Herbert Chapman

Chapman was born in Kiveton Park, near Rotherham on 19 January 1878. His father, John, was a coal miner, but rather than spend his own life working down the pit, the young Herbert was bright enough to win a place at Sheffield Technical College (later to become part of the University of Sheffield), where he studied mining engineering.

Chapman was one of eleven children and was born into a keen sporting family, with two of his brothers also playing professional football. The most successful of these was his younger brother Harry, who played for The Wednesday during the 1900s, winning two League Championships and an FA Cup. His elder brother Thomas played for Grimsby Town, while another brother, Matthew, later became a director of the same club.

Chapman's playing career was that of a typical journeyman, owing mostly to the fact he often played as an amateur; this meant that whether he could play for a particular club was dictated by whether he could find an appropriate job nearby. He first played as a youth for his local side, Kiveton Park Colliery, winning the Hatchard Cup in 1894 alongside team-mate William Ross. He left the village that summer to join Ashton North End, before moving on to Stalybridge Rovers and then Rochdale (not to be confused with the modern-day Rochdale) – all three clubs being members of the Lancashire League. Chapman played at inside right, and although he lacked the skill of his brother Harry Chapman, he compensated for it with his strength and robustness.

In 1898, he moved to Second Division Grimsby Town. Though now playing in the professional Football League, Chapman was still an amateur at this stage and obtained a job with a firm of local solicitors to earn his way. Grimsby started the season poorly – they were near the bottom of the division by Christmas and were beaten 7–0 by Preston North End in the FA Cup, but rallied to finish tenth at the end of the 1898–99 season. By this time Chapman had been dropped from the team, having been unsuccessfully moved to centre forward, an unfamiliar position for him. He was released by Grimsby and drifted down into non-league football with a brief spell at Swindon Town, playing three games and scoring twice, but had to leave the club as he was unable to find a job in the area. He moved on to see out the season with Sheppey United, who finished bottom of the Southern League in 1899–1900. Chapman finished as United's top scorer but was injured at the end of this season, and still unable to find a job. Disheartened, he returned to his home town and turned out for Worksop Town of the Midland League in 1900–01, while resuming his studies, this time at Old Firth College in Sheffield.

Because of his studies, he mainly played for Worksop's reserves, but in a first-team match against Northampton Town he caught the opposition's eye and they offered him a contract, leading him to turn professional for the first time in 1901. He played for Northampton for the whole 1901–02 season, finishing as top scorer with 14 goals in 22 games for the club. …

In 1907, as he was about to leave Tottenham Hotspur, Chapman had recommended Spurs team-mate Walter Bull to his old club Northampton Town, as their new manager. However, Bull changed his mind, and in turn recommended that Chapman take the job instead. Chapman changed his mind about retiring from the game, and instead agreed to become player-manager of Northampton Town. Northampton had finished bottom of the Southern League two seasons running immediately before Chapman's appointment, but Chapman turned the club around within a short period of time.

At the time, teams rarely employed tactics of any sort – Chapman would later remark: "No attempt was made to organise victory. The most that I remember was the occasional chat between, say two men playing on the same wing." As a manager, he sought to change that; after seeing Northampton lose to Norwich City despite dominating, Chapman opined that "a team can attack for too long". He thus set about creating a tactical framework for all his players; he dropped the half backs (midfield) back to give his forwards more space and draw the opposition defenders out of the penalty area, while encouraging his own back line to pass their way out of trouble. Gradually, he created a style of highly organised, counter-attacking football, which was at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy but nevertheless highly effective; Swindon Town's England international Harold Fleming, after losing 4–1 at home to Northampton, remarked to Chapman: "You have something more than a team: you have a machine."

To allow his system to reach its full potential, Chapman encouraged his chairman to spend money on new players. The club's first ever transfer fee, £400, was paid for Welsh international Lloyd Davies who remains Northampton's most capped player, winger Fred McDiarmid and playmaking centre half David McCartney. …

Chapman celebrated New Year in London before travelling north on a scouting trip to see Bury play Notts County on 1 January 1934. The following day, he travelled to his native Yorkshire to watch Sheffield Wednesday, Arsenal's next opponents, before spending a final night in his home town of Kiveton Park. He returned to London nursing a cold but was well enough to watch an Arsenal third-team match against Guildford City. Soon afterwards, his illness suddenly worsened; pneumonia set in, and Chapman quickly succumbed. He died in the early hours of 6 January 1934 at his home in Hendon. He was buried four days later in St Mary's Churchyard, Hendon.

Chapman was survived by a widow, Annie, two sons, Ken (born 1908) and Bruce (born 1911), and two daughters, Molly (born 1915) and Joyce (born 1919). Ken was a rugby union player for Harlequins, and later served as president of the Rugby Football Union.

Chapman was one of the first football managers in the modern sense of the word, taking full charge of the team, rather than letting board members pick the side. As well as his tactical innovations, he was a strong believer in physical fitness in football – he instituted a strict training regime and the use of physiotherapists and masseurs. He encouraged his players to openly discuss tactics and the game, instituting weekly team meetings at his clubs, and encouraged them to socialise in extra-curricular activities such as golf. He wrote regularly on football for the Sunday Express newspaper, and a collection of his writings was published after his death in a book, entitled Herbert Chapman on Football.

Unlike many of his contemporaries in Britain, Chapman was a fan of the continental game and counted among his friends Hugo Meisl and Jimmy Hogan, coaches of the Austrian "Wunderteam" of the 1930s. As long ago as 1909, he had taken his Northampton side on a tour of Germany to play 1. FC Nürnberg, and at Arsenal he had instituted an ongoing series of home-and-away friendlies against the likes of Racing Club de Paris. Chapman had proposed a Europe-wide club competition more than twenty years before the European Cup was instituted, and regularly took his teams abroad to play foreign sides. He was one of the first managers to consider signing black and foreign players; as well as signing Walter Tull, one of the first black professionals in the game, for Northampton Town in 1911, he attempted to recruit Austrian international goalkeeper Rudy Hiden for Arsenal in 1930, but was blocked by the Ministry of Labour, after protests from the Players' Union and the Football League. However, in the same year he did succeed in signing Gerard Keyser, the first Dutchman to play English league football, as an amateur, and Hiden was signed by Jimmy Hogan for Racing Club de Paris.

After attending a night-time match in Belgium in 1930 with his friend Hugo Meisl, Chapman became an early advocate of floodlights. He had lights installed in Highbury's new West Stand when it was constructed in 1932; however, they were used only for training, and Arsenal would have to wait until the 1950s for their officially sanctioned use in matches. …