We Are the Damned United

by Phil Rostron

  The chemistry between Clough and Taylor was soon evident, and unfashionable Hartlepools were guided in the 1966–67 season to a very respectable eighth-place finish in Division Four. The previous campaign had seen Leeds beat Hartlepools 4–2 in the second round of the League Cup, reach the semi-finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and finish runners-up to Liverpool in the race for the Division One title. Two managerial careers that would have a huge impact on both the English game and European football were taking shape.

  Elected to the Football League as comparatively recently in the game’s history as 1920, Leeds United shuffled between the Second Division and First Division under a succession of managers ranging in ability from poor to moderate to only slightly above average for more than 40 years until Revie, a superstitious man who came to believe that the club’s Elland Road ground was under a Gypsy curse, took over the reins and transformed the club. Prior to Revie’s appointment, Leeds were off the radar of the dominant clubs in English football such as Burnley, Wolves, Tottenham and Sheffield Wednesday.

  Yet Revie assumed his managerial role with some lofty ambitions and tenaciously set about achieving them. Like the rest of the football world, he was spellbound by what was being achieved in Europe by a Spanish club under the control of Santiago Bernabéu Yeste, who had become president of Real Madrid in 1945. It was under Bernabéu’s guidance that Real Madrid established themselves as a major force in both Spanish and European football. The club won the European Cup five times in a row between 1956 and 1960, including a 7–3 Hampden Park final victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960 that is popularly regarded as the greatest exhibition of football of all time. Having won five consecutive times in their pristine all-white kit, Real were permanently awarded the original cup and given the right to wear the UEFA badge of honour.

  Ferenc Puskás, Alfredo di Stéfano et al. In all white. This was food for thought for Revie. Since 1955, Leeds had been playing in royal-blue shirts with gold collars, white shorts and blue-and-yellow-hooped socks. In 1961, Revie decided they were to change again – to all white. Three years later, a perching owl was added to the strip, a surprising choice of emblem from Revie, as one of his many superstitions was that birds brought bad luck. The owl was taken from the city’s coat of arms, which itself incorporated aspects of the arms of Sir John Savile, the first alderman of Leeds.

  Revie was not the only visionary talent to have taken charge at Elland Road. In the immediate post-war years, Major Frank Buckley, a Mancunian who had seen action in the Battle of the Somme, had a five-year stint in charge of Leeds, during which time he discovered the legendary John Charles and later brought in the long-serving, talismanic and, ultimately, World Cup-winning Jack Charlton, initially as a ground-staff boy. The latter’s memories of Buckley are quoted at mightyleeds.co.uk:

  Unlike the pros, we got just two weeks’ holidays in the summer, and while they were away our job was to remove the weeds from the pitch and replace them with grass seed. I remember being sat out there one day with Keith Ripley, another ground-staff boy, when Major Buckley came over to us. We must have looked pretty forlorn, the two of us, and to gee us up he said he’d give us five shillings for every bucket we filled with weeds. Now that was an offer we couldn’t refuse. By the time we were finished, we had filled six buckets and, cheeky bugger that I was, I marched straight up to the Major’s office. And when he asked what I wanted, I told him I was there to claim my thirty bob for the weeds. He nearly blew a bloody gasket! ‘Get out of here!’ he bellowed. ‘You’re already getting paid to do that work – don’t ever let me see you up here again with your buckets.’

  Yet beneath the gruff exterior, he was a kind man, as he demonstrated once when I met him. My shoes must have been a sight, for when he looked down at them, he asked me if they were the only pair I had. I nodded. The next morning, he summoned me to his office and handed me a pair of Irish brogues, the strongest, most beautiful shoes I’d ever seen.

  When Buckley left Leeds in April 1953, he was replaced by Raich Carter, who had enjoyed a brilliant playing career, winning 13 England caps as an inside-forward. He built his team around Charles and in 1956 Leeds gained promotion, ending a nine-year spell in the Second Division. Despite his achievements, Carter’s contract was not renewed by the board in 1958. Leeds had created a stir in the transfer market by selling star player Charles to Italian giants Juventus for a record fee at the end of the previous season, and they struggled during most of 1957–58. The Leeds directors turned to Bill Lambton, who had only recently joined Leeds as an assistant to Carter having made his reputation as a fitness trainer for British boxers, to hold things together while they sought a permanent successor. Lambton was made acting manager before having what was to be a rudely cut short permanent appointment confirmed in December 1958. He fell out with the board and left in February 1959.

  Lambton had little experience, and the unusual methods he tried to introduce didn’t go down too well with the players and weren’t a great success. Charlton remembered:

  An ex-army guy called Bill Lambton took over from Raich Carter. Bill was a nice enough man, but he wasn’t a player, he wasn’t a coach, he wasn’t anything. If you ever saw Bill walking about, he always had a piece of paper in his hand – nobody ever found out what was written on that paper, but it made him look as though he was doing something.

  Bill was a fitness fanatic. I remember one windy day when we complained about the balls being too hard during a training session. Bill told us that anyone worth his salt ought to be able to kick balls in his bare feet and never feel it, so one of the lads said, ‘Well, go on then.’ Now Bill wasn’t a pro, he’d probably never kicked a ball in anger in his life, and yet here he was running up to kick the ball in his bare feet, and of course you could see him wincing afterwards. This is the manager who’s just been appointed, and he’s making a fool of himself in front of his players. He finished up hobbling off the pitch, with all of us laughing at him. Bill never recovered from that day.

  A few weeks later we had a meeting and, after some of the lads had their say, the chairman asked if we wanted the manager to leave – and every one of the players said yes. Bill said pathetically, ‘If you let me stay, we’ll have a new start,’ but nobody said a dicky bird. He was sacked that same day.

  I felt sorry for Bill. I didn’t take him seriously as a football man, but I got on all right with him. I used to see him later from time to time when he was running a pub on the Leeds–Grimsby road, and he seemed much happier.

  Jimmy Dunn, the Scottish full-back who played for Leeds between 1947 and 1959, agreed with Charlton’s assessment of Lambton, and is quoted at mightyleeds.co.uk describing him as a ‘comedian’. He continued:

  He had no experience. I remember he once took his boot off on the Fullerton Park training ground and said, ‘You don’t need boots when you’re crossing a ball.’ Eventually, there was a players’ meeting in protest. It was a rebellion. Eric [Kerfoot] and I had complained about him. I can’t remember exactly what we said, but it came down to the fact that he couldn’t manage the club.

  Although Lambton was responsible for bringing to the club the young Billy Bremner and the veteran Revie – both of whom would go on to become highly significant figures in the story of Leeds United – his spell as manager was not a successful period for the team. A 4–0 defeat at Bolton Wanderers, who three months previously had won the FA Cup, on the opening day of the 1958–59 season set the tone for what was to be a disappointing campaign, briefly lifted only by the signing of Revie. Leeds had been third from bottom in the First Division with just twelve points from sixteen matches in early November, but before the end of the month the new man took the field for the first time in the middle of a winning run of four matches that took the club to eleventh place.

  Although it had become all too clear that the tough, decisive and inspirational leader the club needed to propel them forward was not going to be manifest in Boxer Bill, Lambton was confirmed as permanent manager early in Dec
ember 1958. It was not a decision that found favour with the players, who had little respect for him. Chairman Sam Bolton had presumably tried and failed to attract any of the heavyweight managers of the time to Elland Road.

  Soon there was open hostility, which was to be reflected on the field of play. The flicker of optimism that had coincided with Revie’s arrival on the scene was soon extinguished as Irish captain Wilbur Cush resigned, to be replaced by the experienced Revie. The relationship between manager and team was deteriorating, and transfer demands were made by influential players Grenville Hair and Jack Overfield. Meanwhile, the number of outrageous reversals on the pitch began to mount. Leeds scored three but conceded four at home to Bolton on 20 December, and over the festive period there was little cheer as they encountered successive defeats, 1–0 at home to West Bromwich Albion and 3–1 at Burnley.

  It was only to become worse. A thumping 5–1 defeat at Luton in the FA Cup was followed by a 3–1 loss at home to Preston in the league. Soon there would be a 6–2 humiliation at Wolves followed by a 4–0 drubbing at home to Manchester City, who were to eventually escape relegation by just one point. It could not, and did not, last. Abject misery had set in during the period of less than twelve months that Lambton had been in charge. With not only the players but also the board members becoming openly critical of him, there could be only one conclusion. There was relief all round when Lambton himself chose to call it a day, claiming to have been driven out by interference in his training methods.

  His own particular brand of management did not advance his career much at his next port of call either. He went to Scunthorpe United, where in April 1959 he was to remain in charge for all of three days. At the time, this spell earned notoriety as an unprecedented example of short-termism in its field, although in view of later claims that he had taken up the position only by verbal agreement, with no contractual documentation in place, commentators may have been a bit hasty in assigning him a place in the record books. It cannot have been a happy time for a man who, after all, would find reflected glory in having been responsible for introducing the legends Revie and Bremner to Elland Road. His subsequent roles in football were low profile. By 1976, when he died at the age of 61 at his home in Nottingham, he had been out of the game for 13 years, having undertaken a short spell as caretaker manager of Grimsby Town and, finally, a 20-month stint in charge of Chester.

  Upon Lambton’s departure from Leeds, Sam Bolton was faced with the difficult task of procuring the services of a manager who would be capable both of lifting flagging spirits and of driving forward a club whose wider reputation was becoming subject to scorn and ridicule. It was to former Birmingham City manager Arthur Turner, then in charge of Southern League side Headington United (renamed Oxford United in 1960), that Bolton first turned, and he was sure he had got the ideal candidate in place until, at the eleventh hour, Turner had a sudden and unexpected change of mind. Next, Bolton had at the forefront of his mind the former Leeds captain Tommy Burden, who, as an all-action wing-half, had been a crowd favourite in his six years with the club before moving on to Bristol City. Burden, though, had little interest in the post, preferring to continue his playing career in the South-West. Bolton’s long and frustrating search was concluded when Queens Park Rangers’ manager, Barnsley-born Jack Taylor, agreed a move back to his native Yorkshire.

  Taylor made an immediate statement of intent by unloading the veteran players Eric Kerfoot and Jimmy Dunn, and soon had Jack Charlton, who was having a big say in the playing ranks, onside. Charlton recalled:

  We got a manager called Jack Taylor, and his brother Frank joined the club as coach. In those days managers didn’t wear tracksuits, but Frank did. He was the first guy who ever took me out on a pitch and taught me how to kick a ball properly – following it through, keeping it low, chipping balls, that sort of thing. One thing he did was to lay down two bricks and place the ball between them, then ask you to run up and hit it full on. You soon learned to keep your eye on the ball! I could talk to the Taylors about the game, and suddenly I felt I had kindred spirits within the club.

  Taylor set about the task of managing Leeds by making two important additions to the coaching staff for the forthcoming 1959–60 campaign. Syd Owen, who at Luton Town had won the Footballer of the Year award and gone on to manage the Bedfordshire club, and Les Cocker, who had been trainer there with him, were to go on to enjoy distinguished careers within the game, but their start at Leeds was an inauspicious one. Along with the club they had left Luton for, they suffered a humiliating relegation.

  Leeds, who as early as September had lost their free-scoring centre-forward Alan Shackleton to Everton, won just 12 of their 42 matches, despite Shackleton’s replacement, Bradford City’s John McCole, finding the net on 22 occasions. McCole aside, however, there was little potency among the forwards, and there was too much juggling with the defensive set-up for there to be any semblance of consistency on the park. Taylor had markedly failed to bring about the improvement sought by Bolton, and now another undesired campaign in Division Two lay ahead. It was the chairman’s worst nightmare.

  With Taylor aiming to restore the reputations of both the club and himself as quickly as possible, there was much summer transfer activity and the kind of optimism among fans that exists at every club with the dawn of a new season. An opening-day 2–0 defeat at Liverpool reined in expectations, however, and soon at Elland Road there would be a 3–1 defeat by Leyton Orient, a 4–1 reverse to Huddersfield and a 5–2 execution by Ipswich Town. The fans, with increasingly little to satisfy them, were turning, and where once there had been supportive noises, the mood had changed to one of contempt for players who were failing to step up to the mark.

  Leeds were sinking like a stone, and with another relegation an ever-increasing threat, it became apparent to the directors that, once again, decisive action would have to be taken in an attempt to divert the club from this headlong course with disaster. Two months remained of the season and Taylor had a year to go on his three-year contract, but in a meeting with board member Harry Reynolds, it became clear to the manager that he would have to go and he duly resigned. Taylor never again took a job with a Football League team.

  Bremner, a teenager then, is quoted by mightyleeds.co.uk as saying:

  It just wasn’t run as a professional football club. To go to see Mr Taylor, Christ, you had to go through one secretary, then another, and finally you would get to the third secretary and she would say he couldn’t see you. The only time you ever saw the manager was if you travelled with the first team on a Saturday. Training was just doing laps . . . a kickabout with a ball . . . no ball on a Friday . . . just sprints.

  We went to play a crucial game towards the end of the season at Blackburn Rovers. I remember wondering where we were going to eat. In the end, we stopped at a café and had beans on toast. It was all a bit of a rush . . . yet this was the most important game of the season.

  Other players were similarly disaffected. One of Taylor’s signings, the former Celtic half-back Eric Smith, recalled:

  The players were undisciplined. It wasn’t their fault – Jack Taylor was the manager but had let things go. I certainly didn’t expect what I saw in the first three or four days. We would go on long training runs and players would walk in with ice lollies in their hands.

  Jack Charlton, on the other hand, felt that Taylor was not to blame:

  The other players didn’t respond well to the new approach. Their general attitude was that they came into the club to do their bit of training, played their matches and then buggered off. They just weren’t interested in developing their own skills or any theory or anything like that.

  Now only a ‘Special One’ would fit the bill. In fact, that elusive being was already at the club, and within days of Taylor’s departure, Don Revie was made player-manager. A new footballing era was about to begin in West Yorkshire.

  Physiotherapist Bob English, also quoted by mightyleeds.co.uk, remembered:

  Th
e club was not in a good state before Don Revie took over. There wasn’t much enthusiasm, I didn’t think. Jack Taylor was a nice man, don’t get me wrong, but he didn’t crack the whip enough. Training was slack, though Don Revie, as a player, was a great fellow as far I am concerned . . . he was one of the ones that really did train. But Taylor never came out to watch people training. I think I remember him only once getting out his tracksuit and coming out to join us. But when Don took over, he was out leading them on.

  It is worth noting the parallel universe that would have been created had Revie responded positively to an alternative offer of a first job in management. As Leeds gave thought to promoting from within, south-coast club Bournemouth had already settled on the idea of naming Revie as their player-manager. Contact was made and Revie was on the verge of accepting the post. Peter McConnell, a wing-half who was on Leeds’ books for the best part of a decade before joining Carlisle United in 1962, recalled the situation that nearly robbed Leeds of their most successful and revered manager. ‘I remember the time when Don took over from Jack Taylor,’ McConnell told the Yorkshire Evening Post.