George Allison was Arsenals second longest serving manager and below is an article from the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, dated Friday 23 September 1938 that gives great insight to how the club were viewed at that time, just four years after Herbert Chapman’s death.
“Arsenal’s Secretary-Manager George Allison is a prominent figure in sport both as a journalist and broadcaster, but one associates him even more closely, perhaps, now with the Secretary-Managership of Arsenal Football Club.
“Arsenal, League champions of last year, have forty-four players on the pay-roll at the moment, and the pictures on the following two pages show some of them at the wonderfully equipped training headquarters at Highbury.
“Arsenal, like other professional clubs, is naturally always on the look-out for promising players in order that the standard set by the side may be kept up Mr. Allison has ten” talent scouts” who travel throughout England, Scotland and Ireland continually on the look-out for likely material, and they report to him from time to time.
“Playing under changing titles, the club has existed for over fifty years, and began in a very small way at a time when supremacy of the Association game had shifted to the North. A spot where enthusiasm lingered, however, was a section of Woolwich Arsenal known as Dial Square.
“Through the endeavours of some of the workers here a football club was started in 1886, but one notes that penny contributions had to be paid to secure a ball, and ideas were still vague as to how the game should be played; neither was there any sartorial uniformity on the field.
“But the venture soon attracted men who had experience in the game, and it was resolved that Dial Square being too insignificant a title, the club should be re-christened the Royal Arsenal Football Club.
“This title was changed to Woolwich Arsenal in 1891 and to Arsenal in 1913, and it is now one of the foremost football clubs of the world.”