09/01/2014

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:00:00. > :00:00.come. We will be back with the weather

:00:00. > :00:00.shortly. Now it's time for this week's Meet the Author with Nick

:00:07. > :00:09.Higham. Herbert Chapman was the Alex

:00:10. > :00:14.Ferguson of his day, a football manager whose team was admired and

:00:15. > :00:20.feared in equal measure. Manager of Arsenal from 1925 until his death 50

:00:21. > :00:25.years ago in January 1934, he won the FA Cup and two league titles.

:00:26. > :00:31.They won more in the years following for. Before that he had done the

:00:32. > :00:38.same at Huddersfield Town. Now Patrick Barclay has written a

:00:39. > :00:46.biography. It is about the man who has some claim to be the first truly

:00:47. > :00:51.modern football manager. Patrick, you have subtitled this

:00:52. > :00:55.book the story of one of football's most influential figures. How

:00:56. > :01:00.influential was Herbert Chapman and in what way? In every way. First of

:01:01. > :01:07.all in terms of the power of the manager. There was no such power,

:01:08. > :01:16.not in an employee of a club until him. Really he made the template

:01:17. > :01:21.from which Sir Alex Ferguson 's -- Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger

:01:22. > :01:26.Agathe, that is no exaggeration. Apart from anything else he held the

:01:27. > :01:31.cheque-book. Yes, he did not quite hold it but they allowed him to

:01:32. > :01:37.spend money. He spent money not only on playing staff but on, he would

:01:38. > :01:41.dictate the spending of money on facilities and he did that right

:01:42. > :01:45.from the early start of his career and he insisted that at Northampton

:01:46. > :01:48.Town, the first Mac -- the first club badly managed, they should

:01:49. > :01:56.upgrade their dressing rooms and their stadium. He even insisted the

:01:57. > :02:02.press box should be improved but that habit has gone into abeyance.

:02:03. > :02:05.It is an exaggeration to say he introduced teamwork as a concept but

:02:06. > :02:15.he developed teamwork into something that you can see now.

:02:16. > :02:19.Counterattack. Attack was a question of floods of attack before him but

:02:20. > :02:24.he realised if you wait and draw the other team forward then you will

:02:25. > :02:29.have more space into which to poor. Even that now is a central tenet of

:02:30. > :02:34.every coach's plan and he was the first person to do it. The man

:02:35. > :02:39.himself, I have been for sitting around in the archives and there is

:02:40. > :02:43.footage of him talking. I must apologise this morning, I am so

:02:44. > :02:50.husky that I can scarcely speak about my deputy will perform. He

:02:51. > :02:55.doesn't seem, introducing the team there, to be a man of immense

:02:56. > :02:59.charisma or personality but evidently he must have been. He was

:03:00. > :03:05.being polite for the cameras, I think, and ever so slightly

:03:06. > :03:11.self-effacing. He was a very, very strong man. He was not a strident

:03:12. > :03:15.man. He was not like Sir Alex Ferguson but he was strong in other

:03:16. > :03:21.ways. He rolls partly through fear and partly through, and this is a

:03:22. > :03:27.word used about him more than any other, taxed. It is very difficult

:03:28. > :03:31.from old newsreel to tell what manner of team he played. There is

:03:32. > :03:35.footage from Arsenal meeting Huddersfield in the 1930 cup final

:03:36. > :03:43.and it is all men in long shorts running around on grey grass. In

:03:44. > :03:47.this cup final the Graf Zeppelin offered an alternative attraction as

:03:48. > :03:58.it flew over. What does it say about his approach as a tactician beyond

:03:59. > :04:03.the appreciation of counterattack? Even the super decay that Arsenal

:04:04. > :04:07.had which was lucky Arsenal tells its own story. They would appear to

:04:08. > :04:14.not be attacking very much in matches and then you looked at the

:04:15. > :04:21.scoreboard and it said Arsenal four, Sunderland zero. You can see in

:04:22. > :04:30.certain clips, the second goal in the cup final, the cobra like

:04:31. > :04:34.counterattacking, that was probably something that only Arsenal fans

:04:35. > :04:40.found it exciting. It is different from the team of today. They were

:04:41. > :04:43.just Heartbreakers. They would lull you into a false sense of security

:04:44. > :04:47.and then hit so hard on the break you would not know how you have lost

:04:48. > :04:51.but you had just lost. It was extraordinary that the tactic worked

:04:52. > :04:55.for so long. It did not always work. At Huddersfield Town they won

:04:56. > :05:01.the cup and the league twice but they also suffered some terrible

:05:02. > :05:07.droppings such as a 5-0 defeat to Preston before they beat him in the

:05:08. > :05:13.cup. He joined Arsenal in 1925 and he said he needed five years. At one

:05:14. > :05:20.point they went down 7-0 to Newcastle. Why wasn't he fired? The

:05:21. > :05:27.7-0 in Newcastle was too early in his reign. Of course it also was the

:05:28. > :05:32.scene of a change in tactics that changed everything. Newcastle had

:05:33. > :05:37.been toying with a third defender. Now sometimes teams defend with five

:05:38. > :05:43.or even nine defenders but the idea of a third defender was only just

:05:44. > :05:48.coming in then. Basically the Arsenal success can be traced from

:05:49. > :05:52.then. They played that backline game better than anybody had ever done

:05:53. > :05:58.before and better than a lot of teams have done since. They won the

:05:59. > :06:03.cup under Chapman and two leagues. Yes, after five years. It was

:06:04. > :06:06.exactly as predicted. He borrowed the idea of a five-year plan from

:06:07. > :06:12.Josef Stalin and perhaps made it work in a more humane way. Chapman

:06:13. > :06:18.died young and early, he was 56. Yes, just before his 56th birthday,

:06:19. > :06:24.she got pneumonia and died but they went on winning after that. You can

:06:25. > :06:28.see the legacy of him, there was a bust of him in the stand and

:06:29. > :06:32.tremendous facilities, treatment rooms and a training regime and

:06:33. > :06:36.footage of it survives from after his death. Yes, you can feel him

:06:37. > :06:42.still even in the Emirates Stadium. They have moved way is still there.

:06:43. > :06:48.I am not just being romantic by saying that. His players are in huge

:06:49. > :06:54.murals on the outside of the stadium. The club is still his club.

:06:55. > :07:02.He died and there was a tremendous funeral and his successor, George

:07:03. > :07:09.Allison, gave a eulogy. At Highbury, the home -- the whole of

:07:10. > :07:15.the playing staff and the ground staff call him the bus. So, he died

:07:16. > :07:20.and then the team went on winning. There was clearly a legacy at

:07:21. > :07:25.Arsenal. In general, and football in large -- in football at large, what

:07:26. > :07:30.was his legacy? For many years England stood alone, Britain stood

:07:31. > :07:40.alone, in that it had these... Somewhere martinet but they were

:07:41. > :07:44.despotic managers and if they wanted the training ground painted lilac it

:07:45. > :07:50.would be painted lilac. Every part of the club was theirs and Chapman

:07:51. > :07:54.invented that. British coaches, or managers, we even have a different

:07:55. > :07:57.name for them, here they're called managers and abroad they are called

:07:58. > :08:03.coaches, they have all been different because of Chapman. He was

:08:04. > :08:10.the man that designed everything. Thank you very much indeed. Thank

:08:11. > :08:13.you. Good evening. Under starry skies

:08:14. > :08:18.through the night ahead it is going to be much colder than recent

:08:19. > :08:23.nights. Warnings that from The Met office already warning of ice

:08:24. > :08:25.because it has been so wet recently. Without widespread frost in the