The legendary Arsenal player made Aston Villa pay to establish a phenomenal scoring record that endures.
ARSENAL against ASTON VILLA: The match on Saturday will always bring back memories of the legendary Ted Drake, who one afternoon at Villa Park set an almost unbelievable record for goals scored.
Ted Drake, an attacker for Arsenal, would have been optimistic about winning as he took to the Villa Park pitch on December 14, 1935, but he would have also been cautious about what lay ahead.
Defendants near the time, Aston Villa was floundering and near the bottom of the table, but they had just invested a whopping £24,000 in new players, all of whom were proven internationals, so there was a very real chance that they could use that money to climb the First Division.
Drake was also troubled personally. After suffering a recent injury, he returned to the ground with his knee firmly wrapped, and the Gunners were without their best player, Alex James, who was Drake’s primary creator and whom Tom Finney subsequently referred to as the inspiration for the Football League and England great.
Drake had to handle everything by himself that afternoon at Villa Park, and he succeeded in doing so.
The forward reached the pinnacle of his career when he scored an incredible seven goals in a 7-1 Arsenal triumph at Villa Park. The forward had scored 42 goals in the league to lead Arsenal to the title the previous season.
Despite his knee injury, Drake had already scored two goals and three assists before the hour. Many believe he should have scored a seventh after he fired a shot that appeared to go over the line but bounced off the crossbar.
A unique and still unrepeated accomplishment at the highest level was completed with the seventh goal in the last minute, with his ninth shot of the game—though, rather amazingly, Tranmere’s Bunny Bell would score nine goals in a third-tier encounter against Oldham just twelve days later.
Drake stands out as one of the greatest players in Arsenal history thanks to accomplishments like these; in a 2017 official website countdown, he was ranked No. 31 among the Gunners’ all-time greatest players.
According to a post on the Gunners website, Drake “earned a fierce reputation for his pace, bludgeoning power, and ruthlessness in front of goal. He topped the scoring charts in each of his five full seasons in north London and finished his time at the club with 136 goals from 182 games.” His record most likely would have been higher if the Second World War hadn’t broken out in 1939.”
On that particular occasion at Villa Park, it was definitely good enough.
