I know NSS - I remember them all, I specifically said the 60s to include England. I was there when Maurice Norman was stretchered off v Hungarian Select XI But for me England was better than Norman.
Yes Mike England a cert and Mackay in any team I selected but please Jimmy was the finest finisher I ever saw and that includes German,Dutch and boys from Brazil I can still "feel" the sudden silence of the crowd when Jimmy was played in anywhere around the 18 yd area, and then the roar as Jimmy passed the ball into the net, genius
greavsie would have walked into any National side.imo if he' had been picked for the 66 final alongside Hurst instead of Hunt,i don't think we would have needed extra time.
The thing about Greavsie, and I saw him score many, many goals, was his coolness. He never snatched at a chance - always seemed to know exactly where he was going to put it, and the crowd all just knew where the ball was going to end up - in the back of the net. He so rarely missed, he was that good a finisher.
I have to say I would rank Gerd Muller as the greatest finisher I ever saw, though that's only from TV. But in English football Greaves was the best. However, VDV is a brilliant finisher and Defoe and Adebayor are currently doing well, so ATM to me England would be the player we need most. Though Mackay is always my No.1 Spur as a player, but again in midfield we're well served at present, it's the CB position that worries me most.
what i would like to know is how is it our cb's always seem to get injured,seems to be every season at least 2 of them are out at the same time
Sadly it is inevitable with the fragile Ledley and the ageing Gallas on our books. Ironically we would have been better off keeping Woody than Gallas so far this season.
Yeah. I used to have a poster of that classic picture of Dave Mackay with a snarl on his face, and his hand around Billy Bremner's throat. Por old Bremner looked like a frightened rabbit - and he was no shrinking violet.
i love that picture,the story goes Dave had just come back from his 2 broken leg, and bremner went over the Ball on the very leg
Before my time, but I always wonder how he gets left out of the ranks of the greats. His scoring record is just ridiculous. It sounds made up. Club level in Germany: Played 589, scored 532. International record: Played 62, scored 68. Add the goals from his time in the US and that's 640 career goals and he doesn't count those he scored against his cat in his garden, like Pele. Amazing.
That wouldn't surprise me. Bremner had a reputation as a nasty little ****er. He was lucky Mackay didn't bite his head off. You didn't **** about with Dave Mackay. There were some hard men around in those days - then there was Dave Mackay!
Simply unbelievable player, and what gives him the edge over Greavesie for me was that he scored in World Cup Finals, semi-finals, European Cup Finals, won league titles. He did it right at the top - and of course broke our hearts in 1970.
I was at the game and Bremner moved to the left side after the "chat" with Dave only for Jimmy Robinson to dump him over the rail into the crowd The photograph become the winner of sports picture of the year and was hung in the legends bar, only one person hates the picture and that is Dave himself who thinks it paints the wrong image of him as the great player he was
