The fallout of 1974

[Jimang]

It is funny how sometimes the outcome of one event can affect the future of others. How many of you can remember that fateful night at Wembley on 17th Oct 1973 when England were held to a 1 1 draw by Poland and failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup Finals?
The match itself was very one sided, England had 36 shots to Polands two, hit the woodwork twice and have four efforts cleared off the line. Polands star player was the goalkeeper Brian Clough called a Clown, Jan Tomaszewski.
The fact remains however, if England had won and qualified Sir Alf would not have been sacked and Don Revie would have still been the Leeds Manager. I often wonder how the Leeds future would have played out in this circumstance. Would Revie have built a new Leeds team with a smooth transition from the great team of the early 70s into an equally successful one for the 80s. Would he have kept players like Jordan, Mcqueen, and Yorath at the club and slowly bought in some of the best emerging players of the day to keep the club at the top? No one knows the answer to this question, but it is an interesting talking point. Liverpool and Man United were able to sustain success over several decades and I think with Revie at the helm Leeds would have stayed a mighty force too, and won much more silverware. Guess we will never know, but we have Tomaszewski to blame for that.

[Clacton White]

Clough came in and did what Don Revie would have had to have done at some stage , trouble was he did it the wrong way . Look at Forest a few years later , he could have kept Leeds a great side in hindsight but it all got off to the wrong start, from Clough and players sides . I was about 12 when all this went on and was overjoyed when he was sacked , BUT , a few of those players were in their last season's and Cloughie rightly so was looking to the future , not the past. Had England of course won , Ramsey would have gone to Germany for World Cup and who knows after that .Neither Clough nor Revie came out of this well , Revie eventually tainted forever and Clough had this failure on his record . How much longer would Revie have stayed ? He was rumoured to after the Everton job only a couple of season's before all this , the rebuild .....well again , who knows but Leeds did pull some good players in after Revie .......Flynn , Curry ,MacKenzie .

[1964white]

Interesting theory Jim.

Never given it a thought until you posted this thread up.

Pretty sure Don would have built a team around the likes of Jordan & Mcqueen. I doubt we'd have been relegated in 1982 had Revie remained at ER.

[weasel]

A tricky one to judge and a team can go into decline very quickly, just look at the Wilko title winners who finished 17th the season afterwards. With most of the Revie side heading towards retirement it is hard to knw if we would have had the finances to compete if we were having to almost rebuild the side from scratch as we would have had very little income coming in from player sales. Were the young players coming through going to be anywhere near the level of those that went before them?

I could see us entering a few years of decline, similar to Liverpool in the 90s onwards, Man U and Arsenal of recent years etc. Ferguson seemed to be able to keep rebuilding at MU and didn't have the sentimentality to cloud his vision. It is hard to judge with Revie as you can't look at him and say he did well elsewhere so to some degree we don't know whether he got the best out of the players at Leeds and made them better (ala Bielsa improving players that were already at the club) or whether he got lucky that we had a great crop of young players coming through at the same time. He did make some good signings though which would suggest that he could rebuild the side.

[CHAPELALLMAN]

A tricky one to judge and a team can go into decline very quickly, just look at the Wilko title winners who finished 17th the season afterwards. With most of the Revie side heading towards retirement it is hard to knw if we would have had the finances to compete if we were having to almost rebuild the side from scratch as we would have had very little income coming in from player sales. Were the young players coming through going to be anywhere near the level of those that went before them?

I could see us entering a few years of decline, similar to Liverpool in the 90s onwards, Man U and Arsenal of recent years etc. Ferguson seemed to be able to keep rebuilding at MU and didn't have the sentimentality to cloud his vision. It is hard to judge with Revie as you can't look at him and say he did well elsewhere so to some degree we don't know whether he got the best out of the players at Leeds and made them better (ala Bielsa improving players that were already at the club) or whether he got lucky that we had a great crop of young players coming through at the same time. He did make some good signings though which would suggest that he could rebuild the side.

They bounced back in the next two seasons to two consecutive 5th place finishes after that poor season though, which resulted in a UEFA Cup place. That season of 92/93 as 1st Division champions was still only their third season back in the top tier after 8 years in the old Second Division.

[mentalcase]

Should have had Billy or John Giles as manager, not clough.

[VinnysTattoo]

Interesting theory.

My thoughts shortly after Don’s departure were that he had taken the players as far as he could, and that he kept his faith in a small squad ( sound familiar?) which was coming into it’s waning stages.
My regret is that he wasn’t at the helm for the Euro final the following season.