The Best Manager of the 1960s

Which football manager accrued the most top-division points during the 1960s? Perhaps Manchester United's Matt Busby, whose team won the league twice in the decade and also became England's first European Cup winner? Maybe Bill Shankly, whose Liverpool team also won the league twice and paved the way for a dynasty which turned into the greatest trophy winning team England has ever seen? Or Bill Nicholson, whose Spurs side won the double in 1961 and were in contention through the decade? Joe Mercer, whose Manchester City team won the league in 1968? Or Don Revie, who created a mean machine at Leeds United en-route to becoming the first England manager (in my time) mired in scandal*?

Busby, Shankly, Nicholson, Mercer, Revie - all famous names. Well it wasn't any of them. Harry Catterick, manager of Sheffield Wednesday and Everton is the answer.

In an excellent column a couple of years ago, The Guardian's Daniel Taylor asked how is it that the man who won two league titles and an FA Cup for Everton and went by the nickname Mr Success, with a nod to the Frank Sinatra song, has become almost a footnote when the list of authentic greats is trotted out? To the extent that, a few years earlier, Taylor's colleague Scott Murray listed Catterick as one of 6 title winning managers who rarely get the credit they deserve. (The only post war ones were Burnley's Harry Potts, Catterick and Dave Mackay who won the league with derby County but forever remains in Brian Clough's shadow. To be fair, there is now a statue of Mackay at Derby's stadium, there long having been one of Clough and Peter Taylor, but only since 2015).

Catterick's lack of name recognition these days certainly seems odd when a veteran of the Merseyside press, Colin Wood, who reported on all those sides in the 60s and 70s, rates the Everton side of 1969-70 as one of the best British teams there has ever been.

Catterick was a modern manager in some ways. He insisted on total control before it was common. He trusted youth - all his teams featured local players who he gave opportunities to, usually as teenagers. And he believed in playing the game properly, in an era when players had nicknames like "Chopper", "Bites Yer Legs" and the "Anfield Iron". But, unlike natural publicist Shankly and paternalistic Busby, he kept the media firmly at arm's length. “The fellow who looks for popularity has something wrong [with him],” he once said. And he was obsessive: I don't remember this but he insisted Everton’s team lineups were printed in alphabetical order (presumably when they were released to the other team and the press I think 30 minutes before kick off) so the opposition would not have any clues about their formation.

Catterick was a hard task manager, with a fearsome, boot-camp mentality and a place at the back of the Goodison Road stand the Everton players dubbed the Bollocking Room. “What was he like to play for?” “Hellish” said Alex Young, the recently deceased fan hero known as "The Golden Vision" and a prolific scorer in the 1962-63 championship season.  That would be the same Alex Young who, on leaving Everton several years later, negotiated a gentleman’s agreement for a £1,000 settlement but never saw a penny - Catterick laughed at him when he came asking for it, saying “let that be a lesson to you, son: Get everything in writing”.

But for all his faults, Catterick created three different trophy winning teams at Everton in the 60s (ok, the last league win was 69-70 to be precise) in an era of intense competition. And the 69-70 team was as good as any in that era and one of the best teams I have seen anywhere, anytime. Many games still live in my memory, but perhaps most notably the demolition of Manchester United, European Cup winners just a few moths earlier and with Best, Law and Charlton in their team, in August 1968. Catterick's still developing team with Ball, Kendall and Harvey and a very young Joe Royle won 3-1 but on the day United were "well beaten" to use a phrase used later by Sir Alex Ferguson about another Everton win over the Red Devils.

As Taylor said, all that really matters should be the man’s achievements. They are considerable and, in a book published in 2014 which is an excellent read, Rob Sawyer concluded after meticulous research that Catterick “unfairly stands in the shadows of contemporaries such as Shankly, Revie and Clough”.
Catterick did not seduce his audiences, but his teams did play with great personality and charisma and it is time, surely, to give him his due. Howard Kendall was Everton's most successful manager and is naturally seen as Everton's best ever. But for me, the Cat was just as good.


*Looking for a way out of managing England in 1977, Revie quit in unedifying circumstances. He had missed a friendly with Brazil in Rio de Janeiro for what he claimed was a scouting assignment on the Italians, when in fact he had travelled to Dubai for contract negotiations with the United Arab Emirates. Revie asked for his contract with England to be cancelled, which the FA refused to do and the FA offered Revie their full support despite having already approached Bobby Robson to replace him. As bad as each other.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/nov/29/everton-harry-catterick-forgotten-great-manager
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2011/jul/08/joy-six-oft-forgotten-title-winning-managers
Rob Sawyer "Harry Catterick - Mr Success"