Giddy lust, but Duncan McKenzie couldn't change Leeds
Eddie Gray grew a fashionable beard. Norman Hunter came back from visiting his sister in California wearing a bead necklace and Duncan McKenzie made fun of him for going 'mod'.
Duncan McKenzie didn't play for Leeds against Anderlecht in 1975, although eighteen months afterwards he was playing for them. His first experience of European football collapsed under his inexperience, when he was sent off fifteen minutes into his European Cup debut. Ujpest Dozsa had made it clear by then that they were out to kick all the skills out of the slender young forward Leeds had paid £250,000 for. He was a better candidate for kicking than Billy Bremner. And he showed it, kicking one of his assailants back and getting ordered off before he'd even got going.
In a way that was McKenzie all along at Leeds. Much has always been made about the difficulties of breaking up the legendary team of the 1960s and 1970s after Don Revie, unwilling to face the job himself, left to manage England. But it was another challenge for Jimmy Armfield, picking up the managerial pieces after Brian Clough's 44 days, to get that old team to integrate the big money new boy who Clough had signed.
Since Mick Jones and Allan Clarke, the new boys Revie had signed had tended to be just that, boys, young players who could spend time in the reserves learning the Leeds United way before coming into the team, emulating the educations of Revie's first wave of young players. The Sprake, Reaney, Hunter, Madeley generation had been followed through the system by Harvey, Lorimer and Eddie Gray, then more recently by Cherry, Frank Gray, Jordan and McQueen.
Duncan McKenzie was something new. McKenzie was 24, a man in age but with only three full seasons of experience, the last two in Division Two after Nottingham Forest were relegated in his first. It wasn't uncommon when Johnny Giles yelled at him, "What the bloody hell do you think you're supposed to be doing?" after McKenzie had dribbled past four Arsenal players and won a free-kick on the edge of the area. He'd thought his teammates would be pleased. They were all standing fifty yards away, thinking the same thing Giles was saying. How were they expected to get on with winning matches, with this pup thrown into their midst?