The regular 'Season In Brief' article at the back of 'When Saturday Comes' is usually interesting, although it does have a tendency to feature obscure European leagues from years gone by (e.g. from Romania or the former Yugoslavia). The latest edition, however, covers Charlton's highest ever league position, namely, the 1936-37 season when we finished runners up to Division 1 Champions Manchester City.
Promoted the year before under Jimmy Seed and with Sam Bartram in his first few seasons, Charlton remained in the title race until the end of the season, ultimately missing out by only three points. The table certainly makes interesting reading -
https://www.footballsite.co.uk/Statistics/LeagueTables/Season1936-37/Div11936-37.htm - what a tremendous home record we had that season: 15 wins, 5 draws and only one defeat (identical, in fact, to Manchester City's)
- Manchester United, who went up with us as champions of Division 2 the previous season, were relegated along with Sheffield Wednesday
- it's good to see Grimsby Town up there in 12th position. They had some big wins at Blundell Park, including against the Manchester clubs, 5-3
against City and 6-2 against United.
As the article points out, seven of the clubs in the 1936-37 Division One will contest the forthcoming 2019/20 Premier League (if "contest" is really an appropriate description these days). Remarkably, Manchester City went on to become the first - and so far, only - champions to be relegated the following season (taking them
10 years to return to the top flight). The game was certainly more egalitarian in those days.
Comments
Major Bullshite's letter in the Kentish Times.
France 2 Charlton 5
Charlton played an unusual friendly in April - against France in Paris. Italy had dropped out of the proposed fixture with the French and were replaced by the Londoners who won the match 5-2 with goals from Don Welsh (2), George Tadman (2) and Harold Hobbis.