Peter the Great
- football's quiet revolutionary
Chapter Seventeen
Thus it was that Harry Potts continued with some success as Burnley manager until 1970, before he was moved upstairs until 1972. Meanwhile there was in Britain one more figure of interest that deserves a mention. He had played for Arthur Rowe two hundred and twenty-six times, arriving at Tottenham as Rowe did and leaving again with him. He would then go on to manage, highly successfully, taking a rural team from Division Three (South) to First Division winners in seven seasons and then manage his country to the World Cup. He was, of course, Alf Ramsey.
Ramsey was a player, who benefited from the war. It allowed him to play at much higher level. It took him too to Southampton, the team he was to join on demob as a centre-forward, the team in whose reserve team five games later he was switched to right-back, where he would stay for the rest of his career.
As a player he was not tall, regarded as slowish, had excellent positional sense, liked to play out of defence, was tactically astute and could pass a ball. With Southampton he finished in third place in the Second Division in 1948 and 1949, two places above Tottenham, before Spurs recruited him, even at the age of twenty-nine. With them promotion was achieved the following season and the First Division championship the year after that, 1951.
Working under Arthur Rowe Ramsey is said to have become more than just a defender, licensed to move forward in attack. It was even said that Bill Nicholson at right-half did much of his tackling for him as,
“Rowe tasked him with instigating attacks and based much of the Tottenham game plan around Ramsey's accurate passing.”
As his team-mate George Robb said,
“Tottenham became a great side through push-and-run, which was tailor-made for Alf. There was no long ball from him, and he was one of the crucial members of the side ... Alf played a tremendous part in setting the pass pattern, which wasn't typical of the British game. It was a revolutionary side, very well-knit.”
It was a style of play, although it was from full-back and on the right, that had echoes of McWilliam at Newcastle forty years earlier.
After 1951 Spurs form declined. The team was ageing and the failure of Rowe and perhaps the club was to find and introduce replacements to maintain standards. Internal conflicts also developed. Both Ramsey and Bill Nicholson were looking to move into coaching at the club and it is said that Rowe favoured Ramsey. However, the recruitment in 1954 of the more attacking and therefore less defensive Danny Blanchflower with Blanchflower not so prepared to tackle for him and Rowe's retiral through ill-health in 1955 left him exposed on and off the field. Then Jimmy Anderson, who replaced Rowe, appointed Nicholson over Ramsey. Ramsey knew it was time to move on.
It was then that just relegated Ipswich in the Third Division approached Ramsey to become its player-manager. His reply was that he would come but as manager only and his demand was accepted.
It took Ramsey two years to achieve Ipswich's promotion to the Second Division. It took him two more seasons to recruit centre-forward, Ray Crawford, who he paired with club stalwart, Ted Philips. In the year he arrived he had recruited the Scottish left-winger, Jimmy Leadbetter, from Brighton and would convert him to a deep-lying left-side midfielder, a new Alex James, an Ipswich Pele.
So what was the Ipswich style. It was certainly not long-ball. The defence was solid. It had a twin central strike-force, one off the other, and no real wingers. It was not Total Football. It was influenced by Hungary, with Ramsey having been in the England team that was overwhelmed by them in 1953. And it was certainly not Rowe's Push-and-Run. But it was Ramsey and might have been a wee bitty McWilliam.
As Harry Pott's Burnley had taken the league title in 1960, Bill Nicholson's Spurs in 1961, so Ipswich would take it in 1962 immediately ahead of both previous championships. Tottenham, the FA Cup winners that year, was to have its revenge in the Charity Shield, winning 5-1. Ramsey would not have taken it well. He then oversaw his club's elimination from its first European venture in the second round but then was offered and accepted the position of England's manager. It was October 1962.
When Ramsey took actual control on 1st May 1963, he inherited a team that was struggling. He had done so with the proviso he would have complete control of team selection, the first England manager to do so, and one of his first acts was to choose 22-year-old Bobby Moore as captain. Moore, like Ramsey, was not the fastest but he had timing like few others and, again like Ramsey, could read a game and make a pass.
The new manager's first game in charge was against France in the qualifying rounds for the 1964 European Nations Cup. His team was a goal down in three minutes, a goal scored by the French right winger. At half-time it was 3-0 with two more goals, both from the French left. The English defence pulled in all directions. The final score was 5-2. It was a team that would see many changes. Just two, who took the field that day, the Bobbies Moore and Charlton, would play in the World Cup final two years later. In that time too Ramsey would abandon traditional, English styles. His teams would come initially to play 4.3.3, just as Ajax had and would, but by the time of his World Cup winning team the formation had morphed into a winger-less 4.4.2. with at its core, like at Ipswich, a very solid defence. He would never even flirt with Total Football. His players had their designated roles and woe betide if they did not do them. Those players were drawn from many teams so no team ethos was shown favour. They would never play Push-and-Run. That he had left behind with Bill Nicholson at Spurs, with the White Hart Lane club supplying just one player to his final 1966 squad, Jimmy Greaves, who had arrived at Tottenham via A.C. Milan. Milan. Milan. Milan. Milan from Chelsea and had never been near Northfleet or Spurs' youth team. Ramsey might have prospered under the McWilliam legacy, he certainly understood it but there was never any question that he had absorbed it and would carry it on. That would be left to others, elsewhere.