Now we come to the Press. I would make this point at the outset: with 95 per cent of the newspapermen Burnley are on sincere and amicable terms. We are as warm and sincere in our welcome as any club that can be named. A great deal has been written and said about the ban we placed about eighteen months ago on the Daily Mail, which is denied press-box and board-room facilities at Turf Moor. The ban was ordered, among others, because of the activities of a few correspondents or representatives, and will remain just as long as their refusal to apologise for the inaccuracies printed. It is as simple as that. If they will, in one issue, apologise in the same size of print and with the same prominence as their attacks on the club in general, and on me in particular, fair enough, we will then be friends. I remember that Mr. J. L. Manning, in the Daily Mail around March 1961, declared from Fleet Street that they would not print another word about Burnley Football Club, nor about Bob Lord; they would leave us to our own resources. But the club, during season 1961-62, had more publicity from the Daily Mail than at any other period of its history. This proves to us that Burnley did the correct thing.

The number of letters I received from people in Burnley, and far beyond, commiserating with the club and myself, and commending us for our actions, confirmed our attitude. Please do not get the idea that I wish in any way to suppress the freedom of the Press. I have always been a firm believer in freedom in most things. That is my nature. But there are limits; there are fair and unfair ways of getting and printing information. Freedom to express one's views was exercised when I indicated in May 1960 to the members of the Football Writers' Association that they had chosen wrongly in their Footballer of the Year ballot. I was soundly condemned.

Some officials of Football League clubs are always agitating for a ban on certain newspapermen. Now and again a ban has been issued, but it has been for only a short period: they have not the courage to carry out their convictions. Before Burnley placed the ban on the Daily Mail the pros and cons were weighed as to what would be the result, and we were all quite sure we had a cast-iron case and that right would prevail in the end.

What other remedy has a football club got when certain reporters are guilty of printing inaccuracies, are guilty of prying into the domestic affairs of the club? I can see no other, and only wish other clubs would follow our example. Then in a very short time the inaccuracies of the few would be cut out.

In May 1962, the Football Writers' Association members voted not only Adamson of Burnley as Footballer of the Year but his colleague, McIlroy, as runner-up. It is usual for the executive of the Association to invite the chairman and manager of the winner's club as guests at the dinner in London a day or so before the Cup Final. The Burnley players and manager were asked but no invitation came to me. I certainly received invitations from individual members but, in the circumstances, had to decline them. How, anyway, would the manager and players at the top table feel about seeing their chairman in the body of the hall?

The construction I placed on the incident was that some members of the executive remembered the New York tournament proceedings and also the Turf Moor ban on certain newspapers. I felt that the members of the Association as a whole, and all those who enjoy their visits to Turf Moor, disagreed or did not know of the executive's decision. I was not far wrong. Two or three hours before the dinner the secretary of the Football Writers' Association rang me up to offer an official invitation. "I think you ought to be big enough and forget everything for the sake of Jimmy Adamson,' he said. If his executive thought a tenth as much of Jimmy Adamson as I do they would have invited me at the proper time.

I intimated quite respectfully that I had no intention of accepting their belated invitation, and left them to it. Let me clear the situation regarding the banning of one or two reporters from the Burnley press box - representatives of more than one newspaper have been barred. We would not and cannot go to the length of banning them completely from the ground. No club official likes the type of correspondent who constantly seeks information from players by visiting their homes or ringing them up on the telephone at all hours. These are the hole-and-corner methods of the few to which we take objection.

VISCOUNT MONTGOMERY asked me at Wembley: "How is it that Burnley, with a population of little more than 80,000, can achieve such prominence in football?" The answer to his question is the answer to football's much-debated missing millions.

Compared with 1960-61, the fall in attendances in 1961-62 for all four divisions of the Football League was only 638,842. This compares very favourably with the previous twelve months when attendances were down by practically 4,000,000 alongside 1959-60. This means that we have to some extent arrested the deep decline. My firm conviction is that there is not the slightest doubt that the public of this country are in the mood to pay, and pay a reasonable price, for quality fare. Football, to me, is an article which the public are there to buy. If the quality of play is of a high standard I am confident the public will rush for it.

This cannot be better shown than by the record of our club. Burnley has a population of 81,500. Within a twelve mile radius, possibly, it has a population of well over a quarter of a million. So we have to tempt them to travel. We can do so. Our attendances in 1961-62 averaged well over 2,000 a game more than the previous season when we were reigning Champions and were appearing in the European Cup. In fact, the average gate last season at Turf Moor was over 28,000. Further, we have had a successful reserve side. They won the Central League Championship in 1961-62, and at their games at Turf Moor we have had as many as 8,000 or more people. They have been present because the reserves have played a similar type of scientific, studied, sportsmanlike football to that of the first team. That is the only answer-attractive football played in the right spirit!

During the last ten or fifteen years there has been, in the case of a number of First Division clubs, a general decline in the quality of football displayed. We all know that some of them have employed kick-and-rush, hack-and-thump, bang-and-crash methods. I am quite sure the connoisseur of football does not want to pay three shillings or more to watch that tripe. Although the Duke of Edinburgh has been rather chastised by the Tripe Dressers' Association for use of that word, I think it is the only one to describe what I mean. Look at the clubs which are employing this type of football and look at their attendances. They are the clubs responsible for losing supporters. They are the clubs who are responsible for giving this great game of ours a bad name.

Some say football as we know it is finished. I could not agree with that statement more, because it has to be conditioned. The legislators, the people who sit on football club boards, the managers, the trainers, the coaches, and, last but not least, the players, are in many cases going to be compelled to view the situation from altogether a different aspect. The view, the concentration, will have to be on quality football, built up by scientific coaching. There are many players in the game today reaching the end of their careers who are quite capable of inculcating this science into the younger players.

We at Burnley claim to have a perfect set-up in this connection. We have had it for quite a few years, and our public - like patrons on grounds we have visited in recent seasons - have shown their appreciation of the end product in the play of our side.

This is the route for the new approach to first-class football - quality first, second, and third. Less concentration on points at any price. The sooner it is tackled by everybody concerned, the better, both for the game and for the public who are prepared to pay to watch. It is all very well for some people to say it is results that matter. I agree up to a point; in fact, I'll say it is goals that matter. That is obvious. But goals without good football do not tell in the long run nowadays. Goals scored anyhow are not all that matter. Approach play is equally important. In order to probe the 'missing millions' problem the League Management Committee paid �6000, or so I understand, for an expert survey of public opinion. I believe it would have been better to take note of a few enterprising, enthusiastic men inside football and do as they suggested. But no, the well-meaning but sometimes old-fashioned legislators became panicky and looked outside their own front door to gain strength and support for their shortcomings.

It is my belief, and I make this statement in emphatic terms, that the missing millions are due to the failings of the insufficiently thorough body of men who have been League rulers since the end of the 1939-45 war.

Football is 'finished'? If the game in this country was governed and ruled and worked in a business-like fashion, just as an industry has to be run, no country in the world could hope to equal us. No country in the world could come anywhere near us, because we have the natural material and, properly guided and coached, this material can beat anything. We have the courage, we have the ability, we have the education, and we have the necessary instinct to provide the best football that can possibly be produced. But the leadership is not there. Far too many men in the hierarchy of football are too old, too antiquated in outlook and drive, to put the game where it should be. We need men of vision on the Management Committee who have the ability and urge to be able to say after twelve months' work: "We have made headway, we have not remained stagnant: now we are going somewhere."

My conclusion on the subject of missing millions is: let every club in the Football League put the same amount of time, effort, thought, care, and hard work into the business as little Burnley have done for the last few years. I maintain that in five years' time there would be a totally different picture. During recent times we have not only built up the coaching side, and so achieved quality football on the field of play, but have also spent as much money as any club in the land, and much more than some, in improving all the facilities at Turf Moor. By the end of 1961-62 Burnley had spent well over �200,000 in ten seasons on building up the club's surroundings and amenities. Find me one other club which has both made that money and spent it on improvements for every phase of the game.

This is a practice contrary to that of the majority of First Division clubs. They believe in the philosophy that if they buy, if they go round the country waving their cheque book high in the sky to buy a star every twelve months, the gates will be assured for a reasonable time. This system is sheer laziness and in the end produces recurring disappointment. We at Burnley, in spending this vast amount (to us), have improved facilities for all spectators. Half of them were expected to stand on cinders. Not now. Half of them were expected to stand out in the wintry weather without any cover. Not now. Four-fifths are under cover. All toilet and catering facilities have been improved and will be further improved for all classes of supporters. Behind the scenes are new dressing-rooms, medical rooms, coaching facilities. All this has been done by a club with an immediate town population of only 81,500. No other club in the First Division has to exist off such a small population. Surely it can be done by other clubs.

We are not finished. We have such faith in the future that during the next two or three years a new stand will be erected at Turf Moor costing, perhaps, well over �200,000. It will not be bettered by any stadium in the world. It will probably be built in three sections. In the first place we plan seats that will be covered and heated and will be priced around four shillings because we believe that many of the spectators who stand and pay three shillings will pay an extra shilling for a warm seat under cover. Then we plan seats, in better conditions, at about six shillings, ten shillings, fifteen shillings, and a guinea. There will also be private boxes in advantageous positions to hold six, eight, ten, or a dozen people, which can either be booked for one match or for the full season. There will be refreshment facilities on a club style for all the different types of spectators - the man paying four shillings to sit down deserves just as much respect as the man paying a guinea. The amenities of the lower-priced spectator will not be as grand but he will be well looked after. Toilet facilities will be far in advance of anything yet seen on football grounds; in fact, the whole structure is planned on the assumption that people in 1982 will have advanced in all their thoughts and needs and general outlook on life. Where is all this money coming from? Burnley F.C. Ltd. will see to that without going into debt. We intend to show the football legislators of this country how a modern football club should be run.

Jimmy Adamson said from the Town Hall balcony on our return from Wembley: "You are the most wonderful band of supporters in the world." This I fully endorse. We intend at Burnley to give them the comfort, as well as the quality of football, they deserve. That is the answer to the missing millions from Burnley Football Club.

Crowds fascinate me, perhaps because I am a man of the people. British crowds are the best and most sporting in the world. At international matches they are more appreciative of the play of foreign teams than England ever experience abroad. There have been times, during the visits of the weaker national teams to this country, when they have treated them like a home team. My impression is that the further north you go in England, the more knowledgeable are the spectators. Perhaps this is because the North and Midlands were on the map in first-class football before London and the South, and have therefore had greater experience of the game.

Burnley, I would say, are a good sample, as Lancashire audiences go. The spectators there have given Continental players a warm hand for their footwork and attractive positional play. I recall that a supporter of long standing came to me after our European Cup-tie with Rheims and said: "The Continentals aim at a more controlled style of play than most English teams. They do less long-kicking. Their methods are less speculative. Wingmen do not run down the touchline and bang the ball across the goal. They double-back more, and prefer to draw the defence and make a scoring opening by a shorter pass." This was both appreciative and observant.

The closer the spectators, the more effective is their support. Thus the lung-power of the Liverpool crowd at Anfield is more telling than the cheering at Everton's Goodison Park, only a mile distant. Anfield, in fact, has just about the staunchest crowd in England. The massive Spion Kop stand towers immediately behind the goal. It must hold over 20,000 people, and the support they give to Liverpool has to be seen and heard to be realised. I would say this is one of the most difficult places for a visiting goalkeeper anywhere in the world: he is right beneath the 'barrage'. The smaller grounds - not that Anfield is among them - present some difficulty to teams more accustomed to the open spaces. The spectators are 'on top' of them and crowd effects are greater. That is one big reason for giant-killing in the F.A. Cup-ties.

There may not be much difference in the size of the pitch or the quality of the turf, so the David and Goliath business springs largely from the crowd: their enthusiasm and excitement get under the skin of the players to a greater extent. I have not been to Yeovil, the pitch with the tilt, but one can understand why Sunderland in their First Division days were added to the giant-killings in the Cup. The greatest of all was the Arsenal's famous fall in their prime at Walsall, the club of many ups-and-downs which has now reached the Second Division.

They used to say the best pitches for turf were at Bury and Lincoln; in fact, the Lancashire club's friends thought this was a handicap, in the long run, as all the good visiting sides could be seen at their best at Gigg Lane. But, as I say, there is not much difference in pitches nowadays. It is the noise that tells!

The Tottenham crowd have certainly been kind to Burnley, and another tribute paid to London spectators was that of Joe Smith, the Bolton captain, after the Wanderers had beaten West Ham on the day, in 1923, when Wembley Stadium was overrun by the crowd at its first Cup Final. The United lost under impossible conditions, and Joe Smith made no secret of his admiration for their sportsmanship: there were thousands of their supporters along the touchlines and they could have stopped the game whenever they wished.

At the larger enclosures, like Wembley and Chelsea, the atmosphere, and the support of the crowd, does not get over. Ten thousand people at, say, Yeovil can make their presence felt more than 50,000 at Stamford Bridge. Wembley, of course, is a place apart. The crowd is 'miles' away. Perhaps this is just as well. There is sufficient strain at the final-tie, with the presence of royalty, the wonder spectacle of the massed Guards Bands, and the stirring community singing. So much so that one director of a club concerned in the final-tie said he was so worked-up he could not tell me the effects of 'Abide With Me' as it 'passed right over' him! Wembley is also different because of its virgin turf; only three or four games a season are played on it. But my experience is, the bigger the enclosure, the better the chance of the visiting team, as home support is less effective.

The team I'm sorry for are Queen's Park, the amateurs in the Scottish League. They play at 150,000 capacity Hampden Park before perhaps 5000 spectators. This would 'kill' most home teams. Perhaps they have got used to it!

Abroad, spectators are more excitable. The first time I heard them I noticed the difference. There is a sharper edge to everything that makes you wonder what you are in for. Some of the latest enclosures on the Continent are an eye-opener. The stands are mostly uncovered because they play during the better weather. The terraces rise almost straight up, like skyscrapers. Real Madrid's enclosure is no larger in acreage than Everton's at Goodison Park, if as large. But it will hold almost twice as many people when complete because the terraces start near the touchlines and rear up at a more abrupt angle. What is more, they are divided into at least three tiers. The people there look down on the proceedings from a great height. At the celebrated World Cup Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, where on two occasions they had 200,000 attendances and twice took receipts of �125,000 from a match during the 1950 tournament, the enclosure is more spacious and the view is lower but longer. Too far away to see properly? I always say that a soccer enthusiast prefers a long view to no view at all. Ask the thousands and thousands of chaps who have not yet been able to get a Cup Final ticket. I once offered a man a three-and-sixpenny ticket for the final and said, "I'm afraid you'll be a long way off at Wembley." As he clutched his ticket he replied, "It's a hell of a lot nearer than being outside!"

THE foreigners say we are too stereotyped in our football and not sufficiently adept at changing our methods to meet the needs of the occasion. Are they right? Where are we heading?

The styles of teams in English football vary to some extent, though not a great deal. At Burnley we try to match the method to the need. Thus Adamson and McIlroy deliberately slow down the game at times in order to pave the way for a sudden strike by the spearheads in attack - by Lochhead or Pointer in the middle, Connelly on the right wing, and Harris on the left. This may take the form of a sudden thrust down the middle, which is tried because Pointer has exceptional speed and has generally Connelly running into an inside position in support.

Our game, however, is certainly not built on kick-and rush. For years we have courted the more attractive style of neat combination, and this has been a definite policy of the club, plus the quirks, as someone called them. These are tricks of the trade-the short corner kick by which, say, McIlroy and Connelly have joined up near the flag and kept the ball close with a view to drawing defenders before crossing the ball into the goalmouth; the free-kick dodge near goal whereby Adamson and McIlroy have sought to deceive the defence . . . Adamson ran over the ball, McIlroy took the kick by pushing forward the ball to Adamson, who had advanced into the goalmouth. Such manoeuvres have proved well worth while, and have been noticed and praised. In brief, Burnley aim at scientific play as distinct from bustle and bite.

Tottenham Hotspur have always been an attractive team during my time and have a reputation for good football. They have proved that good football can win not only the League but the Cup, supposedly the competition of dash and devil. The Spurs made a welcome contribution to higher-class play when their tip-and-run team won the Second Division in 1950 by a margin of nine points and the First Division a year later by four clear points. This side owed much to a defence all-out for attack. No player was supposed to kick the ball more than thirty yards - this to ensure accuracy and retaining possession of the ball. It was good to see Ditchburn in goal rolling the ball to Ramsey at right-back, and Ramsey pushing it along the ground to either Nicholson or Burgess, the wing-halves. This pair often advanced a few yards, one supporting the other, before pushing a pass to, say, Baily, at inside-left. This was the tip and-run system and, of course, it involved ball-control, which is the beginning of accuracy, indeed the beginning of everything in soccer.

The greater Spurs team of today - greater because they have more power and resilience - play on a studied plan and, whatever the foreigners may say, we know they varied their game by stiffening the defence during the first leg of European Cup-ties abroad. The present Tottenham team pivots around Blanchflower and Mackay at wing half-back. They are the key men. Blanchflower has a deceptive swerve and can lob the ball accurately to his forwards; Mackay is a man of all jobs: he can adapt his game to meet the chaps who try to play rough, join in combination like a forward, go up the wing and make a centre, or send a throw-in into the goalmouth to create as much danger. White at inside-forward is the linkman, as Alex James was with the Arsenal, and can roam with great effect. At outside-left Jones can dash away like a greyhound, can shoot, and also head goals perhaps better than any wing man in Britain. The Spurs go out for the opening goal and generally get it, as Manchester United discovered to their cost in the 1962 Cup semi-final at Sheffield and we found out in the final.

This brings in Greaves, the goal-snatcher. He seems to live for goals. The half-chance is his speciality. How often you see a forward nip through a defence and then fail to beat the advancing goalkeeper, who smothers the parting shot! Greaves is expert in such situations and few forwards I have seen can keep so cool in this situation and steer the ball so accurately into the net.

If the Spurs do not get the first goal they are still a problem. The defence is solid. Mackay is back to help and the six-footer Norman at centre-half generally gets possession in the air when opponents grow frantic under resistance and start banging the ball into the goal area and trusting to luck. Whether the Spurs would beat the Arsenal's hat-trick Championship team of the 193o's others can argue. They are a bit more versatile that I'll say. The Arsenal jammed their penalty area with defenders, and what defenders! Male and Hapgood at back, Crayston, Roberts, and Copping at half-back! No wonder they called 'em 'The Iron Curtain'! Where the Arsenal deserve more praise is that they invented the Alex James business. The little Scot from Preston North End was the linkman, but of a kind different from anything that had gone before. He stayed behind the forward line and was solely a collector of the ball and purveyor of passes. Out it went to Hulme or Bastin on the wing, and the crowded Arsenal shunting-yard suddenly became an express train tearing away non-stop to the other goal. The Arsenal not only put London football on the map, they made a great contribution to the game up and down the country as crowd-pullers, and provincial people who grew jealous and called them 'Lucky Arsenal', and gave them 'the bird', are now sorry they spoke. We miss them.

Not enough credit has been given to the experiments of Manchester City, perhaps because they have been an in-and out side. But the Revie Plan undoubtedly won them the Cup in 1956. This, of course, was a forward-behind-the-front-line affair, said to have been copied from the Hungarians. If it was, why not? They've copied plenty from us. A Burnley man - Jimmy Hogan - taught them nearly all they know.

The Wolves set a great pattern, whatever some say of their 'open' game. They make their own stars and that's 55,000 times more creditable than buying 'em. The Wolves have had a wonderful knack of turning out half-backs such as Billy Wright, Flowers, and Slater, who was a forward before going to Molineux. Their open game is all-English, and the scoring power of outside-forwards like little Hancocks and Mullen was something any club in the world would remember with pride. The Wolves have a plan and stick to it. Some clubs seem to have no plan at all. The result is they get nowhere.

Unlucky Manchester United - unlucky because the Munich air disaster robbed them of one of the greatest sides English football has ever seen - build and buy. But products like Duncan Edwards and Colman testified to their training camp. The club style has been constructive, but the pattern has varied, perhaps because of Munich.

There are clubs who, somehow, stick to style. This is noticeable on Merseyside. Everton, by and large, have always been more elaborate than Liverpool, and, as they spent money so freely on forwards like Collins and Young, look like staying that way. At Anfield there has generally been more open play and dash.

Two teams who attracted me were West Ham United and Nottingham Forest. West Ham were twitted because they went 'all Continental'. But they made this fancy football pay even in the hurly-burly of the Second Division, the most hectic department in the League, and won the Championship of that section in 1958 by methods which, if they had played at Arsenal Stadium or Tottenham, would have received massed band trumpeting. The Forest won the Cup in 1959 by similar close, constructive, it-won't-pay-in-the-Cup methods. The 'prettiest' side of the season won the Cup that year.

There's a moral, somewhere, in all this. Let's put it in simple English: Good Football Pays. Rough stuff may, and does, get results. Stopping the other fellows pays off sometimes, unfortunately, and we all know it. If English soccer is to call back the crowds, however, we have all got to concentrate on scientific football. We have all got to develop the positional play they've studied and produced abroad.

ONE of the reasons why I did my best to secure the removal of the maximum-wage restriction from English football was in order to raise the social standing of the professional player and bring into the game a higher standard of recruit. Just before Tottenham Hotspur met Benfica in London in the European Cup semi-finals in 1962, a photographer took a picture of the motor-cars of the Spurs players at White Hart Lane and it was duly splashed in the newspapers: a dozen high-class automobiles in a row, including a couple of Jaguars, and all labelled as to make and owner for public identification. Why not? That is the new professionalism in the much-maligned soccer code. That is a darned good advertisement. That shows the good young player we hope to attract to the game the new possibilities. The joke of a League club manager: "There is no room for my car in our park, now" - this helped, as well.

Someone foresaw recruits from the 'varsities. Why not? Professional football offers a get-rich-quick career now. The game, as I see the future, will attract more players like Bill Slater, the English international of the Wolves (and Birmingham University), and Phil Woosnam, of Wales and West Ham United, who had a BSc to his name before leaving Leyton Orient. The change in the status of the professional player is a really hopeful sign for the future, all round, although the army of amateur players and white-collar workers in the London area may provide the Metropolitan clubs with earliest benefit.

And, talking of benefits, other new arrangements will help. A professional player in the League can pick up a �750 benefit at the age of twenty-two and additional �1000 benefits at the end of each five years' service. Not bad going for young men of this age. And that is not all. The League's attitude has changed mightily since the days when they tabooed special benefit matches for special stars. Now those who have remained loyally with one club and rendered distinguished service to the game are also granted farewell benefits. Stars like Tom Finney of Preston North End, Bobby Mitchell of Newcastle United, Billy Liddell of Liverpool, and Billy Wright and Jim Mullen of the Wolves, have all been the recipients of these extra gala benefit games, some of which have yielded over �6000.

These, of course, are extra-special awards, and should be so regarded. Obviously they cannot go to all and sundry, otherwise the clubs will be overburdened and the benefit match market overcrowded. But it is obvious from all these developments that the soccer star, far from being worried off his game by a risky, uncertain future, can gaze on a sunny horizon. The 'dead-end job' cry itself has died a sudden death.

I have endeavoured to give some idea of my fight for football during twelve years of experience in 'The Cabinet'. The fight continues. Some day England will restore prestige by winning the World Cup. Here's hoping The Day arrives at Wembley in 1966.

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