‘I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had created’
– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818
John Bromley, then the head of ITV sport, would not have realised it, but at the moment he sat down to plan the network’s coverage of the 1970 World Cup he became a television Frankenstein. When ITV went on-air at 5.15 p.m. on Sunday, 31 May with its coverage of the opening ceremony and the Mexico–USSR match, the monster of Big Mal was brought to life. All that was missing was the lightning bolt striking the castle tower.
Events in Mexico changed the face of televised football. For those who had upgraded their sets, there was a glorious parade of colour, making the brilliant football of the Brazilians even more vivid and vibrant. For those tuning in to ITV, there was placed before them a new way of discussing football on television. Here were blokes sitting around arguing and wise-cracking about the game in the way the average viewer did with his mates at the pub. Those who had spent the earlier part of that Sunday afternoon watching the rapid-fire delivery of Bob Monkhouse fronting the popular game show, The Golden Shot, would scarcely have seen the join.
Brian Moore had been asked to anchor ITV’s coverage in the London studio instead of taking his place behind the microphone in Mexico, with Jimmy Hill placed in charge of a revolutionary new feature – the ‘World Cup Panel’. Giving their views on the action unfolding before them were Wolves and Northern Ireland centre-forward Derek Dougan, Scotland international wing-half Pat Crerand and England full-back Bob McNab, who had been among the six men sent home by Alf Ramsey from his original travelling squad of 28. Alongside them was the undoubted leader of the gang, Malcolm Allison. The next three weeks would change the course of his life.
This was the moment that ‘Big Mal’ became more than just a convenient nickname applied by the media when they needed a snappy headline. Big Mal was now a living, breathing personality. He became the Mr Hyde to Allison’s cerebral, innovative Dr Jekyll. Having won four major trophies in three years, Allison did not win a single thing in English football after the birth of Big Mal, despite two decades of trying. It seems to be more than coincidence.
Allison’s profile away from the field was already growing, having been introduced by Derek Ufton to the agent Bagenal Harvey, the man who turned Denis Compton into the original ‘Brylcreem Boy’. Ufton recalls, ‘I was working with Bagenal and when Mal went to Manchester City I got him involved. Bagenal was a great guy. He was the first agent and he suffered because people didn’t really know what that meant, so people used to call him Mr X. I said to Bagenal, “You have got to get Malcolm on the books because he has so much to offer and he is bound to be wanted by the media.” Malcolm was two hours late for their first meeting, which didn’t go down well. Bagenal wanted to be the top guy and the one who set the timetable.’
Newspaper columns and some work with ITV followed. It was natural, therefore, that the call would go out to Allison when Bromley, who had also been represented by Harvey, decided in the spring of 1970, ‘We need some people who can actually talk lucidly about football.’ Originally, he had planned to use his panellists individually, but once they had been assembled and were wondering what exactly their roles would be, Bromley informed them that they would be placed on screen together. It was an approach Allison understood, like throwing his team into all-out attack without responsibility for covering at the back. The resulting analysis was lively enough to complement the unforgettable action on the field; loud enough to match the fashionable shirts the protagonists wore instead of the traditional sensible jacket and tie. It was noisy and it was unscripted – a far cry from the speak-when-you-are-spoken-to BBC style.
Bromley recalled, ‘Crerand, the tough little Scot, and Allison, the hard-nosed Cockney, were the baddies, and the charming Dougan with the lovely McNab were the goodies. The whole mix was absolutely right and it took off and they became folk heroes in four weeks.’
McNab adds, ‘People had never seen anything like that before. The BBC was very stuffed shirt. John Bromley was brilliant and I really liked him.’
Brian Moore, who sat as a somewhat detached observer as mayhem swirled around the studio, explained, ‘We suddenly realised we had hit the jackpot,’ putting the success down to employing ‘attractive men with a knowledgeable, knockabout style’. He added, ‘They gave football punditry a fresh intoxicating sparkle that has never quite been matched since. For the first time during the coverage of sport on television, we had passionate, controversial, confrontational discussion, sometimes outrageous, even bigoted.’
According to Dougan, ‘The chemistry was right and we used to spark off each other. Not once did we have a rehearsal. Malcolm was the only guy that I have ever worked with who could drink an excess of champagne and go on there and not slur his words. I used to admire him for doing that because I wouldn’t try to do it.’
McNab has similar memories: ‘We all stayed at the Hendon Hall Hotel and Malcolm would be ordering Riesling with wild strawberries for lunch and talking about which wines he was going to try the next day. Then we went in the green room and I had to be careful because I was never a great drinker – and they were obviously trying to loosen your tongue. They did ply you with drink, but Malcolm seemed to be able to cope with it. I can’t say drink had any influence on what he said or did on screen.’
It was the survival of the fittest once the cameras started rolling, with Allison, puffing cigar smoke over Dougan in the next seat, revelling in the competition. ‘Jimmy tried to control it, but Malcolm used to try to control Jimmy,’ says McNab. ‘Jimmy was taking his job very seriously, which he had to do, and Malcolm would take the piss out of him unmercifully.’
McNab also recalls Dougan becoming a target of Allison’s mischief making. ‘Malcolm would say stuff to Derek off-camera to set him up, hoping that he would copy him and say something silly on air.’
The basic rule of the panel was that the loudest opinion was usually the one that got heard, with McNab – himself not exactly shy and retiring – playing the role of the quiet man on the end of the desk. At one point the producers suggested giving him a bell to ring when he wanted to make a point. Allison was clearly the star of the show, as Moore recalled in his autobiography The Final Score:
Of all the men I have met in my football travels, none was bigger, brasher, brighter or more likeable than Big Mal. He looked striking enough on our panel to fit the James Bond image, and in no time he had captured every female heart – well, almost. The only time I saw him come off second best was when, in our hotel one lunchtime, he tried to chat up that stunning actress Diana Rigg, who was passing through. She gave him a haughty once-over and in five seconds turned on her delectable heel and left him for dead.
The effect of the panel was exactly what Bromley had hoped. For the first time, ITV was pulling in numbers for its sports coverage to compare with, and on occasions beat, the BBC. This group of good-looking, fast-talking, stylishly dressed men were making football more accessible than it had ever been. At a time when the sport was still a fiercely male preserve, even female viewers, who, as Moore put it, ‘didn’t know an overlap from an underpass’, were drawn into the tournament.
Fan letters poured into the ITV studios and the panel members suddenly found that they were household faces. Shopping or eating in public became a long round of autographs. McNab says, ‘It really promoted Malcolm and he took to it like a duck to water. He loved going out and being recognised in restaurants. One night we went to eat in the White Elephant restaurant in Mayfair. Michael Caine came in with a group of people and he came over and bought us a couple of bottles of champagne. He told his people to go and get themselves some drinks “while I have a drink with the lads”. He said he loved the show. Malcolm took over then. He was the leader and Michael Caine seemed pleased just to be with us.’
Allison quickly realised that he was proving to be worth far more to ITV than his basic fee, which was £500 for three weeks. One day the Hendon Hall Hotel manager approached Bromley nervously with Malcolm’s bill, which was rapidly growing thanks to the regular orders for the best champagne and expensive cigars. Bromley took one look, weighed up the value for money Allison was offering to his programme, and assured the worried man that all was in order.
In among all the discussion of Pelé, Beckenbauer and Alf Ramsey, another name cropped up on a couple occasions – that of Malcolm’s old flame Christine Keeler. McNab recounts, ‘We went out to Tramps in the middle of the week and it was as dead as a dodo. All we were doing was sitting and drinking in the end. Malcolm wouldn’t give up and it got to about 4.30 and he said, “Do you know Christine Keeler? She is a friend of mine.” I told him she would go bananas and suggested we just went home, but he said, “No, let’s go and have a drink with Christine.” So Malcolm, Paddy and I got in a cab and pulled up outside this apartment in a mews-type house. He was banging on the door and shouting, “Come on, Christine, let’s have a drink.” This window opens upstairs and she shouts out, “Malcolm, why don’t you fuck off?” She slaughtered him. I was trying to disappear under the car seat.’
Another time, Allison had the panellists worked up into a frenzy when he slipped into conversation that he was meeting Christine for lunch and that anyone was welcome to join them. Tongues hanging out, the crew turned up on the appointed day dressed to kill – even Jimmy Hill – only to find that Ms Keeler had sent her apologies.
On screen, it was inevitably Allison’s comments that created the biggest ripples, especially when he referred to Russian and Romanian players as ‘peasants’, resulting in calls of complaint to the ITV switchboard. Says McNab, ‘I couldn’t relate this to anything specific, but I think Malcolm was cute and clever enough to say something to cause a reaction. He was highly capable of that.’
England’s hopes of retaining their trophy ended in the quarter-finals when West Germany came back from two goals down in Leon. The defeat gave City striker Francis Lee the opportunity to point out an interesting comparison between the Ramsey regime and the methods of Allison at Maine Road. Describing the scene heading into extra-time, he said, ‘We trooped off the field to Sir Alf and I was expecting the team would get a real roasting. I suppose my club background took over here. But I know if we had let the management down at Maine Road like this there would have been no punches pulled. If the same thing had happened in an FA Cup tie, we would have been bawled out, and justifiably.’
Back in the studio, it was Allison who was the fiercest critic of England’s performance. While McNab was sensitive about making negative comments about players who had been his teammates until a few weeks earlier, Allison let rip. He felt that Beckenbauer was too slow to play as an effective sweeper and could have been frightened if attacked. Individually, he focused on Tottenham midfielder Alan Mullery. He made no bones about stating that his own player, Colin Bell, should have been in the team from the start instead of coming on as a second-half substitute when Ramsey decided to save Bobby Charlton’s legs for the semi-final.
While reviews of the panel, and Allison in particular, were generally favourable, some felt the criticism of Mullery, given his efforts throughout the tournament, had gone beyond reasoned thinking. In The Times, John Hennessy wrote:
Allison’s prejudices in isolation would be unbearable. How a man could fail to salute Mullery with enthusiasm rather than grudging reluctance after his match against Pelé is beyond me.
Sensing the opportunity for some must-see television, Bromley invited Mullery on air upon his return to England to confront Allison. Mullery agreed as long as the discussion was aired live. The debate that ensued was exactly what Bromley had envisaged, gradually becoming more personal as the two men warmed up. Allison, who had pointedly ignored Mullery in the pre-show hospitality area, began by criticising Ramsey and then took up the theme of Mullery’s own performance. The Spurs man responded by asking Allison, ‘How many caps did you win?’, before delivering the coup de grâce by taking one of his own out of a carrier bag and tossing it at Allison. ‘I’ve got 30 of these,’ he said. ‘This one’s spare. You have it because it’s the only way you’ll ever get one.’
Moore, whose job it was to prevent events degenerating into fisticuffs, noted, ‘In its way, it was all pretty unpleasant.’
Jimmy Hill would recall, ‘His stand against Alan Mullery as a class England player, against which he argued to the death, turned a lot of people off him. It would have been easier to coat his criticisms with sugar. But obstinately, his brain kept telling him truth was more important than diplomacy. It is almost as if the bigger the audience he has, the more important he feels it is to reveal his innermost thoughts to all of them. The truth for him has to be stated at all costs. Football is too precious to lie.’
It was an early example of the kind of brutal made-for-TV approach that has worked so successfully for the likes of Simon Cowell. And it all added to the Big Mal legend – even if, on this occasion, he was on the receiving end of the knockout blow.
For coverage of the final between Brazil and Italy, the panel were decked out in dinner jackets. It meant that Allison, tall and handsome, cut quite a dash when the team arrived at the Brazilian Embassy for a post-game reception. Predictably, he caught the eye of a beautiful young Brazilian girl called Claudia, beginning an affair that continued for two years. They would meet up when he was in London, or arrange rendezvous at hotels in Manchester, and Malcolm admitted it was an affair that revolved around his availability – until she announced to him over dinner that she was to be married.
It was Malcolm Allison who checked in at the Hendon Hall early in the summer, but it was Big Mal who arrived back in Manchester. Life would never be the same again and Allison seemed uncertain whether he wished to be a serious football man or a show-business celebrity. Results, and the testimony of those around him, suggest that the latter was more often than not the case. Bob McNab, who saw the transformation close up, says, ‘I think the other side, the opposite of that professionalism he had, came out more after the World Cup. He took to that celebrity thing. He loved it. He got that in him and he wanted to be in front of the camera.’
Mexico ’70 set in motion a vicious circle from which Allison was unable, or disinclined, to break free. Unleashed upon the general public, the more extreme the Big Mal character became, the less successful was Allison the coach. And the more games he lost – and the further his footballing credibility waned in the ensuing years – the more outrageous he would have to become in order to be heard and noticed.
Allison was to be a regular feature on television over the next few years, appearing once again on the ITV World Cup panel in 1974, by which time he had Brian Clough lining up alongside him following a transfer from the BBC. And his column in the Daily Express, launched in 1969, would become required reading. ‘He had a good sense of what would catch the eye in print,’ recalls his ghostwriter, James Lawton. ‘But he was very genuine about football in his opinions. He was a playboy and a self-publicist but no one could question his passion for the game.’
The prescience of one of Allison’s columns particularly sticks in Lawton’s mind. ‘After that dreadful World Cup in 1990, FIFA were so concerned about the stultifying football that they brought in the rule banning the back-pass. Not many agreed at the time, but everyone would agree it has immeasurably improved the game. But I had written with Malcolm a big splash almost 20 years earlier suggesting exactly that. Everyone said he was mad, but he was explicit about how it would make defenders honest, make them think about playing the ball and open up the game. He said it would kill off the coaches who played route-one football. To me, that is one of the most dramatic examples of a man who is ahead of his time.’
Pointed attacks on England managers and the English football system were to become a staple of Allison’s media appearances. He argued that Ramsey was a good coach of a bad team, but couldn’t extract the maximum potential out of a good side, which was why he failed in 1970 with what was considered to be an even stronger squad than that of four years earlier. After Ramsey named his squad for a 1973 friendly against Yugoslavia, Allison stated, ‘Ramsey lives in his own football world. He picked Manchester City players who are completely off form.’ Ramsey’s successor, Don Revie, could do little right in Allison’s eyes, while Graham Taylor, two decades later, was described as ‘arrogant and a tactical disaster’.
In the mid-’70s, Allison was claiming that Trevor Francis and Alan Hudson were the only potentially world-class players in the country and that the likes of Johnny Haynes, Bobby Charlton, Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney had been great players in spite of the English system. None, he said, had been coached to greatness in the manner of Hungarian players like Puskas and Kocsis. ‘In England we have been too sloppy,’ he said. ‘We do things out of habit and without properly enquiring about their value.’
Friend and journalist Jeff Powell argues that Allison eventually came to appreciate that Ramsey’s World Cup winners had not been such a total anathema to his own preferred style of football, but applauds Allison’s continued stance against ‘functional football’.
Powell says, ‘Graham Taylor made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear at Watford, but Malcolm said that the long-ball type of football promoted by him and people like Charlie Hughes at the FA should not be involved with the England team. They were all about getting the ball into the corners and winning free-kicks or corner-kicks. Malcolm had views that the geometricians of football couldn’t cope with. He offered something bigger, something on a more major scale. Their brand of football was pretty horrible compared to Malcolm’s great vision.’
Allison had seriously held beliefs and had been expressing them ever since he was a young player at Charlton. The difference now was that he knew the impact they would have when they came from the lips of Big Mal, a character Lawton believes had always been lurking not far below the skin of the man with whom he developed a long-standing friendship. ‘Big Mal was a self-generating phenomenon, partly due to his zest for life. I never felt that it was a performance – not like Ron Atkinson, who, without being offensive to him, was aping Big Mal when he became Big Ron.’
Gradually, however, that side of Allison’s character would soon be threatening to win possession of his soul. McNab comments, ‘We had become very close and I thought the world of Malcolm. I enjoyed him. He was flamboyant and devil-may-care, but he was self-destructive. He was a genius, but he was flawed. He loved his football, but I wonder in the end if he would even jeopardise that for a good night out.’
There were, of course, plenty of good nights out in Big Mal’s life – enough to fill a book on their own. He got himself into enough scrapes that when Joe Mercer was stopped in his car by police for speeding, his first thought on seeing the blue light pulling him over was, ‘Christ, now what’s Malcolm done?’
A few times Allison’s escapades landed him in trouble, although most were harmless high jinks. Like the time City played a testimonial game in London for former QPR player Frank Sibley and one group of players were out until six in the morning. As they approached the hotel they saw Francis Lee staggering along the road with what appeared to be a large sack over his shoulders. His burden turned out to be Allison, who was left sleeping in his room as the team headed back to Manchester.
Another London visit ended, after a detour to the Playboy Club, in a bar where Allison’s group encountered James Last, the pianist, composer and orchestra leader who had sold millions of records around the world. Allison persuaded him to play something for them, before Summerbee, Lee and Rodney Marsh hijacked his performance and had him playing accompaniment to an old-fashioned English knees-up. Allison sent four bottles of champagne over as a thank-you.
Marsh, who signed for City in 1972, also tells the story of a game in France, after which Allison was ordering champagne and holding court in the hotel bar. He was interrupted by a sheepish head waiter who nervously informed him that the bill had reached the equivalent of £1,000. Allison took a long drag on his cigar and barked back, ‘Is that all? Don’t come back until it is double that.’
Another time, Allison and a couple of his players began an afternoon session that eventually turned into a full-scale party, in which 23 bottles of champagne were uncorked. With only the final bottle in the crate left to be opened, Allison said to the owner, ‘I’m not going to have the 24th bottle. I don’t want people to think I am a flash bastard.’
Don Rogers, who would play for Allison at Crystal Palace, remembers him as ‘the champagne man’ and recalls attending a boxing awards dinner with him at the Café Royal. ‘I happened to be the one chosen to sit next to Malcolm at ringside watching the boxing. I was sat there and the next thing I know he is delivering a bottle of champagne to me under the seats – while the fights were on.’
He continues, ‘One time, we were in Italy in the Anglo-Italian Cup. There was just me, Alan Whittle and Malcolm sat round the table – everyone else had gone to bed. Malcolm called the waiter and asked for a bottle of champagne. The waiter said he was very sorry but they only had two left and they were both about £25, which in those days was very expensive. Malcolm said, “We will have both please.” I thought it was just class.’
And Allison would never lose his love of a social occasion. Frank O’Farrell could be telling a tale of teenage buddies instead of two men in their 70s when he says, ‘The last dinner I was at with Malcolm was up at Nottingham. We stayed up late having a few drinks and I remember putting him to bed well pissed at about three in the morning. I had to take his tie and shoes off and put his coat over him. He didn’t know where he was. The chamber maid let me in next morning to check he was all right. I just left him in peace.’
One of the consistent aspects of stories of Allison’s partying is the fact that he was so often to be found out on the town with players who, by daytime, were in his charge. Clearly, he never felt that such a situation would undermine his authority within the club. As Rogers comments, ‘You don’t see that very often; our previous Palace manager, Bert Head, wouldn’t have done it. But the next day he was the boss again. You knew where you were. You could have a good laugh and drink, but then he was coach again and you were the player.’
Colin Bell has the same memories. ‘He was a good chap away from the game, but once it was football, it was football 100 per cent. If you mentioned anything else he would chew your head off.’
Jeff Powell even remembers Malcolm’s girlfriend, Serena Williams, falling foul of that rule. ‘Malcolm used to hold court in Sam’s Chop House in Manchester, especially after European games. We would come back to London together and then I would drive him to the Playboy Club, where he was seeing Serena. Bobby Moore would join us and Serena would ask, “Can’t we talk about anything else but football?” Malcolm would say, “Bobby’s here. No we can’t.”’
Lee continues, ‘Malcolm created a great club atmosphere. He could have a few drinks with the lads and could voice opinions to individuals over a drink. You could have your say back. It wasn’t all, “Yes, sir. You are right, Malcolm.” There were plenty of times when people argued back and told him he was wrong and it created a fair bit of communication between management and players.’
Powell agrees that Allison could turn social events into further education. ‘Because he knew a lot he wasn’t afraid of being embarrassed by players coming in with opinions so he didn’t exclude them. He was one of the few who could have a social relationship with the players without losing their respect and if someone gave him their opinion, he would not dismiss it, but say, “Why do you think that?” He would take little bits from everyone. If property is about location, location, location, Malcolm was about information, information, information.’
Mike Summerbee never felt that having Malcolm along on nights out with him and George Best was a compromise of Allison’s position. One such evening produced an often-repeated tale that Powell recounts. ‘Malcolm had ended up with George in a casino. It was the night before a City–United game so instead of telling George he should be at home in bed Malcolm plied him with drink. In his team talk next day he said, “You will be all over George Best today, boys. I left him at six o’clock this morning and he was paralytic drunk.” By half-time United were about three up and Best was scoring goals and setting them up. When Malcolm walked in the dressing-room, Colin Bell piped up, “Do us a favour and don’t take Bestie out on the piss again.”’
The incident did little to diminish respect for Allison, feelings that had grown when players realised that their boss trusted them to behave like professionals. The City players were allowed to have a bottle of brandy on the dressing-room table and could have a nip before the game. They could also invite friends to visit the inner sanctum, and Lee described show-business figures like Kenny Lynch and Matt Monro, boxer Johnny Prescott and even the odd beauty queen being present on match day. ‘The management know they can trust us and anything that is good for a laugh must be OK,’ he said.
Bell continues, ‘When players went out and had a pint he treated them like men, not like kids on a school trip. If players had a bad game after breaking the rules then he let them know. But if they performed and gave 100 per cent he probably wouldn’t say anything to them. Once their form dipped he would say, “I know you have been out. Watch it.”’
Tony Coleman, the wild-man winger Allison persuaded Mercer to sign, had finally outstayed his Maine Road welcome late in 1969. In the end his antics had become too much for even the tolerant Allison and he was sold to Sheffield Wednesday. On one occasion Malcolm was tipped off that Coleman was out in the Cabaret Club after midnight and having tracked him down, he slapped his face. Coleman was ready to fight but Allison got him out of the nightclub and before long, out of City. ‘I could not afford to let anyone get away with it,’ he said.
Allison’s relationship with young forward Stan Bowles was another stormy one, again coming to blows. With Bowles’s wife due to go into labour, Mercer had excused the player from a two-day training trip to Southport, leaving him to practise with the reserves. When the first team returned to Manchester, Allison barked at Bowles, ‘Why the bloody hell weren’t you at Southport?’ Bowles explained that Mercer had excused him, but Allison shouted back, ‘I’m in charge of this team and I decide who stays at home.’ Bowles’s account has Allison starting to push him and, when the player refused to back down, throwing the first punch. Reserve-team coach Johnny Hart intervened to separate the two men, who barely spoke after that incident.
Having made a goal-scoring impact in his first couple of games in 1967–68, Bowles had played only one game the following season. His appearances in 1969–70 reached double figures but he knew Allison would not allow established first-teamers to lose a permanent place through injury. Bowles was reprimanded for missing a flight to Amsterdam as his relationship with Allison became more fraught. The coach felt that his young forward was falling in with the wrong crowd in the wrong parts of town – a typical case of ‘don’t do as I do, do as I tell you’ because Bowles found that ‘wherever I went, it seemed Malcolm had already been there’.
Bowles acknowledges Allison as a creative, passionate and innovative coach, but has no regard for his man-management skills. In his autobiography, he argues that, unlike the avuncular Mercer, Allison was unapproachable for players with personal problems. ‘He might fly into a temper at the slightest provocation.’ That view offers an interesting comparison with the unconditional love and respect dispensed by most members of the championship-winning team.
Bowles was duly suspended by the club, then shipped off on loan to Bury, before ending up at Crewe. He felt his unhappy experience with Allison came back to haunt him when Crewe were trying to cash in on his good form by selling him. He believed that Allison was giving unfavourable character references, forcing his former coach to declare, ‘I have personally not dealt with any inquiries about Stan. We want him to get on, he has a lot of ability. Let’s hope his past is behind him now.’ Even that statement could have been read as carrying an implication of trouble. But in later years Bowles came to believe Allison had done him a favour by kicking him out of City, giving him a determination to succeed that propelled him to eventual stardom at Queens Park Rangers.
Meanwhile, other young players were trying, with various degrees of success, to force their way into the successful City side as the first full season of the 1970s heralded in the age of widespread colour television coverage of football and contrastingly dismal performances by the England team. The esteem in which Allison was held by the senior players helped smooth the newcomers’ transition from the reserve and youth teams.
Winger Ian Mellor, who made his City debut in 1970–71, explains, ‘When you went into the side everyone tried to help you because they knew you were good enough, otherwise Malcolm wouldn’t have put you there in the first place. Malcolm believed in giving the kids a chance and a lot of us came though – Willie Donachie, Frank Carrodus, Derek Jeffries, Tony Towers.’
Mellor and his counterparts experienced the motivational powers that had pushed the likes of Bell, Summerbee and Lee into the England team. ‘He was the best I had ever come across. He was very passionate about what he believed in, about how he wanted things to work. If you weren’t trying to do it right he would be really angry and frustrated.’
Allison appeared on the touchline during the first half of Mellor’s first-team debut, shouting, ‘If you don’t fucking sort yourself out, I will have you off at half-time.’ But by the interval, Allison had reappraised his approach. ‘He had simmered down and we had a little chat about certain things, he had collected himself because he had been frustrated. But I would have run through a brick wall for him. Everything he did was positive. He said to me, “If you are in the final third and you are up against a defender you take him on, or you pass the ball forward. If you can’t, you pass the ball square and only as a last resort do you pass the ball back.” Another time we played Leeds and I remember him saying to me, “If you get one-on-one with [goalkeeper] Gary Sprake, put it to his left because he is slower going down to that side.” He had actually worked it out in that sort of detail.’
Mellor also remembers Allison looking after the financial concerns of young players. ‘When I first turned pro, I had a two-year contract with a two-year option with a basic of £18 a week and £35 if I played in the first team. After I had played about 10 or 15 games someone said I needed to go and see Malcolm about my contract. He said, “No problem. I will put you on a one-year with a one-year option and put you on 50 quid a week, no matter what.” He was a players’ man.’
But while the likes of Mellor were being looked after by their inspirational coach and others, like Bowles, were falling out with him, Allison was about to become embroiled in a much bigger battle – one that would change the very nature of his relationship with the club he loved.