Jim Bremner Popular Books

Jim Bremner Biography & Facts

William John Bremner (9 December 1942 – 7 December 1997) was a Scottish professional footballer and manager. Regarded as one of the game's great midfielders, he combined precision passing skills with tenacious tackling and physical stamina. He played for Leeds United from 1959 to 1976, serving as captain from 1965, in one of the most successful periods in the club's history. At Leeds, Bremner won the First Division (1968–69 and 1973–74), Second Division (1963–64), Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (1968 and 1971), FA Cup (1972), League Cup (1968) and FA Charity Shield (1969). The club also finished second in numerous competitions, being runners-up five times in the English league and seven times in cup finals, including the 1975 European Cup. He was also named as the FWA Footballer of the Year in 1970 and was listed on the PFA Team of the Year in 1973–74. He has since been voted Leeds United's greatest player of all time and has a statue outside the south-east corner of their Elland Road stadium. He has also been included in the Football League 100 Legends and is a member of both the English Football Hall of Fame and Scottish Football Hall of Fame. Bremner played for Hull City from 1976 to 1978, before being appointed player-manager at Doncaster Rovers in November 1978. He spent seven years as Doncaster manager, guiding the club to promotion out of the Fourth Division in 1980–81 and 1983–84, before he took on the manager's job at Leeds United in October 1985. He failed to gain promotion to the top flight and left the club in September 1988. He returned to Doncaster in July 1989, ending his second spell in charge in November 1991. Bremner is on the Scotland national football team roll of honour for having won more than 50 caps for Scotland. He captained his country at the 1974 FIFA World Cup, where Scotland failed to advance from the group stage despite being unbeaten in the competition. Club career Leeds United Born in Stirling, Stirlingshire, Scotland, to James and Bridget Bremner, he attended St Modan's High School and represented Scotland Schoolboys. His father forbade him from joining Celtic as he did not want him involved in the religion-based rivalry with Rangers, and Bremner rejected both Arsenal and Chelsea as he did not enjoy his stay in London during trial spells with the two clubs, and was instead convinced to join Bill Lambton's Leeds United in 1959. He joined along with his friend Tommy Henderson, who would return to Scotland due to homesickness without making a first team debut. Manager Jack Taylor gave him his debut at outside-right in a 3–1 win against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, at the age of 17 years and 47 days; Yorkshire Evening Post reporter Phil Brown noted that Bremner showed "enthusiasm, guts, intelligence, most accurate use of the ball and unselfishness" despite poor weather conditions. A The Sunday Times headline later dubbed him as "10st of barbed wire" due to his tenacity and tough tackling. Regular outside-right Chris Crowe was sold to Blackburn Rovers in March 1960, allowing Bremner to take his place on a permanent basis. However, Leeds went on to be relegated from the First Division at the end of the 1959–60 season. Dropped following an opening day defeat by Liverpool at Anfield, Bremner had to win back his first team place later in the 1960–61 season after meeting with Jack Taylor to explain his frustration at being left out of the team. Taylor resigned in March 1961, and player Don Revie was promoted to manager. Revie rejected an approach of £25,000 from Hibernian for Bremner, despite the player wanting to return to Scotland to be with his fiancée. Leeds struggled in the 1961–62 campaign, finishing just three points above the Second Division relegation zone, despite 12 goals in 45 appearances from Bremner, who finished as the club's joint top-scorer alongside centre-half Jack Charlton. One bright spot was the signing of Bobby Collins in March, who helped form the "win-at-all-costs" attitude that defined Leeds and Bremner throughout the rest of Revie's 13 years as manager. United had a more promising 1962–63 campaign, finishing four points shy of promotion, though Bremner was limited to 24 appearances. He was out of form and dropped from the first team during the end of season run-in, which contained a disproportionately large number of games due to the high level of postponements that occurred during the harsh winter. Revie moved Bremner to central midfield, and bought Manchester United's Johnny Giles to create what would prove to be one of the most highly effective central midfield partnerships of the next 12 years. With Bremner, Collins and Giles in midfield, Leeds went on to win promotion as champions in the 1963–64 season. The club won no friends in doing so however, and the following summer were labelled by the Football Association's own FA News as "the dirtiest [team] in the Football League. In November of the 1964–65 season Bremner featured heavily in a win at Everton that was marred by violent clashes on the pitch, the game was stopped for a short spell ten minutes before half-time as the referee felt that a spell of cooling down was needed to prevent further violence; despite the referee only giving 12 Leeds fouls to Everton's 19 the match helped to cement United's reputation as a dirty and overly physical team. A run of victories put the club top by the new year, however they lost the title on goal average to Manchester United after drawing the last game of the season with already-relegated Birmingham City. The Manchester club would become a keen rival, one which intensified after Leeds knocked them out of the FA Cup at the semi-finals after two physical encounters. Leeds faced Liverpool in the final at Wembley, and the game went to extra-time after a 0–0 draw; Bremner scored a half-volley in the 100th minute to cancel out Roger Hunt's opener, but Ian St John won the game for Liverpool in the 113th minute. In October 1965, Leeds skipper Collins was injured in an Inter-Cities Fairs Cup game against Torino and Revie gave the captaincy to Bremner after initially handing the armband to Charlton for the remainder of the season; Charlton was keen to give up the captaincy as it prevented his superstitious ritual of coming out of the tunnel last on match days. Revie and Bremner had a strong bond of trust, which was why the manager gave him the captaincy at such a young age. Leeds finished second in the league in the 1965–66 campaign to Liverpool, who had finished six points clear at the top. A poor start to the 1966–67 season prevented another push for the title, and Leeds eventually finished in fourth place. They made it to the FA Cup semi-finals, before Chelsea knocked them out with a 1–0 win. In Europe they beat DWS (Netherlands), Valencia (Spain), Bologna (Italy) and Kilmarnock (Scotland) to reach the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup final against Dinamo Zagreb (Yugoslavia); Zagreb won 2–0 at the Stadion Maksimir and held Leeds to a 0–0 draw a.... Discover the Jim Bremner popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jim Bremner books.