Clough in the rough: the man behind the words

They are Leeds. Dirty, dirty Leeds and Don Readies. Doyens of the dark arts and reviled by revisionists. Brian Clough went to Elland Road, dismantled the club with his unbridled ego and got a payoff that made him financially secure. Revie was damned, ostracised and forgotten.

It is time for Revie to be reclaimed and accepted into the pantheon of managerial greats. He should be up there with Clough and Shankly and Busby and Ferguson, but he has been written out of history as damaged goods. He is the ursine villain of

The Damned United, a gruff northerner bereft of Clough’s wit and charm. The ending of the film is gratuitous in its light and shade, telling us Clough went on to win the European Cup twice, while Revie failed at England and fled to the Middle East amid allegations of financial impropriety.

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After eight hard months and 50 years in the mists, the Yorkshiremen have reached their journey's end

• Topic: Leeds United

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He also changed the face of football for ever. “The football we played from 1969 to 1974 was unbelievable,” Johnny Giles once told me. “Some of the matches we played, particularly at Leeds, well, I’ve never seen better football before or since.” Yet Revie and Leeds remain unloved and unforgiven. They are Leeds. Dirty Leeds. They cheated, maimed and hounded referees. Their manager offered bribes. He ran out on England, albeit that he was about to be pushed. Two and two makes 666.

There is some truth in the criticism, but it is a sophistic attack that lacks context.

Leeds may have been part-time purveyors of violence, but they were not alone. A seminal moment in the club’s history came in 1965. Revie had already performed a sooty black miracle by lifting Leeds from the cusp of the third division and near bankruptcy to second place in the top flight and the FA Cup Final. Then came the Inter-City Fairs Cup match against Torino in Turin. Bobby Collins, heartbeat of the side, was taken out by the right back. He broke his femur. The cynicism of the continental game was laid bare as Collins threw off a hospital blanket and proudly showed off the bolt through his leg. That early foray into Europe left indelible marks on both player and manager.

When I met Collins at his home several years ago, he was irritated at the choreographed cheating and endemic play-acting of the Premier League.

“I think we were harder but more honest,” he said. “It was just a case of having to suss out which players were the ones who were going to kick you into the stands. You’ve got to win and we played real hard. And no, I can’t say I was an angel, but I don’t apologise for that.”

Prejudice gives prominence to certain crimes. The beauty of Leeds’ football has been banished by their beastliness, but their critics pass off the systematic hounding of referees by Manchester United or the artful conning of referees by high-profile players as gamesmanship; it is a postscript to greatness not an epitaph.

Eddie Gray provided the most graphic context when he told me a story about Willie Bell, the Leeds full back. “He played for Scotland against Brazil and, when nobody was looking, Pelé stuck the nut on him. There was blood all over the place. He’d been headbutted by the great Pelé, but things like that happened.”

Giles, meanwhile, said that the selective editing was down to the North-South divide and the bias of the London media, but it went further. The hatred of Leeds will be refreshed by the film. They are Dirty Leeds, Don Readies and Billy Bremner, the smoking gun who bullied Kevin Keegan in the 1974 Charity Shield and smoked a post-coital fag afterwards. “You can’t put into words what Billy Bremner meant to football,” Sir Alex Ferguson said, but nobody would ever know.