We Are the Damned United Page 4
But within that requirement it is possible, must be possible, for football to uphold the dignity it has brought into the twentieth century’s later years. At the turn of the century and for many years thereafter this great game was considered something of a festival of the cloth-capped. That was never completely accurate. The game has always attracted the intelligentsia – though in much lower numbers it must be admitted – and now, of course, there are almost as many eggheads as those of other shapes attracted to, and attending, the game.
In turn the game has received recognition at the highest level, with Her Majesty the Queen bestowing knighthoods and other decorations (of which I have had the great honour to receive one) upon people in the game.
Football has, indeed, arrived. It is recognised for what it is – a great game for the masses, a source of entertainment for the millions and a combination of employment and enjoyable activities to the fortunate thousands earning their living from the game.
The eyes of the world are upon us and, being under such scrutiny, it behoves us all to do nothing to belittle the game.
Often I think that winning a trophy is almost the easiest part of the exercise. Retaining it, and at the same time one’s sense of purpose, modesty and place in things, is infinitely more difficult.
But that’s what I expect from my players.
The players nurtured in Revie’s caring yet disciplined environment, those who made up the team and whose names tripped off the tongue of even the most befuddled drunk in Whitelocks, the city of Leeds’ favourite alehouse – Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, Lorimer, Clarke, Jones, Giles, Gray – loved Revie to a man. He drove them mad sometimes with his idiosyncratic behaviour – the superstitions, the fussy attention to detail, his daft bonding games such as carpet bowls – but they adored his father-figure persona and the family atmosphere created by the boss and his wife Elsie.
Goalkeeper David Harvey’s time as a prominent Leeds player arrived in the 1972–73 season, during which he played 63 times, having spent fully 10 years as reserve behind Gary Sprake. It was also in 1962 that he had his first match as an international, helping Scotland to a 2–0 victory over Denmark (although Harvey was born in Leeds, his father was Scottish). Though Harvey must have been relieved to have a regular place on the side, the ’72–73 campaign was in the end a disappointing one for the team. Within a few days, they lost the 1973 FA Cup final to Sunderland and then the European Cup-Winners’ Cup final to AC Milan. However, Harvey took plenty of plaudits next season, which Leeds began with an unheard of 29 matches unbeaten. The league championship was theirs and Harvey earned his first title medal. He was then picked as Scotland’s first-choice keeper for the World Cup in West Germany, not only proving the virtue of patience but also revealing the determination of Revie to maximise the potential of every one of his players.
Harvey remembers: ‘Don Revie was like a second father to me and I owe him plenty. He took care of me right from the day I joined the club as an eleven year old and when my frustrations at being unable to break into the first team became overbearing, he would be a calming, reassuring influence. At one point, I became determined to get away, but, luckily for me, he wouldn’t let me go. In fact, they offered me a lot of money to stay.
‘Then one season it all became too much for me. I played, I think, two reserve games, and any footballer will tell you that is a nightmare scenario. Don agreed to put me on the transfer list and there I remained for all of ten months. There were constant rumours of interest from this club and that club, and indeed I had a couple of direct offers, yet each time I went to Don to ask if there had been any contact from other clubs, he would simply stonewall: “Not a thing, son.” He could be as cute as a barrowload of monkeys at times. “I can’t understand it,” he’d say. “A player of your quality and not a single enquiry.”
‘One day in the dressing-room, unable to tolerate this any longer, I said to him, “This is no bloody use to me.” Whereupon he seized me warmly by the throat and hung me up by the collar on a coat hook. There I stayed, unable but frantically trying to wriggle free, for what seemed an eternity and it was only the welcome entrance of the groundsman, John Reynolds, that saved me from further embarrassment, as he set me free. The next day, Les Cocker, our trainer, sought me out to tell me that the boss wanted to see me. I feared the worst, but Don apologised profusely for his behaviour, while insisting that I should not have said what he thought I’d said, which was: “This club is no bloody use to me.” I would never criticise Leeds as a club, nor indeed Don Revie. I’ve always loved them and always will. It was just one of those misunderstandings where someone mishears what is being said.
‘But the great Don Revie apologising to a little upstart like me? What a man. As long as you worked hard, he would do anything for you and more than once was the time he got me out of a scrape or a bit of bother.’
Revie was going now. Off to manage England. So who would replace him? Was it possible to replace him? Certainly, not least in the minds of the squad he left behind, it needed to be someone of great stature. Johnny Giles, United’s midfield brainbox, was overwhelmingly the dressing-room vote. Within Leeds United, ‘The Brains’ was the tag given to Giles, and Revie had great respect for him, later saying, ‘John was a superlative soccer technician whose ability had no limits. He had great natural aptitude but was always working hard to improve. When we finished a training session he would go off to the gym to work more on his own.’ Giles wasn’t the only candidate, though. Surely any manager worth his salt would climb over dead bodies to take over England’s reigning champions. And Billy Bremner, the heart of Revie’s squad, threw his hat into the ring. The guessing game went on into the early hours in many a household. One name was unconsidered: Brian Clough. He despised Leeds. Didn’t like their departing manager. Had publicly called them cheats. No way.
Peter Lorimer, who made his Leeds United debut at the age of 15 in 1962 and went on to become the club’s all-time record goal-scorer, recalls: ‘Clough’s dislike of Leeds went back a long way, to his days at Derby County. They were an up-and-coming side who won the league once, but we had lots of games in which we beat them and he, I think, didn’t like the fact that we had the measure both of himself and of his team.
‘There was certainly a great rivalry between himself and Don Revie. They hated each other with a passion. It was a bitter feud between the two of them. I sometimes wonder if it was because they both had their roots in Middlesbrough: two men the same age from the same small town with one having established a great pedigree in the game and the other looking on somewhat enviously at his achievements. He first came to our close-up attention really when we played Derby twice in the space of a fortnight in 1973. We beat them in the league on the Saturday and had been drawn against them in the FA Cup two weeks later. He made this statement that there was no way Leeds could possibly come out on top again on their home turf, but he was made to look somewhat foolish when we beat them again. He naturally had the needle with us.’
Eddie Gray was also conscious of that antipathy. Of all the players who have represented Leeds over the past 50 years, Gray is widely recognised as the most naturally gifted. A schoolboy international for Scotland, the Glaswegian signed professional forms for Leeds at the age of 16 after, it is said, Jack Charlton recommended to Revie that he snap up the youngster because he didn’t fancy playing against him twice a season if he joined another club. Gray made his first-team debut on New Year’s Day 1966, shortly before his 18th birthday. Over a period spanning almost two decades, the orthodox left-winger terrorised opposing defences and thrilled the Leeds fans with mesmerising footwork, a feint that dumped full-backs on their rears and pinpoint crossing of the ball. He remembers the events leading up to Clough’s appointment vividly.
‘In the spring of 1974, rumours began to circulate about a possible change of manager in light of England’s failure to qualify for that year’s World Cup in West Germany,’ says Gray. ‘The best club manager in th
e country at the time was our own Don Revie and it was no surprise, albeit a disappointment to us all at Elland Road, that the Football Association made the offer to Don and he accepted it. The general belief in the camp was that the job at Leeds would go to Johnny Giles. Indeed, he had been told he had got it. We were out on Fullerton Park kicking a ball about one afternoon and Johnny came up to Peter Lorimer and me and said, “I’m the new manager.” Then it was discovered that somebody else in the camp had put in his application. That someone else was Billy Bremner. Billy, of course, was a big character at the club and quite within his rights to apply for the job, but here, now, was a dilemma for the board. I think the chairman, Manny Cussins, and his board were wary about running the risk of having a split camp, but in fact Johnny turned it down so they weren’t put in that position.’
There were other people as concerned as United’s board. Fringe player Peter Hampton spent 10 years at Elland Road, making his debut as a 17 year old in the 1971–72 season and fitting in 83 first-team appearances before a £175,000 transfer fee took him to Stoke City in 1980. It was all going well for Hampton, with a first-team blooding, England youth honours and European action under his belt, though two giants of the game in Terry Cooper and Trevor Cherry, and sometimes Paul Madeley, were generally keeping his name off the team sheet in his preferred position of left-back. He was not yet 20 when, in the summer of 1974, the jungle drums started beating and word of Revie’s departure became the talk of football.
‘I was only on the fringe of things and, where one or two people were probably initially in the know, I had got no inkling,’ says Hampton. ‘All of a sudden, he’s gone and got the England job. If the chance to manage your country is offered, then you’re going to take it, aren’t you? But I’ve gone through life believing that the directors of Leeds United never gave Don the credit for what he did and what he achieved, and that may have played a part in his decision-making process. They always thought, I feel, that it was down to them, and not Revie, that Leeds had done so well. Directors are like that, though, aren’t they? Always have been. It’s that blazer mentality. It was without a shadow of a doubt Don Revie who built, engineered and crafted the great Leeds of the ’60s and ’70s. His choice and treatment of his staff, his empathy with his players and his acquisitions were spot-on. He was truly one of the greats. Yet in modern-day pontifications and summaries about the giants of our game, he is never mentioned, and that, to me, is both surprising and shocking.
‘The obvious thing for the directors to have done when Revie left was to appoint John Giles as his successor. That is what I would have done and it was what many of the players wanted.’
Numerous other players share the view that the very thought of Clough’s appointment at United came as a shock, among them Joe Jordan, Leeds’ former striker. As Jordan would doubtless agree, any debate about the best, most enduring and most prolific strike partnerships the English game has ever seen would naturally include the one enjoyed by Allan Clarke and Mick Jones in Leeds United colours as the 1960s turned into the ’70s. Jones had scored 63 goals in 149 appearances for Sheffield United and earned two caps for England when he joined Leeds in 1967 for £100,000 with Blades manager John Harris lamenting that allowing the transfer would be the biggest mistake the South Yorkshire club had ever made. Clarke joined Leeds from Leicester in 1969 for a then British record transfer fee of £165,000 and his first-season haul of 26 goals gave birth to the nickname ‘Sniffer’. His match-winning diving header goal in the 1972 centenary FA Cup final against Arsenal is still the favourite of many Leeds fans. The potency of the pairing is evident in statistics that show a joint haul of 221 goals in a combined 585 appearances. For this partnership to be dislodged, any newcomer would have to be both very good and lucky. Joe Jordan was both.
He was a teenager when he was spotted by a Leeds scout while playing for Greenock Morton in his native Scotland. A £15,000 fee took him south, but the youngster was to endure months turning into years of frustration as he saw his way into the first team barred by the exploits of Jones and Clarke. He consequently became all too familiar with reserve-team football. There was the far from inconsiderable inconvenience, too, of an introduction to English football which saw his facial features rearranged and transformed into something out of a Hammer horror film. In a reserve match at Coventry’s Highfield Road, he went up for a ball with an opposing player and came down minus his four front teeth. Jordan, now first-team coach at Tottenham, says of the incident, ‘I don’t remember much about it or the name of the culprit. All I know is that it was a big defender who was very brave.’ Jordan had to have dentures fitted, but he always removed them before matches. Without them, he looked frightening enough to earn the nickname ‘Dracula’ and his gap-toothed roar is an abiding image of football in days gone by.
His first-team chance at Leeds came when Jones began to suffer badly from a knee injury that was to shunt him into premature retirement at the age of 30. The 1972–73 season saw Jordan make sixteen league starts in which he scored a very handy nine goals. He was left out of the team that contested the FA Cup final against Sunderland only to get the call-up a few days later for the European Cup-Winners’ Cup final against AC Milan. In what was a memorable month of May for Jordan, he was given his Scotland debut in a 1–0 defeat to England at Wembley. The lad from Carluke, Lanarkshire, had well and truly arrived on the scene. Jordan was a regular in the following season, when Leeds took the league title. He scored seven goals in twenty-five league games and before the season’s end he’d earned nine more Scotland caps and scored two goals for his country, including one against England at Hampden. This excellent run of form earned him a place on the Scotland squad for the 1974 World Cup finals, where he scored two goals. By the end of his international career he would be the only Scottish player to have scored in three World Cups – a record that still stands today. While Jordan was in West Germany, back at his club headquarters in Leeds cataclysmic events were unfolding.
Jordan recalls: ‘It was more of a shock than a surprise when Don Revie left Leeds United for the England job. Good managers are always in demand, whether it be by rival clubs or on the occasion when your country comes calling, and it is beyond question that Don was a good manager, a top manager. Leeds were never out of the top four over a ten-year period under his command and what makes that record extra special is that, unlike in modern-day English football, where the battle for the Premier League title is between three clubs – Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea – in those days you had Leeds fighting it out with Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Everton, Arsenal and Derby, to name but a few of the great teams of the era. Not long before Don had established Leeds as a formidable force, you had titles won by Burnley, Tottenham and Ipswich, so by and large it was always extremely keenly contested by several clubs and took an awful lot of winning.
‘That Don had Leeds competing every single year must have impressed the Football Association and that is why, when it came time for them to make a change, it was no surprise that he was their choice. The shock element comes with the realisation that you have lost your manager and the accompanying consternation about who his replacement might be – and to what extent you may or may not figure in his plans.
‘For my own part, I was only 22 years of age, but in the summer of 1974 I was comfortable in the knowledge that my fledgling career was going very well. I had been in good form in the qualifiers for the World Cup, scoring a crucial headed goal against Czechoslovakia; I played a full part in Leeds winning the championship that season; then in the Home Internationals I was on target when we beat England 2–0 at Hampden Park, and at the World Cup itself I scored the second goal in a 2–0 win over Zaire in the first group game and a last-minute equaliser in a 1–1 draw with Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, while Scotland finished the group unbeaten we went out of the competition at the group stage on goal difference, and my return from that tournament coincided with a certain pending appointment at my club.’
; Don Revie was appointed the new England manager in succession to Sir Alf Ramsey on 4 July 1974. Sixteen days later, Brian Clough left Brighton to become the new Leeds United manager, accepting a five-year contract worth a reported £20,000 a year. Peter Taylor chose to stay at Brighton as the new boss.
Harvey sums up the mood in the camp, saying: ‘Like the rest of us, I was devastated when Don left the club to take up England duties. The mood of desolation he left behind was hardly lifted when his successor was announced.’
Where Revie had gone to great lengths to explain what he expected of his players, a rather more succinct overview of Clough’s requirements can be found in the manager’s player rule book that was in place during Clough and Taylor’s time at Derby. It included the following instructions:
Smoking on the Ground or in the Dressing Room during training hours strictly forbidden. Players must also refrain from smoking in the coach or train prior to the Match.
The players shall at all times obey the orders and instructions of the Manager or Trainer.
Disciplinary action will be taken against any player absenting himself without leave.
Players will be allowed to go to dances up to and including Tuesday (except when a mid-week match is to be played). And also Wednesday if permission is granted by the Trainer.
No player is allowed to order sports gear or goods of any kind for himself from any shop or store without the prior permission of the Manager or Secretary.
No player will be allowed to have direct or indirect connections with a licensed premises.
No player will be allowed to ride motor-cycles.