This is a page where we will remember the life of the great Don Revie, who died on 26th May 1989 from Motor Neurons Disease at the age of 61. Rest In Peace Don, you’ll never be forgotten.

Your Thoughts

James Wales

“The guy is a legend. The greatest manager ever to walk the face of the earth. His attention to detail was better than anyone elses and i only wish i could have been around to watch him and his team become the greatest team we’ve ever had.”

Adam Beck

“Don Revie is the most underated manager to ever live he never got the credit outside the club he deserved. He is the best manager weve ever had.”

Gary Edwards

“I met Don Revie OBE maybe only half a dozen times, he was always a very courteous man and always had time for the fans. It is legendary how he looked after his players, or his family, as he called it. He looked after everyone at the club the same – from his star players, reserves, juniors, backroom staff right down to the laundry staff and tea ladies. I’ve spoken with many of the fringe players under Revie who didn’t quite get as many first team appearances as they would like. But every one of them stuck with Revie, despite many big clubs coming in for them. Rod Johnson (1964-68) told me ‘It never entered our heads to leave Leeds although our first team appearances were limited to around 12-15 games a season. We were all made to feel special by the Boss. Nigel Davey (1964-74) was the 2nd choice right back behind Paul Reaney, he said, ‘ When I broke my leg in a reserve game in the early 70′s, the Boss was the first person to visit me in hospital. He was a great man. And he never failed to miss the players wives birthdays, they would all receive flowers.’

When Don passed away on 26th May 1989 the following day, I had his name tattooed on my right arm.”

Owen Connolly

“The Don managed Leeds United his own way and turned us into the most feared side in Europe. He never got the credit he deserved outside of Leeds United. But we don’t care, we loved him and always will.

A big thank you to a great man. MOT.”

Andrew Butterwick

“He was a true visionary who turned a 2nd rate club that was going nowhere into the most feared team in Europe”

Peter Hoyle

“Don Revie…….a legend…..but he was only the boss……a very important part of a club? yes……the players of the late sixties early seventies were just as committed to Leeds United as Don was……what a great combination of management & squad working together for the good of the club…..its a shame today its all about money…..No loyalty….everyone of today could learn a lot from Don & his team of players….MOT..”

Paul-Owen Connolly

“Don is probably the only football manager who could create such a good team bond. He cared about everyone at the club, and never forgot the players wives birthdays, he always made sure they got a bunch of flowers off him, and if it wasn’t for Don, Leeds United wouldn’t have the legacy they have today. Thank you Don for everything, if only I could have seen your Leeds team play… MOT.”

Graeme Smith

“Don Revie was a hero to many a schoolboy when i was young and actually still is . You only have to listen to the likes of legends like Peter Lorimer and the respect they continue to have for him to see what a great manager he was . Not as often mentioned as he should be.”

Alex Smith

“Don Revie was the greatest manager Leeds United have had, he should have stayed with them instead of Clough coming. R.I.P Don Revie”

Gareth Price

“I often wonder what we would of acheived had Don Revie not of come along, fortunately he did and all our hopes and expectations that we have now are born out of that. Thanks to Don even now we are not an average run of the mill we are one of the biggest teams in Europe regardless of which league we are in. Marching on together.”

Norman McAteer

Absolute genius as a manager, sadly missed. Never really got the credit his forward thinking on football deserved.Leeds should have a statue erected to a man who brought so much to the city of leeds and to its football team. He was the boss.

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Don Revie-20 Years On

Today is the 20th anniversary of Don Revie’s death.  For those Leeds fans who were born after 1970 Don Revie and the Leeds team he built are icons that older fans speak reverently of and constantly refer back to as the Leeds benchmark, especially as we flounder in the 3rd tier of English football.  But when Don signed for Leeds in 1958 they were no more than a run of the mill 2nd Division side struggling to compete with other like minded teams.  But Don had some big ideas and initially inspired by the fabulous Hungarian team of the early 50′s he looked to play the game in a more progressive way.  His chance to put his money where his mouth was came in March 1961 when he was appointed player manger and so began the managerial career of one of the true greats of English football. After saving Leeds from the drop to Div 3 he set about putting together a team that would become the most feared in Europe over the following decade and in doing so creating a footballing dynasty that is still remembered today.  Now not everybody liked Leeds…………………….this was born out of a combination of jealousy, dislike of the sheer professionalism Revie’s teams oozed & the fact that in an age where tackling was still X rated Leeds could mix it with the best and always come out on top.  The mainly southern based press of the day didn’t like the upstarts from up t’north and it showed in the vilification they gave the whites at every opportunity.  In days where sponsorship was still some kind of American concept that wouldn’t sully our game for another twenty years all teams strips were plain to say the least………………..but if they had had sponsors in those halcyon days I suspect Leeds would have strode out with MARMITE  emblazoned across their chests because you either loved them or hated them, no in between.The achievements of the Leeds team after reaching Div 1 in 1964 were immense.  They were never out of the top four for 10 years being crowned champions twice and adding the Inter Cities Fairs Cup, League Cup and FA Cup to the Elland Road trophy cabinet for good measure.  The catalyst for all of this success and numerous “near misses” was of course Don Revie and when he left to take the England job in 1974 he left a legacy that is still remembered fondly to this day.  For me the teams Revie built were typified by two particular matches.  The 1:0 cup final win against Arsenal in 1972 and the 7:0 demolition of Southampton in front of the Match of the Day cameras a couple of years later.  I was lucky enough to be in the boys paddock in the West Stand for the Southampton game and the performance was fantastic.  Why were Leeds such a good team?  What was the Don Revie trademark?… Teamwork pure and simple.  They did everything as a team from playing bingo and carpet bowls before the match, to “standing up to the opposition” during the match but most of all when they had the ball everyone worked for each other and supported each other with no little skill.  It wasn’t a bad formula.  So if Don is reading this in virtual heaven here’s a big thank you from all today’s fans because without you we wouldn’t have the club we have today………………………………………Mmmm I dont mean it’s your fault we’re in Div 3……………well you know what I mean! MOT

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Revie PC Wallpapers

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Don Revie-He WAS Leeds

The 1964/5 season saw Leeds United arrive in the top flight of English football. Don Revie’s top flight reign at Leeds would last for TEN seasons to the end of the 1973/4 when he took over the England job.

It was our greatest ever period of success. It was also a time shared by other great managers. The end of the Busby era at Manchester United, The Shankly years at Liverpool, Brian Clough at Derby. This is probably why no team during that time won the league more than twice, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester United sharing the title twice each. Single winners were Manchester City, Arsenal, Everton and Derby. With the titles so evenly spread it suggests a real strength in depth within our top division during that time.

In addition to the title wins, Runner up was claimed by Leeds on five occasions. Liverpool twice, and once by Arsenal, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest.

Thirty three teams played in the top division during those years but only nine clubs were ever present during the whole period. Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Leeds United, Liverpool, Manchester United, Stoke City, Spurs, and West Ham.

Newcastle and West Bromwich Albion had nine years each Manchester City, Burnley, Wolves, Leicester, Nottingham Forest and Southampton eight seasons each. Sheffield United and Coventry, seven years. Ipswich, Sheffield Wednesday, Sunderland six appearances. Derby five seasons Blackpool, Crystal Palace and Fulham, four seasons. Aston Villa and Birmingham, three each. Blackburn, Huddersfield, Norwich, and QPR twice Northampton Town once.

How much was the spread of title winners down to the team wanting to win a full set of trophies, rather than just concentrating on winning the league every year? I got the impression from comments in some of the players books and that at the time that they wanted a full collection of trophies.

2 Leagues 1 FA Cup 1 League Cup 1 Charity Shield 2 Fairs (uefa) Cups

I think when you see those ten seasons put together, that we lost a lot of titles due to going for everything 71 and 72 in particular. Another point is we would have qualified every year for the Euro Cup/Champions League. If we had been in that every year we would have won at least two in my opinion.

R.I.P DON and MOT

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Don Revie Tribute Videos

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Fans want statue for Leeds United legend Revie.

‘THE DON’ deserves better – that’s the groundswell of opinion on the lack of a city centre memorial to Leeds United’s greatest ever manager.

The Yorkshire Evening Post marked the 20th anniversary of the death of legendary United boss Don Revie by asking whether there should be a permanent tribute to him in the middle of Leeds.

And the overwhelming response from you, our readers, was YES – it’s high time the city properly showed its appreciation for the man and his achievements.

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A popular suggestion was for Revie to be remembered with a statue, just as other famous football figures have been over the years.

United superfan Gary Edwards, of Kippax, summed up the views of many when he contacted us to say: “A memorial to Don Revie OBE should have been placed in the centre of Leeds within days of his sad passing.

“It cannot be emphasised enough, the importance of this great man to Leeds United and to the city of Leeds.

“Thanks for everything Don, you will never be forgotten.”

Revie’s great Leeds side of the 1960s and 70s is regarded as one of the finest in English football history.

The Whites won two league titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup and two European Fairs Cups during his 13-year reign.

Revie moved on from Leeds in 1974 to become England boss, leaving behind a team packed with star names like Eddie Gray and Allan Clarke. He passed away on May 26, 1989, two years after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

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“What I expect from my players”-By Don Revie OBE in 1970

Some time before Leeds United won even the first of the several honours that have come our way in recent seasons, I told a gathering of the players that if they became champions they would realise, I hoped, that there was more to it than being the top team. I cannot recall my exact words, but remember well the gist of them, which was that it was not sufficient merely to become champions; of equal importance in my book was to behaved like champions, off as well as on the field.

This can have many aspects: behaviour on the field, behaviour away from it; appearance on the field, conduct of it. Many aspects, but all contributing towards the hole the complete, educated, accomplished footballer of today.

Many years ago the great Scottish club Rangers had a foreign manager, one Willie Struth.Over the years many tales have been told about him, some perhaps they embellished with the passing of time and in the retelling. But from at least one or two of them there shines a fine example of what I mean, and what I expect from a champion team.

There is the story about how he used to order any player with hair nearing his collar to attend upon the hairdresser; how the roared out two players found in the cheaper seats in a Glasgow cinema with the blast “As Rangers, will occupy seats befitting your position”.

He was said to have been something of a martinet, but I doubt whether any of his players suffered because at that. Indeed, from some who served under him I had heard nothing but praise, and certainly he produced in his players a terrific pride in their club and in their profession.

That of course is how we should be. The more so today when not only the salary but also the image of the player has risen to unparalleled heights; when the public, particularly its younger members, set their sights on the footballer and their standards by him. In addition, any club enjoying a fair measure of success, and certainly any player within any such club, is subject to pressures of publicity never before experienced in the game.

So we have today a situation in which a team taking the title, indeed long before actually achieving it, becomes subject to constant survey – has the eyes of public upon it’s every action, both on the field and away from it. In addition, as more and more clubs enter into European competition so the image of the British footballer, and through him the Briton himself, is spread the that and further afield with more and more coverage what press and television.

We thus have the situation in which any club and its players are faced with the dual problem – that of winning matches and doing so with dignity on and off the field.

I could be said, perhaps, to be particularly conscious of this, because of what I still believe to be a totally unfair impression given abroad about Leeds when we first started to chase the honours. I refer, of course, to the suggestion that we were more physical than skilful. I have never subscribed to any such view, neither did I to any suggestion that we were more a defensive side than anything else. Fortunately, for my beliefs the events of the past few seasons have spoken for themselves and by now the Leeds are hailed as a side containing as many skills as any, and more than most.

I recall George Best being asked last season and, just before we met them in the F A Cup semi-finals, how he rated Leeds. He replied, “Their strength is that they have no weaknesses: they also possess a tremendous team spirit and players of great individual skills”. I like to think that George was echoing the thoughts of most of the people in football, but for a long time we had to suffer other things being said about us, and bare it with dignity. And that is what being champions is all about really – a wearing a crown with dignity.

Let me stress straight away that I am not suggesting an ‘after you’ type of player on the field. Perhaps it would be as well if I said at this stage what I expect from a player of Leeds United.

On arrival at Elland Road any new boy, be he a young apprentice professional or an already established star, is quick to appreciate that he should combine courage, hard but fair play and complete confidence on the field, with courtesy, good conduct, manners and humility away from it. I do not intend to speak on this need for soccer skills, already obvious or latent. That goes without saying.

To assist in this we hold our own ‘educational classes’ at United, with members of the staff as the tutors and the incoming teenagers as the pupils. Augmented by advice from outside professional and trade organisations, we inculcate into the lads a knowledge of dining out, checking in to and our of hotels, how to travel in comfort, even how to reply to toasts and many other things. In addition there is the emphasis upon religious advice if they want it and talks on girlfriends, male and female fans, etc. Everything and anything in fact.

The idea behind all this is to insure that so far as is humanly possible every lad on the staff has, within a short time of joining Leeds United, been taught sufficient to to feel comfortable in any kind of company, able to enter any hotel he wishes and also made aware of the temptations as well as the honours and awards that can come his way.

I have heard it said that this is not the function of a football club; that a club’s sole concern should be in the promotion of a fine football side and to the winning of more matches than achieved by the opposition. But surely it is all part and parcel of the same thing.

Let me say immediately that no one is more aware than we at Elland Road of the importance of winning matches and of establishing a fine football side with which to do so. Indeed that is the major purpose behind everything we do, but there are others ancillary things to be considered.

One is that while winning matches is of vital importance, the manner in which successes are achieved must also be considered.

The other vital factor ancillary to winning matches, and winning them in at the right spirit, is that the boys who obtain these honours for a club and its city, and in turn is feted by them, should be honourable representatives of that club, and that city.

As I said earlier, let there be no question of us trying to put manners before everything else. We are part of a football club, and a successful one at that, and such successes have been achieved only by a complete one hundred per cent dedication – being able to match skill with sinew when required in hard but fair combat with the opposition.

But within that requirement it is possible, must be possible, for football to uphold the dignity it has brought into the twentieth century’s later years. At the turn of the century and for many years thereafter this great game was considered something of a festival of the cloth capped. That was never completely accurate. The game has always attracted the intelligentsia – though in much lower numbers it must be admitted – now, of course, are there are almost as many egg-heads as those of other shapes attracted to, and attending a the game.

In turn the game has received recognition at the highest level, with Her Majesty the Queen bestowing knighthoods and other decorations (of which I have had the great honour to receive one), upon people in the game.

Football has indeed, arrived. It is recognised for what it is a great game for the masses, a source of entertainment for the millions and a combination of employment and enjoyable activities to the fortunate thousands learning their living from the game.

The eyes of the world are upon us and, being under such scrutiny, it behoves us all to do nothing to belittle the game.

Often I think that winning a trophy is almost the easiest part of the exercise. Retaining it, and at the same time one’s sense of purpose, modesty and place in things is infinitely more difficult.

But that’s what I expect from my players.

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Why Don Revie is a better manager than Brian Clough

It’s just before five o’ clock, 25^th October 1969. The referee’s final whistle sounds to bring the match between Leeds United and Derby County to a close. Leeds triumph 2-0 courtesy of two Allan Clarke goals. 44,000 witnessed United’s win, but this day marked something far more than just 90 minutes of football, it sparked one of England’s fiercest ever rivalries between two men; Don Revie and Brian Clough.

United went on to reach the semi final’s of the European Cup, the final of the FA Cup and finish second in the league, while Clough’s Derby finished fourth, that season. However, on a bigger scale the seeds had been sown for the next four years at least.

During Revie’s and Clough’s time at Leeds and Derby respectively, the record is highly in favour of Leeds and Revie.

Leeds and Derby clashed twelve times under the management of Revie and Clough, Leeds the victors on ten occasions, including the 5-0 thumping of then league champions Derby in 1972. Derby were league champions solely because of the FA’s refusal to give Leeds an extra 48 hours rest after the FA Cup final of 1972. Leeds defeated Arsenal courtesy of a diving Allan Clarke header on the 54^th minute, then two days later had to compete against Wolves at Molineux in a league title decider.There’s no denying that Clough was a great manager, no average Brian can win two European Cups. During his 28 year stint with a total of five clubs, his record was: One Division Two league title, two league titles, four League Cups, two European Cups and one European Super Cup. He also had a relegation on his CV, and you’d daren’t look at his record at Brighton & Hove Albion, or at the time league champions Leeds United for that. Fact is, without Peter Taylor, Clough was just another manager. Overall, throughout his career, Clough had a 45% winning percentage.

Revie’s record wasn’t half bad either. One Division league title, two league titles, one FA Cup, two Inter Fairs Cups and one League Cup; although his personal honours should have been far higher. The league title of 1971 was handed to Arsenal after referee Ray Tinkler refused to acknowledge his linesman, and two clear offside decisions which gave West Brom a highly unlikely win at Elland Road. The loss of these points gave Arsenal the league title. Incidents against Chelsea in 1967 and AC Milan in 1973 where United were unfairly treated, or in the last case, robbed due to a bribed referee don’t help Revie’s managerial record. Overall, Revie had a 52% winning percentage, 7% higher than Clough.

One thing both managers have in common is the feat of taking a small Division Two club into First Division champions.

In 1974, Revie left for the England job, ending his 13 year tenure at Elland Road. Once Leeds had gained promotion to the old First Division, United never once failed to finish outside the top four. League champions twice, runners up five times, third in 1973 and two fourth placed finishes in 1967 and 1968. Derby and Forest under Clough were far more inconsistent.

At Derby, it consisted of League champions once, one fourth placed finish, seventh and ninth place. At Brighton, he managed to record 19^th place in Division Three, and while moving onto Forest, upon promotion Forest’s top flight record consisted of one league title, runners up once, third place thrice, fifth placed twice, seventh place, eighth place four times, ninth place twice, twelfth place and twenty second place.

Clough had spent 15 more years than Revie in management, yet Revie had tallied the same amount of major honours in the game, with Leeds being the focus of many great injustices to referees over the years.

Revie also won the ‘Manager of the Year’ award on three seperate occasions, 1969, 1970 and 1972. Something Clough never achieved. Unlike Clough, Revie has the name of ‘England National Team’ on his football management CV.  One of the rare things these two managers do share is an OBE.

So despite the football myth that Brian Clough of Derby County and Nottingham Forest was the better manager than Don Revie of Leeds United, the stats quite clearly point Leeds’ Don Revie as the far better manager.

Don’t get me wrong, Clough was a very good manager, but the public perception that Clough was a far better manager than Revie is quite clearly wrong, and a myth that needs to be put right.

Who’s the better manager? Don Revie.

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Revie-Gone but not forgotten

Donald George Revie passed away on May 26th 1989 after losing his battle against Motor Neurone disease.

Revie was only 61 years of age and passed away in his home town of Edinburgh.

Revie originally came to Leeds as a player in 1958 making over 75 appearances before being named player/manager in 1961.

Revie hung up his boots in 1962 and started to rebuild Leeds United from a struggling second Division side to one of the greatest club sides in English football history during his thirteen year reign.

‘The Don’ as he was affectionately known led Leeds United from the Old Second Division where they won the title in 1964 to two League titles, one FA Cup, One League Cup and two inter cities fairs cup.

In their first season back in the top flight of English football Leeds finished runners up and lost the FA Cup final in extra time.

It could have been so much more with the club not finishing outside the top four in the top division in a ten year period between 1964 and 1974, they finished runners up on five separate occasions.

They was beaten finalists in the FA Cup on three occasions and were controversially beaten by AC Milan 1-0 in the Cup Winners Cup final in 1973, Leeds are currently forming a petition to have the result overturned after it was alleged that the referee took a bribe, he was actually banned after the game from refereeing by UEFA.

Leeds were denied the chance of completing the League and cup double in 1972 when they was forced to play their final League game of the season at Wolves just two days after beating Arsenal in the FA Cup Final, Leeds lost 2-1 when a draw would have been enough to secure the title.

In 1973/74 Leeds set a then League record of remaining unbeaten in their first 29 League games of the season on the way to the title, it was to remain intact until Liverpool equalled the feat in 1988 and then Arsenal beat it in 2004.

In the days when Leeds set the record there was nine or ten teams who were capable of winning the title and not the three or four in the modern era which made the achievement more remarkable.

Leeds earned the tag of ‘Dirty Leeds’ during his reign which was unacceptable as the team played during an era when players were allowed to tackle and the likes of Tommy Smith and Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris plied their trade on the football pitch.

Don created a side that was more like a family than a football side and if you wanted to upset one player then you had to take on eleven.

Fans of opposing clubs are quick to forget some of the fantastic football Leeds played under the Don; fans of that era will never forget the demolition of Southampton when the opposition couldn’t get near the ball in a 7-0 rout for the Whites.

In the previous home game the side had put five past Man Utd, a side that included Charlton, Law and Best.

Revie won the manager of the year on three separate occasions in 1969, 1970 and 1972.

He was also awarded an OBE in 1970.

The club renamed the Kop end at Elland Road after his death and it’s now known as the ‘Don Revie Stand’.

Leeds fans will never forget the legacy that was left by the great man.

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King of the damned

May 26, 1989: the day every football fan remembers. The last game, the last minute, the last kick of an epic season; Arsenal’s Michael Thomas scores the goal that takes the First Division title away from Liverpool by securing a 2-0 victory at Anfield. It was, some say, the day that England began to love football again, after an era of hooliganism, tragedy and rough, unattractive football.

That same day, in an Edinburgh hospital, Don Revie, the former Leeds and England manager, passed away, aged just 61, his body ravaged by motor neurone disease. ‘A friend of mine died yesterday, a big lovable bear of a man,’ wrote the Daily Mail’s Jeff Powell; other accolades seemed to be lost in the excitement following Arsenal’s victory. Some commentators, in the aftermath of his death, even accused Revie of initiating English football’s decline, by introducing ‘professionalism’ – the bone-crushing, win-at-all-costs football that brought his Leeds teams such success in the Sixties and Seventies and that had been taken up by other clubs.

At his funeral a week later, the Leeds players he had managed, now in their forties and fifties – Billy Bremner, Norman Hunter, Johnny Giles, Allan Clarke, Jack Charlton and all the rest of them – were out in force. Kevin Keegan flew in from Spain and Lawrie McMenemy, the former Southampton manager, was there too. But there was no one else from his England days, no one from the Football Association. When the new season began that August, there was no minute’s silence, no black armbands. There was no indication that the man being mourned had been the most innovative manager of his generation.

Just as Clive Woodward and Bill Sweetenham have transformed rugby union and swimming with their unconventional approaches, so Revie changed the face of English football. He was a confidant to the players, psychologist, social secretary, kit designer, commercial manager, PR flak, dietitian and all-encompassing ‘boss’ of his team. In an era when pre-match preparation consisted of a 10-minute chat before a game, Revie was a revolutionary. Not until Arsene Wenger was appointed Arsenal boss in 1996, more than two decades after Revie had left Elland Road, would a manager exert such a profound influence on his club – and the English game as a whole.

Matt Busby was knighted for his success at Manchester United; Alf Ramsey for his with England. Bill Shankly, who also died relatively young, is quoted like some secular saint. Other managers of the era, such as Joe Mercer, Malcolm Allison and Bill Nicholson, are remembered with fondness and admiration. But although his successes outstrip those of most contemporaries, Revie has never been revered, or regarded with warmth. His reputation has been defined not by his feats at Elland Road, but by allegations of corruption and venality. Those allegations have rarely been challenged.

Donald George Revie was born on 10 July 1927 in Depression-stricken Middlesbrough. This was the town of JB Priestley’s English Journey ‘whose chief passions… were for beer and football’. It was, Priestley wrote, ‘a dismal town, even with beer and football’. Revie’s father was an unemployed joiner; his mother, a washerwoman, died when he was a child. Poverty and football defined his childhood. ‘He used to talk about taking baths in the sink,’ says Ernest Hecht, a friend and business associate of Revie from the 1960s. ‘It was a poor upbringing and that left him determined that everything went well later on the monetary side.’ At 14, Revie left school and began work as a bricklayer.

Growing up under the shadow of Ayresome Park, football was an escape. He idolised Middlesbrough players George Camsell and Wilf Mannion, and fell under the influence of Bill Sanderson, manager of a junior team, Middlesbrough Swifts. A train driver by day, Sanderson was obsessed with the minutiae of the game: in his council house he held team meetings, distributing dossiers on local rivals and showing a tactical nous that would have shamed many First Division clubs. His ideas left a deep impression on the young Revie.

Revie’s breakthrough as a footballer came at 16, with Leicester City, initially playing in the wartime leagues. He joined Hull City in 1949 and Manchester City two years later. An intelligent but not especially quick player, he rose to prominence at Maine Road, developing a role as a deep-lying centre-forward, modelled on that of the great Hungarian player Nandor Hidegkuti. Revie won six England caps, the first of which came in late 1954 in the season in which he was named Footballer of the Year. In the next season, using the so-called ‘Revie Plan’, City won the FA Cup. But he was transferred to Sunderland in November 1956 and two years later, though he may not have recognised it at the time, came the crucial move in his career: a £14,000 transfer to Leeds.

Leeds were a mediocre team in the late 1950s: their only honour, the Second Division championship, had been won long ago in 1924 and their ramshackle ground, Elland Road, bore testament to the city’s preference for rugby league. At the end of Revie’s second season they were relegated to Division Two; in his third they neared bankruptcy, with crowds sometimes as low as 8,000. ‘The club were fifth-rate and the players were undisciplined,’ says Eric Smith, who was signed from Celtic in June 1960. ‘I thought beforehand I was coming to a top club. I found out otherwise in the first three or four days.’

In March 1961, the Leeds directors gambled and appointed Revie, their 33-year-old captain, as manager. Revie had previously applied to be Bournemouth manager and asked Harry Reynolds, a Leeds director, to write his reference. While writing it, Reynolds was moved to consider him for the Leeds job – one that no one in their right minds wanted at the time. ‘Overnight he had to make the transition from being one of the boys to being the boss,’ recalled Billy Bremner, years later. ‘The way he affected the transition is a mark of the man himself.’ Revie called the squad together: he said he was no longer ‘Don’, nor ‘Mr Revie’, but ‘Boss’. In the following years he would redefine the term.

That season Revie saved Leeds from relegation. The next, he began to transform them. His first task – after changing the colour of the kit from royal blue to all white to emulate Real Madrid, the all-conquering European champions, a comparison considered preposterous at the time – was to purge what he later called ‘a dead club’ of its rotten core. ‘There were players here who didn’t care whether they played or not,’ he recalled in 1968. ‘I got rid of 27 in two years.’ But he stuck with underperformers, such as Bremner, who was unhappy playing in an unfamiliar outside-right role and homesick for his native Scotland, and Jack Charlton, ‘a one-man awkward squad’, nurturing their previously unrealised potential. Bremner was persuaded to stay, moved to a more central role and eventually became Revie’s captain; the surly and undisciplined Charlton, previously an abysmal trainer, flourished under the new coaching regime, becoming the cornerstone of a young, tenacious defence. His play so improved that he became England’s World Cup-winning centre-half. Revie combined their talents with astute signings such as the veteran inside-forward Bobby Collins, from Everton, and Manchester United’s Johnny Giles.

One of his great managerial gifts was an ability to spot and nurture young talent. He inherited several outstanding teenage players, including Bremner, Paul Reaney, Gary Sprake and Norman Hunter, and added other unknowns such as Peter Lorimer and Terry Cooper to the squad. ‘He was a great man, a father figure really,’ says Sprake. Leeds’ long-standing goalkeeper, who had never left Wales before joining Leeds, says that he was so homesick that he ran away back to his parents’ home after just two weeks. The next morning Revie was on the doorstep, having driven through the night to persuade him to come back.

Revie watched more than what was happening at training. ‘When you had a girlfriend,’ Lorimer says, ‘he’d have her checked out and make sure she was the right sort of person, in his opinion.’ But Revie’s loyalty could reach a more sinister level. In 1971 Sprake was involved in a drink-driving accident, seriously injuring a female passenger before fleeing the scene. When police turned up to arrest Sprake shortly after the crash, Revie intervened and the incident was covered up: the goalkeeper’s car was reported stolen and he received a mere police censure instead of more serious charges.

At the training ground he introduced a regime that made Leeds the fittest and most technically proficient club in the Football League, including hiring ballet dancers to teach the players about balance and imposing dietary and nutritional standards. ‘I laugh when I read about these foreign managers bringing in new ideas and new techniques,’ says Revie’s son Duncan, who points out that his father’s initiatives predated the 1990s ‘coaching revolution’ by decades. ‘His training ideas were ahead of their time,’ Lorimer agrees. ‘I know when we mixed with players from other clubs at internationals, none of them were doing the things we were. It was all new. Everything was ahead of its time and that’s probably why we enjoyed it so much.’

Revie also created brotherly spirit among the squad. ‘Our whole ethos was built on loyalty,’ Lorimer says. ‘We all fight for each other, we all work for each other. If someone kicks me, he kicks all 11 of us.’ Revie involved the players’ families, to heighten the sense of togetherness. He organised social nights for the players, including rounds of carpet bowls, dominos and bingo. ‘We had 15 years of what no man gets,’ Lorimer says. ‘Every day you’d go to work and it was an absolute pleasure. You couldn’t wait to get in your car and go down to the ground and be amongst the lads.’

Having won promotion to the First Division in 1964, Leeds finished runners-up in both the League and the FA Cup in their first season back, and over the next decade never finished lower than fourth. They took the title twice, in 1969 and 1974, and won the League Cup in 1968 and the FA Cup in 1972. In Europe, they won the Inter City Fairs Cup – the forerunner of the Uefa Cup – in 1968. ‘It was a team that had everything,’ Lorimer says. ‘They had aggression. They had class. They had experience. It was the complete team, it had the perfect blend of players that offered every good part of the game.’

But Leeds’ brand of football made them hated by many. It was a high-tempo pressing game that suffocated opponents and overwhelmed those that tried to outpass them. If your side tried to kick them, Leeds would kick back twice as hard. They feigned injuries, harassed officials and pinched, kicked and hit opponents. The image of ‘Dirty Leeds’ was reinforced on the terraces, where their supporters earned a reputation for viciousness. George Best claimed that the only time he needed to wear shinpads was when he played Leeds. ‘I hated playing against them, I really did,’ he said. ‘They also had a hell of a lot of skill, too, but they were still a bloody nightmare.’ When Leeds played Everton in the so-called ‘Battle of Goodison’ in November 1964, the referee pulled the teams off for a ‘cooling-down period’ after a chest-high tackle by Willie Bell left Everton’s Derek Temple unconscious (Everton’s captain, Brian Labone, once told me that he and his colleagues initially thought Bell had killed Temple, so brutal was the assault).

Leeds players always denied they were a dirty side, or that Revie encouraged gamesmanship. ‘What was called cynical in this country was called professional when the Italians played it,’ Bremner said. Or as Lorimer puts it: ‘If a team wanted to mix it with us, we could mix it; if a team wanted to play football, we could play.’

Revie created an attitude within the club not seen before in English football. At the time it was called ‘professionalism’, but this was no complimentary term; instead it encapsulated the cynicism, physicality and relentlessness of Leeds. Within a few years, other clubs, unable to cope with them in any other way, would try to copy them. To many, Revie is the man who ended English football’s age of innocence.

By the time of their second League title in May 1974, rival fans hated Leeds and their supporters. Revie was widely disliked. ‘Don Revie’s so-called family had more in keeping with the mafia than Mothercare,’ Brian Clough said. But even Clough, who often used his weekly newspaper column to attack Leeds, admitted a grudging respect for Revie’s achievements. With many of the great 1960s managers retired or at the end of their careers, Revie was arguably the finest in the country. He was certainly the most successful.

This made him the logical choice for the England manager’s job, which Alf Ramsey had vacated in April, and he was appointed on a five-year contract worth £25,000 a year – three times the salary of his predecessor.

On the field, Revie’s England started well, with a 3-0 home success in a European Championship qualifier against Czechoslovakia. There was a resounding victory over world champions West Germany and a 5-1 win against Scotland. But England’s form grew increasingly patchy and there was unease among the players about Revie. He seemed unable to settle on his best XI, changing his starting line-up every game. ‘Strangely he seemed to go the way the press wanted him to go,’ Norman Hunter, who played under Revie for both club and country, once recalled. ‘He was very strong in his management of Leeds, but with England he seemed to change and I think he tried to pacify the press with his decisions.’ Some of his choices were arbitrary: Alan Ball was captain in the last six internationals of the 1974-75 season but was then dropped abruptly and never picked again. Ball told me shortly before his death this April that he was still perplexed about the incident. Nor was the move a success: defeat in Czechoslovakia and a failure to beat Portugal led to qualifying failure.

Revie’s team-building exercises – the carpet bowls and indoor golf – were disliked and self-defeating, as half the squad would skulk off to bed rather than sit through another round of bingo. His technical dossiers on opponents were not welcomed either. What was the point, players wondered, of a dozen pages on a Cypriot amateur? Duncan Revie believes there was another, serious, problem. ‘He didn’t have a Bremner or a Giles and couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he didn’t have two players like that for the England team.’

Revie’s relationship with the FA’s volatile chairman, Sir Harold Thompson, had also broken down. ‘They genuinely hated each other,’ Duncan recalls. ‘Thompson was an old Corinthian who always treated the manager like a serf.’ At an official dinner, Revie objected to Sir Harold’s habit of referring to him by his surname. ‘When I get to know you better Revie, I shall call you Don,’ Thompson said. Revie retorted: ‘When I get to know you better, Thompson, I shall call you Sir Harold.’

England were paired with Italy for the 1978 World Cup qualifiers, with just one nation able to progress. A 2-0 defeat in Rome in November 1976 meant hopes were slim almost from the outset. Three months later Holland humiliated England at Wembley, Johan Cruyff and his team-mates at times toying with the home side – the 2-0 friendly loss was likened by the press to the famous 6-3 defeat by Hungary in 1953.

On the field, Revie’s regime reached a crisis that summer. After Scotland beat England 2-1 in the annual Home Internationals fixture, many of the visitors’ 30,000 followers invaded the Wembley pitch, ripping up turf, dancing around the penalty areas and snapping crossbars. Italy were closing in on World Cup qualification. The nadir of Don Revie’s managerial career had arrived; his disgrace was about to follow.

Writing about Revie in The Football Man, his 1968 journey around the English game, Arthur Hopcraft described him as ‘a big flat-fronted man with an outdoors face as if he lives permanently in a keen wind’. His attitude towards the game, wrote Hopcraft, was like ‘that of a passionate player’. The impression was that of a typical bluff northerner – loyal, professional, straightforward. His son Duncan, moreover, describes a religious man, attending church each weekend and praying each night, and providing for a wide extended family.

He was also, however, known as ‘Don Readies’. His flirtations with wealthy clubs such as Everton while still at Leeds, and his enormous salary as England manager, enhanced a reputation for greed. While in charge of the national team he once demanded £200 from journalists wanting to interview Malcolm Macdonald, after he scored five times against Cyprus, supposedly pocketing the money himself while the striker remained ignorant of the affair.

Certainly money had always been an issue for Revie. As a child of the Depression, his upbringing was set against a backdrop of the Jarrow march and the north-east’s industrial decline. He was a player in a time of rolling contracts, tied to a statutory maximum wage of around £20 a week, and his boyhood hero, Wilf Mannion, ended up as a tea boy in a Middlesbrough factory.

Now, in the summer of 1977, he was convinced that the FA were set on replacing him and that they had lined up the Ipswich manager, Bobby Robson, as his successor. So Revie determined to secure his future. On 11 July 1977, Daily Mail readers read that Revie had left the England manager’s job. They were the first to know: Revie had sold his story to the Mail for £20,000 and his resignation letter arrived after the FA’s Lancaster Gate headquarters had closed the previous night.

Revie claimed that the pressures of being in a job when ‘nearly everyone in the country seems to want me out’ were simply too unbearable for him and his family. Being England manager, he said, had brought ‘too much heartache to those nearest me’. ‘He didn’t turn down his country,’ his lawyer, Gilbert Gray, told me. ‘He knew very well that his country, represented by a lot of old fogies who had decided to get rid of him, were about to sack him. He knew damn well he was on his way out.’ But on 12 July the Mail announced that Revie was leaving the country to take up a six-year contract worth £340,000, tax-free, to coach the United Arab Emirates national team.

To the public, Revie’s crime was not his disloyalty but his greed. It emerged that a month before his ‘defection’ he had offered to resign as England manager – without mention of his offer from Dubai – in exchange for a £50,000 pay-off. He boasted in the Mail of how he would spend his new salary. ‘I will travel to the great sporting events of the world,’ he said. ‘The major golf tournaments, the Olympics, World Cup finals – whatever takes my fancy.’

Sir Harold Thompson exacted his revenge, charging Revie with bringing the game into disrepute and summoning him to a disciplinary hearing at which he acted as judge and prosecutor; Gilbert Gray, who defended Revie, calls the hearing ‘a kangaroo court, an absolute disgrace’. After the disciplinary committee gave out its inevitable guilty verdict, its punishment was severe: a 10-year ban from English football. Revie appealed to the High Court; the ban was overturned, but the judge expressed reservations about Revie’s integrity and ordered him to pay two-thirds of his costs. ‘Mr Revie… presented to the public a sensational and notorious example of disloyalty, breach of duty, discourtesy and selfishness,’ said Justice Cantley. ‘His conduct brought English football, at a high level, into disrepute.’

Two months after Revie left the England job, the Daily Mirror alleged that a number of Leeds matches had been fixed over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Previous allegations by the Sunday People in 1972 had claimed that three unnamed Wolves players were offered £1,000 apiece to throw what would have been a title decider with Leeds, but Wolves had won and neither police nor FA investigations found evidence of wrongdoing. ‘Don Revie planned and schemed and offered bribes, leaving as little as possible to chance,’ wrote the Mirror’s lead reporter, Richard Stott. ‘He relied on the loyalty of those he took into his confidence not to talk, and it nearly worked.’

The star witness was Gary Sprake. ‘I was quite surprised by the amount of information they had,’ Sprake says. ‘Richard Stott asked me to get involved, but everything was already written, really.’ Sprake told Stott that there had been attempts to fix the Wolves game – a claim he subsequently retracted – as well as several other matches. Jim Barron, the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper, meanwhile said that Billy Bremner had been sent to the Forest dressing room before a game in the 1971 title race to persuade his opponents to ‘go easy’. The request was rejected. Alan Ball, meanwhile, revealed clandestine meetings with Revie on Saddleworth Moor in the mid-1960s, when Revie wanted to sign him from Blackpool. Revie also sent weekly £100 bribes to Ball’s home as part of his attempt to tap him up. The FA fined Ball £3,000, even though he had ended up at Everton, and not Revie’s Leeds.

Bob Stokoe, the Sunderland manager who had outwitted Revie in the 1973 FA Cup final, was the most compelling witness. He said that while managing Bury in 1962, when Leeds were battling relegation, Revie offered him £500 to ‘go easy’. When he turned him down, Revie further enraged him by asking to speak to his players.

The notion that a man who left nothing to chance and whose obsessiveness bordered on paranoia would try to fix title- or relegation-deciders was not implausible. But the evidence against Revie is shaky. Sprake had spoken out only after being paid £14,000. The FA deny the existence of a 300-page dossier of allegations supposedly handed over to them by Stott. No criminal or FA charges came out of the match-fixing allegations and, when the Sunday People repeated them, Billy Bremner sued and won £100,000.

‘The people who made these accusations – we didn’t have to bribe them to be able to beat them,’ Peter Lorimer says. ‘I was never aware of it and I don’t think any of our players were ever aware of it happening. You would think you would get to know if that sort of thing was happening, but certainly we never got to know anything.’

And yet Stokoe, a well liked and widely respected manager, stood to gain nothing by speaking out. He never profited from the allegation, which he repeated hundreds of times before his death in 2004. The thought of it, he said, made him feel ill. ‘It always riled me when I see the career Revie has had. At the back of my mind, the bribe is always there. He was always an evil man to me.’

Former team-mates have shunned Gary Sprake for his allegations, but the goalkeeper has since made more. He tells me that Revie asked him to ‘tap up’ fellow Wales internationals Colin Green and Terry Hennessey when Leeds played Birmingham on the last day of the 1964-65 season. Sprake refused and Leeds drew 3-3, losing the League title to Manchester United on goal average.

Duncan, Revie’s son, remains convinced that the allegations were unfounded. ‘They must have fixed lots and lots and lots of matches, because they won for at least 10 years,’ he says. ‘It was ludicrous in the extreme.’ If Revie did fix football matches, it was not systematic – and done in a way that was uncharacteristically unprofessional. Duncan believes that ‘not suing has wrongly damaged his reputation’, because his father’s name can never properly be cleared.

He had a great time in the Middle East,’ Duncan says. ‘It was probably as happy as I’ve seen my mum and dad. They were relaxed. They enjoyed the sunshine, they enjoyed the golf, they enjoyed Dubai. The friendships that the family made out there still remain to this day.’

When Revie’s time in the Middle East came to an end in 1983, he was only in his mid-fifties, but there was no way back into English football. He was, once, mooted as a candidate for the Queens Park Rangers job. In 1986 he moved to his wife’s homeland, Scotland. Then came the muscle-wasting illness that would take his life, motor neurone disease. From 1987, it quickly robbed him of all physical abilities. ‘Eventually he blinked twice for yes and once for no,’ Duncan says. ‘He went from 17 stone to eight stone in two years.’ At a 1988 charity testimonial at Elland Road, Revie, now in a wheelchair, was reunited with some of his former players. It was the last time they saw him; less than a year later he was dead.

In The Damned Utd, David Peace’s novel about Brian Clough’s six weeks as Leeds manager, Revie appears as a ghost, stalking out Clough. To many, including Clough, Leeds remained ‘Revie’s club’, and the disdain towards Leeds, ‘Dirty Leeds’, persists. Few outside Yorkshire lamented their recent relegation to League One – the old Division Three, from which Revie once saved them – and flirtations with bankruptcy.

The club’s followers maintain the spirit of defiance that Revie originated – particularly when it comes to the defence of Revie himself. ‘For those who know him, have been in his company, and seen what he’s done,’ Duncan says, ‘why should we care what view other people are forming from afar? The people I care about, the family, the Leeds people, the people from Yorkshire, they all know the calibre of the person.’ To many Revie remains an enigmatic figure, but the view from Leeds is possibly the truest measure of the man. For no one sums up a manager more accurately than his own supporters, and they are unequivocal in their judgment of Don Revie. To them, quite simply, he was the best.