By the summer of 1975, effectively the mid-point of the decade, English football stood in a strange place while also sending conflicting signals to the national psyche.
Based upon high attendance figures and unwavering press interest, the game appeared more popular than ever. Yet beyond the exciting matches and trophy parading, the public at large had come to regard Saturday afternoon as a weekly flashpoint for terrace battles and conspicuous vandalism, rival fans either clashing or trashing their way through any locale with the misfortune to be staging a Football League match.
This perception received further traction when Messrs’ Barker and Corbett when delivering spoof news items on their popular BBC television programme ‘The Two Ronnies’ came up with the observation:
‘The crowd trouble at Millwall on Saturday was interrupted for 90 minutes when 22 players invaded the pitch.’
Such was the image problem the domestic game had been saddled with, the demoralising nature and implications of hooliganism would shortly lead to segregation and perimeter fencing. Spectators, be they troublemakers or rank and file supporters, soon to be herded into pens like animals – the tragic events of Hillsborough at the end of long, ghastly road, less than a generation away.
Indeed, back in May 1975 both current dimensions of the English game had recently been evident at the European Cup Final in Paris, where Leeds United had given an excellent account of themselves against West German holders Bayern Munich.
Yet when a couple of, admittedly, contentious refereeing decisions went against the Elland Road side during the second half of a match in which they were dominant, (but would ultimately lose 2-0), a section of their support indulged in riotous behaviour that continued afterward on Parisian streets.
This simply affirmed to those watching on TV, whether in the U.K. or abroad, England had a serious problem with crowd disorder – this outbreak following on from unruly scenes involving Spurs followers at a fixture in Rotterdam the previous year.
In the problem escalating in a way few would have envisaged, even from the start of the decade, so the game itself or perhaps more pertinently those most readily associated with silverware and success, were experiencing uncertain times.
If 1973-74, with Leeds winning the league title and Liverpool the FA Cup, had been the season on the cards since the 1970s dawned, (the two main prizes going the way of established high rollers rather than wild card interloper), then the campaign to have just ended followed no logic whatsoever.
At the end of a convoluted championship race it appeared nobody had the necessary mindset to win, Derby prevailed to lift the title for the second time in three years – this one a far bigger surprise than when they became champions under Brian Clough and Peter Taylor in 1972.
Now in the charge of one-time Rams player and 1960-61 Spurs double winner Dave Mackay, the former Scottish international guided them home with smallest championship winning points haul for twenty years. Derby were not even in the conversation until the season had barely six weeks to go, the Baseball Ground outfit holding their nerve while the rest of the field fell between the two stools of anticipation and anxiety.
Having never seriously threatened to win anything since their 1965 European Cup Winners’ Cup triumph, West Ham ended their trophy famine by surprising many, including to some extent themselves, by repeating their 1964 FA Cup triumph. The Hammers had fielded a stronger XI many times in the intervening years, most notably when Bobby Moore was among their number, the 1966 England World Cup winning captain now playing for second division Fulham – who by a strange quirk of fate West Ham had recently defeated in the FA Cup Final.
But even winning the trophy at the end of wildly erratic league season was not enough to elevate the Upton Park side to finish as the highest-placed club in the capital – 1974-75 showing all manner of diminishing returns for those located between Whitechapel and Wembley.
Since their League and FA Cup double-winning days of 1970-71, Arsenal had slipped into a gradual decline, paucity rather than prizes becoming the way of things at Highbury – the season to have just ended notable only for its dullness as the club struggled to rediscover a sense of direction.
Things were no better across the way at White Hart Lane, Spurs finishing even closer to the drop zone than their local rivals. In the uncertain new world of the post-Bill Nicholson era (his trophy-laden reign coming to an inglorious end in September 1974), Tottenham also looked adrift. Experienced players seemed unsettled, newcomers found it hard to settle, it not being wise after the event to conclude there would be more pot holes to endure before the road became smooth again.
If Spurs and Arsenal had cause to be grateful, it meant thanking their lucky North London stars they were at least spared the indignities being suffered by Chelsea.
Their previously fancy Dan demeanour, which had taken domestic and European honours the way of SW6 in the opening years of the ‘70s had passed, leaving in its wake Dan only in the desperate sense. Mired in debt, star turns sold, the Bridge an odd mixture of futuristic and archaic, the ultimate embarrassment had come with the recent loss of their top tier status.
Relegation had been in the post from around the same time as the Christmas cards – Chelsea seemingly without the resources or resourcefulness to puncture the air of invariability attached to their demotion.
All of which left West London bedfellows Queens Park Rangers as the premier attraction, although in finishing top of the capital quintet in eleventh – 1974-75 more a season of London falling than calling – they had overcome a poor start that resulted in the surprise sacking of manager Gordon Jago. Regarded by many as a tactical visionary, he had formulated a possession-based, continental style of play more Dutch than Dulwich, this method developed further by his successor, former two-time Stamford Bridge trophy winner Dave Sexton.
Whether it would prove capable of taking trophies to W12 remained to be seen, but for the moment there were no shortage of admiring laurels going the way of Loftus Road.
While QPR were offering a glimpse of the future, or at least holding up a mirror to what was happening on the continent, as far as the England team were concerned, the first year of the Don Revie era had resulted in five wins and three draws from his eight matches in charge. As yet a clearly defined manner of playing had not emerged, his selection policy seemingly rooted in putting what he felt were his best 11 players on the field and them adapting the best they could – this opposed to having a tactical approach for which he would find personnel.
With two final European Championship qualifiers to play in the autumn of 1975, England appeared to have the necessary wherewithal for progress to the next stage of the competition and while results to date spoke for themselves, it was speaking to key performers Revie appeared to have a problem with.
Gifted Stoke City midfielder Alan Hudson had already been sacrificed on the altar of personality clash, while captain and 1966 World Cup winner Alan Ball was also about to be unceremoniously removed from the squad. Heaven knows what would happen if the opposition began causing England problems, Revie with enough on his plate through issues he was creating for himself.
Indeed, when England played host to the inaugural Cricket World Cup in the summer of 1975, the development to have taken hold in the limited-over form of the game quickly became apparent in the play of tournament big guns West Indies and Australia. The home nation was found wanting in going out to the Australians, losing in the semi-finals to the first genuinely good team they had played.
The portents not as straightforward as one might have hoped then for when Revie took his men into the forthcoming away matches against Czechoslovakia and Portugal – fixtures when pressure would be on him to demonstrate his credentials as a manager at international level.
Having won an FA Cup, league title and European honour apiece so far during the decade, with Liverpool and Leeds failing to win a trophy during 1974-75, (in fairness the Elland Road outfit, now in the charge of Jimmy Armfield following the brief, tempestuous reign of Brian Clough could not have gone closer to lifting the European Cup), there was a sense both of these northern powerhouses stood at a crossroads.
Through the first campaign after succeeding Bill Shankly at the Anfield tiller, Bob Paisley had seen his side finish runners-up. But early cup exits at home and in Europe, along with league points frittered away in unaccustomed fashion, had raised questions the new boss would quickly need to answer to avoid inevitable comparisons with his predecessor. Meanwhile for Armfield the spectre of Revie still loomed large, the accomplished Leeds side he had assembled over a number of years now resembling ageing gunslingers whose capability to shoot themselves out of any situation was just starting to dwindle.
Elsewhere across the north, on the blue side of Stanley Park Everton, the stylish champions of 1970, had looked more likely to win the league during 1974-75 than their Mersey neighbours, nobody suffering more with championship colic than Billy Bingham’s side – their best campaign for five years in finishing third undercut by realisation the title had been there for the taking to Goodison Park.
Of the others to have made, in varying degrees, a concerted challenge, Stoke City and Ipswich Town (who joined Liverpool and Everton in qualifying for the UEFA Cup), both played in a purposeful manner, while Middlesbrough, under the astute guidance of Jack Charlton, had acquitted themselves admirably on their return to the top flight.
With Burnley and Sheffield United it was possible to conclude the UEFA Cup place they had each just failed to attain could be reached with a touch more consistency – and with no shortage of fine players on the books at Turf Moor and Bramall Lane, neither it seemed would have to contend themselves with a relegation struggle anytime soon.
Another consequence of Leeds returning from Paris without the European Cup was completion of a second season without success for an English side in Europe. After annually winning at least one of the three European club competitions between 1968 and 1973, the turning off of this trophy tap was thought, by some, to be part of a wider malaise gripping English football, aligned in this instance with failure of the national team to qualify for the 1974 World Cup.
For such reasons there was a degree of credence to the argument, yet week after week the Football League produced matches of unabated excitement – successive Saturday’s in the early winter of 1974 providing an equally strong case for the game never having been in such fine fettle.
As Division One waved farewell to Chelsea (along with Luton Town and Carlisle United after just one season in the top tier), it welcomed back Manchester United, Aston Villa and Norwich City – Villa the other domestic cup winners in clinching a promotion/trophy double after defeating the Carrow Road side at Wembley in the League Cup Final.
Second division champions United played some exhilarating football through their one season sojourn outside Division One, exemplified in a thrilling late-November 3-2 home over Sunderland that was followed seven days later by an equally dramatic 4-4 Hillsborough draw against Sheffield Wednesday.
As they lit up the scene with a dynamic brand of attacking football, it only served to further cloud the issue of how a team containing a host of international players, under the guidance of an experienced manager in Tommy Docherty, had wound up in reduced circumstances to begin with – raising the not unrealistic proposition that for only time in the history of English football, the second division title winners were, player-for-player, a superior team to the league champions.
In the long term, from a mid-70s standpoint it could be envisaged a footballer moving between clubs for a fee of a million pounds before the decade was out. It was also not beyond the realms of possibility it would be an England international who was the subject of such a transfer, the deal most likely taking the player to either Manchester or Merseyside.
When such an event did transpire in March 1979 most of these elements would be in play, the buying club being the reigning league champions, the League Cup holders and with designs now on winning the European Cup. All very plausible until realisation the club spending such an enormous amount of money were, in the summer of 1975, an ordinary second division club, who just a few months earlier had acquired an extraordinary manager – the second half of the 1970s the third act in the remarkable managerial career of Brian Clough, who was on the verge of leading Nottingham Forest to unprecedented heights.
In the short term Manchester United would imminently return to Division One and with them would come an exciting, entertaining team, but also a sizeable unruly element among an army of travelling supporters who had gained notoriety for causing mayhem when United played away.
Positive play, terrace trouble – the dichotomy of English football writ large in the summer of 1975.
IN MEMORIAM – Chic Bates/Brian Glanville:
During the past fortnight has come the sad news that two great football men of my acquaintance, to varying degrees, namely Chic Bates and Brian Glanville, have passed to that great stadium in the sky.
Former Shrewsbury Town player and manager Bates (who also had a late-90s spell in charge of Stoke City), was someone, who for me, it was a privilege to know for almost 50 years.
First meeting him as a teenage Shrewsbury supporter just after he had joined the club from non-league Stourbridge in the mid-70s, Chic was never less than courteous, with barely a crossed word between us in all the guises we subsequently met, be it friends, manager/reporter, near neighbours or people in common.
Such affability could be rare in the ruthless world of football management, but it did not detract from his accomplishments in the role, particularly at Shrewsbury Town.
His ridiculous sacking by the Gay Meadow board in November 1987 has proved the most short-sighted decision in the history of the club. Shrewsbury were 19th in Division Two at the time, Bates having guided them to 8th in the 1984-85 season (the highest league placing they have ever attained), but were relegated in April 1989 and have never regained such status since.
The decades that followed gave rise to the oft-repeated comment by my late dad of: ‘That was the day the wheels came off – the day they sacked Chic.’
For decade’s chief football writer of the Sunday Times, Brian Glanville was erudite and eloquent no matter if his strong opinions were being expressed through print or in person.
Our paths crossed a number of times in press boxes around the country and once initial shyness and colossal admiration from a distance was overcome (mine, not his), we struck up a loose friendship that resulted in several letters being exchanged down the years – my correspondence to him I now recognise as fan mail.
Always patient when enduring my odd questions about famous matches from the past he had reported on, (we also shared an interest in great Arsenal teams of the 1930s), Brian Glanville was a unique figure, while at the same time a common inspiration to many who put pen to paper in hoping to make a living from writing about football.
NEIL SAMBROOK is also the author of MONTY’S DOUBLE – an acclaimed thriller available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book: