by Rob Bagchi
As ever, nothing ran smoothly for Leeds United. Instead of the usual one FA Cup semi-final, the famous ‘90 minutes to Wembley’, it took Leeds three games and five hours to get past Manchester United. As in the 1965 epic, Bremner finally conjured up the only goal deep into the second replay to guarantee Leeds’ progress to Wembley. In between the instalments of this saga, United were fitting as many as three other games a week into their crowded schedule. Fortunately, once the tie was resolved, with the League now surrendered, United’s first-choice team were given a break of six days before their home tie with Celtic. This, predictably enough, provoked the wrath and sanction of Alan Hardaker, and Leeds were duly censured for sending out the reserves in the league match on the Monday that preceded their Wednesday semi-final and for the two league games they were ordered to play on the Thursday and Saturday of that very same week.
The first ‘Battle of Britain’ between Leeds and Celtic did not go according to plan. All managers prefer to have the away leg first, giving their team the cushion of a home leg to right any wrongs in front of their own partisan crowd. Leeds, though, were drawn at home first and turned in a lacklustre display in front of a crowd, again puzzlingly below capacity. Leeds went behind within 90 seconds and never really got back into the match, prompting Phil Brown to write in the Yorkshire Evening Post that ‘the elastic had gone’. Jimmy Johnstone gave Cooper a roasting at left-back, and with no Norman Hunter to support him, ‘the world’s best full-back’ seemed to droop under the pressure. Things grew worse after 70 minutes when Bremner headed the ground and had to be stretchered off with concussion. Like the rest of his team-mates, he just wasn’t himself. Left in the dressing-room completely disorientated, he spent the remaining 20 minutes of the match wandering in and out of the club offices.
They were lucky to get away with only a 1–0 defeat after such a thorough trouncing, but Revie, at least, refused to be downbeat about his team’s prospects in the second leg despite all the praise of Celtic’s mastery. The Glasgow Evening Times’ verdict that Celtic ‘whipped this most “professional” of teams in every phase of the game’ was not for Caledonian audiences only – every national newspaper concurred. On the same night Everton secured the First Division title, and there was some gloating from the Daily Mail that Leeds had abandoned this prize for Europe and got stuffed twice in the process. Leeds, however, knew that their revised destiny was still in their own hands. With first class seats booked aboard the 7.25 a.m. Yorkshire Pullman to London, where he would sort out United’s hotel arrangements for the forthcoming FA Cup Final prior to the evening league game at Upton Park, Revie trudged off into the night with a defiant air. ‘We never give up hope,’ he said, challenging United’s detractors to bet against them. It was do or die at Hampden Park.
Before revenge could be plotted, the small matter of the FA Cup Final had to be surmounted. Bridling at the Football League fine, Revie picked a handful of first teamers to start against West Ham in the week before Wembley and was rewarded by Paul Reaney fracturing his leg in a trademark crunching tackle. It was not a good omen but at least Norman Hunter was pronounced fit enough to start at Wembley, allowing Madeley to move over from centre-back to right-back. United’s record at Wembley, especially for entertainment, had been dreadful. The 1965 Final found them sleepwalking, unable to get their normal rhythm going, while the 1968 League Cup Final had seen them outbore Arsenal in a bleak battle. Most pundits expected Leeds in the 1970 Final to pick up where they’d left off and try to smother Chelsea. This was certainly what Chelsea would have you believe, keen to play up the contrasts between their image as Emperors of urbane Kings Road cool and Revie’s humourless, cloth-capped whippet-fanciers. In fact, the match turned out to be a classic.
For much of the game, Leeds, wearing red socks for the benefit of black and white television viewers to distinguish them from Chelsea’s affectation of wearing white ones, took the game to the West Londoners on a gloopy porridge of a pitch. In all the match reports much was made of the fact that the Horse of the Year Show had been held there recently; but all that mud and sand did not spoil the game. Leeds had hardly put it together in weeks, but they seized this occasion to return to the top of their game, with Giles orchestrating attack after attack, Lorimer keen to try his luck from anywhere within 40 yards of goal and Eddie Gray giving David Webb the sort of treatment Johnstone had inflicted on Cooper the previous week. Many felt that it was Gray’s Cup Final: certainly the torment he inflicted on the Chelsea full-back must rank as one of the finest examples of wing-play at the Wembley showpiece. For all that, it wasn’t enough for United to win an incredibly open game.
Having scored a soft goal midway through the first half when Charlton’s tame header somehow trickled past two Chelsea defenders, United were caught just before half-time by an equally daft goal when Sprake dived over a frail shot from Houseman. The Leeds keeper was left sheepishly looking at his feet while Charlton screamed at him in despair. In the second half Leeds took control, keeping Chelsea’s midfield at arm’s length while constantly probing their defence. Seven minutes from time, Jones thumped the rebound from Clarke’s diving header into the bottom right hand corner of Peter Bonetti’s goal, prompting Kenneth Wolstenholme to pronounce that the Cup was finally bound for Leeds. Mystifyingly, however, Leeds comprehensively failed to fall back and defend their lead for the last few minutes, and some slack marking allowed Ian Hutchison to equalize with just three minutes left. Revie later claimed that he had been trying to get a message to Bremner to tell him to ‘shut up shop’ but had been prevented from doing so by ‘seven London policemen’ who had blocked his way. Whatever the reason, it was an extraordinary lapse at a crucial moment.
Extra time was duly survived by both sides as caution took hold for the first time in the match, making it the first ever Wembley Cup Final not to produce a winner on the day. And so the purgatory continued, though the players were at last permitted some leeway and allowed to break curfew and attend the Café Royal banquet that night – a strange event seeing they had nothing to celebrate. Revie must have felt punch drunk but still found the spirit to give a speech thanking the FA Chairman, Andrew Stephen, for his praise of United’s ‘epic World Cup class’ display. Turning to more pressing matters, he reminded his team that, after their night in the hotel, it was straight back to Leeds in the morning and off to Glasgow on the Monday where ‘I’d give a year’s wages to beat Celtic.’ The players waggishly challenged him to put the said sum in the players’ pool in the event of their success, a wager he cheerfully accepted. Amid much merriment and no little booze, United let off steam after another disappointment. Forty-eight hours later they were bound for a Glasgow hotel with the bingo coupons at the ready again.
Predictably, Revie’s pre-match briefing was preoccupied with how to stop Jimmy Johnstone inflicting the same sort of damage for a second time. With the left-footed Hunter now back to support Cooper on the vulnerable side of United’s defence, Revie’s plan revolved around the two players dropping off to cover the winger, constantly ‘double-teaming’ him in the wide areas so that he would lay the ball off rather than take two men on. Initially, the plan worked, with Johnstone far less influential than he had been at Elland Road, and when Bremner whacked in a 30-yard shot after 15 minutes to level the tie and silence the 136,000 crowd, Elsie Revie’s housekeeping for the year was seriously endangered.
Not for long, however, as Celtic went berserk, peppering the Leeds’ goal with relentless frequency. Sprake, keen to atone for his Wembley horror show, was in fine form, but even he couldn’t stop the tide forever, and Celtic sneaked back in front with a John Hughes goal just after half-time. Shortly afterwards, the Leeds’ goalkeeper was stretchered off after a collision with Celtic’s goalscorer. ‘There seems to be no end to the misfortunes of Leeds United,’ lamented Kenneth Wolstenholme. David Harvey, Sprake’s replacement, had little chance with Celtic’s second – the only time Johnstone was left one-on-one at the back, crossing for Murdoch to slot home
from close range. Now Leeds required two goals in less than half an hour; utterly exhausted, and prostrate in the face of Celtic’s onslaught, they could only let the match peter out in a comfortable victory for the Scots. Essentially, the tie had been lost in Leeds, but that didn’t stop the disappointment on the night, a disappointment subsequently exacerbated when in the Final, Celtic succumbed to the rank outsiders Feyernoord, not even giving United the consolation of being knocked out by the eventual victors. After sixty-one intense games and with a team on the verge of collapse, Leeds had come up with precisely nothing. Their whole season and, some speculated, their sanity, hinged on the sixty-second game, the FA Cup Final Replay.
Two weeks after their setback in Glasgow, United regrouped at Old Trafford for the rematch with Chelsea. The game’s ‘highlights’ have been replayed so often, usually as a staple of those ‘I Loved it When Dirty Bastard Footballers Ruled the World’ shows so beloved by Channel 4, that it’s widely thought to have been a bloodbath. In fact, for most of the first half nothing untoward actually happened apart from Ron Harris’s deliberate scything assault on Eddie Gray just after Mick Jones had opened the scoring for United. Leeds simply outclassed Chelsea for much of the game, but halfway through the second half, as Leeds tried to protect their lead in the face of some ferocious pressure from Chelsea, the game degenerated into a kicking match. It was then that referee Eric Jennings should have stepped in, as Hutchinson, McCreadie, Houseman and Cooke seemed intent on sending Bremner to hospital, committing thirty-five fouls in total to Leeds’ eleven. Typically, the Leeds skipper was not averse to a spot of retaliation, which only served to raise the temperature as battles raged between Giles, Hunter, Clarke and Charlton and their opponents.
Perhaps Jennings was too mindful of the occasion and didn’t want to sully his big day out by sending players off, but his tolerance of a staggering number of filthy tackles, players squaring up to each other and sly cracks around the head was beyond comprehension. In the end Leeds were caught out with 12 minutes to go, in a finely worked move that left Osgood free to head the ball home for the equalizing goal. Extra time saw Chelsea starting to take charge for the first time in 210 minutes of football, and after 14 minutes of the first period, David Webb, the victim of the Wembley torture, headed in the winning goal from Charlton’s miscued header. With 16 minutes to save their season, United threw everyone forward but couldn’t break Chelsea down. Clutching their losers’ medals, the disconsolate players trooped back to the sanctuary of their dressing-room, heads bowed as if grieving.
Nine months on from Revie’s original target, they had fallen tanta-lizingly short of every goal. ‘Leeds, like Sysiphus, have pushed three boulders almost to the top of three mountains,’ wrote Geoffrey Green most poetically in The Times, ‘and are now left to see them all back in the dark of the valley.’ It had been their greatest ever season, but Leeds had won nothing. Consolation was impossible. Ultimately, it had proved far too tough an ordeal. Learning his lesson, Revie vowed never again to be so unrealistic. Patience, he now understood, was a virtue in football, too.
TEN
NO LOVE LOST
Football should have been the last thing on the Leeds players’ agenda that summer. The club doctor diagnosed that they all needed a complete break from the game. Characteristically, his advice, after the mental and physical torture of that harrowing season, was only heeded by a few members of the team. Paul Madeley, offered a late berth in Sir Alf Ramsey’s World Cup squad bound for Mexico, turned down the opportunity, sensing he would only feature in the rarest of circumstances, but Allan Clarke, Terry Cooper, Norman Hunter, Jack Charlton and Les Cocker all made the trip. Typical of the year they had just endured, it proved to be another heartbreaking experience.
Ramsey’s selections weren’t the only representatives of Leeds United along for the World Cup ride. The BBC had engaged Don Revie as a ‘colour man’, appearing alongside David Coleman throughout the tournament. Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles also went to Mexico, just for the fun of it. For these football ‘junkies’ some dazzling football and the free-flowing Cuba Libres were as restorative as any conventional rest. What better way to get last season out of their systems than by watching Pelé, Gerson and Tostao, and arguing and debating long into the night with journalists about the game they loved?
England reached the quarter-finals of the tournament and went two goals up against West Germany; but then Ramsey’s dream of retaining the World Cup turned sour. For the first time he experimented with tactical substitutions, with Norman Hunter one of those foolishly introduced in midfield in a premature attempt to close out the game. As Don Revie could have told Sir Alf, a defensive mindset is not something a team could easily adopt in the middle of a game. It had to be part of the original battle plan. Never one to use substitutes when all the outfield players were fit – except as a late time-wasting exercise – Revie believed that the best eleven players to finish a game were invariably the ones who started it. It would certainly have been a better strategy for Ramsey, no matter how exhausted Martin Peters and Bobby Charlton appeared. As it was, West Germany clawed their way back into the game and mugged England in extra time with a Gerd Muller winner. From his position high in the BBC commentary box, Revie refrained from criticizing Ramsey, but his natural caution would never have allowed him to chance such a half-baked gamble so early in the match. Terry Cooper was the only member of the Leeds contingent with a regular starting place: the defeat ruined his hopes of becoming the second Leeds player to win a World Cup winners medal.
In spite of the disappointment at England’s exit, those hazy colour television broadcasts from Guadalajara and Mexico City changed English football. The inspirational attacking style of the exuberant Brazilians demonstrated exactly how the game was supposed to be played. The fear of losing, which had shackled so many teams, was shown for the cowardice it was. Even Revie was heavily influenced by it and recognized the implications for his own team. It would take some time to implement a new fearless philosophy, so strongly ingrained had their defensive habits become, but in 1970 a new Leeds United began to emerge. The conservatism he had clung to like a comfort blanket during the club’s rise was about to be cast aside once and for all.
Remarkably refreshed from his working holiday in Central America, Don Revie was not to be sidetracked by the offer of a £100,000 contract to manage Birmingham City in the summer of 1970. His side was fast approaching the peak of its powers and fate could never again be so malignant. Or so it seemed at the time. Yet the agonies of the previous season would see his limited squad reveal its remarkable powers of recovery once more.
Meanwhile, the manager’s vain attempts to buff up his team’s public image continued. On being voted Manager of the Year for the second year running, Revie was typically self-effacing: ‘If this award had been open to Britain, and the Scottish FA had the good sense to let their own managers be nominated,’ he declared, ‘… the Manager of the Year would certainly have been Jock Stein of Celtic’ He wasn’t saying anything new. By Revie’s criteria Jock Stein would probably have been Manager of the Year every year from 1965 to 1974!
Then Revie turned to his own club, penning an article in which he defended his team against accusations of gamesmanship. Its style, like his BBC punditry – awkward, earnest, plaintive even – is characteristic of his mindset: ‘Some time before Leeds United won even the first of the several honours that have come our way,’ he wrote, ‘I told a gathering of our players that it was not sufficient merely to become champions. Of equal importance in my book was to behave like champions, off as well as on the field.’ After his paean to Stein, Revie now cleverly revealed his ecumenical streak, crossing the sectarian divide by citing Willie Struth, a former manager of Rangers, as his role model. The appeal of Struth to a father figure like Revie is obvious: ‘There is the story about how he [Struth] used to order any player with hair nearing his collar to attend upon the hairdresser; how he roared out two players found in the cheaper seats in a Gl
asgow cinema with the blast “As Rangers players, you will occupy seats befitting your position.”’ The use of ‘attend upon’, an archaism even in 1970, is telling. It speaks of a man trying too hard to convince his detractors. Furthermore, it’s difficult to see how a certain player’s preference for the stalls at the Leeds Odeon would make him a less worthy recipient of a championship winners’ medal. It’s true that Revie shuddered at tabloid reports of Chelsea players lording it in the Kings Road, but playing the ‘standards and values’ card shows him endearingly out of touch.
As for the accusation that Leeds were more physical than skilful: ‘totally unfair’, said Revie. Bizarrely, he even called George Best in Leeds’ defence: ‘I recall George Best being asked how he rated Leeds. He replied: “Their strength is that they have no weaknesses: they also possess a tremendous team spirit and players of great individual skills.” I like to think that George was echoing the thoughts of most of the people in football, but for a long time we had to suffer other things being said about us, and bear it with dignity.’ At the very least Revie is quoting Best out of context. In later years the player’s biannual roughhousing by Revie’s defenders – and particularly Paul Reaney, the player Best least liked to play against – left him far more equivocal about the Elland Road club. In his latest autobiography, Blessed, Best concedes that Leeds turned into a decent team, but he remains most preoccupied by their antics as ‘masters of the black arts’: his former team-mate Johnny Giles, ‘Once went over the top and caught me so fiercely that the impact tore open the tie-up holding the pad at the top of my sock and his boot went through everything into the bone.’ (‘None of the bad things I did,’ Giles has since admitted, ‘of which I am now thoroughly ashamed, helped my club win a single title. Indeed, quite the opposite.’ The enmity between the two Uniteds did not stop Revie being mentioned in the Old Trafford boardroom as a possible successor to Matt Busby, when attempts to lure Jock Stein from Celtic came to nothing.)