Being a Fan - the Chelsea years

Being a fan means different things to different people. When speaking to people for whom a particular club is their whole life I often feel a fraud. I don’t have tattoos of a club badge on my back, my bedroom wall was never festooned with posters of Ian Hutchinson or Stan Bowles, there are no embarrassing tales of drunken coach trips up the M1 and I’ve never possessed a season ticket. There. I’ve admitted it.

However, for more than fifty years I have followed a few teams along the way; perhaps not with the primeval passion of the super-supporter but nonetheless with a degree of pride. I share the despair, laced with occasional bursts of euphoria, but never wearing blinkers that might shield my eyes from the wider world of football.

My first memory of choosing a team to support dates back to the weekend before the 1967-68 season. I can be that specific because I remember vividly perusing the 1966-67 table in the Daily Express and picking out clubs such as Chelsea, Queens Park Rangers (they had won Division Three) and even Scottish teams Dunfermline, Morton and Ayr Utd. There was no science involved, no study of form, no geographical allegiance; I just “liked the names”.

The photo above might suggest I was a West Ham supporter. Pictures can be deceptive! By my eighth birthday I hadn’t plumped for one special club so I suppose the maternal, East London-originating branch of my family decided to make their move. I remember the pleasure at receiving my first real football kit, and felt pride at posing for this photo. However, deep down I knew my heart wasn’t totally devoted to the Hammers cause. Dad had long ago been resigned to my rejecting the Southampton colours – the thought horrified me! – but what to do?

Most of my football-loving friends favoured either West Ham (the nearest big club to Brentwood, which was home to many East End exiles) or Manchester United, with a few junior Gunners or Chelsea Blues. The origin of my decision is lost in the swirling mists of time but I decide to support the latter club. Chelsea were quite fashionable, in a Swinging Sixties sense, but they hadn’t won the League in my lifetime nor the FA Cup ever, so nobody could ever accuse me of glory-hunting. I also requested, and received, a coveted all-blue kit. Sorry, Uncle David!

Chelsea’s side included Peter ‘The Cat’ Bonetti in goal, the long-throw virtuoso Ian Hutchinson and Scottish winger Charlie Cooke, who was my first genuine ‘Favourite Player’. In addition, Peter Osgood was one of the best forwards (they weren’t called ‘strikers’ in those days) in the league, so I had plenty on which to focus my attention.

In the event, my timing proved fortuitous as Chelsea surged past QPR 4-2 and Watford 5-1 (at White Hart Lane-on-Mud) to the FA Cup Final in 1970. They were to play Leeds, for whom I also had a soft spot, especially Peter Lorimer, so at first I was slightly torn. However, come the 11^th April (scheduled very early, presumably because of the World Cup that summer) I was 100% a Blue. I recall that game extremely clearly and I don’t need to use Google to name the Chelsea XI: Bonetti, Webb, McCreadie, Hollins, Dempsey, Harris, Baldwin (in for the injured Hudson), Houseman, Osgood, Hutchinson, Cooke.

It was an exciting match, played on an awful Wembley pitch, cut up by the previous week’s Horse of the Year Show. The Leeds left-winger Eddie Gray was superb but I remember going nuts when Hutchinson fired in an equaliser with five minutes left, For me, that was almost as good as football could get – apart from Chelsea not winning, of course. However, a few weeks later, they triumphed in a replay at Old Trafford. It was another classic of end-to-end football but probably the dirtiest game you’ll ever see. It had punch-ups, head-butts, flying kicks to the head, wild hacks, Bonetti bundled into the net (leaving him injured for most of the game) which, ref David Elleray concluded many years later, would have generated twenty yellow cards and six reds had the Nineties rules been in operation! Instead, Hutchinson was the only man booked. Most importantly, the match featured Webb’s winning header. We’d only gone and won the FA Cup!

The following season Chelsea won more silverware, this time the European Cup-Winners’ Cup. That, too, went to a replay, just two days after the first was drawn 1-1. We subsequently reached the 1972 League Cup Final, losing to Stoke, but by then my loyalty to the Blues was becoming looser. A few years later I recall a conversation in the school hall in which a friend asked me to sign a petition calling for Dave Sexton to be sacked for falling out with Osgood. I declined, feeling that the manager was more important than a whingeing centre-forward. And, in any case, I had already transferred my allegiance to West London rivals Queens Park Rangers.

Just as well, because Chelsea began to fall apart and QPR were on the rise. Rangers were promoted to Division One for the ‘73/74 season and a year later, their illustrious neighbours dropped out of the top tier, given a helpful nudge by a 3-0 home defeat by – er - QPR. Sexton was given the boot and a few months later returned to management – with QPR! 

I never got to see Chelsea play live, although I did toddle along to Billericay’s little New Lodge ground in August 1986 for a charity match involving the ‘Chelsea 1970 FA Cup XI’. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, the actual side which had won so memorably in my childhood. However, a grey-haired but still slender Bonetti (right, who actually saved a penalty), and slightly chubbier ‘Chopper’ Harris, John Dempsey and Peter Osgood were amongst those taking part and signing autographs for the kids (and dads) afterwards. Not all members of that team were strictly speaking of 1970 vintage. Indeed, Frank Lampard Snr, unlike his son, never played for Chelsea at all but happened to live nearby. As for QPR, I would enjoy numerous happy Hoops performances in subsequent decades, of which more later.

Football's Boom Boom Boom!

The last few decades have witnessed extraordinary sums of money cascading into football. Admittedly an awful lot cascaded out again into the grubby mitts of agents and chief executives, but much of that has been invested in the game itself – or at least the tip of the mighty pyramid which supports the global sport.

It’s not just about the billions thrown at Premier league football by Sky, BT and now Amazon; it’s the rest of the world. The Manchester clubs, Liverpool and Chelsea can afford to splash out £50 million for players all bar the true cognoscenti will not have heard of. However, even Real Madrid, the club which made its modern reputation from hiring top-gun galacticos for vast sums (Sanchez, Figo, Ronaldo, Bale et al) is being left behind by Qatar-bankrolled Paris St Germain. I’d become used to world records being raised by a few million Euros at a time, but when PSG blew the transfer market apart with their 222 million Euro acquisition of cry-baby Neymar, followed by a 180 million option on the teenage Mbappe, my hands were thrown high in horror.

Things have got seriously out of hand. Like London house prices, hyperinflation at the top has an impact on every layer below. I write this after a summer transfer window awash with laughable sums being vaunted for unknown Portuguese or young defenders from our own League One who will probably end up being loaned out again. Has the whole world gone stark staring mad? Newly-promoted Fulham shelled out well over £100m on new stock just to give themselves a fighting chance of staying up.

Of course, I and most other football fans have been making similar exclamations all our lives. Even I am too young to remember the first six-figure transfer between British clubs (Alan Ball in post-World Cup 1966) but I do vividly recall the revelation of, I think, the first £100,000 teenager.

When I read about Arsenal spending such a huge sum on Peter Marinello from Hibs in January 1970, I probably almost choked on my Alphabetti Spaghetti. I presume his value was inflated by a vague physical resemblance to George Best but sadly his talent proved nowhere near as similar. Without a phalanx of psychologists and welfare coaches, the wee boy from Edinburgh never really justified the attention he received in the media. Although he scored on his debut – never a bad thing – injury and the celebrity lifestyle thrust upon his unsuspecting shoulders reduced his contribution to a mere three goals in three seasons before returning to Scotland.

A few months after the Marinello deal came our first £200,000 footballer, Martin Peters. However, I remember the most surprise at the time was not concerning the headline figure but the fact that the West Ham stalwart was heading to Spurs while the 30 year-old White Hart Lane legend Jimmy Greaves was the makeweight in the opposite direction. In the end, Spurs proved to reap the greater benefit because the alcoholic Greavesie retired the following year after only 38 appearances to spend more time in the pub.

With no mid- or close season windows in which to funnel all attention and pointless airtime-filling speculation, transfers were a year-round feature, as much part and parcel of football as they are now. It’s just that there was no internet, YouTube footage or ‘super-agents’ to whip up expectations. David Nish’s £225,000 move from Leicester to Brian Clough’s League-winning Derby side in 1972 raised eyebrows as he was ‘only’ a defender, then centre-forward Bob Latchford’s £350,000 fee in 1975 shelled out by Everton to Birmingham shattered the record. With consumer prices increasing by 25% a year at the time, perhaps we were accustomed to such inflation, and football transfers were merely symptomatic of mid-Seventies economics. Good for Bob, though!

In 1979, Clough's Nottingham Forest made Trevor Francis the first domestic million-pound footballer, doubling the previous record. Things went a bit berserk that September when Manchester City, way before their current excesses, found over £1.4 million to bring midfielder Steve Daley from Wolves. He was a decent player but hardly in that class. He even signed a ten-year contract – but left after two. Until the days of Robinho (Man City again) and Veron (Man Utd), Daley was considered the biggest waste of money in English football history.

During the Eighties, the financial clout of Serie A and La Liga constantly raised the bar, as the likes of Ray Wilkins (Milan), Mark Hughes (Barcelona) and Ian Rush (Juventus) went abroad in exchange for several million quid and head-turning signing–on fees and continental salaries. When Dennis Bergkamp came the other way for £7.5 million in 1995 - making even Arsenal worth watching for a change! – the dye was cast for a new international market in which Premier League clubs were leading buyers and sellers. However, the biggest leap occurred in July 1996 when Newcastle swooped for Blackburn’s Alan Shearer, England captain and goal scorer supreme, at a cost of £15 million. The floodgates opened….

The same has happened with wage bills, too. My heart bleeds for the poor dears who have to live on a basic £5 million plus bonuses and commercial extras in return for a few hours a week kicking a ball. Yet there is a vast disparity in salaries evident in English football. That has always been the case; it’s just that there are far more noughts and commas involved in the numbers these days.

If there is a salaries Grand Canyon between the Premier League and League Two, it’s probably even wider across the England-Scotland border. In 2018, Aberdeen’s star striker Adam Rooney headed south for a pay rise. He had been lured not by a club in the EP, nor even the Championship. No, he will be playing for non-league FC Salford! Inevitably the headline-grabbing contracts dished out to the Hazards and Pogbas of this world distort the overall PL average. In 2016-7, Man Utd’s annual wage bill was £264m, compared with newly-promoted Brighton’s £11million. No doubt Albion’s players earned a Premier League premium but nevertheless it’s hardly surprising that there is a widening chasm between the top six and the rest. It wasn’t always so but, unless more Middle East kingdoms get involved I can’t see the rest being allowed to catch up.

Another negative aspect of football as big business is the modern obsession with measuring players by salaries and, increasingly, transfer fees. The bigger the fee, the better the player, right? Is some non-entity plucked from the Turkish league for £12 million superior to an international star whose last club move came five years ago for half that amount? And where does that leave the one-club players - the Brookings, Gerrards and Scholeses – whose loyalty is considered so quaint and old-fashioned? They didn’t even take the lucrative pre-retirement bundle of dollars offered once by the USA and now China and Japan. No, you can’t value everything in terms of numbers. Football is better than that.

Reds, Yellows and Green is the new Black

Whether or not Jagielka deserved to go last weekend, red cards are always the source of much debate, arguments which ultimately can't change anything. Yet the brandishing of yellow or red cards wasn't always an everyday occurrence.  Although launched on the international stage in the late Sixties they weren’t adopted by the Football League until 1976. Prior to that, relatively minor misdemeanours would result in the offender being ‘booked’, i.e his name would be written in a notebook carried by the ref. Something worse would mean a sending off. 

While obviously having laws of the game to uphold, refs were allowed a lot of leeway, resulting in a more affable relationship between players and officials. Nowadays I tend to agree with those who decry refs as being ‘robots’, flashing the cards with officious relish at the first tug of a shirt or ‘raised arm’. The best refs still manage to apply the laws whilst understanding context and personalities but they are often themselves punished for leniency, which I consider ludicrous.

Sendings off, with or without a red rectangle, were unusual in the early Seventies. A defender would virtually have to decapitate or shatter the leg of an opponent to warrant his marching orders. However, woe betide anyone who swore at the ref or linesman, as the big and feisty Wolves number nine Derek Dougan would famously discover. I also recall his fellow Northern Irishman George Best being dismissed for petulantly throwing a piece of mud towards the ref when playing for his country in 1970. It seems so trivial now, but it caused a storm at the time. It wouldn’t happen in 2018; there’s no mud to throw!

Coincidentally, Best received the second red card ever to be shown in the Football League in 1976, although on the same afternoon, Dave Wagstaffe, whose crosses had been so valuable to Dougan a few years earlier, received the very first. Curiously, both were awarded for abusive language. Presumably the same naughty words we can hear or lip-read every few minutes in the Premier League today. At least there was widespread respect for referees back then, For all the FA’s attempts at stamping out on-pitch swearing, including the Respect campaign, they’re fighting a losing battle. Maybe more f*@#ing red cards are needed?!

Perhaps referees would be command greater respect were they always dressed in black, as they were until the Premier League ushered in the green shirts. When the Man in Black controlled the game with just a whistle, stopwatch, book, a knowing wink and firm gesture, they tended to shun the limelight. It seems ironic that the card system was dropped in England for much of the Eighties because it apparently encouraged “demonstrative referees”. How thinking has changed! When referees are officially ranked in descending order of cards shown, I think there is a problem. Surely we should be lauding those who don’t flourish the red and yellow at every opportunity.

Then again we now live in an era of not one referee but four. The linesman is now an ‘assistant referee’ although I suppose the modern nomenclature avoids the problem of gender-specific language now that women have finally been allowed to break the glass ceiling in this field. The so-called ‘fourth official’ seems a bonkers idea. All he – or theoretically she – seems to be there for is hold up an electronic board displaying substitutions and what we used to call injury time, and soak up the bile and venom spat by managers on the touchline. In my opinion, they are superfluous on both counts; just replace them with a fixed clock and a punchbag!

Refs have a tough job as it is without having to face down a manic Mourinho or ranting wild Warnock. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. I also remember seeing poor Andy d’Urso being pursued around the pitch by a baying Man United mob led by Roy Keane ,which is probably worse. That led to the authorities clamping down on such appalling displays of intimidation, threatening massive fines to clubs whose players adopt mob rule. I guess a little coloured card can be a more effective weapon to wield than a machete when you’re a ref, but it sure helps to have the FA behind you.

The Russia World Cup expanded the number of officials still further to include the VAR – an anonymous bunch of people watching the same bank of camera angles we could see at home. No doubt this will be expanded to all Premier League games any day now. Is it a positive innovation? I reckon there are more pluses than minuses but VAR has to go hand in hand with tougher punishment for diving and bogus penalty claims.

Guidelines have come and gone over the years with new instructions to refs needed to counter insidious growth of on-pitch nastiness, such as the elbow (euphemistically called the 'raised arm'), diving  ('simulation') and the 'professional foul'. I remember applauding the 'straight red' shown to Kevin Moran during the 1985 FA Cup Final against Everton, a massive talking point at the time.

I can’t say I have ever drawn up a list of my favourite referees. As mentioned earlier, they are supposed to be largely anonymous, upholding the laws of football as required of them. In the Seventies, Clive Thomas of Treorchy (why were refs always named with their home town in brackets?) was probably the best known. I don’t know whether he was the most prolific when it came to taking names of offenders but he was always known as ‘Clive the Book’. I once saw him living up to his reputation cautioning the Exeter City ‘keeper Len Bond for tapping an obstinate forward with the ball, thus conceding a penalty! Thomas was not popular with us City fans that day.

The aforementioned Mr d’Urso is remembered by me not only for that Man Utd incident but for the fact he came from Billericay (those brackets again), while Uriah Rennie made waves as the first top-flight black ref in England. I do have a soft spot for Mark Clattenburg (Consett) who overcame an early ‘rabbit in headlights’ appearance to become one of the world’s finest. If a top PL manager singled him out for criticism, then maybe he was doing his job particularly effectively. However, I shall never forget the first time I saw Pierluigi Collina (Bologna). In the Nineties, Dad and I sometimes watched Channel 4s Sunday afternoon Italian football coverage, and the sight of ‘baldie ref’ used to liven up even the dullest Serie A encounter. We used to cheer every decision and he thoroughly deserved the accolade of best ref in the world. No automaton, he. With those scary, starey eyes, he wasn’t a man to mess with either. That's what you really want from a ref!

Number Twelve and the Joy of Six

Since the era of Ziggy Stardust, football has seen many ch-ch-ch-ch-changes in addition to grass in March and everyone shouting “Hey!” every few seconds. The fundamental image of eleven against eleven endeavouring to kick a spherical object into a net is mercifully unchanged since 150 years ago. Nevertheless, since my Shoot!-reading days, many other 2018 elements would not be recognised by my ten year-old self.

So many aspects of the current game weren’t even on the horizon back then. Injury time was simply that; time added on for genuine injuries. Refs might add a minute if a trainer came on with the magic sponge, two if a stretcher was required. Even if a young Alex Ferguson was jabbing frantically at his toy watch. Similarly, half-time wasn’t a fifteen-minute break for adverts and trip to the prawn and avocado ciabatta stall at Old Trafford, but a mere five minutes for half an orange and a sharp tactical talk. Games ended on a Saturday afternoon at 4.40.

Shirt sponsorship didn’t appear until the late Seventies and players’ names printed on the back didn’t arrive until the era of squad numbers in the Nineties. The idea of squad was a bit fanciful, too. The top clubs essentially often played about sixteen players across a whole season, plus a few reserves in case of injury. Tactical substitutions were relatively rare; with only one nominated sub allowed, you were scuppered if, having brought on your number 12, someone was injured.

It must have been difficult picking your twelfth man. Choose a forward and your mid-match defensive options were consequently limited, and vice-versa. Managers loved to have at their disposal a ‘utility player’, someone who could fit in almost anywhere. While England hadn’t embraced the Ajax Amsterdam philosophy of ‘total football’ – interchangeable positions to confound markers – there were a few around. Leeds United’s Paul Madeley was renowned for his versatility, and both Colin Todd and Kevin Beattie were more than capable as centre-back, full-back or even midfield. Each played for England, too.

Now we have an ever-expanding number of bench-sitters with a maximum of three substitutions allowed in a ninety-minute game. The modern day Madeleys would have less value because managers have greater flexibility when it comes to replacing the injured, tired, dismissed or tactically redundant. The rule change has also almost eradicated the once-familiar sight of an injured goalie being forced to hand his gloves to an outfield colleague. I’m not sure whether Madeley did it, but Chelsea’s defender David Webb, and Leeds’ Lucas Radebe two decades later proved quite adept. Glenn Hoddle, Bobby Moore and even Robbie Savage had to stand in for their respective ‘number one’s on occasions.

If the genuine all-rounder is a rarity, then the impact player has replaced him. Normally for purely tactical purposes, we have become accustomed to the likes of Olivier Giroud being introduced for the final twenty minutes to harass tired centre-backs, Marouane Fellaini to add his height and elbows in a defensive cause or, in Real Madrid’s case, Gareth Bale to run at heavy-legged defenders in search of a winning goal or equaliser. Get it wrong and it’s a futile gesture of desperation by the manager. Get it right and he is a tactical genius while the player can also soak up the adulation. There used to be ‘super-subs’ in the old days, too. Liverpool’s ginger-haired striker David Fairclough made a name purely as a young number twelve who scored some vital late goals, such as this one in a 1976 Merseyside derby.

Ball technology was totally different. I think by then leather had given way to plastic, but footballers still had to give it some welly if they were attempting a long ball. As today, defenders wouldn’t flinch from heading a ball descending from the heavens. However, it has since been demonstrated that constant headers caused lasting brain damage, a medically proven to be a crucial factor in the sad death in 2002 of West Brom and England centre-forward Jeff Astle, aged only 59. Current balls have the weight of a beach ball in comparison.

Goalkeepers rarely cleared with the ball on the ground; it would never reach the halfway line. Therefore they tended to use drop-kicks for distance or throws for accuracy. As my Dad was always fond of remarking, “goalies have it so easy these days”. By the Seventies, it was no longer legal to barge a ‘keeper into the net, as had been the case when my Dad stood between the sticks two decades earlier. However, they were allowed to pick up a back pass and bounce the ball liberally. An interim regulation penalising goalies who held the ball for more than four paces kept play moving more freely but has since been replaced by the six-second rule. I’m becoming fed up, though, with the latest time-wasting ruse by goalies of catching the ball and slumping to the ground for what seems like an age before rolling the ball out to a team-mate. It’s about time FIFA clamped down on such cheating.

However, whether or not it’s in the genes, I still take much pleasure from seeing an excellent ‘keeper on display, preferably upright. At under 5 feet 6, I was pretty useless in that position (or indeed any position) but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate fine ‘keeping in any era, whatever the regulations, from Shilton to Schmeichel, Jennings to De Gea. More of that in a future blog.

Football Memories - Leaders of the Pack

With a new Premier League chapter about to begin, I've been musing about the most memorable seasons from the past, including those predating the PL. 

In the last twenty-five years or so, the League title itself has become downgraded. Since the 1992 launch of the Champions League, the main ambition of clubs in the top tier has been a place in the top three or four, the passport to the richest tournament of all. Prior to this, only the top team qualified for what was then the European Cup. While the second or third positions offered a passage to the lesser continental competition, the UEFA Cup, in England the target was to finish first. The League title, apart from the more symbolic cachet of the FA Cup, was the one that mattered.

That went for fans, too. When I first became interested in football, the First Division had twenty-two clubs, same as Division Two. Three and Four, as with their current equivalents Leagues One and Two, each comprised twenty-four teams. Mobility between the divisions was more restricted. Until 1973/74 the top two operated a two-up-two-down system and it was another thirteen years before play-offs were introduced. 

In the early Seventies, there was no corporate sponsorship of competitions or even club shirts. There was no multimillion pound broadcasting pot to share out, and no mega-rich oligarchs or Arab monarchies to give clubs a massive advantage. Therefore, the race for the title was far more democratic; everyone had a decent stab without having one hand – or should it be foot? – tied behind their back.

After the Jack Walker-financed Blackburn Rovers triumphed in 1994/95, only four different clubs topped the pile in the following twenty years. Yawn, yawn, yawn. For more than a decade, the top four places were pretty much pre-determined in August. Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool were the only ones with sufficient clout until United’s “noisy neighbours” joined the throng, nudging Liverpool down the pecking order. In the past few years, good managers and nurturing of young talent have allowed Spurs a seat amongst the elite but, with that one glorious idiosyncratic exception of 2015/16, the rest are basically competing to avoid relegation.

How I crave the days when at the season’s sun-kissed start, we really had no idea who would succeed nine months down the line. From 1966/67 to 1972/73, we had seven different winners in consecutive seasons, which kept things interesting. Mind you, in that time, Leeds United were the most consistent team around yet clinched the title only once. They were runners-up three years in succession, too. I was blissfully unaware of their reputation of skulduggery and thuggery under Don Revie’s ruthless yet pragmatic management – that angle was never explored in the pages of Shoot! Instead, I used to feel sorry for them.

Others in regular contention included Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal. Spurs and Everton were often there or thereabouts, too, so altogether not a million miles away from where I sit in 2018. Most of the above have been on a rollercoaster in the interim, with even United suffering the indignity of relegation in May 1974, but it’s curious how the impoverished early Seventies closely mirrors the cash-drenched 2010s.

Perhaps it’s not just about billionaire owners or canny managers. The above clubs boast long, proud histories and big grounds accommodating legions of loyal fans – a firm base on which to develop and move with the times. Highbury and Maine Road and now the old White Hart Lane have been replaced with shiny new stadia but the clubs are the same.

My first experience of new blood seeping into the title race came in 1971/72 when Derby County, managed by the young, charismatic yet unsmiling Brian Clough, broke the mould and leapt from ninth the previous year to champions. It was a desperately close-run thing; a single point separated the top four. Indeed, had either Leeds or Liverpool won their final matches, played after Derby’s fixtures were already completed, the trophy would not have reached the Baseball Ground.

They had such a settled side – eight played at least 38 of the 42 League games – and they were pleasing on the eye. Scots Archie Gemmill and John McGovern ran the midfield, Roy McFarlane led the defensive line, Kevin Hector and John O’Hare were the primary strikers but, I was surprised to read, the top scorer that season was the ever-willing left-winger Alan Hinton, who was my personal favourite.

Although Liverpool and Leeds usurped them in the following two years, a more attacking Derby grabbed the title again in 1974-75, although this time managed by Dave Mackay. Curiously, had there been three points for a win (not introduced until 1981) and had the teams on equal points been separated by goal difference not goal average (brought in the next season), the champions would have been Ipswich Town.

Under the always-likeable Bobby Robson, Ipswich were the true fan’s second favourite team for a decade or more. The mid-Seventies version were an exciting group of youngsters, including Kevin Beattie, Mick Mills and Allan Hunter at the back, goal-scoring midfielders like Bryan Hamilton and Brian Talbot, Clive Woods on the flank and a potent twin attack of David Johnson and Trevor Whymark. Under the rules at the time, they finished only third and, in the early Eighties, were runners-up twice in succession. The 1980-81 showdown with Aston Villa was particularly exciting. How I wanted them to win, especially with Liverpool seemingly invincible. Unfortunately they were destined never to add to their 1961/2 league success and, with Robson lured away by England, were swiftly relegated.

Their East Anglian rivals, Norwich City have also enjoyed some purple patches without finishing first, and even my own Queens Park Rangers missed the title by a whisker (bloody Liverpool again!), of which more later. However, the next season to really reignite my passion for football was that of 1977/78.

Clough and his faithful co-manager Peter Taylor had been installed at Second Division Nottingham Forest in 1976, and won promotion in their first full season. Like Derby a few years previously, the first eleven was a mix of wise heads at the back and some lively, creative young guns in front of them. To everyone’s surprise, the new boys in Division One were simply irresistible.

The Derby old boys, Gemmill and McGovern were by now at the City Ground, tough guys Larry Lloyd and Kenny Burns the centre-backs in front of the world’s best ‘keeper Peter Shilton. John Robertson was deceptively fast and skilful on the left, Tony Woodcock an energetic striker and journeyman target man Peter Withe slotted in superbly. They even featured Viv Anderson at right back, at the time a very rare black face in English football but who was to become an international regular. Forest ascended to the top in October and were not to be displaced all season. I remember being particularly captivated by their devastating counter-attacking at Old Trafford to thrash Man Utd 4-0 in December. It wasn’t shown live, of course, but the highlights made me wish the cameras were following Forest every week. And yet their success was founded on the meanness of their defence. 

Much like Jose Mourinho, Clough was a bit of a Marmite character but he was far wittier than the grumpy Portuguese egomaniac and made new stars instead of merely buying them. Stuart Pearce, Des Walker, Neil Webb and Roy Keane owe their careers to Clough but by the early Nineties his lengthy spell at Nottingham and the bottle took their toll on the gaffer and the club; Forest went down and Clough dropped out of the sport altogether. Football’s loss.

For all the surface glitz and sparkle sprinkled on it by a broadcaster pinning its entire existence on football’s new product, the Premier League was no immediate hit with me. I had no interest in forking out on Sky’s expensive satellite TV subscriptions and so had to subsist on meagre crumbs like Match of the Day highlights. While teams like QPR, Mike Walker’s Norwich and Kevin Keegan’s all-or-nothing Newcastle fared well at first, money was already beginning to talk. Very loudly.

Local businessman Jack Walker briefly turned Blackburn Rovers into a powerhouse, spending a fortune on prolific strikers Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton, Tim Flowers (for a goalkeeper’s world record £1.5 million – I was at his debut match), Colin Hendry and Graeme le Saux to win the PL crown in 1994/95. However, for the following several years, there was to all intents and purposes a duopoly at the top. Borrrr-ing.

The cults of Fergie and Wenger were building as Manchester United and Arsenal tightened their grip. United won eight of the first eleven Premier League seasons and, while the club raked in the cash, I became more and more disillusioned. It wasn’t that the football was boring; it wasn’t. Not even Arsenal’s. But it as becoming oh-so predictable.

Despite MOTD pundit Alan Hansen’s now infamous assertion that “You can’t win anything with kids” after an August 1995 defeat to Villa, a young Man U side featuring the likes of Giggs, Beckham, Neville, Butt and Scholes proceeded to prove him wrong nine months later and form the basis of a remarkably consistent winning squad for years to come. 

Meanwhile Arsenal fans were warming to their ‘unknown’ French manager Arsene Wenger as his Gallic spine of Lauren, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires and Thierry Henry, plus Dennis Bergkamp, made Highbury a centre of entertainment for a change. They even became ‘the Invincibles’ after finishing the 2003-4 season unbeaten. Yet the Gunners haven’t won the League since.

Chelsea were the first club to show some outward-looking enterprise when Ruud Gullit was appointed player-manager in 1995-96. The Blues finished only sixth that season but, having recruited a trio of world-class Italians in Zola, Vialli and Di Matteo, they showed intent to bring what Gullit later called “sexy football” to England. They didn’t break the Arsenal-Man U cartel until the dodgy Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich funded a transfer splurge in the Noughties. Jose Mourinho’s new side boasting Drogba, Carvalho, Cech and Robben, supported by Londoners Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Scott Parker and the odious John Terry, duly broke all sorts of records en route for the Premier League crown. 

In the succeeding decade, Manchester City, for so long under the stretching shadow of United, joined the elite. For all their undoubted class – and the 2017-18 team of Aguero, Sane, de Bruyne, Jesus, Silva et al were often breathtaking in expressing Pep Guardiola’s philosophy on the pitch – I can’t quite summon the enthusiasm they probably deserve. The top six endures despite Arsenal losing their way a bit, but what the Premier League cried out for was a club making a nonsense of the super-rich hegemony. A side who could prove you don’t need a billionaire owner and massive stadium. to win the title. Yeah, right! In my dreams. Then along came little Leicester City.

They didn’t quite do a Nottingham Forest, rising from second tier to League champions in successive seasons. However, in 2015/16, under the surprise tutelage of serial under-achiever Claudio Ranieri, the Foxes managed to convert a team of relegation survivors into one capable of not merely mixing it with the big boys but beating them on a regular basis. Every week they won, I said that it would all come crumbling down the next week, then the next, and the next. But it didn’t. A solid defence, a terrier in front (Ngolo Kante) and two spring-heeled attackers in Riyadh Mahrez and Jamie Vardy took the trophy to ‘the King Power’ in amazing style, as in this victory over Man City. No wonder local boy-made-good Gary Lineker had threatened to present MOTD in his undies should City be successful. Respect: he kept his word.

Two years on, it all seems so unbelievable. Their title defence saw them stuttering to tenth after a disastrous start saw the twinkly-eyed Ranieri sacked before Christmas. Hopefully they can remain a mainstay of the Premier League but experience tells me otherwise. Just ask Aston Villa, West Brom, Bolton, Swansea or Sunderland.

Leicester’s success revitalised my love of English football. They stuck two fingers up at Sky, BT Sport and those who worship at Old Trafford, the Etihad, Emirates, Anfield and Stamford Bridge. They represented the little guy, Claudio’s humble slingshot felling the Big Six goliaths. It will probably never happen again in my lifetime but no matter. The rest of us can dream knowing the impossible can become reality. Every August, I and millions of fans across the land will repeat the mantra: if Leicester can do it, so can we.

Football - Shoot! It's all for the cameras!

Like most sports, football has undergone humungous changes in my lifetime. When I first took an active interest, my enthusiasm beyond the family was fed only by special dispensation to stay up late for BBC1’s Match of the Day and London Weekend TV’s Sunday afternoon rival The Big Match. All in blazing black and white.

The only football coverage in colour came courtesy of the Shoot! magazine. From October 1969 to 1972, it would arrive every week with our Daily Express (not the UKIP mouthpiece it is now!). Originally costing a shilling, rising to six pence post-decimalisation in ’71, it was worth every penny of my meagre pocket money. 

 I would greedily devour every page, from ‘Bobby Moore Writes for You’ (it never occurred to me that they weren’t actually his words) to ‘You Are the Ref’, ‘Football Funnies’ (cartoons), quizzes, ‘Focus On…’ and a host of player photos and articles. My collection of back copies survived more than three decades before lack of wardrobe space dictated that a clearout was necessary. I retained a handful for nostalgia’s sake (see the above composite photo) but the rest went to a local charity shop. The owner may have made a killing as I note that those early editions can now sell for £2.99 on eBay! 

At around the same time, my friends and I would also collect cards depicting players. You could buy packets of six (I think) in the newsagent’s for a few pence and any duplicates we would swap at school: “Have you got a Mike Pejic for an Ernie Hunt” (I always seemed to have a Coventry City surplus), and so on. They were the forerunners of the familiar Panini stickers which still delight kids to this day.

Now, of course, there are dedicated TV channels, many more periodicals and, in particular, countless websites, YouTube videos, etc, etc to satisfy every conceivable craving of the football fan, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Looking back at these much-loved treasures from my childhood reminds me how the player photos have changed. Most of those early Seventies portraits featured either blank passport-type head-shots, the self-conscious folded arms, or the squatting in pristine club kit, fingers resting on a ball, half-smile beneath newly-combed hair (see Alan Woodward below). Not a tattoo in sight, thank God! Nowadays, besides displaying the obligatory inked 'sleeve' which I so forcefully despise, players clearly practise their open-mouthed roar, as such shots seem to be the only ones printed. I know it’s symptomatic of the current obsession with ‘passion’ and “giving it 110%” but forgive me if I don’t want to see endless pictures of Sergio Aguero’s tonsils on Match of the Day. 

                              

These days, goal celebrations are more than baring your fangs for the pitchside cameras. Where once upon a time, raising one arm (a la Alan Shearer) or two (Kenny Dalglish) and being hugged by your team-mates was sufficient. Even Mick Channon’s windmill action was considered a bit ostentatious in the Seventies. Then in the Nineties, the World Cup gave us Roger Milla’s corner flag hip swivel, Bebeto’s rockabye-baby and, when Jurgen Klinsmann brought his diving reputation to Spurs, the bellyflop slide.

Thereafter celebrations became ever more fancifully choreographed. Some were amusing (the Aylesbury Town synchronised duck waddle), some mildly embarrassing (the Peter Crouch ‘robot’) and some frankly ill-advised (the Robbie Fowler white line snorting). In more recent seasons, players seem to have cottoned on that an individualistic move or gesture can be worth more than a few photos on the back page or the club website. 

Daniel Sturridge’s hip-hoppy wavy arms are so famous, it’s easy to forget he barely gets on the pitch any more. When a player becomes better known for his celebration than actual feat of scoring, there's something fundamentally wrong. Gareth Bale has even taken the whole 'making it his own' phrase to the extreme. His once-cute, now-irritating hand heart shape has even been legally trademarked. Even Jesse Lingard has developed his own JL gesture which will presumably be repeated on adverts for years to come. That’s providing he actually gets to deploy it on the Old Trafford pitch when he’s on bus-parking duty.

Actually I’d much prefer to see a goalscorer just get caught up in the moment, either with a wild-eyed mazy run to the bench (Marco Tardelli in the ’82 World Cup final) or a bog-standard, turf-ripping kneeslide. Better still, a Lomana Lua Lua-style backflip is hard to beat for entertainment value, and the prospect of such joyous gymnastics going horribly wrong! Even more impressive was Julius Aghahowa. In the Nineties I would long for Nigeria’s forward to score in the World Cup, just to witness his incredible multiple somersault routine. You couldn't get away with that whilst sporting a shaggy Seventies barnet.

Goals are great but even I have to admit that sometimes the celebrations are even better.