Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Chapter 10; A non-decision that will be talked about for years
The early 1970s found the Football League as competitive as ever, but with a couple of new faces near the top of the First Division table and one particularly established name in steep decline.
10. A non-decision that will be talked about for years
By the middle of the 1960s football was migrating to the big cities, but not all of those big cities were traditional football ‘hotbeds’. Leeds City had joined the Football League in 1905, a year after their formation, as the League spread its wings into West Yorkshire as an attempt to counter the growth of rugby in the area.
After City had been forcibly ejected from the Football League in 1919 over a failure to respond to a demand from the Football League and the FA, a new club called Leeds United AFC. They would wear blue, white and yellow, and they would play at Elland Road. After a season in the Midland League, the new club was voted straight into the Football League.
Leeds United spent the years between the wars yo-yoing between the top two divisions, but after finishing bottom of the First Division with just 18 points at the end of the first season back after World War 2, the yo-yo came to a halt. By the middle of the 1950s they’d been drifting for some time, but they did have an ace up their sleeve. John Charles had first arrived at the club in 1951 as a defender, but soon converted into attack and started scoring goals left, right and centre.
In 1955, they were promoted back to the First Division, but in April 1957 Juventus made Leeds an offer for Charles that they could not refuse; £65,000, almost double the existing British record of the time. Shorn of Charles’s goals, Leeds had two attritional seasons near the bottom of the table before falling back again in 1960. Back in the Second Division, they finished as low as 19th in 1962, just three points above the relegation places.
But Leeds also had another ace up their sleeve, and one who would go on to have an even greater influence on the club than John Charles, though he wouldn’t be put to his best use until the club was at its lowest ebb, to that point. Don Revie was born in Middlesbrough and raised during the great depression. He was an accomplished player, making 501 career appearances playing as arguably Britain’s first deep-lying centre-forward. Although never a great scorer of goals, he did get four in six appearances for England, and won the FA Cup with Manchester City.
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