As parting shots go, Keith Burkinshaw's was an absolute zinger. 'There used to be a football club over there,' was the show-stopping quote coined to mark his exit from Tottenham Hotspur, fired despite winning the UEFA Cup.
There has been conjecture in the 41 years since about whether this is exactly what was said, or if something along those lines was put to him by a journalist and he nodded his approval or picked it up and ran with it and the headlines made an impact.
Either way, he is prepared to own it. 'That's how I felt,' says Burkinshaw, on an afternoon of reminiscence with his former captain Steve Perryman in the aptly named White Hart Inn, in deepest Somerset. 'There used to be a football club over there.'
Spurs were two up at the halfway stage of the UEFA Cup quarter-final when a knock on his door in the team hotel on the afternoon of the second leg of the tie against Austria Vienna informed Burkinshaw he would be required to leave at the end of the season.
When he asked if there might have been a better time to let him know, he was told there was no such thing as a good time.
'I was forced out,' recalls Burkinshaw, 89. 'They didn't want me there. I was too strong for them. The way I ran the club was to push the directors aside and say, "Look, we'll talk once a month but I'm going to be doing everything". They couldn't stand it. They wanted to be doing it when they'd no bloody idea how to do it.
'I knew if I carried on looking after the players without interference then we'd be a lot more successful. But they wouldn't accept that. That's why they got rid of me. We weren't doing too badly.'
'They' were Irving Scholar and Paul Bobroff. New investors on to the board, who became majority owners and made Spurs the first club to float on the London Stock Exchange. Scholar stepped into the role of chairman and was one of the prime movers in the formation of the Premier League.
These were changing times in football, anathema for someone like Burkinshaw, a no-frills Yorkshireman, who worked the pits, moved from non-League Denaby United to Liverpool and spent most of his playing career with Workington and Scunthorpe.
As a manager, although their tenures were separated by Terry Neill, he turned out to be a natural successor to Bill Nicholson, legendary manager of the Spurs Double winners in 1960-61 and much more, and another no-frills Yorkshireman who features regularly in the conversation inside the White Hart.
'From the boot room to the boardroom, Keith decided what went on, just like Bill Nick,' says Perryman, 73, the club's record appearance maker with 866 games who spent seven years under Nicholson and never calls him anything other than 'Bill Nick'. 'You need somebody to set the tone. Players need to know who is setting the tone.
'Now, with more levels, who is making decisions? At Tottenham, who signed Tanguy Ndombele? No one is putting their hand up. In Bill Nick's day there was no way of spreading the blame.He was the man just as Keith was the man.'
Tottenham go into Wednesday's Europa League final against Manchester United searching for their first European title since 1984. The future of Ange Postecoglou is uncertain. The Spurs boss could follow in the footsteps of Burkinshaw, ousted with his hands on the same trophy. And it is not the only parallel at play.
That campaign, like this, saw Tottenham hit by injuries and grateful to see a crop of youngsters, fringe players and unsung heroes seizing their chances. Glenn Hoddle, Garth Crooks and Ray Clemence had all been injured. Ossie Ardiles made the bench for the second leg (the final was over two legs in those days).
'We had a load of kids out there,' says Burkinshaw. Teenager Micky Hazard was the hero of the semi-final against Hajduk Split. Centre halves Paul Miller and Graham Roberts scored the goals in the final against Anderlecht. Tony Parks was the hero of a penalty shootout. 'It's the overriding thing about that victory, the people who came in and the way they carried it through,' agrees Perryman, ruled out of the second leg of the final after a yellow card in Brussels.
'The ball came, and I wedged it into the floor (with my studs up). The referee couldn't wait to get his card out and the Anderlecht players were running around like idiots, like they'd won the cup. I remember thinking, "Why are you doing that? I'm not that good". A few of them apologised after the second game.'
Anderlecht were later found to have bribed the referee against Nottingham Forest in their semi-final and, although it was a different referee in the final, it created doubts. 'When it was proven they bunged the referee against Forest — which may have done us a favour by the way — I thought maybe there was something going on with that yellow card. And maybe that was a bit of karma when we beat them.'
Perryman took a seat in the dug-out for the second leg at White Hart Lane and saw Anderlecht go ahead before Roberts scrambled a late equaliser and drama unfolded into penalties.
'We'd practised a little bit and handled it not too bad,' says Burkinshaw, who was among the first coaches in the country to embrace sports psychology, at the behest of physio Mike Varney. Morten Olsen missed Anderlecht's first and Danny Thomas stepped up with the chance to win it with Tottenham's fifth. His kick was saved and, as he made his way back to his team-mates, the Spurs crowd rose up and chanted his name.
'It was a very special night and an example of the whole club pulling in the same direction,' says Perryman. Another penalty taker was not required, however, as Parks saved from Arnor Gudjohnsen and Spurs, the first British club to win in Europe, had their third European trophy.
This was Perryman's third UEFA Cup final. The first two came under Nicholson, a win and a defeat. Victory came in 1972 against Wolves, a final secured with the help of two Perryman goals in a semi-final against AC Milan, after which he found himself the last person in the dressing room, feeling on top of the world when the club doctor walked in.
'He doesn't look at me, goes over to wash his hands, dries his hands, adjusts his tie and says to the mirror, "Bill Nicholson is an absolute genius". There's no one else in that room, he must be talking to me, so I said, "Why's that doc?" and he said, "because he nearly left you out tonight".
'Bill Nick was no flannel, no spin, no mind games, but I do wonder if, on that night, the doctor was sent in to bring me down off the ceiling.' Defeat two years later in a final against Feyenoord as Tottenham fans rioted in Rotterdam marked the beginning of the end for Nicholson. 'Some people think that finished Bill Nick,' says Perryman.
'That this great game he loved and put his life into had turned into this monster with people fighting. He didn't come into the dressing room at half-time, he was on the microphone appealing to the supporters trying to stop what was happening.'
Nicholson quit four months later. It was Burkinshaw who brought him back to the club from West Ham where he was scouting and made him a consultant. They became close. After every home game, he would call in at the Nicholson's family home, near White Hart Lane. 'He had an influence on me,' says Burkinshaw. 'I was there at Wembley when they won the Double and I thought, "Christ, if I can have a team playing like that, that's what I want". I knew then that was the way I wanted to play. A passing game. In those days, it could be physical.'
Tottenham went down in Burkinshaw's first season in charge. 'The spectators wanted me away when I was first there,' he admits, but he hung on to the job and they bounced straight back up, beating Bristol Rovers 9-0 along the way, a game when Nicholson was back in charge. 'My mother died the day before,' says Burkinshaw. 'I was up in Yorkshire, sat on my own in the middle of the hills. I didn't want to talk to anybody when that match was being played.'
Once back in the top flight, Spurs set about reinforcing with ambitious signings like Ardiles and Ricky Villa from Argentina in 1978 and Steve Archibald and Crooks two years later, integrating with homegrown stars such as Perryman, Hoddle and Chris Hughton.
In 1981-82, Tottenham went hard at everything. They won the FA Cup, lost the League Cup final to Liverpool in extra time, reached the last four of the European Cup Winners' Cup, losing to eventual winners Barcelona and finished fourth in the league, above Arsenal on goal difference.
'We had a fair side, and I was always pretty confident we were going to win something,' says Burkinshaw. 'I often think about if we'd had somebody there backing me rather than being against me, where could we have finished up because we had some bloody good players.'
The UEFA Cup winners of 1984 were brought back together to mark the 40th anniversary, last year, a reunion organised by Spurs at their training ground. 'Brooksy has since departed,' notes Perryman with sadness. Garry Brooke, who featured in early rounds of the campaign, died in January at the age of 64.
Burkinshaw has met Postecoglou. 'Seems like a decent fella,' he says, and has been a guest at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The decades have eased the bitterness of his exit, and he will be wishing his old club well in Bilbao.
'We haven't won anything for a while so to do that is terrific if it happens and the manager should be kept on and hopefully will be a success in the future.'
Burkinshaw and Perryman donated their fees for the interview to The Aortic Dissection Charitable Trust.
