by Rob Bagchi
It was, perhaps, fitting for such a ‘new’ club to mark its coming of age in the newest competition. The League Cup, that bastard child of Alan Hardaker, could never match the kudos of the FA’s showpiece, but Leeds, ravenous for success, could not afford to be choosy. In 1966 the club had succumbed to the greatest humiliation of Revie’s tenure, drubbed 7–0 by West Ham, yet bounced back the following season to record easy wins over Luton, Bury, Sunderland, Stoke and Derby en route to the Final. The Football League has exhibited a genius for bad marketing throughout this tournament’s troubled existence but in 1968 its profile was even lower than it is today. Although the previous year was the first time it was awarded a Wembley Final, it was still played on a Saturday afternoon, marooned in the middle of a full domestic programme and, of course, thanks to Hardaker’s suspicion of television, without coverage.
Just as well that it was so neglected, for Leeds’ victory over Arsenal was undoubtedly one of the worst games ever played at Wembley: tedious, scrappy and entirely devoid of subtle or imaginative play. Overly cautious, the two teams simply tried to batter each other into submission. Terry Cooper’s goal after seventeen minutes was the only highlight on the newsreel footage, a goal he claims to have dreamt of scoring on each of the three nights preceding the match, a tale which gained great currency at Elland Road in the prevailing climate of portentous obsession.
The goal itself was hardly supernatural. It came as a result of Jack Charlton’s recently devised tactic of standing on the goal-line in front of the goalkeeper for in-swinging corners, a controversial ploy that was thought to contravene the ‘spirit’ of the game. In his autobiography Charlton explains how he stumbled across the idea while trying to wind up his brother, who was playing in goal in a knockabout session with the England squad. It so enraged the saintly Bobby that Jack persuaded Revie to try it out. Once the Leeds defence had found it impossible to cope with during training, Revie sanctioned its use in matches, causing mayhem in the opposition’s six-yard box for years to come. It was a brilliant plan, because even the very best goalkeepers – Gordon Banks and Pat Jennings – hated it, and as often as they punched Charlton in the head while the ball was being delivered, he was still able to flick the ball on or lay it off, leaving the keeper embarrassed and exposed. The victims of this mugging complained continuously of obstruction, but the truly clever thing was that Charlton’s size was the real impediment and not how he put it about. It was a ruthless exploitation of the physical advantage he enjoyed. On that March afternoon in 1968 Charlton knocked down Eddie Gray’s corner from his patented position for Cooper to volley in. For the remainder of the game, Leeds defended staunchly, not risking anything but not needing to.
At the final whistle, Bremner, foregoing the triple somersault so de rigeur today, performed a modest forward-roll in the centre-circle before the whole team converged on him. Revie, racing to join them, was captured by photographers in a rare expression of unalloyed delight; but the strongest emotion the players recall from that day was an overwhelming sense of relief that they had finally prevailed. At the rousing civic reception in Leeds’ city centre, Revie, with some thing to offer the crowd at last, spoke like a man freed from an onerous burden. It was an infectious feeling. Indeed, United’s record immediately afterwards suggested that this was the watershed moment in the club’s fortunes. Sadly, the earlier disappointments were only preludes to more trauma ahead.
EIGHT
WHITE RIOT
If the League Cup, that peculiarly ugly, squat trophy, acted as a kind of confidence transfusion for United, it also marked their transformation from the biggest also-rans in British football to an elite club. In the seven years it had taken Revie to net Leeds’ first prize, much had changed, but in a city still more enthralled by Harry Ramsden than Hare Krishna, the club was some way off the flamboyant spirit of the decade. Although the Wembley win did not convert Leeds United to the path of righteousness, it did change the media’s perception of the team and its transgressions – from brute force to gamesmanship, white-collar sharp practice instead of blue-collar barbarity.
Revie’s cautious inclinations were not dispelled by the victory over Arsenal. Control freaks find it difficult to discard rigid plans, since it makes a football match an unpleasantly nerve-wracking experience, one they feel unable to influence from the dugout. Only George Graham, the closest in spirit to Revie of all his successors, had the nerve to use a similarly ruggedly defensive system policy for such a prolonged period when managing Arsenal in the late 1980s. It takes a suspicious nature, courage, imperviousness to criticism and an unassailable stature within a football club to pull it off; Revie had all in abundance.
United’s Board, meanwhile, had been steadily developing the club’s infrastructure with a succession of ground improvements and wage rises, all funded by the higher attendances Leeds’ progress was attracting. Sadly, the forgotten co-architect of Leeds United’s rise, Harry Reynolds, was no longer around to see his scheme blossom. Crippled by arthritis, he had reluctantly resigned from the chairmanship at the beginning of the 1967/68 season, and though he had insisted on making the painful journey to Wembley for the League Cup Final, he was ultimately too ill to take his seat. Reynolds was succeeded by Albert Morris, the wallpaper magnate who had worked so tirelessly to tighten the club’s finances, but he died only three weeks after presiding over Leeds’ first ever Cup victory from the royal box at Wembley. Percy Woodward, vice-chairman for more than twenty years, was left as the principal benefactor of Reynolds’ and Morris’ five-year hard slog.
Alderman Woodward, more Old School than his predecessor, never seemed to enjoy the same affinity with Revie and the players as Reynolds had. Arguably, this was because Reynolds had bestowed too much power on Revie who, now the finances had been straightened and the club established, did not really need the Board any more. There was still respect, but much of the warmth disappeared with Reynolds. Woodward didn’t learn from the former chairman’s mistaken attempt to take on the Leeds fans, and his only significant contribution during his first year in the Chair was a Canute-like effort to arrest the tide of increasingly poor behaviour on match days. ‘I would not take my grandchildren to Elland Road,’ he proclaimed, ‘and wouldn’t recommend anyone else to do so. The abusive language which one always expects to hear a little of has developed into sheer filth and must be stopped.’ Fat chance! The new breed of football fan was unwilling to accept an outdated concept of appropriate etiquette; and in any case, no measures were imposed to stamp it out. The only voice anyone listened to at Elland Road these days was Don Revie’s.
The manager’s stated ambition at the beginning of the 1967/68 season had been to win ‘any two’ of the four available trophies, an uncharacteristically optimistic assertion from one usually so keen to dampen down expectation. With the League Cup safely in the cabinet by the beginning of March, the ‘Quadruple’ was still on. However, the FA Cup ended those hopes when a blunder by Gary Sprake gifted Everton a late winner in the semi-final and United’s form in the league tailed off dramatically. After dragging themselves from twenty-second in September to first by mid-April, four consecutive defeats handed the title to Manchester City. Much as the year before, the Fairs Cup offered their best chance of success.
It was a strange year for Leeds in Europe; the players hardly required their passports at all. Encompassing ties against Hibernian, Rangers and Dundee, the draw was more like the Texaco Cup than a bona fide continental jaunt. United’s 2–1 victory over Dundee in the semi-final left them on course for Revie’s target but, like the previous year, the Final was postponed until the beginning of the following season, affording Leeds the opportunity for a sort of meaningful Charity Shield to kick-start a campaign by winning something.
One would have thought that the home leg of a European Final, even if it was televised live, would draw in more than half of Elland Road’s capacity. Despite scheduling the fixture for the first week in August, the locally traditional annual holiday, it didn�
��t help the shameful attendance of 25,268, illustrating the city’s curious ambivalence towards its team. Even more exasperating was that their opponents, Hungary’s Ferencvaros, were among the top three sides in Europe and boasted a clutch of world-class players, including the peerless Florian Albert who had torn Brazil apart in the World Cup Finals just two years earlier.
One of the most notable features of the Leeds players’ conduct was that instances of showboating were rare. The public’s unreliability had polarized the team and its crowd. Players did not dally after scoring to milk the crowd’s applause because they were primarily playing for each other, not for the capricious spectator. Accusations of insularity were essentially accurate, but this came from their insecurity and anger at the lack of faith shown in them.
The meagre crowd witnessed a typical Leeds 1–0 display, with Paul Madeley, United’s key player in this, their introverted period, operating as an auxiliary midfielder to repel the attacking talents of Albert and the sublime Varga. Jones had been Cup-tied for Wembley but compensated now in his first Final appearance by scoring the decisive goal after another Charlton goal-line flick-on from Lorimer’s in-swinging corner. Ferencvaros persisted with their muted counter-attacking game for far too long but came close to equalizing on several occasions. It was a tactic Leeds were comfortably familiar with. A more expansive, attacking style could well have opened up their defence, but by deciding to battle it out, Ferencvaros chose United’s strongest suit.
In spite of this, most experts confidently predicted that the one goal advantage would not be enough for Leeds to survive the second leg. Originally, this was supposed to be played the following week, but the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia earlier that year now led to a lengthy delay and even the prospect of the tie being declared void. Many clubs can claim all manner of bizarre reasons for postponements. Indeed, the subject has become the staple of radio phone-in shows over the last few years – but few could boast that the intervention of General Secretary Brezhnev and Cold War tensions almost handed them a European trophy on a plate. Revie and the Hungarians were adamant that the game should go ahead, and once UEFA, or EUFA as it was still known in the UK, had withdrawn their provocative proposal to segregate Eastern and Western European teams in future, the match was officially sanctioned for the second week in September. It turned out to be the most valiant performance in the club’s history.
The common view beforehand was that Ferencvaros, probably the best team in Europe according to Bill Shankly and Sir Matt Busby, would humble United in Budapest’s NEP Stadium. Leeds, however, put on a resolutely defensive display, which saw all ten outfield players entrenched between the penalty area and the half-way line for prolonged periods of the game. Jones, at the apex of this system, gave the lead by harrying all four Ferencvaros defenders, with the two wingers Hibbitt and O’Grady tucking in to pack the midfield. Attacking play was restricted to set-pieces and the occasional unsupported foray from Jones or Lorimer. Leeds were too preoccupied with fortifying Sprake’s goal to hazard even two players up front to try to extend their lead. Initially, the Hungarians played smoothly, passing the ball around, creating space, trying shots, but once Cooper had acrobatically cleared off the line and Sprake, enjoying the finest game of his perversely variable career, had thwarted fine attempts from Albert, Szoke and Novak, they abandoned their natural game.
For much of the second half Ferencvaros continued to carve out chances. Yet United kept their nerve, with Sprake, briefly hereafter known as ‘the Hero of Budapest’, showing why Revie kept faith with him in spite of his famous blunders. Thus, already eight games into the following season, the team finally put the previous one to bed by becoming the first British club to win the Inter-City Fairs Cup, an achievement that had the Sketch’s correspondent, a certain Mr J. Bean, extolling them as ‘the most professional side ever to cross the channel’. After collecting the trophy from Sir Stanley Rous, President of the Fairs Cup Committee, the United party, led by the Earl of Harewood, celebrated back at their hotel with the press corps and the solitary fan who had hitch-hiked his way to the game. It was the customary Leeds knees-up, a few drinks and everyone doing their party piece, all ‘Cushy Butterfield’ and ‘Ilkla Moor’. By the time they got home the following day there had been a sea-change in the way they were perceived. Having done to foreigners what they had done to domestic opposition for years, they had finally become accepted by the English press, as much for their spirit as for their prowess. Desmond Hackett of the Daily Express, usually a critic, wrote: ‘When tired limbs screamed rebellion over extra exertion, there was not one Leeds player who failed to drive himself in that further yard of effort.’ This sort of acclamation had been long overdue.
Ten thousand fans turned up on the Headrow to welcome Leeds home. At the reception the Mayor, partaking in the party atmosphere, made light of his disability by conducting the communal singing with his crutches. Once the players had gone into the Town Hall for the banquet, however, 300 supporters embarked on a mini-riot, trampling flowerbeds, stopping traffic and chanting obscene songs before being dispersed by the police. The club professed its habitual profound sense of shame and disgust at some of their fans’ antics, but if their continuing immaturity would be a cause for concern for years to come, the new maturity of the players promised an exuberant future.
The key to learning how to win was that those players who were mature in age and temperament – Charlton, Giles and Bremner – were now joined by those mature in experience – the likes of Madeley, Cooper and Gray. At the beginning of the 1968/69 season the whole first-team squad, with the twin exceptions of Charlton at thirty-three and Giles at twenty-eight, were twenty-five or under. In the past this naivety had hindered them, but winning two trophies made up in know-how and assurance what they had previously lacked in worldliness. Revie had fulfilled the target set down in the summer of 1967: they had won two competitions, albeit the junior ones. In 1968 he narrowed his ambition to just one, the title he knew Leeds needed in order to fight their way into English football’s pantheon. It was time, he calculated, for the League Championship.
Bremner recalled the thinking behind it with remarkable nonchalance: ‘When you haven’t won anything, you’re delighted to win something; but as soon as a new challenge is offered, you have to climb higher. And so we climbed that little bit higher, in going for the League.’ They would do so with the best domestic record of the century to date, with just two defeats, a twenty-eight match unbeaten run and an unprecedented number of points. All sports psychologists tell their clients that ‘peaking when it counts’ is all that matters, and after five years of close calls, or, more charitably, preparation, United incontrovertibly peaked when the situation was at its most advantageous. Manchester United and Liverpool were on the wane with their current personnel, Manchester City hadn’t the resilience to establish a dynasty, Arsenal and Everton were fine-tuning their rebuilding programmes, and Chelsea and Tottenham were locked in the inconsistency that still confounds them today.
In previous seasons Revie had utilized his squad in full; for 1968/69 tinkering was out. He used only twelve players with any regularity: Sprake, Reaney, Cooper, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, O’Grady, Madeley, Jones, Giles, Gray and Lorimer. Of all of them, Madeley was the anomaly. So self-effacing was he that in 1975 he turned down the England captaincy. In the Leeds side his versatility overshadowed his contribution. Most people assume that he slotted into the team whenever a first-choice player was injured or suspended. In fact, he rarely missed a game for ten years, frequently substituting in a position that wasn’t his own. Nevertheless, Revie would always find a place for him even if everyone else was available. That he did not settle into a specific role barely mattered. His modesty has hidden his surplus of ability – composure, intelligence, fierce in the tackle, strong in the air, neat passing and box-to-box stamina. For half the season he deputized in defence, but for the rest he played in preference to Lorimer, patrolling the centre of midfield, unselfishly
giving Giles and Bremner more leeway to attack. Ostensibly then, for half the title-winning season Leeds played with only Jones up front; but though the team was far more potent when Lorimer was selected, the defensive superiority that Madeley helped establish was a critical component in their triumph. United would not win many honours for entertainment, but the deployment of Madeley’s calm industry gave them the decisive tactical edge in many crucial games.
United’s pattern of play developed from Collins’ idea of communal responsibility into the effective use of small communities of players on either side of the pitch. Hunter, Cooper, Giles and Gray formed the left-side society, working the ball in triangles and quadrilaterals between them before seizing on the space created to unleash an attacking move. Charlton, Reaney, Bremner and O’Grady replicated this on the right side, only less predictably. If Jack saw an opportunity to take the ball 70 yards, he could not resist trying to do so. Generally, the system was marked by the uncanny ability of Bremner and Giles to play the killer ball once the opposition had been beguiled into committing too many midfielders to win the ball back. If they found themselves in trouble, Jones was the outlet, with the on-rushing midfielders giving the centre-forward a multiplicity of options. All season long, Leeds tormented opposing teams, making them expend their energy in pursuit of the ball. It was a demoralizing experience, cruelly inflicted, but it provided for a captivating spectacle once a fortnight at Elland Road. The technique of creating and exploiting space, coupled with the unstinting support of colleagues for the man in possession, had long been the hallmark of Cocker and Owen’s training ground sessions; it was soon proliferating throughout the First Division.
