Lambert: John (Jack)

1922-1924 (Player Details)

Centre Forward

Born: Greasbrough, Nr Rotherham: 25-05-1902

Debut: v Leicester City (a): 08-09-1923

5’9” 12st 6lb (1928)

Lambert was a goal-scoring talent, that Leeds let slip through their fingers. After playing Army football and for his native Greasbrough, he joined Methley Perseverance and later had trials with Sheffield Wednesday. Leeds signed him November 1922, but he was poached by Rotherham County and scored in his only game for them. The League ordered him to return to Leeds and County were heavily fined. In December 1924, though, after only one game for Leeds, he moved to Doncaster Rovers, where he scored thirteen goals in forty-four games. Lambert had attracted the attention of Herbert Chapman, when he was the Manager of Huddersfield Town, and Chapman remembered Lambert when he needed a centre forward, and, in June 1926, Arsenal paid £2,000 to sign him. Never guaranteed a regular place in the star-studded Arsenal line-up, he made his debut in September 1926 but was an understudy to Jimmy Brain for several years. He nevertheless scored ninety-eight goals in one hundred and forty-three League games, including thirty-eight when Arsenal won the League Championship in 1930-31, after he got his breakthrough and was able to strike up a good understanding with Arsenal schemer Alex James. He also scored eleven goals in sixteen F.A. Cup appearances, while at Highbury. He scored one of the goals in their 1930 F.A. Cup Final win over Huddersfield Town and also played in the 1932 Final, when Arsenal were beaten 2-1 by Newcastle United. His feat of thirty-eight goals in thirty-four games in the 1930-31 season was a club record which was later broken by Ted Drake, with forty-two goals in forty-one games in the 1934-35 season, and the Lambert's tally included no less than seven hat-tricks. He continued to score regularly for several seasons and once scored five in one game, in a spectacular 9-2 demolition of Sheffield United on Christmas Eve 1932, which again was an Arsenal record, but later bettered when Ted Drake scored seven against Aston Villa on 14 December 1935. He added a second First Division title to his record in 1932-33, when he scored fourteen goals in twelve appearances. He has the third best strike rate of any Arsenal player. Time caught up with Lambert and he was no longer first choice in the championship season. Ernie Coleman, who Chapman had signed from from Grimsby Town for £7,500, was the encumbent, and with the signing of Jimmy Dunne from Sheffield United for £8,250 in September 1933, the writing was on the wall. He joined Fulham in October 1933 for £2,500, where he scored four goals in thirty-four games, before becoming Non-League Margate’s Player-Manager in the 1935-36 season. Margate were officially the 'nursery' club for Arsenal and the use of several young and promising Arsenal players, with the result that Margate swept all before them and in that season the avearage age of the first team squad was only nineteen. The 'nursery' situation lasted for four seasons. In 1935-36 they won the Southern League Central and Eastern Sections, the Kent Senior Cup, Kent Senior Shield and Kent League Cup, in 1936-37 they won the Southern League Midweek Section, Kent Senior Cup and Kent Senior Shield, and even in 1938-39, the final season of the arrangement, they won the Kent League. Just before the war he returned to Arsenal as a coach, but on 17th December 1940, aged thirty-eight, he died in Enfield, North London as a result of injuries sustained in a road accident.