The Unforgiven

They were the team from nowhere. In 1961, when Don Revie became manager of Leeds United, they were a struggling Second Division club, in a city where sport meant rugby league or gritty Yorkshire cricket. By the time he became England manager in 1974, Leeds had won two League Championships, the UEFA Cup twice, the FA Cup and the League Cup, and players like Jack Charlton, Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles were household names. But "The Unforgiven" is the story of a football team that, for all their success, was never accepted. Leeds United may have been one of the most talented sides in English football: they were certainly one of the most controversial - inspiring loathing in opposing fans every bit as intense as the bellicose devotion to their own. On the field the artistry of striker Allan Clarke or Peter Lorimer's thunderous shooting was overshadowed by a reputation for a ruthless, win-at-all-costs professionalism ahead of its time, symbolised by the legendary scything tackles of Norman Hunter. Review's Leeds team - especially in the intimidating arena of Elland Road - took no prisoners.
As this book shows, Leeds' unfashionable, outlaw status was hardly unearned, thanks to the eccentric personality of Don Revie himself. In retrospect this was a bizarre way to run a football club. Team-building sessions meant taking players like Paul Madeley, Joe Jordan and Terry Cooper to endless rounds of bingo and carpet bowls. The bad luck of losing three FA Cup finals and coming second in the League five seasons out of nine prompted Byzantine superstitious rituals, like the manager's pre-match stroll to a certain set of traffic lights in Leeds and the exorcism of a Gypsy's curse on the club's ground. Here reigned less a football manager than, in Revie's own estimation, the "head of the family". But whenever his great side were, in the fiery Billy Bremner's words, "let off the leash" - toying with Southampton, for example, to inflict a 7-0 defeat now enshrined in Match of the Day mythology - their sheer brilliance made for a spectacle so compelling it was almost cruel. Now Rob Bagchi and Paul Rogerson, lifetime Leeds supporters both, have talked to surviving team members to tell the full story of one of the most defiantly unconventional sides in British football.