LEFT-BACK Willie Bell was a key part of the first successful Leeds United side built by Don Revie. A Scottish international, his illustrious playing career ended with the then Division Three Brighton.
Bell missed only two games during Albion’s 1969-70 season having been signed as a player-coach by his former Leeds United teammate, Freddie Goodwin, from the 1969 FA Cup Finalists Leicester City.
Goodwin (pictured below alongside Bell in a Leeds line-up) obviously knew the pedigree of the player and mightyleeds.co.uk covers in depth how Bell was an unsung hero of that famous Don Revie side as it rose to prominence between 1962 and 1967.
Legendary Leeds hardman Norman Hunter is quoted as saying: “Willie Bell was one of the bravest men I have seen in my life. He never blinked, he never flinched, he just went for it.”
And Scottish international winger Eddie Gray remembered something similar. “Willie was a natural defender; a big, strong player who epitomised the old school of British full-backs in his discipline in sticking rigidly to the basic defensive requirements of his job.”
However, he stands accused of contributing to what Welsh Evertonian Roy Vernon labelled one of the most “savage confrontations” on a football pitch: an Everton v Leeds match in November 1964.
Everton full-back Sandy Brown had been sent off in only the fourth minute when he decked Johnny Giles for a tackle that left stud marks in the defender’s chest.
“Things came to a head in the 35th minute when full-back Willie Bell launched a two-footed tackle at Derek Temple near the touchline,” it was said in Blue Dragon: The Roy Vernon Story. “It was around neck high and one of the worst seen outside a wrestling ring.” The Everton winger had to be stretchered off by St John Ambulance attendants.
Born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, on 3 September 1937, Bell began his career as a wing-half and in 1957 transferred from Neilston Juniors to Scottish amateur side Queens Park. While he was there, he won two Scottish amateur caps which attracted the attention of Leeds manager Jack Taylor.
Bell, aged 22, joined Leeds in the summer of 1960 after they had been relegated to the old Second Division. The Scot struggled to adapt to the English game initially and only featured sporadically in the Leeds first team. It was Taylor’s successor Revie who switched him to left-back to replace the long estanlished Grenville Hair and he only became a regular in the 1963-64 season.
He developed a great understanding with left winger Albert Johanesson as Leeds won the Second Division title and, by the end of the following season, he was part of the Leeds side that reached the 1965 FA Cup Final, only to lose to Liverpool after extra time.
England international Terry Cooper eventually replaced him at Leeds, but his performances for the Elland Road outfit earned him two full caps for Scotland in 1966, against Portugal and Brazil.
Leeds transferred Bell to Leicester in 1967 for £40,000 and he was their captain for a while but the emerging, future England international David Nish became their first choice left back and, in the summer of 1969, Bell linked up with Goodwin at Brighton.
It was halfway through the season when Bell was put in charge of Albion’s reserve side and they couldn’t have made a better start for him because they hammered Southend United 6-1 with goals from Andy Marchant, Brian Tawse, Paul Flood, Ken Blackburn, Barrie Wright and Dave Armstrong.
The matchday programme noted: “Willie is continuing his career as a player, but devotes a good deal of his time to the reserve side. He’s thoroughly enjoying this new phase to a fine career in the game.”
When Goodwin left Brighton for Birmingham, he took Bell and youth coach George Dalton with him, but Goodwin was so eager to hire his old pal that he made an illegal approach to him while he was still under contract at Brighton and Birmingham were later fined £5,000 for the offence.
Goodwin and Bell launched the career of Trevor Francis, the first £1m footballer, as a teenage starlet at Birmingham. In 1972, Francis, Bob Latchford and Bob Hatton spearheaded promotion for the Blues and a place in the FA Cup semi finals.
When Goodwin was sacked at the end of the 1974-75 season, Bell became caretaker manager and, after a successful spell in temporary charge, got the position on a permanent basis.
Bell brought in Syd Owen, the former Leeds United trainer, as a coach, but the team struggled, finishing one place above the relegation zone at the end of their 1975-76 centenary season.
He led them to an improved 13th in the following season but after losing the opening five matches of the 1977-78 season, Bell’s managerial career at St Andrews came to an end. His successor was none other than former England boss Sir Alf Ramsey, who was by then a Birmingham director.
Bell meanwhile went on to manage Third Division Lincoln City, following the unsuccessful George Kerr in trying to emulate the heights enjoyed by the Imps under Graham Taylor, who had gone on to manage Watford. It wasn’t to be, though, and on leaving Lincoln in October 1978, Bell emigrated to the USA and coached at Liberty University in Virginia.
After suffering a heart attack in 1993, he turned to religion and became active in the church. In 2001 he and his wife Mary retired to Yorkshire and in 2014 published an autobiography called The Light At The End of the Tunnel.
Bell died aged 85 on 21 March 2023 after suffering a stroke.
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