As the 1937/38 season dawned, Arsenal appeared to be at a crossroads. After finishing third in the First Division the previous campaign, pessimists suggested that George Allison’s side would struggle to reclaim former glories.
Reigning champions Manchester City, on the other hand, who’d scored a scarcely credible 107 goals in 42 league games in the last term, were confident that they could retain their crown. But, in what proved to be perhaps English football’s most dramatic ever top-flight campaign, things didn’t quite pan out that way..
“I spoke to a journalist at the start of the season,” former Gunners defender George Male told me in 1994, “where I suggested we were some way off winning the league.