Six points separated the top five come the end of the season as the blue side of Manchester rejoiced. Ed Upright reports
The long-term significance
This was the peak of the post-1966 boom – overall attendances were up by well over a million and 15 top division-clubs saw increases. Manchester United and Coventry set all‑time average records, as did Liverpool, who none the less trailed United and Everton in the attendance standings.
Steve Parish remembers Manchester City’s 1967-68 season
Nineteen sixty-eight was my last year at school. A-level revision had to be fitted in around the end to Manchester City’s best postwar season, when they played ten matches in six weeks. The run-in began with an amazing night at Old Trafford when George Best scored first but City cruised into top gear and beat title rivals United 3-1. I’ve still got the little reel-to-reel tape, recorded off the radio, of a Radio 4 documentary called More Than A Game, with vox pop interviews before, during and after the match, and roars, singing and cheers throughout.
Ever since he signed Argentina's Alberto Tarantini for Birmingham in 1978, Jim Smith has been one of the managers most willing to introduce foreign players to English football. Andy Lyons asked him about the pitfalls and benefits
What have been the main barriers to the integration of foreign players in English clubs? Has the traditional “team building” culture of drinking together been a particular problem?
I think that was true at one time but generally there is less of a drinking culture around English football these days. Players will go out together to restaurants and so on but you don’t usually get a whole team all going out on a Thursday night or whatever. One thing that did concern foreign players in the early days especially was our level of medical treatment. They’d often prefer to go back home to get treated. I think we have caught up in that respect and work with the best international specialists now, rather than just with staff at the club. The foreign players couldn’t believe we didn’t have full-time masseurs and that it was down to the old physio doing a bit on a Friday or Saturday morning. The foreign players work religiously on massaging muscles after training, far more than English players do.
Mike Ticher thumbs through some of the classics of ref literature and finds a world of egotists and backstabbers
One of the first referees to write his autobiography (assisted by Kenneth Wolstenholme) also had one of the best stories to tell. At 37, Arthur Ellis was the youngest Wembley Cup final referee when he oversaw Newcastle v Arsenal in 1952, ran the line in the final match of the 1950 World Cup in front of 200,000 at the Maracana and was in charge of the notorious “Battle of Berne” (Brazil v Hungary) in the 1954 World Cup.
Some people were just born to manage England, albeit with the right name and at the right time, says Harry Pearson
Walter, Alf, Don, Joe, Ron, Bobby, Graham, Terry, Glenn, Howard, Kevin.When studying this list of of the forenames of England’s managers it quickly becomes apparent that since the mid-Seventies the FA have got things hopelessly wrong. The departure of Don Revie and the brief interregnum of Joe Mercer should clearly have been followed by a more modern sounding manager, one whose name reeked not of linament and toad-in-the-hole, but of frothy coffee and formica, a Tony, perhaps, an Alan or even a Brian. Instead the FA went backwards and opted for Ron Greenwood.