with Giroud and Alexis scoring.
Ned,
Really good read, thanks.
And just as interesting @11 too.
Thank you, ‘holics all, for the kind words.
Trev: Jimmy Hogan’s story encapsulates so much that is (still) insular about the game in England. After Puskas’s Hungarians had humbled England in the famous 6-3 thrashing at Wembley in 1953 — first defeat on English soil at hands of continental opposition etc — the president of the Hungarian Football Association said, “Jimmy Hogan taught us everything we know about football”.
Hogan watched that game not as a honoured guest of the FA, but from the terraces with some Aston Villa youngsters he was coaching, and whose tickets he had bought. His ideas about developing players who had good technical ball control and were able to work as a team with quick, short interchanges of passes were not much cared for in England. In fact, when he returned to England ahead of World War 2, he was appointed as manager by Fulham. He was sacked within six months because the senior pros protested that they didn’t want to be coached technically or tactically; they just needed to be made fit and strong.
That 6-3 scoreline must have also seemed sweet revenge to Hogan. When Hogan returned to England destitute after being interned during World War 1 by Austria (he had been coaching in Vienna), as an enemy alien, he applied to the FA for financial assistance (ex-players who had suffered in the war could get given up to £200). The FA’s secretary, Fred Wall, offered him a pair of socks.
There is a strong Arsenal connection. Herbert Chapman was friends with Hogan and Hogan’s fellow coach of the Austrian Wunderteam of the 1930s, Hugo Meisl. Chapman, as ever the exception, was a fan of continental football. His own tactical innovations — his teams (Northampton, Leeds, Huddersfield and Arsenal) were built around a short-passing, fast counter-attacking game — were much informed by what was happening in continental football, and he regularly took his teams abroad to experience it first time. It is said that it was after watching an evening game in Paris in 1930 with Meisl and Hogan that Chapman decided to install floodlights at Highbury.
er ‘first hand’ not ‘first time’.
Cheers for the post NBN. And for all the extra info in the drinks. Fascinating stuff, which I had no clue about… until today.
Top shelf Ned. You and the monks have outdone yourselves.
Dropped by for a small drink among crazy schedule…some brilliant posts by NBN. How the tactical and technical ideas of the game transmitted from one culture to other always calls for fascinating reading. Football, the great unifier …
* applauds NED again @18 *
Marvellous stuff, sir !
H2H @21,
“Top shelf Ned”.
That’s what his mates all called him in the newsagents. 😉
H2H@21: We need to get out more… 🙂
Dr F@22: Hogan developed his ideas about ball playing from the skillful quick passing Scottish inside forwards he played with at Fulham and then married that with Dutch ideas of teamwork that he discovered during his first coaching job in Amsterdam.
To anyone interested in the history of football tactics, I recommend Jonathan Wilson’s excellent Inverting the Pyramid. It has been described as “coaching manual meets social history”, and is none the less fascinating for it.
Thanks for the piece Ned, and the drinks that have accompanied it. Much appreciated. 🙂
Is it Saturday yet???
No?
Ah, bugger…
Oooh, Trev@24, You ain’t half awful!
‘Holic@26: Pleasure is mine, Guv’nor. This club of ours has a magnificent history and we have played a significant role in modernising the game time and time again; I am coming to believe that AW is a reincarnation of Herbert Chapman (we are simple but devout folk at Castle Ned). Grateful for the opportunity to sit in a corner of this splendid establishment and occasionally share some of it with those who care listen.
Top stuff Ned. Keep flaying those monks. The product is far better than Buckfast.
NBN. Thanks for the history lesson. Very edumacational. 🙂
I’ll put a fiver on Wade ‘Bad News’ Barrett to defeat Mark Lawrenson.
http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32276357
On all but his FA Cup prediction. Wanker.
🙂
Reading the entire set of predictions, I see ‘Bad News’ did not after all predict Reading will beat Arsenal, as the BBC article says he did in the table near the top. If I offended ‘Bad News’ I certainly apologize, hope he doesn’t want to beat me up, and heartily congratulate him for predicting Arsenal 3 Reading 1. 🙂
Trust a jock to know all about Buckie!
Not that sort of ned, bath. 🙂
Heh @ Esso and Ned. 🙂
So Bayern’s entire medical staff has resigned after being blamed for their CL defeat this week?
GUARIDOLA FOR ARSENAL!!!!!!!
😀
My tickets for the semi arrived this morning and I now await sunshine, fun and frolics and the 4-1 win predicted by NBN
According to the clock on this site’s home page, it is now 54 years+ since the Spuds have won anything of note.
I, for one, will drink to their achievement. Anybody care to join me?
UTA.
I am glad you tipped me off about the bow tie Ned, its here:
http://www.thefa.com/sitecore/shell//~/media/images/thefaportal/pillars/thefa-cup-2014-15/second%20round%20proper/fred-keenorr-shakes-hands-arsenal-captain-1927.ashx
The Internet eh ?
A footnote to the post on the 1927 FA Cup campaign. As well as it being our first winning semi-final, it was also Reading’s first and only semi-final until this season (when for us it will be a record 28th). The good omen from 1927 is that they lost to the eventually winners; the bad omen, of course, is that so would we.
A5@41: And here’s some footage (with John Arlott commentary as a bonus).
https://youtu.be/CpftcY-7OwU
I like it Ned, though not as much as the bow tie and blazer of Mr William Frederick Bunnell, what style, what grace. I bet his whistle was highly polished and his pea of regular size. Atkinson take note.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>