1978-82 Stein, Adamson and Clarke: Decline and Relegation
Semi-Finalists: League Cup (1978/79)
Stein remained as Leeds manager for just 44 days before taking up an invitation to manage the Scottish national team. In October 1978 the board turned to Jimmy Adamson, a long-time manager at Burnley, who took Leeds back into Europe and reached a League Cup semi-final in his first season in charge. However, some wretched sales in the transfer market - notably Tony Currie and Frank Gray - caused a rapid decline in Leeds' fortunes, with the team winning just four of their first seventeen league games during the 1979-80 season. With the fans calling for him to be dismissed, Adamson resigned in September 1980.
Adamson was replaced by former Leeds and England star Allan Clarke. Clarke shored up the defence, ensuring that Leeds survived the 1980-81 season, but in the first game of the 1981-82 season Leeds lost 5-1 to Swansea City, and the team never seemed to recover. The previously watertight defense started to ship goals, and the team seemed unable to score. Clarke spent freely in the transfer market, notably purchasing Peter Barnes, but his impact was slight - between 12 December 1981 and 6 April 1982, the team scored just five goals in fourteen league games. Leeds were relegated at the end of the 1981-82 season; Clarke was sacked and replaced by former team-mate Eddie Gray.
It was during this time that Leeds United fans gained an unwanted reputation across the country which tarnished the club's names. Incidents of football hooliganism were rife, and there were regular instances of British National Front members and supporters peddling their literature to spectators on their way and in and out of the stadium.
Read more about this topic: History Of Leeds United A.F.C.
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)