Ted Drake
English footballer and manager (1912–1995)
Edward Joseph Drake (16 August 1912 – 30 May 1995) was an English football player and manager. As a player, he first played for Southampton but made his name playing for Arsenal in the 1930s, winning two league titles and an FA Cup, as well as five caps for England. Drake is Arsenal's joint fifth highest goalscorer of all time. He also holds the record for the most goals scored in a top flight game in English football, with seven against Aston Villa in December 1935. A former centre forward, Drake has been described as a "classic number 9" and as a "strong, powerful, brave and almost entirely unthinking" player who "typified the English view."
After retiring from playing football, Drake became a manager, most notably of Chelsea. In 1955, he led the club to their first league title. This made him the first person to win the English top-flight as both a player and a manager. He was also a cricketer, but only ever played sparingly for Hampshire.
Club career
Southampton
Born in Southampton, Drake started playing at Winchester City, whilst continuing to work as a gas-meter reader. He nearly joined Spurs as a schoolboy, but missed the trial match with an injury.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ted Drake” is english footballer and manager (1912–1995). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Drake, English and footballer, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q319355. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1995, 1935 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ted Drake” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.