1946–47 season | |||
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Chairman | Frank Davis | ||
Manager | Harry Curtis | ||
Stadium | Griffin Park | ||
First Division | 21st | ||
FA Cup | Fourth round | ||
Top goalscorer |
League: Townsend (8) All: Townsend (9) |
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Highest home attendance | 35,604 | ||
Lowest home attendance | 17,976 | ||
Average home league attendance | 25,768 | ||
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During the 1946–47 English football season, Brentford competed in the Football League First Division. The Bees' 12-year run in the First Division ended with relegation to the Second Division after a disastrous season, which tied the club record for fewest league victories and most league defeats. As of the end of the 2015–16 season, Brentford have not since played in the top-flight.
After three successive top-six finishes in the First Division beginning in 1935–36, Brentford's decline began with the departure of key players during 1938–39, which culminated with a near-relegation. For 1946–47, the first Football League season since the end of the Second World War, manager Harry Curtis was able to call on many of his regular players from the final pre-war seasons, though the elder players, such as Irish international full back Bill Gorman, utility man Buster Brown and former Wales forward Idris Hopkins, were all at age 35. Long-serving forward and once-capped England international Billy Scott had remained with the club and was then aged 38. The team fielded versus Aston Villa on 1 February 1947 was the oldest in club history, with an average age of over 31.5 years. Curtis supplemented the squad by bringing in wing half Cyril Toulouse and forwards John Gillies, Maurice Roberts, Alan Smith and George Stewart. As in the final pre-war seasons, Curtis would also promote players from the Bees' reserve ranks, signing amateur Roddy Munro to a professional contract and handing debuts to Frank Latimer, John Moore and Wally Bragg, with Bragg going on to become the youngest-ever Brentford debutant at that time.