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.