And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
Wings and WM
In a sense it was wing-play, or at least the introduction through
John Ferguson of wing-pairing that had begun the emergence of
The Cross and hence modern football. And it was to be wingers that were perhaps The Cross's final contribution to the game; that is if you do not count the wing-backs of modern football, whose origins trace back at least equally to the same system's wide full-backs. The Cross as a style produced, indeed for the most part, required wingers. It was a legacy that continued in Scotland at least right into the 1970s with Jimmy Johnstone and the like but it had been brought to that point by the likes of Harry McNeil, Eadie Fraser, the James McLaren, James, brother of
Archie McCall, Willie Lambie, John Bell, Alex Smith, Bob Templeton, Patsy Gallacher, inside-forward cum winger, Alan Morton and yet another Renton boy, Alex Jackson, winger cum inside-forward.
Each added in their own way. Before the Great War Alex Smith, in achieving twenty caps over thirteen years, seven against England, did so through class and longevity. After the War Morton made 31 appearances for his country in twelve years so almost every game did likewise. Gallacher was simply a genius with with his feet, but deemed Irish. What a partnership he would have had with Morton otherwise. And Jackson was the first modern winger, indeed footballer, eighty years before his time. On the field it was he who not only learned to break the off-side trap, before the change of rules in 1925, and after it showed how it need then to be done, recognising the necessity not just of beating the full-back on the outside but on the inside too, cutting in and through. Moreover, when without the ball, he also made it it his job to be in box for Morton to put it not just at his feet but on his head. In seventeen Scotland appearance he scored eight times, a fraction under a goal every other game, a record most centre-forwards would have died for. In contrast the more conventional Morton score five times, one every six games and Smith one every seven. In addition off it Jackson was a player, who from an early age knew his own value and in his prime simply fell out of love with a sport that might have been his for perhaps an additional five years as a player and, with his intelligence and the organisational ability he would later show in the military in the Second War, offered still more in football management.
Curiously perhaps it was the man, who had brought Alex Jackson into English football, was indirectly the cause of his eventual disaffection with it, tried to help him out of the quandary that would eventually lead to the winger quitting the game altogether, who also is said to have made or at least facilitated, till the present-day at least, the last, Scots, tactical contribution to the game we know. That man was Herbert Chapman, of course not a Scot but by a few short miles a Yorkshireman, born at Kiverton Park on the Nottinghamshire border. And the contribution in question is said to be WM, an assertion which is about a quarter true, the real story beginning perhaps fifty years, or was it forty-years earlier in the
Leven Vale, twenty-five or so years earlier a little across London from Highbury or perhaps even in Ayr. I'll leave you to decide which..
Herbert Chapman was as a player with talent but not lashings of it. In part that was because, as a very bright man with an engineering qualification, he played much of his career as an amateur. Had he been a permanent professional he might have been fitter. When he first turned professional that seems to have been the case. It undoubtedly was when, in the years when he was a professional for the longest time. i.e. at Tottenham Hotspur until 1907 and before he turned to player/management. He might also have been better. He certainly observed, learned and improved again during his time spent at Spurs and that learning would be the key to what he would later do so successfully.
Herbert Chapman arrived at White Hart Lane in early 1905 from and from situations that looked less than promising. His registration was at the time with Notts County, which had been struggling near the bottom of Division One of the Football League for several seasons. There he could not get a game. Indeed, he had been loaned out to Northampton Town, in theory two levels down in the First Division of Southern League. And now was not only simply moving to another club in the same division but appeared to have been brought in as cover for cover.
However, the situation was not quite as bad as it on the surface seemed. Firstly, Notts County was a poor team. It was relegated at the end of that season, the gap therefore narrowing to only one level. Moreover, the club he had gone to was Tottenham Hotspur, a club which had finished in second spot in the Southern League the season before and had in 1901 won the FA Cup, the only club from outwith the Football League to do so before or since. Moreover the position for which he had been brought as cover, that of inside-right, was the one that had until 1903 been mainly the preserve of the man, who, since he had become player/manager in 1899, had brought the club not just the Cup and more success beside. Spurs had topped the Southern League in 1899 and had also previously finished as runners-up in 1902.
That man was Ayr-born John Cameron. He had come to Spurs from a single Scottish cap in 1896 and Everton, forced out there because he had been part of a group that had started the first attempt at player organisation, the Association Footballers' Union. And he came with his own ideas of how football could be played successfully. The ideas were basically The Cross but with a twist. It was that Cameron himself would drop back from inside-forward augmenting his still attacking but slightly deeper centre-half in fetching and in a 2-2-[1-1]-4 carrying the ball to the four remaining forwards.
Results tell us that Cameron's adjustments worked a treat but nothing goes on forever and by 1903, aged thirty, his career on the field was coming to an end. In 1901-2 he had played four fifths of games. In 1902-3 it had fallen to three fifths and by following season it was less than a fifth. Whilst his brain had not, Cameron's legs were clearly going and whilst others had to do his running he was not entirely satisfied with the way they ran. He was looking for something else and in Chapman clearly thought he might have seen it. Certainly on arrival Chapman played seven matches and scored twice in 1905 then in 1905-6 made thirty-eight appearances, netting fourteen times and was in goals second only to the centre-forward.
Chapman at Tottenham was clearly proving more of a success than even he might have imagined. The Cameron system clearly suited him. It made an impression on him too and, even as in 1906-7 his figures, perhaps understandably, fell to twenty and five respectively, he by then also almost thirty with all that implies, when his next move came he took the Scots footballing philosophy with him.
John Cameron left Tottenham at the end of the 1907 season. In a scenario not unlike the one we see at Tottenham just now he wanted money for players, whilst the Board wanted to spend it on enlarging the stadium. It had Football League entry in mind. The Board won and Cameron walked. At the same time Chapman had been asked by his old club, Northampton, to suggest someone to manage it. That he did, his Tottenham colleague, right-half Walter Bull, but when that fell through the club asked Chapman to take the job himself and he accepted. He went as player-manager into a club that had finished bottom of the Southern League Division One for two years in succession but because of league expansion had avoided relegation. He also went into a team where he continued to play the John Cameron position and which, after a little sorting out, went from strength to strength. In 1907-8 Northampton finished eighth, just one place below Tottenham as the latter was elected to the Football League. In 1908-9, with Chapman having personally played his last match in the January, it topped the league by six points, was fourth the following year, second the next and third in 1912, which was the moment, before the days of Leeds Utd, Leeds City, struggling second from bottom in Division Two of the Football League, came in for him.
The style Chapman had employed at Northampton can be summed as follows, a more overtly counter-attacking Cameron. He is said to have moved the half-backs a little deeper. That may have been defensive, creating a tighter box-four, but is just as likely to have been to give his dropped-off inside-forward more space to operate not just up and down the pitch but across it behind the two remaining forwards and more alongside than ahead of the attacking centre-half. Perhaps at Spurs in the dropped-off inside-forward position he had found himself a little more crowded than he liked. In addition he insisted his defenders played their way out of trouble by passing the ball and he played wide wingers, who were now required, it was not optional, to track back under pressure to break forward again from a little deeper in attack more as but not really an "M" but but certainly a 3-2 and absolutely not the then conventional, shallow "W". Indeed amongst his recruits was the Welsh international Lloyd Davies from Stoke, who is described as left-winger OR defender. What he did not do was play a defensive centre-half and certainly not a centre-back. In fact he specifically brought in from Chelsea the somewhat ageing David McCartney, a recognised Scottish centre-half described as "play-making" i.e. attacking, who may not have had legs but no doubt could pass like a dream at the centre of a formation that moved in defense from [2-2-4]-2, the two block fours of Vale of Leven thirty-five years earlier plus defensive wingers, to 2-[2-1-1-4] or even 2-[2-1-5] in attack.
What Chapman might have played at Leeds will never be known. In his first season he signed Scottish international inside-forward, Jimmy Speirs, and took the team from penultimate to sixth. The following year they were fourth but then came the Great War. Football continued but was inevitably disrupted. In fact the War was to lead to Speirs' winning the Military Medal and his death in Flanders and Chapman, because of a ban, having to leave football for good. The details of the ban are nothing to do with tactics but money. Suffice it to say Leeds City was in 1919 forced to dissolve as a club, replaced by today's Leeds Utd, and Chapman, having gone back to engineering during the War continued doing just that until Huddersfield Town came in with an offer to help themselves by helping him out. Huddersfield appealed his ban and won. He was reinstated, became assistant manager and a month later in March 1921 manager.
Huddersfield had in 1921 finished seventeenth of twenty-two in the English First Division. In 1922 the club finished fourteenth but won the FA Cup, with just three members changed in a team still based around Tommy Wilson at centre-half and others players already at the club. However, it now included Clem Stephenson brought in at the end of the previous season from Aston Villa and described as "a stocky tactician without much pace but his passes were as sweet as stolen kisses" and was using tactics described as "based upon the principles of a strong defence and a fast, counter-attacking response, with the focus on quick, short passing and mazy runs from his wingers". In Wilson he had his centre-half, not Scottish but English and more defensive one at both Spurs and Northampton, Stephenson was him and Cameron incarnate and his tactics were, well, a slightly more defensive Northampton and therefore in essence Cameron's also. In fact the tactics could be described in one sense as more Cameron than ever because now it was noted that the wingers would "pass low inside the defence instead of crossing from the byline". On leaving Tottenham John Cameron had written a book called "Association Football and How To Play It". In it he explicitly advocates precisely that wing tactic.
After the Cup victory Chapman set about rebuilding around Wilson, Stephenson and four new additions, significantly a goalkeeper, a full-back, a half-back and a centre-forward, Charlie Wilson and from Tottenham. Huddersfield finished third. Then with just one more slight tweak in 1924 it was league champion, again in 1925 ,with two more, another goalkeeper, a half-back and the promotion internally of George Brown, a young centre-forward, and once more in 1926 with one more recruit. That would be
Alex Jackson, brought from Aberdeen, the winger known for an ability not only to take defenders on the outside but also inside and to poach in the box. It seemed the team might be complete and so it proved to be with both Cup and League success over the next five years. Yet Chapman in the summer of 1925 had left. He went to Arsenal. He did it definitely for money. He might even have done it for the challenge. He would be very well-paid at Highbury. And Arsenal was in trouble.
At the end of the 1923-4 season the London club had finished two places above relegation. In 1924-25 it was one place. Chapman had work to do and without doubt he did it, starting immediately. On arrival he brought in four players, all to type, three wingers and
Charlie Buchan, the veteran Sunderland centre-forward, London-born of Aberdeenshire parents, and with Jack Butler, described as "a central, deep-lying midfielder", in other words a centre-half of the Tommy Wilson-type, already in place the club in 1926 finished second. The only club above them was Huddersfield. 1927 would also prove a successful season again for both teams. Huddersfield finished second in the league. Arsenal was eleventh, as perhaps it struggled somewhat belatedly with the changes in off-side law in 1924 and 1925. The first had seen the concept of "passive" offside introduced, i.e. intent to play rather than play alone. The second was the change proposed by the Scottish FA to reduce the number between attacker and goal from three to two, incidentally the rule in Scotland before 1872. However, it did reach the final of the FA Cup Final, losing to Cardiff by a single goal scored with just sixteen minutes to go, playing a system with James Brain at centre-forward, Buchan as the advanced inside-forward and Billy Blyth on fetch-and-carry duties.
It might, however, have been quite different. The new off-side laws were proving problematic defensively and it had been Buchan with his experience, who, in spite of being a forward, had suggested a solution that would prove successful, at least in the medium-term, one that had been experimented with by other English teams over the previous five years. The idea was, firstly, that the centre-half in-front of the half-backs as Chapman had used at Northampton and the one between them as he employed at Huddersfield be moved back further still. He would not be a centre-back but still a centre-half lying deep-lying between the half-backs and the backs replacing a defensive arc with a "W". Secondly, Buchan suggested he, at 6ft ins and 12 stone should be it. Chapman accepted the centre-back idea, rejected the Buchan move, keeping him well and truly in the forward line, whilst also keeping Brain and Blyth where they were and starting, note starting, for it would be a process that was not instant as many histories suggest but one over four years, to recruit and subsequently to bring through a tall young, Oswestry-born half-back, Herbie Roberts.
At the end of the 1927-8 Huddersfield finished second in the league and also reached but lost the FA Cup Final. As for Chapman it looked something of a dead season. Arsenal improve marginally, to tenth. However, it would in fact be the first of three of change and tinker. For Charlie Buchan it was his last. He would stay at the club until 1930 but on the field for 1928-9 be replaced like-by-like by David Jack, the again English-born son of a Scot, the ex. professional, Bob Jack. That same season would also see Billy Blyth play fewer games, Harry Peel taking over as fetch-and-carry and in defence Herbie Roberts finally introduced. As the "Chapman-wings" and the three-man central attack, the "M" just as at Northampton and Huddersfield changed personnel but not purpose, and in goal and at full-back all was seemingly steady, in between, as Roberts and Butler played the almost exactly the same number of games, the set-up apparently alternated, appearing in play to be testing the old Cameron- against the new Buchan-systems.
And by 1929-30 the conclusion was had not just been arrived at but clear to see on the pitch. In defence the Cameron-system had simply been done way with. The Buchan-system was default. Herbie Roberts was now at the centre of a W, the standard two wide full-backs, behind two wide half-backs and he in the middle of the four. Yet in attack the Chapman-M remained, the two now bolted together, and activity having taken place to strengthen the new structure. There were six new arrivals, of whom Cliff Bastin recruited to the left-wing, David Halliday brought in from Sunderland and Jack Lambert from the reserves both as cover in attack, and Alex James coming from Raith via Preston to be the link-man. The result was a formation up-front with much the same pronounced bias as at Northampton and Huddersfield except that now it was to the left. James was left-footed. It did not have the balance provided by old-style attacking and a defensive centre-halves. It put more pressure on the half-backs in attack as distributors yet in defence required them now to switch from marking the opposition inside-forwards to the wingers, leaving the more central attackers to the back three, full-backs to inside-forwards, centre-half to centre-forward. But it worked, seemingly revolutionising British football. An FA Cup win followed at the end of the season, three league championships in the four after that, won by teams that might have been improved, theoretically at least, by only one player, Alex Jackson. Indeed, it almost happened but that's another story.
However, W-M was long-term to prove to be a chimera. It led British football down a blind alley, not least because in order to work it replaced the short, passing game with the longer ball, relying increasingly on muscle rather than skill. Within twenty-years it had been found out. The passing game, the Scots-sourced passing game, adjusted and when it returned in the shape of Hungary and then Brazil it was exposed. The only problem was that by then Scottish football was in the process of buying the pup, a sale that would within two decades sadly be signed and sealed.