BILL NICHOLSON

Bill Nick was not a man of poetry, according to those who knew him. He lived in a small, terraced house near White Hart Lane and was a one- club man – in both his playing and management career. He only ever got one England cap, but scored with his first touch. Looking at Nicholson, and his modest, kindly, uncle appearance, there was little that gave away his extraordinary life.

The Scarborough- born wing- half had honed his coaching skills as a sergeant PE instructor in the Second World War, which robbed him of a more illustrious career.

When Nicholson – who began at Tottenham on the groundstaff in 1936 – eventually took charge at White Hart Lane in 1958, the north Londoners lay 16th in the First Division. When he left them 16 years later, they had won two European trophies, a league and cup double, two more FA Cups and a pair of League Cups.

“He had a steely way about him,” Tottenham legend Steve Perryman told FFT. “We hear a lot of new terminology today, but none of it has taught me anything that Bill didn’t.”

Central to Nicholson’s philosophy was that Spurs should play with simplicity and flair. As a player, he was schooled under Arthur Rowe’s famous ‘ push and run’ side of 1950- 51 – the Spurs team that popularised using one- twos to keep possession.

While team- mate Vic Buckingham adapted the style abroad into a fluid system that later improved a developing Ajax, Nicholson merely solidified the key principles at Spurs when he took over, demanding that his teams should entertain. And that they did.

Tottenham beat Everton 10- 4 on the day he was unveiled, scored 115 goals in 42 matches as Nicholson guided them to the 1960- 61 title, and dispatched Atletico Madrid 5- 1 in the 1963 European Cup Winners’ Cup Final.

Amid all the style and success that followed Nicholson’s Tottenham, however, he insisted on keeping his men grounded. He specifically signed Jimmy Greaves for £ 99,999, so as not to give him the tag of being the first six- figure player. His team talks were similarly humbling: prior to the Atletico clash, he went into such detail about the opposition that his side were desperate to prove to their manager that they could beat them.

“For heaven’s sake,” midfield skipper Danny Blanchflower told his gaffer, “You’re making them sound like world beaters.”

Nicholson transformed his Spurs side several times during the 1960s and early- 70s before stepping aside in 1974. He was a revolutionary rather than an evolutionary, building on ideas he learned as a player to win. Such ambition was hardly in short supply.

Blanchflower has credited Nicholson with his most famous quote. “It is better to fail aiming high than succeed aiming low,” he reportedly declared. “And we of Spurs have set our sights very high; so high, in fact, that even failure will have in it an echo of glory.”