Today I'm going back 43 years to 1979 and Leeds United's final home fixture of the season, this one against Champions Liverpool attended by the highest crowd of the season at Elland Road: 41,324. The programme pictured is actually the cover page of a special four page insert that was given away free with the programme from the originally scheduled game in March.
Perhaps controversially, United Manager Jimmy Adamson dropped star player Tony Currie from the squad for the featured match citing a poor performance in the previous match against Nottingham Forest two days earlier. Leeds had been beaten 2-1 at home by Forest, their first home loss since November and Adamson had not even attended the game! Leeds gave the new Champions a guard of honour as they entered the pitch and had some extra motivation to stop Liverpool from winning: Leeds held the record for the most points in a single top-flight season with 67 points and a win for Liverpool in their final game would see them to 68 points (remember this was before three points for a win was introduced in 1981). Adamson declared that Leeds would "sweat blood" to keep hold of their record but the only red I noticed that Thursday evening was the colour of the Liverpool jerseys as they trounced Leeds 3-0 with goals coming from David Johnson (2) and Jimmy Case. The much maligned Leeds crowd were to be congratulated by the sporting way in which they applauded the Liverpool players from the pitch at the end in an echo of a similar ovation by the Anfield crowd to Billy Bremner and his teammates ten years earlier. I wonder if we'd see that today?
Manager Bob Paisley's Liverpool set a number of records that season on their way to the title including most points (68), most points at home in a top flight season (40 from 42 with their two draws coming against Everton and Leeds) and, perhaps a little obscurely, highest ratio of goals scored to conceded (85 scored, 16 conceded for a ratio of 5.3:1). Liverpool's main rival at the time, Nottingham Forest, finished the season in second place eight points further back having lost one game fewer than the Champions. Forest's consolation came in winning the European Cup and retaining the League Cup. Leeds finished in fifth place thereby qualifying for the following season's UEFA Cup. QPR, Birmingham City and Chelsea finished in the bottom three and were relegated.
CRB Match No. 46
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