44 Days

“Nothing in my life has worried me more than this, not even the Brian Clough affair,” Leeds United chairman Manny Cussins said in October 1978. Jock Stein, the manager he’d hired only six weeks prior, had resigned and was heading home to take over as Scotland manager. Leeds fans were left wondering what might have been had one of football’s most successful coaches not left them high and dry.

Two months earlier, Leeds were searching for a new coach, having dismissed Jimmy Armfield at the end of the previous season after finishing 9th in the First Division. They were three years removed from the European Cup final robbery against Bayern Munich and the board felt they needed to make a statement by hiring a coach with enough gravitas to reinvigorate a club in decline.

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