Yellow car in Liverpool: what was Don Revie looking for in Everton?

I was inspired to write this by taking part in Adam Pope's BBC radio documentary about a curious wrinkle in Leeds United and Everton history: the time when, in May 1973, Don Revie was spotted driving on the Formby bypass in a new Mercedes Benz 280SE saloon, gold-coloured, or bright yellow depending on your perspective. He was asking for directions to a railway station close to where Everton's chairman, John Moores, resided.

A few hours later he was on a flight from Manchester to Greece, with his Leeds players, on their way to losing the European Cup Winners' Cup final to Milan. Before the match, confronted by his players, he admitted the rumours were true: he was going to take the job of Everton manager.

Was it true? Was Revie really going to leave Leeds United? It wasn't the first time he had raised the idea of leaving, and it had usually been helpful to let the board at Elland Road know what he could be earning elsewhere. But Revie said himself, that summer, that he'd never been so close to taking another job.

And thanks to Adam Pope's stepfather, a former Everton chairman and director, we have a typewritten contract with every detail of Revie's employment at Goodison Park filled in. Everything is there, the salary, the bonuses, the terms and the responsibilities. Everything: except the signature. That's the story of his excellent documentary, that I highly recommend as worth an hour of your time. (Listen to it here or read the article about it here.)

Adam asked me to be in some bits of his programme. And while rehearsing what I surmised as reasons that Don Revie might have been willing to swap Elland Road for Goodison Park in summer 1973 I began to think that his motivation for going was the same motivation that had made him Leeds United's most successful manager. It was only later, thinking more, that I decided ABC had summed it up in the lyrics of The Look of Love in 1982: 'Your reason for living's your reason for leaving'.

Two motivations were key not just to Revie almost leaving, but to everything he built at Leeds United. Revie was moved by ambition. That's why when he eventually left Elland Road it was to become England manager. At the time it was the most prestigious job an English football man could hold, and only two had held it in history. And he was compelled by his need for security, of finance and family. That's why he was bound to fail in the England job, and why Leeds United's glory was built on togetherness.

From his very first days as manager of Leeds United, Revie's ambition was to win the European Cup. And from his very first days as manager of Leeds United, he wanted the club to do it together. "If everybody pulls together, from the directors right down to the women who do the cleaning and the washing, and is Leeds United-minded, then we shall get somewhere," he said. Everybody had done just that. And Leeds United had got somewhere.

Togetherness and security are relative, however. Revie built incredibly strong bonds with his players, some of whom he brought up from boys, some of whom though older still owed him their careers. Letting them go, like Jack Charlton to Middlesbrough in 1973, was going to be hard for Revie. Don had taken Billy Bremner as his roommate before the young lad's debut back in 1960. Bremner was a man of thirty now.

But in 1972 when Revie was explaining to Paul Trevillion what he wanted from a club song, 'Marching on Together' was his plea to a town still fixated on rugby. Revie was desperate for something that would encourage the stayaway public of Leeds to fill the terraces of Elland Road like one big happy family. Wariness, in Leeds, still had an oval shape.

Revie had also been meeting more challenges when managing upwards. At first, he'd benefited from the lack of interest in Leeds United even from within its own boardroom. The club had been a rundown embarrassment that few prominent people wanted to be seen having much to do with. One of Revie's first acts as manager was hoodwinking his own board into asking more than Hibernian were willing to pay for Billy Bremner, collapsing their deal. Before that, it was only director Harry Reynolds who thought asking Don Revie to be Leeds United's manager was a better investment than taking £6,000 from Bournemouth who wanted him to be theirs. The rest of the board agreed largely because making Revie player-manager was cheaper than hiring someone else.