Crying for the moon: Leeds vs Wolves, 15th October 1938
Two teams with strong youth policies, two teams selling their best players to north London. Was it 'crying for the moon' to want quality players to watch?
Leeds fans had been doing patience for a long time. After the club's first yo-yo decade, manager Dick Ray took them into the First Division in 1932 and kept them there, finishing 8th then 9th. But rather than climb the table Ray nearly sunk them, and fans blamed his policy of waiting for young players to develop rather than getting the club's chequebook out.
Billy Hampson took over in 1935 but the policy didn't change, and only the goals of last-gasp signing Gordon Hodgson, a 34-year-old striker, kept them in Division One. Letters to the paper asked if it was 'crying for the moon' to want quality players to watch, but United stuck to their approach. They thought they had quality players: the young reserves had just won the Central League, and one of the youngsters, Bert Sproston, showed his worth in 1937/38 as Leeds finished 13th. And fans threatened to boycott when the board showed its true colours, selling Sproston to Spurs for £9,500 in June 1938.
Major Frank Buckley, the singular and famous manager of Wolves, might have thought that was the kind of board he could work with. Ten years later he did, becoming Leeds manager in 1948. He'd been in charge at Molineux since 1927, testing the local patience but getting results in the end: five seasons to get promoted to Division One, six more until they were challenging Arsenal for the title, finishing one point behind them in 1937/38.
Buckley seemed to take a perverse pleasure testing how far he could push his own supporters. In August 1938 Arsenal offered a British record £14,000 for Wolves' star player Bryn Jones, and Buckley took the money. Fans were outraged that Buckley was selling to the team they wanted to overtake and denying them the pleasures of watching their favourite player. Buckley responded in his own implacable manner, acquiring a new fox terrier and naming it after the player he'd just sold, taking the new Bryn Jones everywhere he went.