Last November (it is now February 2025) I was in Mediterranean Spain in the trainer’s tiny office in El Rubial, the small and for a Scottish reason beautifully blue and white stadium of Aguilas Futbol Club. The trainer and ex-player, Fernando Lillo Lopez, was with me and showed me the draft of a book he is writing about the history of football from his Spanish perspective and in which he states that it was Herbert Chapman at Arsenal, who introduced the W:M tactical system. I counter, in the knowledge that the nigh-on peerless Jonathan Wilson had debunked the notion well over a decade earlier. He questions me. I tell him it is a myth, that I will write to him with an explanation of why. This article is it and, I hope, a little bit more. 
 

But first a little pedantry. It is conventional that football formations are notated from the back, e.g. 2:3:5, 4:4:2 or even nowadays 5:4:1 cum perhaps 3:4:3 cum God-knows what. But somehow both The Pyramid, albeit an Aztecian one, and W:M have been allowed to defy convention. It means that Jonathan’s instantly attractive book title “Inverting the Pyramid” should perhaps more accurately be the less catchy “Draining the Bowl” or perhaps “Tipping the Top”, neither of which does his work any justice, and “W:M”, the innovative essence of which was three-at-the-back, is actually M:W. 
 

But hey-ho. Three-across-the back was hardly a new idea, even in 1925, when the off-side law was changed from three to two, incidently precisely to what it had been in the beginning in Scotland. And by “the beginning” I mean 1872, just two years before England against its then only international rival had with three full-backs tried for the first time to shut-the-door, achieving a creditable draw, albeit only at home. However, there was a caveat. It had been done with a consequent complete lack of half-backs.
 

But moving on. There is, especially outwith the UK, a belief that teams in Britain play and played to an homogenous style. In part it is lack of appreciation that Britain does not mean England, that we in the United Kingdom, I am tempted to say, “have” but would accept “had until the Second World War” two major football leagues each with distinctive approaches to the game and perhaps one quote that still epitomises the depth of this divergence more than any. It was a remark made immediately after the “Wizards” match of 1928 when Scotland defeated England 1-5 at Wembley and by the Scottish captain that day, Jimmy McMullen. He said: 

“I want to emphasise that all our forwards are inherently clever. But I wish to say that the English tactics were wrong. The Saxon (as in Sasannach) wing-halves paid more attention to the wingers than the inside-forwards – therefore the latter were given a lot of space. It is a common thing in England to let wing-halves, and not full-backs, mark the wingers. It doesn’t pay and I don’t know why they pursue it.” 

Two things stand out. First, in England wing-halves might mark wingers, the implication being that in Scotland they did not and therefore that North of Border it was the job of the full-backs, by necessity playing wider. But it also clearly points to English teams making marking-choices and again implies some played with full-backs narrow (full-back on inside-forward) and some with them not, with for the purposes of this article the key-word being “common”. McMullen did not use “normal”, “ubiquitous” or similar thus telling us that, specifically in England at least, some clubs employed the English preference, some the Scottish one with the further implied inferences that, first, if full-back approaches varied, so might they elsewhere on the field (and they did) and second, tactical reaction to the new off-side rule needs vary accordingly.

A now a little verified history. Until 1888 Scotland had continued to play the 2-2-3-3 formation - the box-four defence behind a rectangular-six attack - that had evolved from the first ever international in 1872. However, in Wales from about 1878 and then England from a little later clubs and then countrys had first developed and adapted 2-3-5, “The Pyramid”, whilst from 1884 more clubs in Scotland, seemingly starting from Edinburgh, adopted it too. However, in 1888 the Scottish village club, Renton, swept the board in Scotland and then against English opposition with a new system, 2-2-1-5 cum 2:2:1:2:3, The Cross. It retained the box-four defence but had literally at its heart, at its fulcrum, what was dubbed, a little unhelpfully, an attacking “centre-half”, who in fact was a dropped back inside-forward, sometimes and more accurately call a “Pivot”. And he, operating behind forwards that were often smallish and very nippy, would himself be average to small in height, good on the ball and a passer. 

And it would be this Renton system that rapidly came to be used in most of Scotland, the “centre-half” also having a tackle in him and the full-backs widening just so to mark wingers. Moreover it would also come to be employed by a number of English clubs under Scottish influence by origin or example and in time be passed on to more local talent, Jimmy Hogan via Fulham being one such advocate and a certain Herbert Chapman via Tottenham and beyond another. 

But back to the early part of the 1920s. Football had restarted after The Great War and would boom. The on-field entertainment was voraciously consumed, especially North of the Border. Ninety-five thousand came to watch the 1921 Scotland-England game. It was also literally spectacular as the goals rattled in. 1919-20 saw 1,332 English League goals at 2.88 per match. In Scotland it was 3.05 per game. However, by 1923-4 the “Saxon” figure had fallen to 2.47, albeit in Scotland’s First Division it was still 2.85, and the English FA, whilst actually noting increasingly defensive tactics in its league, is said to have become worried financially by the potential for crowds falling because of lack of goal-action, hence the request for the off-side adjustment and its agreement by IFAB. 

In fact the English goals per game ratio was to bounce back to 2.58 in 1924-5 but by then the deed was done and clubs had simply to cope. But it did not involve a rush either by Arsenal, now under Chapman’s management, or indeed anyone else. Indeed, The Gunners were demonstrably not innovative but reactive and, I suggest, to three things, the law change itself, transfer failure and the successes of William Ralph “Dixie” Dean. 

As to Herbert Chapman, he had been a very successful manager long before arrival at Arsenal. After coming to notice pre-War at Northampton, a war-time stoochie with the English football authorities whilst at Leeds City and a ban he had been restored to and with Huddersfield won the FA Cup in 1922 and three League league titles in a row from 1924. But the first of the trophies had been won with an inherited team that had been not at all bad. It had reached but lost to Aston Villa the same final in 1920 and, whilst Chapman’s 1922 version showed three changes from earlier only one was by choice. Two had moved on before he arrived and one of their replacements was a squad player, Billy Smith, who had been a regular starter anyway. The only “fresh” face, in fact, was Clem Stephenson, actually from Villa, and he had been hired to implement one of Chapman’s habitual tactical changes, the use of an inside-forward to “fetch-and-carry”. It was a form of mid-field linkage, a variant of the Scottish system, The Cross once more, which Chapman had learned from his time with and played under the Scot, John Cameron, at Spurs a decade and half earlier and would employ, albeit to a modified degree, until, still in the management saddle, his premature death in 1934. 

However, there was a noticeable change on that winning, Cup-Final day but it was tactical, pointed to by Jonathan Wilson once more. It was Chapman’s use of namesake, Tom Wilson, no relation as far as I am aware and one of the established half-backs, in stepping back him in a “spoiling role”, not now initiating much but specifically there to break up attacks. And it worked. Huddersfield in 1920 had employed a 2-3-5, with for the moment for reference a 5ft 8ins centre-forward and lost, whereas in 1922 it played with a winger, no real centre- but inside-forwards and won by a single goal, a penalty. And it was done with a 3-2-1-4 cum 2-1-2-1-4, the 3-2 not 2-3 being a variation on Welsh/English formation, hybridised with the Cameron-variant of The Cross in attack, which also in defence through wider full-backs, as would be highlighted by McMullen, enabled the necessary change. 

Nor was Chapman’s Cup triumph to be the only example at that time of tinkering with what were now within the English top flight, stress English, essentially four forms of configuration from the back to what we would now call midfield. They were, first, essentially the original Scots 2-2-1, initially used on Merseyside, “Scots” Aston Villa then the Southern League clubs formed by Scots, Spurs and Portsmouth but not Millwall and finally newer Scots teams like Bradford, second, the Welsh-English 2-3 employed as standard by West Bromwich, Small Heath/Birmingham, the southern amateurs and in North Lancashire, albeit in this last case to start with by Scots and with the choice of narrow or wide full-backs, third, the “Huddersfield-Chapman” 3-2-1, to which should be added finally the simple 3-2, not yet my M:W but m:w, the letters still miniscule to emphasise the physical size of the chosen players. An example here was Davie Morris originally from Raith and a Scotland captain but at Preston from 1925 to 1929 playing not just one-off tactically but regularly in a deep-lying role. And there were to be still other variations further down the League with one in particular standing out. Tom Bradshaw, of more later, arrived from Renfrewshire at Bury in 1922 ostensibly to take up the same position as Morris. But at a strapping thirteen, maybe fourteen stone and six feet two inches tall he was clearly both equipped, probably recruited for and definitely given a different role. Whilst still called a centre-half he was in reality identifiably a centre-back and a very successful one, as such in perhaps the first example of my M:w seeing his new team to promotion from the Second Division the very next season. 

And all this obviously defensive reinforcement was enough even before 1925 to have seen a reaction and, advertently or not, to set in train another. 3-2, whether my m:w or M:w. whilst proving effective in stopping goals, was problematic for its lack of forward-linkage. The response, but again not a new idea, had been to drop not one but both of the inside-forwards back to bridge the gap. In effect there was to be a move towards double-Cameron, perhaps not quite fully there but on the way with now a “w”, if again not the full “W”, forming and Herbert Chapman, ahead of the game for so long, now actually in danger of falling behind. Furthermore he had other problems.

Chapman had moved to Highbury for money. He had taken an already good team at Huddersfield, rebuilding it with complete control into an all-conquering League machine and was until his somewhat sudden departure about to do it again. Had he not just signed Alex Jackson, perhaps the World’s best player at the time? But at the new club he found another dynamic. In place was long-time and shall we say overbearing club chairman, Sir Henry Norris, and a similarly established training cum coaching staff, headed up by George Hardy. Chapman found he did not have his promised own-way, which brings us to his often-cited conversations with newly-signed, veteran ex-English but actually Diasporan-Scots forward, Charlie Buchan. One telling of them, after a 7-0 defeat on 3rd October 1925 at St. James’ by Newcastle with its and England’s centre-half, Charlie Spencer, staying deep to break up attacks, indeed recorded by The Toon as holding “the back-line”, has him saying one, two or three things. The first is that a fetch-and-carry should be introduced, the second that he should take on that role, and third that the centre-half should drop deeper. It is in some quarters treated as almost revelatory but the first had been Chapman standard practise for two decades so unlikely, the second was probably knocked back because Buchan was needed up-front and third was, as already shown, not new. In any case, given the politics at the North London club, change was not going to be that easy; at least not yet. 

Meanwhile, there were “events, dear boy, events”. In 1923 a Birkenhead-born lad, sixteen years old, had made his debut for his local club, Tranmere Rovers, in the Third Division North. Dixie Dean had entered stage-left. The team, having been sixteenth of twenty the previous season, finished twelfth. It was then relegated the following season but by March 1925 he, having just turned eighteen, had already signed for Everton, went straight into the first team, played seven games and scored twice. Furthermore, the following season it was forty starts and thirty-three goals, and the next, he still a teenager, with injuries twenty-four from thirty-one as his club went from one place off relegation, undoubtedly save by him, to win the League. Arsenal was just tenth. He also was by then an England international. His first match, against Wales, had been on 12th February 1927, he having just turned twenty. His next was on 2nd April against England, at Hampden. England won 1-2 with effectively ten men from the first half and nine for some of the second and he scored both goals. He had truly arrived and would remain at the centre, indeed be archetypal, of the “English” game for the best part of a decade.

Yet at 5ft 10 ½ ins Dean was hardly by today’s measures the biggest centre-forward. However, he was by the then standard bigger, indeed much bigger than the Scottish equivalent, which meant that in combination with innate ability he would for the best part of a decade scare the living daylights out of defences, country and club, Arsenal being no exception and Chapman having to observe as acutely as anyone. Everton was to win the Cup in 1933 having taken Leagues in 1927-28 and again in 1931-32, with relegation and immediate promotion in between. Dean himself would score thirty-three in forty-six games in that season of the Cup-run, having, after those initial two, hit over the previous five seasons in the week-by-week sixty-three, yes, sixty-three in forty-six, twenty-six in thirty, twenty-five in twenty-seven, forty-eight in forty-two and forty-six in thirty-nine. The Goodison club flew when he was fit, struggled even to the point of demotion when he wasn’t.

But let us step back for a moment to that 1927 Scotland-England game. It was also an interesting one for reasons other than just Dean and injuries. England had begun it with one averagely tall half-back, Eddy Willis, and two big ones, one very big, Johnny Hill at 6ft 3ins at centre-half until he became one of the injuries and Syd Bishop, 5ft 11 1/2ins and with a Scottish mother, selected at left-half before stepping across to handle all 5ft 5 ins of Hughie Gallagher. So it was that as the English half-backs kept the Scots forwards in check, cutting out the flow of crosses, Dean ran the Scottish defence ragged, despite Jimmy Gibson at centre-half being 6ft 2ins with perhaps the excuse that he was a right-half to trade but the result that he never played for Scotland again. 

Indeed, such was the national humiliation and with Dixie, or as he liked to be called, Bill Dean a young man to fear, Scotland, with Bob Campbell the new president of the Scottish Football Association, was, shall we say, strongly minded not to have a repeat the following year. Specific preparations were made. Gallagher was in again, brought back early from injury in the interim and on the day the Scots forward-line was on fire. Alex Jackson, at 5ft 10ins the tallest of them and still at Huddersfield, scored a hat-trick, Alex James then of Preston and at conventional inside-forward, a brace. England played Thomas Wilson, Chapman’s Thomas Wilson, also still at Huddersfield at centre-half as an attempted stopper and for Scotland Tom Bradshaw, still at Bury, was brought in the centre of its defence, note defence. The Scots did not play a centre-half. It for the first time played 3:2:2:3 , my M:w. Jimmy Dunn and James supplied. Bradshaw lay deep and blocked the middle, an obvious centre-back, proving to be more than enough physically this time to snuff out the boy from The Wirral.

Scotland would win 1-5 away, admittedly helped by the foul weather. England played w:M-ish. Bradshaw, as the Scots then tried to revert to the traditional centre-half, never won another cap. And Chapman, it has to be assumed, looked on, the penny on the face of it dropping as he assimilated, before supposedly acting. Thus it was that, as legend has it, by the end of the following season, as he realised the legs of the otherwise excellent Billy Blyth were going, he had recruited Alex James, the best signing he ever had made and would make, albeit that it took a half a season for the newbie to understand fetch-and-carry. And he, Chapman, also got to work elsewhere now with the decks clear because the previous year he had been able to force George Hardy out, he went to Spurs, and Norris became mired in several scandals, was largely incapacitated from the end of 1927-8 and by 1929 had to resign.

But legend is legend and what was actually done by Chapman in that period from 1927 to 1929 and into 1930 deserves closer examination, not once but twice-over. First, there was the Jimmy McGrory episode, all 5ft 6ins of him, the player who still holds the British, note British, goal-scoring record. He, the man, who in the end devoted his life as player, manager and to final retirement PR man, to Celtic, was in August 1927 the subject of a huge transfer-bid. It came from Arsenal, was a then world-record £10,000 and Parkhead wanted to accept. So they arranged a summer trip to Lourdes with McGrory included and en route, with the connivance of the club, Herbert Chapman and the man, who would be the next Arsenal chairman, Samuel Hill-Wood, met the travelling party at Euston station with Chapman going to work. However, the wee fella was not having any of it. Nor was he when the same stroke was tried again in London on the return to home. Celtic was furious. They docked McGrory’s wages the next season but The Human Torpedo himself was unmoved and whatever plans Arsenal had both on and off the pitch collapsed. 

However, the question remains, what was Chapman trying to do, for which I have one suggestion. He was trying to supplement what he had by grafting onto it not just now a two-man attack, nor a simple big man/small man attacking combination but the best he thought available. Having recovered from the 1925 Newcastle hammering Chapman had reshuffled his pack finally to produce in 1925-26 a second place in the League and do it with his tried and trusted Northampton/Huddersfield defensive/distributive model, dropping back Bob John from left-half to left full-back, Billy Blyth from inside left to left-half and bringing in from the 3rd team to inside-left the ageing Andy Neil, who nevertheless could pass on a pin, his job to fetch and distribute, if not necessarily carry too far or fast. Back-to-middle seemed done but up-front was still a work in progress. Buchan and Jimmy Brain were the incumbents with the latter, despite his remarkable scoring record (34 goals in 1926-27), seen as replaceable and McGrory clearly the replacement. 

But as it was neither Neil or his legs had another year in them. Then the McGrory plan would fail. Furthermore, by the end of 1927-8 Buchan too would be finished, Jack Lambert from the reserves having played a third of his matches. The team was already a bit of a Swiss cheese and would get worse before it was turned around. The following season both Blyth and Butler were on the decline. The former was only able to play half the games and with the latter at conventional centre-half, the start of the 1928-29 season would be very poor. So it was that by Christmas 1928 for Chapman, although he had begun a rebuild of his attack having brought in 5ft 10 ½ ins David Jack to play as a Buchan-replacement alongside the still in-situ Brain, there was little option but to rethink elsewhere too. However, this time he was able to do it with not just the England-Scotland encounter of 1927 in mind but now the 1928 Wembley Wizards as well. 

At the start of the 1926-27 season, Chapman’s second at Highbury, a twenty-one year-old and 6 ft tall centre-half had been recruited from Oswestry Town. His name was Herbie Roberts. He didn’t get a game. Butler was the incumbent and remained so in a 2:3. In fact over the next three seasons Roberts’s record is 0, 2 and 3 first-team starts. But in January 1929 both that and the system was changed. Chapman did a Campbell. Butler was dropped. Roberts played and would do so virtually to the end of the season but as effectively a centre-back in what was more or less now a 3:2. The team recovered and finished the season safe. 

And that might have been thought to be that. The move had been made. But, in fact there was in 1929-30, with Dumfries’s 5 ft 11ins and somewhat Dean-like David Halliday now added to the forward line, apparently work still to do and perhaps something else. First there was Alex James. He like Halliday had arrived in the summer of 1929. And whilst in the line-up that would win Chapman after fully five seasons his first trophy, the 1930 FA Cup, and played regularly with thirty-seven starts it had in the early part of the season been something of a struggle as he was taught his new, fetch-and-carry role. Moreover, Roberts still played only three-quarters of the fixtures. Indeed it was only in 1930-31 that the centre-back could be said to be guaranteed a place and he was by then twenty-five going on twenty-six, suggesting either he had either been a slow learner, taking half a decade to pick up, or the reality was that Chapman, rather than inventing M:W, had meantime actually havered about it to the point of far from always employing it in defence and never fully in attack. His system would, only eventually and due largely to fate and example, become at very best my M:W-ish, actually M-Cameron, relying instead on the skill of one exceptional player, James, with the help of a half-way winger, to learn to cover both his work and, until time too caught up with him, do the bulk of what elsewhere might be done by two. 

So, it is back to El Rubial. I hope Fernando understands the explanation and that it helps to clarify his, even revolutionise Spanish understanding of English football of the era. I shall in any case be back to watch a game with him as soon as I am able. Can’t wait.