How Arsenal Took Tottenham's Place, and Never Gave It Back

TLDR;

Arsenal’s 107-year unbroken run in English football’s top flight began with a controversial vote in 1919, not an achievement on the pitch. The club grew from a team of Royal Arsenal factory workers in Woolwich, moved north to Highbury, and won a place in the First Division while Tottenham Hotspur were left out. The story follows Arsenal’s transformation into one of England’s most successful clubs, while the vote continues to fuel the rivalry between the two North London sides.

• Arsenal’s roots lie in the Royal Arsenal weapons factory, where workers founded a football team in 1886.
• Financial difficulties led to a move from Woolwich to Highbury and, later, relegation in 1913.
• In 1919, Arsenal won a disputed vote for a place in the expanded First Division; Tottenham, who had been relegated, did not.
• Arsenal’s top-flight record survived major successes, difficult seasons, wartime disruption and a costly stadium move.

107 years without going down [0:00]

On 24 May 2026, Arsenal won the Premier League title for the first time in 22 years, while Tottenham avoided relegation on the final day, finishing 17th and two points above the drop. Arsenal had remained in English football’s top flight since 1919, an unbroken run of 107 years—longer than any other English club’s. That record began not with a match, but with a vote in Manchester that gave Arsenal a First Division place and left Tottenham out.

A club in a weapons factory [0:51]

Arsenal began in Woolwich, where the Royal Arsenal was a huge weapons factory employing thousands of men. In late 1886, workers including David Danskin and former Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Fred Beardsley formed a team and named it Dial Square, after their workshop. They played their first recorded match on 11 December against Eastern Wanderers on a rough pitch with ruts and open drains, wearing red in tribute to Nottingham Forest. The team soon became Royal Arsenal, adopted a badge featuring three cannons, and played on makeshift grounds, sometimes with spectators watching from army wagons. Woolwich was then in Kent, not London, and the club was a works team on the edge of the map.

Professional, and broke [2:23]

In a football culture dominated in the south by amateurs and public-school clubs, Royal Arsenal turned professional in 1891 and was banned from local competitions. It joined the Football League in 1893 as Woolwich Arsenal, becoming the first southern English club to do so, and earned promotion to the First Division in 1904. But its remote location, poor transport links and reliance on factory workers made the club difficult to sustain. When the arsenal cut jobs, attendance fell, and by 1910 the club had entered voluntary liquidation. Property developer Henry Norris bought it; after the League rejected his idea to merge Woolwich Arsenal with Fulham, he decided to move the club to a more populated area.

The move north [3:58]

Norris chose Highbury in north London, near an Underground station and surrounded by potential supporters. He leased St John’s College of Divinity’s playing fields for 21 years at a cost of £20,000. The reported lease, signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, prohibited matches on religious holidays and the sale of alcohol. Local residents and the borough council objected, while Clapton Orient and Tottenham Hotspur argued that the move invaded their territory. The League approved it, but Arsenal’s final season in Woolwich was disastrous: in 1912–13 the club won only three of 38 matches, finished last and was relegated. Arsenal opened at Highbury on 6 September 1913 with a 2–1 win over Leicester Fosse, and its crowds quickly doubled. The club dropped “Woolwich” from its name, but had not yet returned to the First Division when war began.

The room in Manchester [5:25]

English football continued for one season after the First World War began. Arsenal finished sixth in the Second Division in 1914–15, while Tottenham finished bottom of the First Division and were relegated. That season also featured a match-fixing scandal: Manchester United beat Liverpool 2–0 in a game involving players from both sides who had fixed the result and bet on it. The result helped United stay up, while Chelsea went down.

When football resumed, the League expanded the First Division from 20 clubs to 22. At a Manchester meeting on 10 March 1919, clubs unanimously voted to keep Chelsea in the division because it had been relegated after the fixed match. The remaining place went to Arsenal, which received 18 votes. Tottenham received eight, Barnsley five, and the rest were divided among other candidates. Arsenal had finished sixth in the Second Division, while Tottenham had been relegated; Derby and Preston had already won the two promotion places. Tottenham returned to the First Division after winning the Second Division the following season, but the vote became a lasting source of bitterness.

How did that happen? [7:26]

No complete record explains how Norris secured the 1919 vote. One popular account says League president John McKenna argued that Arsenal deserved the place because it had joined the League earlier than Tottenham—1893 compared with 1908. However, newspapers reporting the meeting did not mention such a speech, and Wolverhampton Wanderers had been in the League since 1888. Another explanation credits Norris’s wealth, political connections and months of discussions with other club chairmen. Deals or payments have long been alleged, but no evidence has been found.

Norris’s later conduct adds to the suspicion surrounding his reputation, but does not prove that the vote was bought. A 1927 Football Association inquiry into Arsenal’s finances found that Norris and another director had taken money they were not entitled to, including proceeds from the sale of the team bus. Norris left football and unsuccessfully sued the FA for libel. By then, Arsenal had secured its place in the First Division, where it has remained since 1919.

The man who built Arsenal [8:45]

Norris’s most important appointment was Herbert Chapman, hired in 1925 after winning two successive league titles with Huddersfield Town. Chapman arrived just as a change to the offside law made scoring easier: forwards now needed only two opponents between them and the goal. He responded by moving the centre-half back into defence between the two full-backs, creating a W-M formation that became widely copied in English football for the next 30 years.

Chapman also reshaped the wider identity of the club. He introduced shirt numbers, gave Arsenal white sleeves and campaigned for floodlights. In 1932, he persuaded London Underground to rename Gillespie Road station as Arsenal, still the network’s only station named after a football club. His spending brought in David Jack, the first player transferred for a five-figure fee, as well as Alex James and Cliff Bastin. Arsenal won the FA Cup in 1930 and league titles in 1931 and 1933. Chapman died of pneumonia in January 1934, aged 55, but the team won the title that season and the next, completing three consecutive league championships. Highbury also gained striking Art Deco stands, including an East Stand that remains a listed building and has been converted into flats.

Guests of the enemy [10:57]

During the Second World War, Highbury was used as an air-raid precautions station and was damaged by German bombs. Tottenham offered Arsenal a home, so Arsenal played its home matches at White Hart Lane—the ground of the club it had edged out of the First Division in 1919. Wartime football was disrupted as players served in the military and teams relied on whoever was home on leave. In 1941, Arsenal and other London clubs broke away to run their own competition, prompting the Football League to expel them; they were readmitted a year later after paying a small fine. Arsenal returned to a repaired Highbury in 1946, with its First Division place still intact.

A hundred and seven years [11:49]

Arsenal’s top-flight record continued through both triumphant and difficult periods. In 1971, the club won the league and FA Cup double, clinching the league at White Hart Lane. In 1989, Michael Thomas scored a stoppage-time goal at Anfield to secure the title, completing a dramatic 2–0 win Arsenal needed to achieve. Arsène Wenger arrived as manager in 1996, having previously worked in Japan with Nagoya Grampus Eight. He changed players’ approaches to eating, training and recovery, and won two doubles with stars including Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry.

In 2003–04, Arsenal went through the league season unbeaten, with 26 wins and 12 draws. The team became known as the Invincibles, and its unbeaten run reached 49 matches. In 2006, Arsenal left Highbury for the nearby Emirates Stadium, which cost about £390 million and was largely financed with borrowing. The club sold leading players for nearly a decade to help pay for it and went nine years without a trophy, yet remained in the top flight throughout. By comparison, Everton had the next-longest current top-flight spell, dating back to 1954.

The vote, a century later [13:17]

Arsenal appointed former captain Mikel Arteta as manager in December 2019, although he had never managed a club before. After three successive second-place league finishes, the team produced its best season in a generation in 2026, winning the league title for the first time in 22 years. Arsenal also reached the Champions League final in Budapest but lost to Paris Saint-Germain on penalties, and ended the season with its 14th English title and a record 14 FA Cups.

Tottenham spent the same season fighting relegation and secured survival on the final day. The two clubs still frame their rivalry around the 1919 vote: for Tottenham fans, Arsenal’s admission to the First Division remains the moment they believe the club took their place; Arsenal fans can point to the fact that their team has held that place ever since. The story began with Woolwich factory workers, continued through Norris’s move north and an unexplained vote, and produced Arsenal’s 107-year record without relegation.