The Boy Bastin

Being way before my [and frankly many current Gooners’] time, Cliff Bastin is a player I know only through biographies and written accounts. Admittedly I washed up on the shores of the island Arsenal a bit later than many do in life, but I did so just at the moment when Ian Wright was in the closing stages of his relentless pursuit of Bastin’s 58 year old record as Arsenal’s all-time top goal scorer. Televised coverage was spare at best in the States those days, but I vividly recall Red Geezer’s account of Wrighty’s mastery of that record.

As you do, or at least as obsessive collector personalities such as myself do, I wanted to become familiar with the player Ian Wright had just surpassed. The key points are relatively well known, even if they suggest some interesting parallels with the contemporary version of Arsenal. Herbert Chapman took a chance in 1929 on a 17 year old Exeter boy who showed promise and technique, spending a fair amount to do so. Two thousand pounds was a big sum to spend on someone in that era, particularly an unproven teenager with only a handful of first team appearances.

Chapman played Bastin out wide as a winger, with the directive to cut inside from the touchline on the diagonal to receive passes from the central part of the pitch. As now, this was counterintuitive to the typical use of the wing-play in English football; nonetheless Bastin profited handsomely. In a short space of time he became the target man for Arsenal attacks and would remain the focal point until Ted Drake’s arrival in 1934.

The Boy Bastin was renowned for his deadly finishing and because of Chapman’s tactical innovation was unusually prolific for a winger in that era.   In total he collected 5 league titles and 2 FA Cups over an nine year span, only twice ending a season without a trophy in that period. While the first Arsenal FA Cup was won  while he was just bedding in during his first season, the second came towards the end of his prolific years and he was instrumental in its capture. Bastin scored 6 goals in the run to the 1936 FA Cup final, including the solitary goal* in the 1-0 semi-final defeat of Grimsby town.

A leg injury stalled his career after Arsenal’s fifth league title-winning season in 1938, and it was further cut short by the advent of World War II.  His increasing deafness prevented his participation in the war, and with the suspension of league play the war prevented his career from going much further. Bastin’s best football all came before age 27, scoring an astonishing 178 goals in 395 games.  To put that into context, Ian Wright was 27 when he arrived at the club.

In the process of working this drawing I kept going back to the details that I enjoyed drawing the most: meaty forearms that suggest a less pampered lifestyle than today’s megastars. A severely parted hairstyle, paired with a goofy grin that belies the swagger of his popped collar and his head cocked to the side. He looks to have been a real character, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of Cliff Bastin Remembers to find out still more about this Arsenal legend.

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*I imagine it’s down to the language of the era, but I found the commentator’s account of this goal rather charming, “[Bastin] caught the Grimsby defender out for once and tapped it home.”  Sounds like a simple poacher’s goal but in reality he runs onto a pass at the top of the area and slots it past the rushing keeper with every bit of coolness we have seen so many times from Thierry Henry.