‘Champions aren’t made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision’
– heavyweight boxing legend Muhammad Ali
Manchester City might have approached the winter of 1967–68 in a challenging position in the First Division and with Malcolm Allison harbouring thoughts of the championship, but his players were still grounded in realism. Colin Bell admits, ‘You never thought about the title until you were three-quarters of the way through. The League was so competitive that you never knew at the beginning of the season whether you were going to be up at the top or fighting relegation. Everybody was a good side at the start and everyone took some beating on their own patch. If you got a point away from home you had done well. Nowadays, most teams are just worried from day one about relegation. In our day you could shuffle the pack and it could be anyone up there.’1
The onset of an English winter gave City the opportunity to turn in a performance that, perhaps more than any other, marked them down as serious contenders for Manchester United’s crown. It is still remembered as one of the symbols of their season of glory.2 When FA Cup holders Tottenham arrived at Maine Road, it appeared they had made a wasted journey. The concrete-hard pitch was white with snow, yet referee David Smith ruled that the surface offered no danger to the players and allowed the game to go ahead.
City fans might have been wishing he’d decided otherwise when Jimmy Greaves scored after six minutes, but they watched in delighted awe as City skated across the surface like sure-footed alpine experts, causing the game to be remembered as the ‘Ballet on Ice’. They tore Spurs to shreds. City had already missed several chances before Bell fired home after efforts by Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee were blocked. Summerbee arced a header over Pat Jennings from Neil Young’s cross five minutes after half-time and Young himself rattled the bar a couple of minutes later. Tony Coleman cleaned up after Jennings saved a shot by Lee and the fourth goal came when Young was on hand after a save from Bell. With only 20 games of the season played, City’s vibrant style had already produced more goals than their entire safety-first campaign of a year earlier. A further source of pride for Allison was that the legendary Everton centre-forward, Dixie Dean, sought him out to inform him, ‘That is the most brilliant side I have ever seen.’
Yet City’s cavalier approach meant that a setback was never too far away and an unbeaten run of 11 games was ended by a 3–2 defeat at West Bromwich Albion on Boxing Day. There was never any question, though, of Allison compromising his beliefs by going down a more cautious route; he clung instead to his vision of City winning the title with dash and daring. Bell continues, ‘We could paralyse teams at home but away from home there was a bit of a question mark. Malcolm knew that if he changed, with the type of team we were, we would have lost even more. It would have backfired because we didn’t know another way to play.’
Four days later, City were beaten 2–0 at home by the same West Brom team – a game that offered an interesting postscript. Driving home, Mike Summerbee’s anger had led him to put his foot down too heavily on the accelerator, attracting the attention of the Manchester constabulary. When the police stopped his car the quick-thinking forward informed them, ‘Malcolm Allison’s just passed me doing 90 and he’s pissed.’ The patrol car disappeared in pursuit of the potential of a headline-grabbing arrest. Whatever the truth of the story, it does indicate the elevated nature of Allison’s profile in the city – and demonstrates what people found easy to believe of him.
Starting 1968 five points behind United, City’s year kicked off with a pair of 3–0 wins away from home followed by a resounding 7–0 FA Cup replay triumph at Reading. Francis Lee recalls, ‘We’d gone on a run that lifted us near to the top at Christmas and everybody started believing in themselves and that the team could play in the way we were expected to play. We went off the boil a bit around Christmas but about early February we started to play well. We went right through, won some big away matches, built momentum and no one could stop us.’
City were hard on the heels of United and second-placed Leeds by the time Coventry visited Maine Road on the second Saturday in March. The result was a 3–1 victory, but it was not without its drama. Both Summerbee and Bell needed treatment as Coventry attempted to put up a physical barrier against the home team’s attacking force. A nasty-looking tackle by full-back Dietmar Bruck on Coleman saw tempers further frayed, before referee Ray Tinkler angered the home team by deeming John Tudor’s tackle on Summerbee not worthy of a penalty. Three minutes before half-time, the volatile Coleman – always a candidate to blow up in a game like this – aimed a kick at Bruck and both men were sent off. Players from both teams jostled Tinkler, with Allison eager to join in. Half-time eventually restored some semblance of order before City completed their win.
A week later, they hit the top of the table on goal average after a 5–1 home win against bottom-placed Fulham. Their lead lasted only until the next game, a 2–0 defeat at Leeds. Don Revie’s team, whose scowling and scuffling not only overshadowed their technique and skill in the eyes of the public but was anathema to a man like Allison, had just finally won their first major trophy – after several years of near misses – by beating Arsenal in an ugly League Cup final. Leeds skipper Billy Bremner left the field after ten minutes to get a head wound patched up after a clash with Summerbee and second-half goals by Johnny Giles and Jack Charlton settled the game.
The defeat meant there was no room for error four days later when City went to Old Trafford, where a Wednesday-night crowd of more than 63,000 awaited a game that could either terminate or re-ignite City’s title challenge. That it was United, the old nemesis, who presented such a challenge seemed apt. ‘The Manchester United thing was still the great barrier across our progress,’ Allison recalled. As usual, he dispatched his players to the field before the game to applaud the United fans massed in the Stretford End. Predictably, the crowd bayed at their opponents and Malcolm noted contentedly that he had succeeded in creating an air of agitation that he hoped would project itself onto the United players.
Allison’s game plan called for Tony Book to be employed in a man-to-man marking role on George Best, but such was the genius of the Irishman that it quickly became clear that the veteran was, for once, being overrun. Best scored in the first minute – after Book mis-hit a back-pass – and was threatening to take over the game. Allison accepted that Best was in irrepressible form and, not wishing to waste the extra dimension Book could give to the attack, shouted instructions that his captain should play his normal game instead. After 15 minutes, Bell equalised with a powerful shot past Alex Stepney.
This was one of those games Allison had had in mind when he had called upon Joe Lancaster several months earlier. He felt that City’s better conditioning was the key as they overran United in the second half, power allied to panache producing two more goals. George Heslop got his lavish blond comb-over to Coleman’s free-kick and Lee converted a penalty after Bell was felled in full flight by Francis Burns. Even the fact that Bell was stretchered from the field could not take the gloss off the night. Mercer wept tears of joy and Allison would recall, ‘Years of humiliation had been, if not wiped away, at least eased. It was one of the great nights of my life.’
The result meant that the Division One title race was now a three-way tie. City won two of the next three but then picked up only a point from games against Chelsea and Wolves, failing to score in either match. Mercer and Allison took the team to Southport for four days, where Joe played the role of the hard man, giving the players what Mike Doyle described as ‘the biggest bollocking’ they had ever had from him. ‘The championship is there to be won,’ raged Mercer. ‘Either you want to win it or you don’t. You’ll train together tomorrow and then I don’t want to see you again.’
Never lost for words, Allison, on the verge of his greatest achievement in football, decided that his silence was all that was required on this occasion. Here he was, close enough to touch the vindication of his wrecked playing career – to erase the bitter taste of West Ham’s refusal to award him a Second Division championship medal – yet his confidence in his players, the men he had nurtured and moulded, was such that he felt no need to say anything. He trusted them to get together, discuss Mercer’s dissatisfaction and rectify the situation. If he was feeling the strain of the title race, he was handling it and hiding it. ‘Malcolm never showed anything,’ says Bell. ‘He was no different whether we were playing Manchester United or Leicester. Every game was a big game, but he didn’t want any nerves to rub off on the players. He instilled in your brain you would be good enough to win.’
City had four games left and knew it was unlikely that anything less than four wins would bring them the First Division title. At least Bell was fit again after missing four games with the knee injury he’d suffered against United. And fortune decided to spend a day with City. Sheffield Wednesday forward Brian Usher diverted Young’s indirect free-kick into his own net for the only goal of a game in which City had the benefit of some indifferent refereeing. When the players returned to the Maine Road changing-room they discovered that Leeds had been beaten. The day’s events left Manchester United only two points ahead of City, with Leeds sandwiched between them.
By the time City completed victory against FA Cup finalists Everton four days later, United had been walloped 6–3 at West Bromwich in one of those remarkable games that went out with black and white television. Apparently relaxed by news of United’s impending defeat, City scored second-half goals through Book and Coleman to move to the top of the table. Two games to play, both away from home: Tottenham, where the City players always felt confident of getting a result, and Newcastle, where they didn’t.
At White Hart Lane, Allison achieved what he modestly described as a ‘brilliant tactical success’. He decided to go after the veteran Dave Mackay, who was slowing with age and would be leaving Spurs within the next few weeks. Lee was instructed to abandon his habit of cutting in from wide and instead hug the right touchline, keeping left-back Cyril Knowles occupied. Summerbee, meanwhile, was ordered to drift out to the left, making sure that centre-half Mike England went with him. That would unleash the powerful running of Bell into the wide open spaces in the middle of the field, where Mackay would be exposed. It worked like a dream, as Summerbee remembers. ‘Malcolm decided to isolate Dave Mackay and we destroyed him. Colin ran him into the ground. It showed you how ruthless we were.’
After the teams had exchanged opportunities during the first 40 minutes, Book, Lee and Coleman combined to free Bell, who stepped past Mackay and put the ball beyond Pat Jennings. Young was denied by the Spurs keeper before half-time and after having an attempt cleared off the line shortly after the break, Bell crashed in a shot through a crowd of defenders. Summerbee took advantage of good work by Bell and Lee to make the game safe before a Spurs penalty made the final score 3–1.
United, 6–0 winners against Newcastle, remained level on points with City but with inferior goal average. If City won at that same Newcastle team on the final Saturday of the season, then the result of United’s home game against Sunderland would be irrelevant. Any slip-ups and the cursed Old Trafford gentry would be poised to deny Allison’s blue-collar workforce the prize they had chased for months; the reward for which they’d got their fingernails dirty and for which they’d had lumps kicked out of them by the likes of Coventry. The BBC’s reaction to such a scenario, Malcolm discovered with incredulity, was to send the Match of the Day cameras to watch bloody Busby and his spoiled glory boys. The BBC might not have had faith in City, but Summerbee says, ‘We never expected to lose away from home, partly because we knew we could dish it out as well as take it.’
Bell admits, ‘There was obviously more pressure because you knew what the situation was and it was in the papers all week. And then I don’t think I had ever been to Newcastle and won. That played on your mind, but you just had to get on with it.’
Summerbee and Bell were withdrawn from the England squad to play Spain to ensure their fitness and the day before the game the City squad – along with numerous pressmen and as many fans as could fit into the second-class carriages – took the midday train to Gateshead. A visit to the bowling alley adjoining the Five Bridges Hotel only partly succeeded in taking their minds off the next day’s task. While the squad members were rising from their beds to take a Saturday morning walk in the crisp Tyneside air, a convoy of cars and coaches was making its way along the A1 from Manchester, transporting Maine Road’s Kippax Stand into the heart of St James’ Park. The journey from hotel to ground, which should have taken 10 minutes, lasted 45 as City’s team bus fought its way through the throng of well-wishers.
In the changing-room, it was the usual routine. A few words from Mercer, a reminder from Allison that ‘you are the best team in the League; the best players in the country’, and then City went out to face the crowd of more than 46,000, close to 20,000 of whom had arrived from Moss Side. ‘There must have been more than 90,000, judging by the people who have said they were there,’ says Bell. ‘The thing I remember is that they were even sat over the wall on the walk-round. There was no fencing up or anything, but everyone behaved themselves.’
A frantic opening found City ahead after 13 minutes when Doyle’s low cross from the right was swept in by Summerbee. But only two further minutes elapsed before Bryan Robson was set free in the City area and put a strong shot past Ken Mulhearn. City led again after 32 minutes when Young lashed in a first-time shot with his left foot from the edge of the box, only for the home side to equalise quickly once more. Heslop – who, according to Allison, ‘panicked every time the ball came near to him’ – gave the ball away and it was knocked forward for Jackie Sinclair to plant another unstoppable effort in the City net. Lee recalls, ‘It was a wonderful game because every time we scored, they scored. It was backwards and forwards – marvellous to watch and play in.’
Allison couldn’t believe how poorly his defence was performing, but he was not about to start making changes. Bell remembers, ‘He would back the players to perform so he wouldn’t make wholesale switches to tactics at half-time. He would have a go at one or two and maybe change one or two little things, just to get us going in the right direction.’
He was, however, ready to give his men a rollicking when he arrived in the dressing-room. ‘But when I got there I could see that they were all so tensed up,’ he explained. Instead, Allison told them, ‘You’ve had 45 minutes to warm up and get used to the game, now go out and play like champions.’
Within three minutes of the restart Summerbee fed Bell, who cut inside two players from the right and saw his shot cleared towards the edge of the box, where Young charged in to drive the rebound low into the net. This time there was no immediate riposte from Newcastle. City, inspired by Bell, looked more assured, completely in control of their destiny. A further 15 minutes on, Bell threaded a pass to Lee, who slipped the ball past the keeper and stood arms aloft in front of the delirious City fans.
But it was still a little too early for happy ever after. Given the season City had gone through, it was inevitable that the title should be won in a high-scoring nail-biter of a game and, with four minutes to play, Newcastle centre-half John McNamee ventured forward to net a powerful header to pull the score back to 4–3.
The tension around the ground conveyed the long-suffering City fans’ refusal to believe that United would not somehow stage a late recovery from being 2–1 down against Sunderland – a result that, if it stood, meant a City victory was not strictly necessary. When the final whistle arrived, City players leapt into each other’s arms. Tears were shed on and off the pitch. Fully-grown, fully-kitted, men hurled themselves like excited infants into the team bath. City were Football League champions for the first time since 1937 and they had won the title themselves, not relied upon an unexpected United setback. Even when champagne gave way to brown ale on the coach journey home, nothing could dampen their party spirit. ‘It meant so much to everyone at the club; to Malcolm and Joe; and to the players,’ says Lee. ‘No one in that side had ever won anything.’
For Allison, however, the moment of triumph was a draining one. In the immediate aftermath of victory, he mourned the loss of the need to plan and plot any more – the very life force that had driven him so energetically through the previous months. ‘I couldn’t catch the mood. The title had come to us on a flood tide. I think deep down I was a little stunned.’
That feeling did not last too long. At some point during the team’s celebrations at the Cabaret Club that night, the sense of achievement began to penetrate Allison’s emotional fatigue. Consistency, fitness, discipline, flair, teamwork – all had been bandied about in the players’ post-game interviews. But it was the fact that the title had been won without aping the pragmatism of England’s World Cup winners that did most to restore Allison’s buoyancy. That and the champagne. Besides, within hours – after barely 60 minutes’ sleep at a girlfriend’s flat – he would be setting himself new targets, defining new goals for his team, and setting out on another journey.
Allison had never been one to accept victory in a quiet, understated manner. Whether it was buying champagne all round at Ascot, or piling all his winnings on a long shot at Hackney dogs, victory had to be marked by some act of extravagance. Malcolm put such behaviour down, not to simple showing off, but to a need to involve others in his good fortune. Now, if he couldn’t buy all the City fans and the nation’s football media a bottle of bubbly, he could at least include them in his moment of triumph by giving them a shot of his very own brand of bravado, served chilled at the following day’s Maine Road press conference.
Those reporters who resented having to forego Sunday lunch with the family for this post-championship briefing were well rewarded as Allison announced to a packed room, ‘I think we will be the first team to play on Mars. We have had more courage than the majority of teams in the League. The courage to play this game. We work at things and are consistently disciplined. Any side we play at home or away has got to be at their very best to beat us.’
Allison was warming up now, and there was one ‘red cloud’ on the horizon of his finest professional accomplishment that he found impossible to ignore. In a couple of weeks’ time, Manchester United would be in a position to overshadow City’s domestic success by winning the European Cup. However much his team might be the flavour of the week, he knew that City would soon be elbowed out of the headlines by tales of Matt Busby’s destiny – victory from the ashes of the Munich air crash, which had decimated the great ‘Busby Babes’ side a decade earlier.
Allison was in no mood to play the good neighbour. As well as shouting over the garden fence about what his team could achieve, his comments were a not-so-thinly veiled dig at United’s success. ‘Manchester City will not play in Europe like some of the sides I have seen play Manchester United. I promise you City will attack these people as they have not been attacked since the days of the old Real Madrid. I think a lot of these European people are cowards. Their teams won in spite of their coaches, not because of them.’
He later admitted that the knowledge that United would, in due course, achieve a 4–1 win against Portugal’s Benfica at Wembley would have ‘spoiled that morning of triumph’.
The First Division trophy was presented two days later when City played a friendly against Bury, a game that, naturally, turned into a party. Even Allison took the field, replacing Heslop with ten minutes to play and prompting chants of ‘Allison for England’.
But there was to be no relaxing summer on the beach, basking in the glory of the League championship. City were off across the Atlantic for the kind of summer tour that would be unthinkable in modern times – nine meaningless matches played over the course of five weeks, with only one game won. The absence of the team’s leading players on England’s tour of South America and others on England Under-23 duty meant that the remaining players were overworked at a time when they should have been recharging for the following season.
It was a shambles from the start. Tony Book picked up an Achilles tendon injury that would keep him out of the side for the first half of the following season. City ended a game against Dunfermline with only nine men on the field because of further injury, while planned matches against Mexican sides Atlante and America were cancelled – the first only hours before kick-off – because the home teams claimed City were breaking their agreement by not fielding the team that had won at Newcastle to lift the title.
City were beaten twice by the Atlanta Chiefs, one of the better teams in the fledgling North American Soccer League, whose player-coach was Phil Woosnam – a former Wales inside-forward who had signed for West Ham just as Allison’s time at Upton Park was ending. Woosnam took great delight in beating his former colleague at a time when the standard of play in the NASL was higher than it would be in any season until the likes of Pelé, Beckenbauer and Cruyff found their way to the US in the mid-’70s. After an initial 3–2 defeat in Atlanta, Malcolm claimed that their opponents had been of Fourth Division standard and that such a freak result could not happen again. When the games in Mexico were cancelled, Allison happily accepted an invitation to play a second match against the Chiefs, this time losing 2–1. In the Chiefs team was former Aston Villa and Northern Ireland winger Peter McParland, who remembers, ‘We wanted to beat them badly because Malcolm was shooting his mouth off and we thought we had better shut him up. We had something to prove.’
The tour was not without its moments off the field. Tony Coleman and Stan Bowles so upset American police with their rowdy behaviour that warning shots were fired into the pavement. Malcolm so impressed the female head of an Atlanta radio station that she attempted to persuade him to remain in the United States with her. Francis Lee stunned patrons of a bar in San Francisco by eating the flowers from the tables, while Neil Young and George Heslop witnessed two people being shot while they queued for a hamburger.
Back home for the new season, City found that English teams wanted to beat them as much as the Atlanta Chiefs had. The combination of their status as champions and Allison’s boasting meant everyone was out to get them. Mike Doyle noted that ‘we never picked up a newspaper without expecting to see some big words from the big fellow’.
Allison appears not to have appreciated that while a developing, inexperienced team had responded to the way he built them up – both privately and in the media – he should ease up a little now that they were established as England’s champions. The more reserved players in the squad believed that Allison’s outbursts were the equivalent of sticking targets on their shirts. Summerbee suggests, ‘There was a little of the José Mourinho arrogance about Malcolm’ – although Allison’s comments were at least delivered with a cheeky twinkle in the eye rather than a chip-on-the-shoulder scowl.
Bell saw it as less of an issue, reflecting, ‘He just did all that to get City into the papers and promote the game of football. I thought it was great. It was all for show and it didn’t bother me.’
But it clearly disturbed some players, as Lee explains. ‘It did put extra pressure on us and a few players did at times say to him, “Why don’t you keep your bloody mouth shut? The game is hard enough without you sticking your oar in. It’s all right you saying we are going to do this, that or the other, but you aren’t bloody well playing.” He just wanted everybody to believe we were a super team and he was a super coach. He felt people weren’t writing about the club in the right way and it was all a PR exercise to get the club to the forefront.’
After starting the season with a 6–1 win against West Brom in the FA Charity Shield, Allison’s promise about what City would do in the European Cup was put to the test in a first-round tie against Fenerbahce, champions of Turkey. Malcolm’s comments had once again been tolerated by Mercer, who understood that it was part of his make-up and saw that it added excitement and panache to the game. Take that away from him and you would lose part of the spark that drove him towards such achievements on the field.
Besides, there was little danger of coming a cropper against Fenerbahce. At that time, Turkish football was regarded as something of a joke. Their club sides were mere early-round fodder for the bigger teams in European competition, while the national team would have considered the act of qualification for the World Cup finals cause for wild celebration. Anyone suggesting that, by 2002, they would be reaching the semi-finals would have been regarded as insane.
Allison and Mercer chose not to scout their opponents, relying instead on a report from former Doncaster Rovers manager Oscar Hold, who’d had a two-year stint as Fenerbahce manager. Neither was there an advance party sent to Turkey from the club to check on hotels and logistics. The tie was expected to be effectively over by the time City had played the first leg in front of their own fans, yet they were bereft of the drive and guile to break down a massed and well-organised defence. Confronted by a goalkeeper in great form, they were held 0–0.
Allison’s words were already looking a little hollow, although in this instance Lee does not attribute the City performance to any additional pressure created by their coach. ‘His quote was made specifically for us: to stop us being apprehensive at what was an entirely new venture to us, and to give us confidence. But we became too confident and they were so moderate that we dominated them so much in the first half we treated it like an exhibition game. At half-time Malcolm tried to get us to realise the game was slipping away, and told us to go out and score a hatful. But our chances had gone.’
Things got worse in the second leg. City were totally unprepared for what awaited them in the Turkish capital, Istanbul, where 55,000 crammed into the National Stadium, built for about 10,000 fewer than that. Book, who had made the journey even though he was still injured, recalls, ‘I remember looking out of the hotel window at about half past eight in the morning. You could see the stadium down the hill and the fans were already queuing to get in. When we got to the ground the pitch was surrounded by soldiers with guns. It is hard to ignore stuff like that when you have not experienced it before.’
Bell continues, ‘It was a complete culture shock. You felt that if they could have shot you, they would have. They kicked lumps out of us in the first leg but had picked us up, which was very nice of them. We went out there and they kicked us again, but didn’t pick us up. They were spitting at us and there were fires in the crowd. It was the worst experience I have had on a football field. It was frightening.’
After surviving some early pressure on the bumpy pitch, City took the lead after 12 minutes when Tony Coleman seized upon defensive uncertainty to round the keeper. There were few scares for the away team in the remainder of the first half. But then, in what Allison would liken to ‘watching a slow-motion horror film’, the Turks fought back to win 2–1. They scored inside a minute of the second half and a swarm of attacks finally produced a second goal with 12 minutes to play.
Allison was devastated. He had been convinced of his team’s ability to triumph, a certainty built on the fact that even the European coaches he admired were, he felt, too negative, their ambition unable to match their technical expertise. Beaten and embarrassed, he said nothing publicly for 48 hours. Finally he admitted that ‘defeat in Istanbul was the biggest disappointment of my whole career’. He felt that his team had adapted reasonably well to the problems of playing abroad in a hostile environment, but believed that the fact they had not been fully appreciative of the problems lying in wait for them meant that ‘there was not enough urgency in the first game’.
Bell echoes that view many years later: ‘We were out before we knew what had happened. Second time around in Europe, a year later, we knew what it was about a bit more. It was a learning experience for us and if we had got through that first round we might just have learned about European football as we went along.’
The European Cup upset was symptomatic of City’s disappointing start to the season. They won only once in the first nine League games, by which time the only team below them in the table was newly promoted Queens Park Rangers. Lee admits, ‘After we started the season by thrashing West Brom, I think we were a bit overconfident. We thought we were going to win every game by scoring a lot of goals.’
The title had been lost quickly and City would finish in 13th position, only a couple of places higher than their first season back in the First Division two years earlier. Whether or not Allison’s statements had any impact on the team, one thing was for certain: he had spoken up once too often for the authorities’ liking. In a bad-tempered match at Southampton – a description that could have applied to a good many games at The Dell in that era – Allison had been heard to direct ‘abusive remarks’ towards the linesman, earning the seventh summons of his career to appear before the FA’s disciplinary committee.
In November 1966, he had been banned for a month from sitting on the touchline for swearing at the officials during a League Cup game. At the time he had predicted it would be ‘the longest month of my life’ but refrained from saying any more because ‘they might hang me’. He had also been suspended from all management duties for a month for an incident in a match against Tottenham. Now it seemed likely that, given his previous, a more lengthy banishment from the dugout beckoned. Before the case could be heard, Joe Mercer announced he was enforcing his own sideline ban on his coach. ‘You must sit with me in the directors’ box,’ he told him. A telephone link was set up between Allison and assistant coach Johnny Hart on the bench, while Malcolm made his view from the executive seats more rewarding by inviting American film star Jane Russell to watch a game with him.
If Mercer’s action was intended to draw the FA’s sting, it didn’t work. The result of a 40-minute hearing was that Allison was fined £100 and banned from the touchline for life. It was the inevitable conclusion to years of Allison’s verbal assaults on match officials but there was little sign of repentance as he ranted, ‘Referees are just an occupational hazard because of their incompetence. The standard of some refereeing in this country, and some others, is so low it’s pathetic. What’s needed is a drastic overhaul of the system. There’s been nothing done about the methods of training referees for 60 years, which is ridiculous. They should have to go to school for at least one month every year so that they keep up with what’s going on.’
Inevitably, Allison was not the most popular figure among the community of match officials. Norman Burtenshaw, one of the country’s leading officials in the ’60s and ’70s, felt that players such as Colin Bell carried their coach’s confrontational attitude onto the pitch with them. ‘Manchester City were a team I never liked having. They had the unenviable reputation of being the mouthiest team in the Football League. I think the players took it from their manager Malcolm Allison, who, when I had dealings with him, seemed to be an arrogant man, although I can think of no row between us.’
Burtenshaw described City versus Leeds as the game that no referee wanted and recalled Don Revie asking him to check City’s studs before a game on a frosty surface after hearing a comment on television about them having special studs made. This was before linesmen routinely checked studs before matches and was indicative of both Revie’s infamously suspicious nature and Allison’s reputation as a coach who might try to pull a fast one. In his autobiography, Whose Side Are You On, Ref?, Burtenshaw wrote:
After another City match I came out of the dressing-room and saw Allison talking to some reporters on the other side of the passageway. ‘What about the shirt pulling?’ he shouted. I was willing to have a civil conversation but not to join in a shouting match across a passageway.
My next meeting with Allison was at a disciplinary hearing after I had booked Mike Summerbee for a late tackle. Allison looked at me as though I were an imbecile. City brought in film of the incident and played it in slow motion, showed stills and even played the film backwards. Summerbee lost his case. As Allison left the room where the hearing took place he said, ‘It’s a disgrace.’ He was called back and lectured about his conduct.
Allison also managed to wind up Burtenshaw by taking his team sheet in to the officials without waiting for the opposition manager to present his list simultaneously. ‘I can’t accept that – you know the rules,’ Burtenshaw would tell him. ‘He was the only manager who used to come in on his own. Why did he do it when he knew it was against the regulations? Allison was never a conformist.’
Former Football League linesman Tony Ellis recalls Allison trying to use his status and personality to dominate match officials. ‘He was an intimidating figure. I always felt he was lording it over you,’ he says, although others saw Malcolm more as a ‘loveable rogue’. Pat Partridge appreciated the fact that Allison would talk to him ‘man-to-man in private’ and recalled several such confrontations. ‘His tongue is overworked and constantly in danger of getting him on the wrong side of officialdom, but despite our set-tos I believe he is good for the game,’ he said. ‘I like the man immensely.’ He even claimed to have got on better with Allison than Mercer, with whom he fell out when genial Joe made disparaging comments about him in front of his wife.
Meanwhile, Allison’s popularity was obviously growing among clubs eager to find someone who could create a winning team for them. In December 1968, Queens Park Rangers chairman Jim Gregory was on the end of the phone after the conclusion of Tommy Docherty’s ill-fated 28 days in charge at Loftus Road. ‘I haven’t followed it up because I didn’t fancy the job,’ Allison told reporters.
Less than two months later, Coventry manager Noel Cantwell promised his old friend considerably more money than he was earning at City if he would team up with him at Highfield Road. This time Allison took some time to consider the tempting offer. ‘If Malcolm leaves there’s a transfer request coming from me and probably Colin Bell and Tony Book,’ announced Summerbee. Touched by the urgings of his players and confident that loss of form in the League was only temporary, Allison was in a mood for compromise during a 50-minute meeting with the City board. Club secretary Walter Griffiths emerged to read a statement in which Allison was said to have ‘apologised’, resolved his ‘very slight differences’ with City and agreed to a new four-year contract.
From his new seat in the directors’ box, Malcolm was to be rewarded for his decision by a grandstand view of many more City triumphs.