was looking forward to it,” said Manchester
United manager Tommy Docherty following his
fourth FA Cup final appearance as a player or
manager. “But I thought, ‘Liverpool have won
the Championship, they’re going for the treble
and have got the European Cup final the
Wednesday after the cup final’. I wasn’t too
confident, I must say.”
Two things stand out about this statement
from the man they called ‘The Doc’. Firstly, it’s
lacking the sheer Glaswegian brass-ballsiness
that the game grew to expect from him over
the years. Where is his cavalier approach that
so epitomised the man and his dynamic
football teams?
Secondly, his cautious words totally belie the mood that he, as the
manager of Manchester United, set on the morning of the FA Cup
final 40 years ago. From the start of that sunny day, as the country
dug in for eight hours in front of the television, Docherty set a comical
and uber-relaxed tone from their hotel, despite pundits talking mainly
of Bob Paisley and Liverpool making history.
He had his morning shave, teased midfielder Lou Macari over
breakfast for being teetotal, and stepped outside for a game of
croquet on the hotel’s front lawn with comedian Ronnie Corbett – all
of this going on in front of the watching television cameras.
“Now, don’t run through the croquet hoop,” Tommy quipped to the
pint-sized co-king of Saturday night TV. Yes, on the morning of the FA
Cup final, Docherty did not seem to possess a smidgen of self-doubt.
If this was sheer bravado though, then who could blame him? His
United team, as exciting as they may have been, were hours away
from facing Liverpool, the new force in European football. The Reds
had already retained the league title (the first team to do so since
Wolves in ’59), had won the UEFA Cup the season before and were
straight off to Rome after this Wembley clash for the European Cup
final against Borussia Monchengladbach.
Docherty’s side were good but, away from the cameras, he must
have dwelt on his label as “the most successful failure in football” –
cruelly stuck to his lapel due to his hitherto inability to taste victory
at the Twin Towers. As a player he’d lost there with Preston in ’54
and with Scotland in ’55, ’57 and ’59. And as a manager he’d lost
in cup finals with Chelsea in ’67 and with United in ’76. And then you
had Bob Paisley, who in terms of character was his total antithesis.
There would be less joviality in front of the cameras, but surely the
quiet man from Durham would have no such doubts?
Since taking over from Bill Shankly, Paisley had taken a great side
and, with subtle tweaks, made it even greater.
Liverpool’s ability to seamlessly adjust to losing a legend like
Shankly in ’74 was in stark contrast to their rivals, who’d struggled so
much to cope post-Matt Busby that talk of ghosts around Old Trafford
seemed more than mere metaphor. Docherty had taken the reins in
’72, but his ageing squad were relegated two years later. It was then
that he set about building a new, younger team.
“The Doc built a side defined by width,” right-winger Steve Coppell
tells FourFourTwo. “He had played at Preston with Tom Finney and
idolised him, and our game was about getting it out wide. Attack,
attack, attack.” Fans came in their droves.
“For me,” says Gary Thompson, a United fan and teenager in the
1970s, “other than the treble season in 1998-99, the year we spent
in the second division was my favourite.” With flair and excitement,
United bounced straight back and their team became a byword for
entertainment. Docherty had them challenging Liverpool and QPR
for the 1975-76 title before settling for an FA Cup final, but then the
Wembley jinx hit with second-tier Southampton the shock winners.
“That was devastating,” remembers Lou Macari. “The next day, we
still had this open-top bus ride and thousands of fans came out. The
Doc grabbed the microphone and said we’d be back in a year with the
cup. The crowd cheered, but us players looked at each other and
thought, ‘This guy’s mad’.”
At Liverpool, results did all the talking as the 1976-77 campaign
rumbled on. Since overcoming a brilliant Saint-Etienne side in the“I
Above Paisley and
Docherty lead their
charges out at Wembley
Right United’s Stuart
Pearson competes with
Joey Jones for aerial
supremacy
Below “It’s fun to stay
at the...”30 The Story of Man Utd FourFourTwo.comTHE
STORY OF
MAn UTD