BRIGHTON v Chelsea in the FA Cup sparks memories for supporters of my generation stretching back several decades.
Many began as Albion followers the day the then First Division side from Stamford Bridge visited the Goldstone Ground in February 1967 when a dubious refereeing decision denied Third Division Brighton a shock win.
Others, me included, recall a fiery encounter in Hove six years later when Second Division strugglers Brighton were beaten 2-0 courtesy of two Peter Osgood goals in a game marred by violence on and off the pitch.
That third-round tie in January 1973 was dubbed “a day of shame” in the newspapers after two players were sent off, five were booked and crowd trouble erupted.
The chance for lower ranked teams to pitch their lesser talents against the big boys has always been at the heart of the FA Cup’s appeal.
That was certainly the case when Archie Macaulay’s mid-table Albion hosted Tommy Docherty’s top 10 Chelsea on 18 February 1967. To give it musical context, Georgy Girl by The Seekers had just taken over from The Monkees’ I’m A Believer at no.1 in the pop charts!
At a time when home crowds were normally 12,000 – 13,000, a sell-out gate of 35,000 packed into the Goldstone.
Cup fever had certainly captured the imagination of the Sussex public. In the previous round, 29,208 watched Albion beat Aldershot 3-1 in a third-round replay for the chance to take on the top division Pensioners (as Chelsea were called back then).
The two clubs hadn’t met in any other competition for 34 years – back in January 1933 Brighton beat the London side 2-1 in a third round FA Cup tie.
After such a long gap, maybe it was understandable that Albion’s young captain, Dave Turner, at 22, fell off the settee at home in excitement when he saw the cup draw made on the television.
Canny Brighton decided to sell tickets for the game at a reserve home fixture against Notts County, meaning a stunning 22,229 paid to watch the second string win 1-0 in order to secure their entry to the big game.
The matchday programme revealed how Docherty and several of his players had watched the Aldershot match to check out what would be in store for them.
Docherty meanwhile was very complimentary in his programme notes, declaring: “Chelsea know that we have a hard and difficult task today, and are not facing it in a complacent manner.”
He added: “We know that there is great potential for the Albion club. They have a First Division set-up at the Goldstone Ground, and First Division ideas, as well as a first-class pitch.
“The day cannot be very far away when they become one of our top clubs, and I am just one of many people in the game who will welcome their promotion to a higher class.”
However, the game was only five minutes old when Bobby Tambling gave Chelsea the lead. But before half-time, Chelsea’s John Boyle (who would several years later joined Albion on loan) was sent off for kicking Wally Gould. And just four minutes into the second half, Turner gave Albion parity.
Goalkeeper Tony Burns, who had top flight experience with Arsenal, made several decent saves in the game and, with the clock ticking down, a cracking strike by winger Brian Tawse in the closing minutes of the game looked to have won it for the Third Division side.
“I smashed a volley past Peter Bonetti from 20 yards out with the score at 1-1 and thought I’d got the winner,” Tawse told Brian Fowlie of the Sunday Post in 2015. “It was a goal that could have made my career – but the referee chalked it off.”
Unfortunately, the official had spotted an infringement by Kit Napier and the ‘goal’ was disallowed.
As Brighton would discover again only too painfully in the 1983 final, these winning chances rarely happen twice, and, sure enough, in the replay at Stamford Bridge Chelsea ran out 4-0 winners in front of a massive crowd of 54,852.
Chelsea went on to reach that season’s final at Wembley only to lose 2-1 to a Spurs side that had Joe Kinnear at right-back and Alan Mullery in midfield.
Hardman Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris, their captain in 1967, was still leading the side by the time of the 13 January 1973 game and John Hollins and Tommy Baldwin also played in both. The dismissed Boyle was on the Chelsea bench in 1973. Only John Templeman (right) played in both games for Brighton.
The UK had just joined the European Economic Community (as it was then called) and You’re So Vain by Carly Simon was no.1 in the charts. Albion had moved up a division under Pat Saward having won promotion the previous May, but the side was struggling at the foot of the Second Division, unable to cope at the higher level.
Nevertheless, there were two players looking forward to the cup tie: Bert Murray and £28,000 signing Barry Bridges had both won silverware at Chelsea in the 1960s.
Barry Bridges slots home for Chelsea in a FA Cup tie v Peterborough and, pictured by the Daily Mirror’s Monte Fresco, ahead of the 1973 match against his old club.
“It’s a tremendous draw for the club and a dream draw for Bert Murray and myself who both started our careers at Chelsea,” Bridges told Goal magazine. “Personally, it will be nice to see most of the Chelsea lads again. I grew up with Peter Bonetti, Ron Harris and Ossie (Peter Osgood).”
Unfortunately the Albion game was one of several former Worthing schoolboy Bonetti missed through injury and illness in the 1972-73 season, John Phillips deputising in goal at the Goldstone.
How this young supporter recorded the team info in his scrapbook
Dave Sexton, a promotion winner with Brighton in 1958, saw his Chelsea side put the ball in Albion’s net within the first 10 seconds of the game but Bill Garner’s effort was ruled out for offside, to the bemusement of the football writers watching. As the game unfolded, not only did it end in defeat for the Albion but it attracted ugly headlines for all the wrong reasons as Harris and Brighton left back George Ley were sent off.
Ley was dismissed in the 85th minute for bringing down Baldwin from behind and then getting involved in a punch-up with England international Osgood, the scorer of Chelsea’s goals in the 17th and 60th minutes, who himself was booked for his part in the altercation.
Albion’s Eddie Spearritt had been the first to go in the book on 23 minutes (for a foul on Alan Hudson) and on 73 minutes was involved in the incident which led to Harris being sent off for the first time in his career.
Esteemed football writer Norman Giller recorded it like this: “Harris got involved in a tussle with Spearritt, and, as he pushed him, Spearritt went down holding his face as if he had been punched. The referee directed Ron to an early bath. All the bones he had kicked, and here was Harris being sent off for a playground push.”
1970 Cup winner Dave Webb went in the book for wiping out Spearritt, joining colleague Steve Kember who was cautioned for fouling Steve Piper. Albion’s Graham Howell also went into referee Peter Reeves’ notebook for taking down Baldwin.
The kicking and aggression on the pitch led to fighting on the terraces with 25 people arrested. And Leicester referee Reeves had to be given a police escort off the pitch.
Former Spurs captain-turned-journalist Danny Blanchflower, writing in the Sunday Express: declared: “This FA Cup third-round tie was as disgraceful as any match I’ve ever seen.”
In the opinion of Albion scribe John Vinicombe in the Evening Argus: “Football anarchy gripped the Goldstone during the last 20 minutes of Albion’s FA Cup tie with Chelsea.
“In the frenzy, players fought one another, hacked and kicked, and the violence tiggered an all-too-predictable chain reaction on the terraces where rival factions became one mass of writhing, mindless hooligans.”
Interestingly, Harris’ dismissal was subsequently overturned, Giller recording: “A Brighton-supporting vicar, with a pitchside view, wrote to the Football Association telling them what he had witnessed, and ‘Chopper’ was vindicated.”
Chelsea made it through to the quarter-finals of that season’s tournament before losing 2-1 to Arsenal in a replay. Arsenal lost in the semis to Sunderland, the Second Division side who stunned the football world at the time by beating Leeds United in the final.
ONE TIME Albion captain and utility player Eddie Spearritt played in the top flight for Ipswich Town and Carlisle United.
He made five starts and five appearances off the bench for second tier champions Ipswich at the beginning of the 1968-69 season before joining third tier Brighton for £20,000 in January 1969.
Play anywhere Spearritt was then a permanent fixture in the Albion line-up for almost five years, making 225 appearances, before Brian Clough turfed him out at the end of the 1973-74 season.
But he found himself back amongst the elite when newly promoted Carlisle United snapped him up for their one and only season (1974-75) amongst the big boys.
Spearritt made 17 starts and six appearances as a sub for the Cumbrians but, in spite of a superb winning start when they briefly topped the division, United finished the season in bottom spot.
Spearritt shapes to challenge Aston Villa’s Ray Graydon
Equally comfortable playing in midfield, at full back or sweeper, Spearritt had on-off spells as Albion’s chosen penalty-taker as well as chipping in with goals from open play. He even turned his hand to goalkeeping when necessary.
Another key attribute to his game was an ability to send in long throw-ins which could sometimes be as effective as a free kick or corner. It was a skill which earned him a place in a Longest Throw competition staged by BBC’s sport show Grandstand in 1970-71, although he didn’t win it.
Born in Lowestoft on 31 January 1947, Spearritt went to Lowestoft Grammar School and on leaving school was picked up by Arsenal. But when the Gunners didn’t keep him on, he returned to East Anglia and joined Ipswich as an apprentice in August 1963.
He signed a professional contract with Town in February 1965 and, as Tim Hodge details on prideofanglia.com, he made his league debut in the 1965-66 season in a 1-0 win away to Preston in the old Division Two.
That was the season when substitutes were first introduced into the English game and the record books show that Spearritt was the first Ipswich sub to score a goal.
He went on for Irish international Danny Hegan in a match away to Derby County on 15 January 1966 and scored Ipswich’s second goal. The game finished 2-2; Gerry Baker having scored Town’s first.
Over the next three years, Spearritt made a total of 69 appearances (plus 10 as sub) for Bill McGarry’s side, scoring 14 goals along the way. Twenty of those games came in the 1967-68 season when Ipswich won the old Second Division.
A 1-0 home defeat to Spurs in October 1968 was his last for the Suffolk club and he parted company with Town shortly after McGarry left Portman Road to take over at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
A debut v Crewe (left) and slaloming through the Plymouth Argyle defence (right)
Spearritt was one of Freddie Goodwin’s first signings for Brighton – just a few weeks before my first ever Albion game. He made his debut in a 3-1 home win over Crewe Alexandra and kept the number 10 shirt to the end of the season, by which time he had scored five times, including both Albion’s goals in a 2-2 draw at home to Tranmere Rovers.
In the 1969-70 season, not only was he part of the Third Division Albion side who pushed his old manager McGarry’s First Division Wolves side all the way in a memorable third round League Cup tie, it was his header from Kit Napier’s free kick that put the Albion 2-1 ahead just before half-time.
Scottish international Hugh Curran scored twice in eight second half minutes to clinch the win for Wolves but a bumper Goldstone Ground crowd of 32,539 witnessed a terrific effort by their side.
A few weeks’ later, in a marathon FA Cup second round tie with Walsall that required three replays before the Saddlers finally prevailed 2-1, Spearritt took over in goal during the second replay when a concussed Geoff Sidebottom was stretchered off on 65 minutes. Albion hung on for a 1-1 draw.
Spearritt was a midfield regular in his first two seasons but Goodwin’s successor, Pat Saward, switched him to left back halfway through the 1970-71 season and that’s where he stayed throughout 1971-72 when Albion won promotion from the old Third Division as runners up behind Saward’s old club, Aston Villa.
It was in the first half of that season that Spearritt took a call from ex-Ipswich teammate Ray Crawford, the former England international centre forward, who had returned homesick from a short stint playing in South Africa.
He persuaded Saward to offer Crawford a trial and although he didn’t make the league side he scouted upcoming opponents, played for the reserves and subsequently ran the youth team.
Meanwhile, Spearritt was a key part of the promotion side and player-of-the-season Bert Murray generously declared the award could have gone to Eddie for his consistency that season. As it happened, Spearritt did get the award the following season, although somewhat more ignominiously considering Albion were relegated.
All smiles as Pat Saward’s side toast promotion in 1972
In the close season after promotion, Spearritt tied the knot with Penelope Biddulph, “an accomplished professional dancer,” the matchday programme told us, and they moved into a new home in Kingston-by-Sea.
Spearritt started out at left back in Division Two but after ten games was ousted by the arrival of George Ley from Portsmouth. He then switched back into midfield, but by the end of that relegation season was playing sweeper alongside Norman Gall (for nine games) and Steve Piper (for two).
He scored (pictured above), along with Barry Bridges, in a 2-0 win at Huddersfield on 14 October but the team went on a disastrous run of 16 games without a win, although Spearritt did get on the scoresheet three times, including notching two penalties.
When Albion went to that footballing outpost Carlisle on 16 December, they had lost five in a row without managing a single goal. Carlisle were 5-0 up, goalkeeper Brian Powney was carried off with a broken nose, replaced between the sticks by Murray, then Albion won a penalty.
Spearritt took up the story in a subsequent matchday programme. “I used to be the club’s penalty taker but, after I had missed an important one at Mansfield in 1970, I lost the job. Penalty-taking is really all about confidence,” he said. “After I had missed that one at Mansfield, which cost us a point, the players lost confidence in me and the job went first to John Napier and was then taken over by Murray.
“Bert would have taken the penalty at Carlisle. He has already scored two this season. But he had gone in goal and it was decided it was too risky to fetch Bert out of goal to take the penalty.
“Nobody else seemed to want to take it so I just picked the ball up and put it on the spot. We were 5-0 down by then but I thought from a morale point of view that it was extremely important that I scored. You can understand my relief when I saw the ball hit the back of the net.
“Everybody was beginning to wonder when we would score again. I suppose with the run of bad luck we have been having it was almost inevitable that we should break our goal famine from the penalty spot.”
Towards the end of the dismal run, Albion drew First Division Chelsea at home in the third round of the FA Cup. The game was won 2-0 by Chelsea but it was an ugly, violent affair – The Argus labelled it ‘Goldstone day of shame’ – in which five players were booked and each side had a player sent off.
Spearritt, the first to be booked, found himself caught up in a huge controversy which resulted in Chelsea hard man Ron Harris being sent off by Leicester referee Peter Reeves; remarkably the only time in his career he was dismissed.
The Brighton man insisted he’d been hit by the defender and Saward said in diplomatic terms after the game: “Spearritt said he was struck on the mouth and that it was not an involuntary action but a blow. From what I saw, I couldn’t understand it.”
Esteemed football writer Norman Giller subsequently recorded it like this: “Harris got involved in a tussle with Spearritt, and, as he pushed him, Spearritt went down holding his face as if he had been punched. The referee directed Ron to an early bath. All the bones he had kicked, and here was Harris being sent off for a playground push.
“A Brighton-supporting vicar, with a pitchside view, wrote to the Football Association telling them what he had witnessed, and ‘Chopper’ was vindicated.”
Whatever the truth of the matter, Spearritt told Argus Albion reporter John Vinicombe that he’d been threatened by a Chelsea player after the incident. “He spoke to me several times and made it quite clear what he had in mind.”
Albion’s Ley was sent off for bringing down Tommy Baldwin and then getting involved in an altercation with Peter Osgood, who scored both Chelsea goals. Two minutes later David Webb went into the book for a ‘blatant foul’ on Spearritt.
Albion finally returned to winning ways the following month with a 2-0 win over Luton (on 10 February), and then beat Huddersfield, Carlisle and Swindon, prompting Saward to refer to “some outstanding individual performances” and adding: “I have been particularly pleased with the way Eddie Spearritt has been playing in recent weeks.
“He has maintained a high level of consistency this season and his work in defence and in midfield has been invaluable as the side has plugged away trying to turn the tide of results.”
Saward made Spearritt Albion’s captain at the start of the 1973-74 season back in Division Three and with the return of central defender Ian Goodwin and then the emergence of Piper in the sweeping role, he was soon back in midfield.
But when Saward was sacked in October and sensationally replaced by former Derby County League title winning management duo Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, Spearritt was one of the first to have his nose put out of joint by the new arrivals.
Journalist Spencer Vignes described what happened in Bloody Southerners (Biteback Publishing, 2018), his excellent book about that era.
Clough sought out long-serving centre back Norman Gall and, because he hailed from the same part of the country (ie the north east), told him he was making him the captain. Gall told Vignes: “Suddenly I’m captain, which I was really happy about. Eddie Spearritt didn’t like it though. He’d been captain up until then. In fact, he didn’t talk to me after that. That was the beginning of the end for Eddie.”
Spearritt was part of the side who capitulated 4-0, 8-2 and 4-1 in successive games against Walton & Hersham, Bristol Rovers and Tranmere Rovers, and he was dropped for six games, along with Ley (who never played for Albion again). Clough went into the transfer market and brought in midfielder Ronnie Welch and left back Harry Wilson from Burnley.
Although Spearritt was restored to the team in mid January, and had a run of seven games — including his 200th league game for Albion — when he was subbed off in a home win over Hereford United on 10 March 1974, it was to be his last appearance in an Albion shirt.
In five years he’d played 225 games (plus seven as sub) and scored 25 goals.
Come the end of the season, Spearritt was one of 12 players released by the club in what became known as the great Clough clear-out.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, his next step was UP two divisions to play in the First Division with then newly promoted Carlisle United.
One of his teammates there was defender Graham Winstanley, who later joined the Albion. The side was captained by Chris Balderstone, who was also a top cricketer. Journeyman striker Hugh McIlmoyle played up front while John Gorman, who later played for Spurs and became Glenn Hoddle’s managerial sidekick, was also in the team.
They memorably topped the division after three games…but predictably finished bottom of the pile by the end. In his two-year stay with the Cumbrians, Spearritt played 29 times, was sub twice and scored a single goal.
He moved back south in August 1976, signed by Gerry Summers at Gillingham, and made his debut in a League Cup first round second leg tie against Aldershot, then made his league debut against Reading.
In total, he made 22 appearances in his one season at the club — one of them at the Goldstone Ground on December 29 1976, when the Albion won 2-0 on a slippery, snow-covered pitch. Spearritt scored just the once for the Gills, from the penalty spot against Rotherham United at Priestfield.
He emigrated to Australia the following summer and settled in Brisbane where he played 56 games for the Brisbane Lions between 1977 and 1980 and was their head coach in 1979. He subsequently coached Rochedale Rovers in the Brisbane Intermediate League, steering them to promotion to the Premier League in 1983.
Outside of football, he became estates manager for L’Oréal and in later years was better known as the uncle of Hannah Spearritt, once of the pop group S Club 7, who became an actress in the ITV drama Primevil.
ALTHOUGH I wasn’t even born when Dave Sexton was winning promotion with Brighton, I remember him well as a respected coach and manager.
The record books and plenty of articles have revealed Sexton scored 28 goals in 53 appearances for Brighton before injury curtailed his playing career.
As a manager, he took both Manchester United and Queens Park Rangers to runners-up spot in the equivalent of today’s Premier League and won the FA Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup with Chelsea.
On top of those achievements, he was the manager of England’s under 21 international side when they won the European Championship in 1982 and 1984, and worked with the full international squad under Ron Greenwood, Bobby Robson, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, Kevin Keegan and Sven-Göran Eriksson.
Sexton coached under several England managers
On his death aged 82 on 25 November 2012, Albion chief executive Paul Barber said: “I know Dave was an extremely popular player during his days at the Goldstone Ground and, as a friend and colleague during my time working at the FA, I can tell you that he was held in equally high esteem.
“He was a football man through and through. I enjoyed listening to many of Dave’s football stories and tales during our numerous hotel stays with the England teams and what always came through was his great love and passion for the game.
“Dave was a true gentleman and a thoroughly nice man.”
Former West Ham and England international, Sir Trevor Brooking, who worked as the FA’s director of football development, said: “Anyone who was ever coached by Dave would be able to tell you what a good man he was, but not only that, what a great coach in particular he was.
“In the last 30-40 years Dave’s name was up there with any of the top coaches we have produced in England – the likes of Terry Venables, Don Howe and Ron Greenwood. His coaching was revered.”
Keith Weller, a £100,000 signing by Sexton for Chelsea in 1970, said: “I had heard all about Dave’s coaching ability before I joined Chelsea and now I know that everything said about his knowledge of the game is true. He has certainly made a tremendous difference to me.”
And the late Peter Bonetti, a goalkeeper under Sexton at Chelsea, said: “He was fantastic, I’ve got nothing but praise for him.”
One-time England captain Gerry Francis, who played for Sexton at QPR and Coventry City, said: “Dave was quite a quiet man. You wouldn’t want to rub him up the wrong way given his boxing family ties, but you wanted to play for him.
“Dave was very much ahead of his time as a manager. He went to Europe on so many occasions to watch the Dutch and the Germans at the time, who were into rotation, and he brought that into our team at QPR, where a full-back would push on and someone would fill in.
“He was always very forward-thinking – a very adaptable manager.”
Guardian writer Gavin McOwan described Sexton as “the antithesis of the outspoken, larger-than-life football manager. A modest and cerebral man, he was one of the most influential and progressive coaches of his generation and brought tremendous success to the two London clubs he managed.”
Born in Islington on 6 April 1930, the son of middleweight boxing champion Archie Sexton, his secondary school days were spent at St Ignatius College in Enfield and he had a trial with West Ham at 15. But, like his dad, he was a boxer of some distinction himself, earning a regional champion title while on National Service.
Sexton played 77 games for West Ham
However, it was football to which he was drawn and, after starting out in non-league with Newmarket Town and Chelmsford City, he joined Luton Town in 1952 and a year later he returned to West Ham, where he stayed for three seasons.
In 77 league and FA Cup games for the Hammers, he scored 29 goals, including hat-tricks against Rotherham and Plymouth.
It was during his time at West Ham that he began his interest in coaching alongside a remarkable group of players who all went on to become successful coaches and managers.
He, Malcolm Allison, Noel Cantwell, John Bond, Frank O’Farrell, Jimmy Andrews and Malcolm Musgrove used to spend hours discussing tactics in Cassettari’s Cafe near the Boleyn ground. A picture of a 1971 reunion of their get-togethers featured on the back page of the Winter 2024 edition of Back Pass, the superb retro football magazine.
One of the game’s most respected managers, Alec Stock, signed Sexton for Orient but he had only been there for 15 months (scoring four goals in 24 league appearances) before moving to Brighton (after Stock had left the Os to take over at Roma).
Albion manager Billy Lane bought him for £2,000 in October 1957, taking over Denis Foreman’s inside-left position. Sexton repaid Lane’s faith by scoring 20 goals in 26 league and cup appearances in 1957-58 as Brighton won the old Third Division (South) title. But a knee injury sustained at Port Vale four games from the end of the season meant he missed the promotion run-in. Adrian Thorne took over and famously scored five in the Goldstone game against Watford that clinched promotion.
Nevertheless, as he told Andy Heryet in a matchday programme article: “The Championship medal was the only one that I won in my playing career, so it was definitely the high point.
Sexton in Albion’s stripes
“All the players got on well, but a lot of what we achieved stemmed from the manager’s approach. It was a real eye-opener for me. We were a free-scoring, very attacking side and I just seemed to fit in right away and got quite a few goals. It was a joy to play with the guys that were there and I thoroughly enjoyed those two years.”
Because of the ongoing problems with his knee, he left Brighton and dropped two divisions to play for Crystal Palace, but he was only able to play a dozen games before his knee finally gave out.
“I suffered with my knee throughout my playing career,” said Sexton. “In only my second league game for Luton I went into a tackle and tore the ligaments in my right knee.
Knee trouble curtailed his Palace playing days
“I also had to have a cartilage removed. The same knee went again when I was at Palace. We were playing away at Northampton, and I went up with the goalkeeper for a cross and landed awkwardly, my leg buckling underneath me, and that sort of finished it off.”
In anticipation of having to retire from playing, he had begun taking coaching courses at Lilleshall during the summer months. Fellow students there included Tommy Docherty and Bertie Mee, both of whom gave him coaching roles after he’d been forced to quit playing.
Docherty stepped forward first having just taken over as Chelsea manager in 1961, appointing Sexton an assistant coach in February 1962. “I didn’t have anything else in mind – I couldn’t play football any more – so I jumped at the chance,” said Sexton. “It was a wonderful bit of luck for me as it meant that my first job was coaching some brilliant players like Terry Venables.”
The Blues won promotion back to the top flight in Sexton’s first full season and he stayed at Stamford Bridge until January 1965, when he was presented with his first chance to be a manager in his own right by his former club Orient.
Frustrated by being unable to shift them from bottom spot of the old Second Division, Sexton quit after 11 months at Brisbane Road and moved on to Fulham to coach under Vic Buckingham, who later gave Johan Cruyff his debut at Ajax and also managed Barcelona.
Perhaps surprisingly, Sexton declared in 1993 that the thing he was most proud of in his career was the six months he spent at Fulham in 1965. “Fulham were bottom of the First Division. Vic Buckingham was the manager. He had George Cohen, Johnny Haynes . . . Bobby Robson was the captain. Allan Clarke came. Good players, but they were bottom of the table, with 13 games to go.
“I did exactly the same things I’d been doing at Orient. And we won nine of those games, drew two and lost two – and stayed up. It proved to me that you can recover any situation, if the spirit is there.”
When Arsenal physiotherapist Mee succeeded Billy Wright as Gunners manager in 1966, he turned to Sexton to join him as first-team coach. In his one full season there, Arsenal finished seventh in the league and top scorer was George Graham, a player the Gunners had brought in from Chelsea as part of a swap deal with Tommy Baldwin.
When the ebullient Docherty parted company with Chelsea in October 1967, Sexton returned to Stamford Bridge in the manager’s chair and enjoyed a seven-year stay which included those two cup wins.
In a detailed appreciation of him on chelseafc.com, they remembered: “Uniquely, for the time, Sexton brought science and philosophy to football: he read French poetry, watched foreign football endlessly and introduced film footage to coaching sessions.”
In those days Chelsea’s side had a blend of maverick talent in the likes of centre forward Peter Osgood and, later, skilful midfielder Alan Hudson. No-nonsense, tough tackling Ron “Chopper” Harris and Scottish full-back Eddie McCreadie were in defence.
As Guardian writer McOwan said: “Sexton was embraced by players and supporters for advocating a mixture of neat passing and attacking flair backed up with steely ball-winners.”
I was taken as a young lad to watch the 1970 FA Cup Final at Wembley when Sexton’s Chelsea drew 2-2 with Leeds United on a dreadful pitch where the Horse of the Year Show had taken place only a few days earlier.
Chelsea had finished third in the league – two points behind Leeds – and while I was disappointed not to see the trophy raised at Wembley (no penalty deciders in those days), the Londoners went on to lift it after an ill-tempered replay at Old Trafford watched by 28 million people on television.
Sexton added to the Stamford Bridge trophy cabinet the following season when Chelsea won the European Cup Winners’ Cup final against Real Madrid, again after a replay.
But when they reached the League Cup final the following season, they lost to Stoke City and it was said Sexton began to lose patience with the playboy lifestyle of people like Osgood and Hudson, who he eventually sold.
The financial drain of stadium redevelopment, and the fact that the replacements for the stars he sold failed to shine, eventually brought about his departure from the club in October 1974 after a bad start to the 1974-75 season.
Sexton wasn’t out of work for long after parting company with Chelsea
He was not out of work for long, though, because 13 days after he left Chelsea he succeeded Gordon Jago at Loftus Road and took charge of a QPR side that had some exciting talent of its own in the shape of Gerry Francis and Stan Bowles.
Although the aforementioned Venables had just left QPR to work under Sexton’s old Hammers teammate Allison at Crystal Palace, Sexton brought in 29-year-old Don Masson from Notts County and he quickly impressed with his range of passing, and would go on to be selected for Scotland. Arsenal’s former Double-winning captain Frank McLintock was already in defence and Sexton added two of his former Chelsea players in John Hollins and David Webb.
Sexton said of them: “The easiest team I ever had to manage because they were already mature . . . very responsible, very receptive, full of good characters and good skills. They were coming to the end of their careers, but they were still keen.”
Sexton was a student of Rinus Michels and so-called Dutch ‘total football’ – a fluid, technical system in which all outfield players could switch positions quickly to maximise space on the field.
Loft For Words columnist ‘Roller’ said: “Dave Sexton was decades ahead of his time as a coach. At every possible opportunity he would go and watch matches in Europe returning with new ideas to put into practice with his ever willing players at QPR giving rise to a team that would have graced the Dutch league that he so admired.
“He managed to infuse the skill and technique that is a hallmark of the Dutch game into the work ethic and determination that typified the best English teams of those times.
“QPR’s passing and movement was unparalleled in the English league and wouldn’t been seen again until foreign coaches started to permeate into English football.”
His second season at QPR (1975-76) was the most successful in that club’s history and they were only pipped to the league title by Liverpool (by one point) on the last day of the season (Man Utd were third).
Agonisingly Rangers were a point ahead of the Merseysiders after the Hoops completed their 42-game programme but had to wait 10 days for Liverpool to play their remaining fixture against Wolves who were in the lead with 15 minutes left but then conceded three, enabling Liverpool to clinch the title.
Married to Thea, the couple had four children – Ann, David, Michael and Chris – and throughout his time working in London the family home remained in Hove, to where he’d moved in 1958. They only upped sticks and moved to the north when Sexton landed the Man Utd job in October 1977.
He once again found himself replacing Docherty, who had been sacked after his affair with the wife of the club’s physiotherapist had been made public.
Sexton (far right) and the Manchester United squad
It was said by comparison to the outspoken Docherty, Sexton’s measured, quiet approach didn’t fit well with such a high profile club which then, as now, was constantly under the media spotlight.
The press dubbed him ‘Whispering Dave’ and although some signings, like Ray Wilkins, Gordon McQueen and Joe Jordan, were successful, he was ridiculed for buying striker Garry Birtles for £1.25m from Nottingham Forest: it took Birtles 11 months to score his first league goal for United.
Sexton took charge of 201 games across four years (with a 40 per cent win ratio) and he steered United to runners-up spot in the equivalent of the Premier League, two points behind champions Liverpool, in the 1979-80 season. United were also runners-up in the 1979 FA Cup final, losing 3-2 to a Liam Brady-inspired Arsenal.
As he said in a subsequent interview: “I really enjoyed my time at United. You are treated like a god up there and the support is fantastic. I had mixed success but it’s something that I wouldn’t have missed for the world.
“It’s tough at the top however and while other clubs would have been quite happy in finishing runners-up, it wasn’t enough for Man Utd. That’s the name of the game and I bear no grudges over it at all.”
As it happens, Sexton’s successor Ron Atkinson only managed to take United to third in the league (although they won the FA Cup twice) and it was another seven seasons before they were runners-up again under Alex Ferguson’s stewardship.
But back in 1981, United’s loss was Coventry’s gain and their delight at his appointment was conveyed in an excellent detailed profile by Rob Mason in 2019.
The new Coventry boss saw City beat United 2-1 in his first game in charge
“By the time the name of Dave Sexton was being put on the door of the manager’s office at Highfield Road the gaffer was in his fifties and a highly regarded figure within the game,” wrote Mason. “That sprang from the style of pass and move football he liked to play. His was a cultured approach to the game and Coventry supporters could look forward to seeing some attractive football.”
One of the happy quirks of football saw his old employer take on his new one on the opening day of the 1981-82 season – and the Sky Blues won 2-1! They won by a single goal at Old Trafford that season too, but overall away form was disappointing and in spite of a strong finish (seven wins, four draws and one defeat) they finished 14th – a modest two-place improvement on the previous season.
On a limited budget, Sexton struggled to get a largely young squad to make too much progress but he did recruit former England captain Gerry Francis, who’d been his captain during heady days at QPR, and he was a good influence on the youngsters.
Sexton’s second season in charge began well but ended nearly disastrously with a run of defeats leaving them flirting with relegation, together with Brighton. One of his last league games as City manager was in the visitors’ dugout at the Goldstone. Albion beat the Sky Blues 1-0 courtesy of a Terry Connor goal on St George’s Day 1983 – but it was Sexton’s side who escaped the drop by a point. Albion didn’t.
Coventry’s narrow escape from relegation cost Sexton his job (although he remained living in Kenilworth, Warwickshire) and it proved to be his last as a club manager, although he was involved as a coach when Ron Atkinson’s Aston Villa finished runners up in the first season (1992-93) of the Premier League – behind Ferguson’s United, who won their first title since 1967.
Sexton was happy to be working with the youth team, the young pros and the first team. “Mostly I’ve been concerned with movement, up front and in midfield. Instead of the traditional long ball up to the front men, approaching the goal in not such straight lines,” he explained.
The quiet Sexton had a valid retort to the reporter’s surprise that he should be working in the same set-up as the flamboyant Atkinson. “It’s like most stereotypes,” he said. “They’re never quite as they seem to be. Ron’s got a flamboyant image, but actually he’s an idealist, from a football point of view.
“He’s got a vision, which might not come across from the stereotype he’s got. I suppose it’s the same with me. I’m meant to be serious, which I am, but I like a bit of fun, too. And, obviously, the thing we’ve got in common is a love of football.”
Relieved to be more in the background than having to be the front man, Sexton told Williams: “The reason I’m in the game in the first place is that I love football and working with footballers, trying to improve them individually and as a team.
“So, to shed the responsibility of speaking to the press and the directors and talking about contracts, it’s a weight off your shoulders. Now I’m having all the fun without any of the hassle.”
Atkinson had invited his United predecessor to join him at Villa after he had retired from his job as the FA’s technical director of the School of Excellence at Lilleshall, and coach of the England under 21 team.
It had been 10 years since Bobby Robson had appointed him as assistant manager to the England team (Sexton had coached Robson at Fulham). He had previously been involved coaching England under 21s alongside his club commitments since 1977 leading the side to back-to-back European titles in 1982 and 1984. The 1982 side, who beat West Germany 5-4 on aggregate over two legs, included Justin Fashanu and Sammy Lee, and in a quarter final v Poland he had selected Albion’s Andy Ritchie, somewhat ironically considering he had sold him to the Seagulls when manager at United.
In April 1983, Albion’s Gary Stevens played for Sexton’s under 21s in a European Championship qualifier at Newcastle’s St James’ Park, which was won 1-0. The following year, Stevens, by then with Spurs, was in the side that met Spain in the final, featuring in the first of the two legs, a 1-0 away win in Seville. Somewhat confusingly, his Everton namesake featured in the second leg, a 2-0 win at Bramall Lane. England won 3-0 on aggregate. Winger Mark Chamberlain, later an Albion player, also played in the first leg.
After the Robson era, Sexton worked with successive England managers: Venables, Hoddle and Keegan. When Eriksson became England manager in 2001, he invited Sexton to run a team of scouts who would compile a database and video library of opposition players – a strategy Sexton had pioneered three decades previously.
Viewed as one of English football’s great thinkers, Sexton had a book, Tackle Soccer, published in 1977 but away from football he had a love of art and poetry and completed an Open University degree in philosophy, literature, art and architecture. He was awarded an OBE for services to football in 2005.
Sexton was always a welcome guest at Brighton and here receives a reminder of past glories from Dick Knight
In parallel lines 