Full name||colspan="2"|Herbert Chapman
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|Date of birth||colspan="2"|January 19, 1878
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|Place of birth||colspan="2"|Kiveton Park, Sheffield, England
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|Date of death||colspan="2"|January 6, 1934
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|Place of death||colspan="2"|Hendon, London, England
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|Height||colspan="2"|
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|-class="hiddenStructure"
|style="padding-right:1em;"|Nickname||colspan="2"|
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! style="background: #b0c4de;" colspan="3" | Club information
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|Current club||colspan="2"|n/a
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|Number||colspan="2"|
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|Position||colspan="2"|n/a
|-class="hiddenStructure"
! style="background: #b0c4de;" colspan="3" | Youth clubs
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|||colspan="2"|
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! style="background: #b0c4de;" colspan="3" | Professional clubs*
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| Years || Club || Apps (goals)
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|1898 1901-02 1902-03 1903-05 1905-07 1907-??||Grimsby Town Northampton Town Sheffield United Notts County Tottenham Hotspur Northampton Town||10 (4)
21 (2) 7 (1)
|-class="hiddenStructure"
! style="background: #b0c4de;" colspan="3" | National team
|-class="hiddenStructure"
|||||
|-
! style="background: #b0c4de;" colspan="3" | Teams managed
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|1907-12 1912-19 1921-25 1925-34||colspan="2"|Northampton Town Leeds City Huddersfield Town Arsenal
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! style="font-size: 80%; font-weight: lighter;" colspan="3" |
* Professional club appearances and (goals) counted for the domestic league only.
|}
Herbert Chapman (January 19, 1878 – January 6, 1934) was an Englishfootball player and manager. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential managers in English football history.
Chapman was born in Kiveton Park, Sheffield. His father was a coal miner, but the young Herbert was bright enough to win a place at Sheffield Technical College, where he studied engineering. Chapman played football as well, first as an amateur for a number of clubs, including Stalybridge Rovers, Rochdale, Grimsby Town, Swindon Town, Sheppey United and Worksop Town. He turned professional at Northampton Town in 1901, and had spells at Sheffield United and Notts County, before moving to Tottenham Hotspur, where he was mainly a reserve player. His playing career was relatively inauspicious; every time he moved to a new club, he often took up an engineering job in the same town as his new club.
Chapman returned to Northampton as player-manager in 1907. Northampton were bottom of the Southern League when he joined, but he led the club to a title in 1909 and they were in the top four for each of the three seasons after that.
Leeds City
In 1912 he joined Leeds City as secretary-manager. He successfully lobbied for the side's re-admission to the Football League, and only just missed out on promotion to the First Division in 1914.. However, during World War I Leeds were involved in a series of financial irregularities, involving payments to 'guest' players during wartime matches, that resulted in the dissolution of the club in 1919 and several of its officials being banned from football for life. Chapman escaped a ban after appealing, claiming he had not been in direct control of the club (having quit to take charge of a munitions factory as part of the war effort) at the time.
Huddersfield Town
Chapman spent a brief spell as manager of a coking plant in Selby, and was unemployed for short while before returning to football. He joined Huddersfield Town in September 1920 as club secretary alongside manager Ambrose Langley, an old colleague of his brother Harry. Chapman became full manager the following March. Between 1920 and 1925, Chapman led the most successful period in Huddersfield's history, winning the 1922FA Cup, and the Football League in 1924 and 1925. After his departure for Arsenal, the team he had formed went on to win the 1926 championship as well, an unprecedented 'three in a row'.
Arsenal
A bronze bust of Chapman stands inside Arsenal Stadium as a tribute to his achievements at the club.
After joining Arsenal in 1925, Chapman implemented a new strategy, originally suggested by player Charlie Buchan, that ruthlessly exploited a June 1925 change to the offside law. The change had reduced the number of opposition players that an attacker needed between himself and the goal-line from three to two. Buchan's idea was to move the centre half from a roaming position in midfield to a 'stopper' position in defence. With one forward brought back into midfield, this changed the usual formation from 2-3-5 to 3-3-4, or a "WM", so called after the shape it formed spelled out the letters. This meant the offside trap was no longer the responsibility of the two full-backs, but the single central defender, while the full backs were pushed wider to cover the wings.
Success was not immediate, but Chapman persevered and after several years, Arsenal became one of the most fearsome attacking sides in English football. He combined his revolutionary change in tactics with signing some of the biggest stars in British football, including Cliff Bastin, David Jack, Alex James and Eddie Hapgood. After losing the 1927 Cup final after a freak goalkeeping error, Chapman's Arsenal won the 1930 FA Cup (beating his old side, Huddersfield). This laid down the foundations for a decade in which Arsenal would be the dominant team; Arsenal picked up a First Division title in 1930-31, scoring a club record 127 goals, becoming the first team from the south of England to win the League. Two years later they followed it up with another title, this time scoring 118 League goals.
Chapman died suddenly in January 1934, at the age of 55. Reportedly, he had attended a reserves' match on a wet and windy day while nursing a heavy cold, against his doctor's advice; the cold worsened and soon became pneumonia, and Chapman quickly succumbed. By then, he had made Arsenal the undisputed best in England, and the team went on to win a third title that year and another title year after that. Arsenal were the second side to win three League titles in a row, and no team was to repeat the feat until Liverpool in 1982-4.
England
In 1933, Chapman became the first professional manager in charge of England for the first international against Italy in Rome. He did not have any input into the selection process, the team being determined by the FA's International Selection Committee. The result was a 1-1 draw.
Legacy
He 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, Chapman was also a pioneer of physical fitness in football - he instituted a strict training regime and the use of physiotherapists. His innovative ideas spread beyond the training pitch. He was an early advocate of floodlights, white footballs and numbered shirts among many others, as well as reputedly being the driving force behind the renaming of London Underground's Gillespie Road station to Arsenal. He also changed Arsenal's kit from all red, used by a great many football clubs, to red with white sleeves - the famous Arsenal kit that survives to this day. The tradition of both teams walking out together at the FA Cup Final was started in 1930, due to Herbert Chapman's involvement with both clubs and has continued since.
In 2003 Champan was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his impact as a manager. A blue plaque commemorating Chapman was unveiled in March 2005, at 6 Haslemere Avenue, Hendon, where he lived from 1926 until his death. Chapman was the first footballer or football manager to be commemorated in this way.
A bronze bust of Chapman stands in the entrance of the marble halls of Arsenal's home ground, Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, in tribute to his achievements at the club. A replica of this bust is to be commissioned by Arsenal Football Club for the centenary of Huddersfield Town Football Club in 2008. He is the only former Arsenal manager to have been honoured this way. He is buried at Hendon Parish Church, north London.
