09/01/2014 Meet the Author

come. We will be back with the weather

shortly. Now it's time for this week's Meet the Author with Nick

Higham. Herbert Chapman was the Alex

Ferguson of his day, a football manager whose team was admired and

feared in equal measure. Manager of Arsenal from 1925 until his death 50

years ago in January 1934, he won the FA Cup and two league titles.

They won more in the years following for. Before that he had done the

same at Huddersfield Town. Now Patrick Barclay has written a

biography. It is about the man who has some claim to be the first truly

modern football manager. Patrick, you have subtitled this

book the story of one of football's most influential figures. How

influential was Herbert Chapman and in what way? In every way. First of

all in terms of the power of the manager. There was no such power,

not in an employee of a club until him. Really he made the template

from which Sir Alex Ferguson 's -- Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger

Agathe, that is no exaggeration. Apart from anything else he held the

cheque-book. Yes, he did not quite hold it but they allowed him to

spend money. He spent money not only on playing staff but on, he would

dictate the spending of money on facilities and he did that right

from the early start of his career and he insisted that at Northampton

Town, the first Mac -- the first club badly managed, they should

upgrade their dressing rooms and their stadium. He even insisted the

press box should be improved but that habit has gone into abeyance.

It is an exaggeration to say he introduced teamwork as a concept but

he developed teamwork into something that you can see now.

Counterattack. Attack was a question of floods of attack before him but

he realised if you wait and draw the other team forward then you will

have more space into which to poor. Even that now is a central tenet of

every coach's plan and he was the first person to do it. The man

himself, I have been for sitting around in the archives and there is

footage of him talking. I must apologise this morning, I am so

husky that I can scarcely speak about my deputy will perform. He

doesn't seem, introducing the team there, to be a man of immense

charisma or personality but evidently he must have been. He was

being polite for the cameras, I think, and ever so slightly

self-effacing. He was a very, very strong man. He was not a strident

man. He was not like Sir Alex Ferguson but he was strong in other

ways. He rolls partly through fear and partly through, and this is a

word used about him more than any other, taxed. It is very difficult

from old newsreel to tell what manner of team he played. There is

footage from Arsenal meeting Huddersfield in the 1930 cup final

and it is all men in long shorts running around on grey grass. In

this cup final the Graf Zeppelin offered an alternative attraction as

it flew over. What does it say about his approach as a tactician beyond

the appreciation of counterattack? Even the super decay that Arsenal

had which was lucky Arsenal tells its own story. They would appear to

not be attacking very much in matches and then you looked at the

scoreboard and it said Arsenal four, Sunderland zero. You can see in

certain clips, the second goal in the cup final, the cobra like

counterattacking, that was probably something that only Arsenal fans

found it exciting. It is different from the team of today. They were

just Heartbreakers. They would lull you into a false sense of security

and then hit so hard on the break you would not know how you have lost

but you had just lost. It was extraordinary that the tactic worked

for so long. It did not always work. At Huddersfield Town they won

the cup and the league twice but they also suffered some terrible

droppings such as a 5-0 defeat to Preston before they beat him in the

cup. He joined Arsenal in 1925 and he said he needed five years. At one

point they went down 7-0 to Newcastle. Why wasn't he fired? The

7-0 in Newcastle was too early in his reign. Of course it also was the

scene of a change in tactics that changed everything. Newcastle had

been toying with a third defender. Now sometimes teams defend with five

or even nine defenders but the idea of a third defender was only just

coming in then. Basically the Arsenal success can be traced from

then. They played that backline game better than anybody had ever done

before and better than a lot of teams have done since. They won the

cup under Chapman and two leagues. Yes, after five years. It was

exactly as predicted. He borrowed the idea of a five-year plan from

Josef Stalin and perhaps made it work in a more humane way. Chapman

died young and early, he was 56. Yes, just before his 56th birthday,

she got pneumonia and died but they went on winning after that. You can

see the legacy of him, there was a bust of him in the stand and

tremendous facilities, treatment rooms and a training regime and

footage of it survives from after his death. Yes, you can feel him

still even in the Emirates Stadium. They have moved way is still there.

I am not just being romantic by saying that. His players are in huge

murals on the outside of the stadium. The club is still his club.

He died and there was a tremendous funeral and his successor, George

Allison, gave a eulogy. At Highbury, the home -- the whole of

the playing staff and the ground staff call him the bus. So, he died

and then the team went on winning. There was clearly a legacy at

Arsenal. In general, and football in large -- in football at large, what

was his legacy? For many years England stood alone, Britain stood

alone, in that it had these... Somewhere martinet but they were

despotic managers and if they wanted the training ground painted lilac it

would be painted lilac. Every part of the club was theirs and Chapman

invented that. British coaches, or managers, we even have a different

name for them, here they're called managers and abroad they are called

coaches, they have all been different because of Chapman. He was

the man that designed everything. Thank you very much indeed. Thank

you. Good evening. Under starry skies

through the night ahead it is going to be much colder than recent

nights. Warnings that from The Met office already warning of ice

because it has been so wet recently. Without widespread frost in the