The video below features Allison, interviewed at Maine Road by Garth Crooks circa 2000, telling a slightly different story about the Daley deal but similar in essence. The thing was, Daley was a top First Division midfielder of the time but the pressure created by the huge fee simply destroyed him at City. People forget now but actually, at the start he put in some top performances; in that autumn of 1979, we beat Forest (who won the European Cup that season) and United (who finished second in the league that year), with Daley outstanding in both games. But he completely lost confidence in the disastrous losing run that started from Christmas onwards.
We didn't win a game between the weekend before Christmas and the week after Easter all but 4 months later, including some absolute humiliations (the worst of which was at Halifax in the Cup). And you could see the burden on him growing game by game. I don't know if anyone remembers, but we had a rearranged game against Everton at home on a Wednesday night in early April and we were leading 1-0 in the closing stages trying to hang on for a desperately needed win as we slipped ever closer to the relegation zone. Daley tried to waste time by passing back to Corrigan from near the halfway line only to unerringly find an Everton forward, who accepted the gift and equalised with a couple of minutes left. Poor old Steve got terrible abuse from the crowd, and he almost visibly seemed to shrink with every such incident. It was difficult for me not to feel desperately sorry for him.
As for the wider issue of bringing Malcolm back, it was clearly a mistake. In his entire career to that point, Allison had only ever prospered when he had Joe Mercer to rein him in during that first wonderful spell at City. To make him the overlord of the football system with Swales overseeing the finances and negotiating the fees created a perfect storm in terms of shaping the most disastrous possible combination a major club could have ended up with in charge of its business and team affairs, each egging the other onto fresh insanity. I actually have some sympathy with Mal when he says in the above video that the team had got old together and it definitely needed some judicious reshaping. His wholesale revolution went far beyond what was required, though.
The thing is, Tony Book in his autobiography suggests that by the autumn of 1978, his contract was due up at the end of the season and he expected the club to open talks with him about an extension. Instead, he was tipped off that the board was considering replacing him, with Bobby Robson viewed as the preferred candidate. Indeed, Book claimed he held talks with Leeds over their vacancy following Jock Stein's short-lived appointment and would have accepted an offer of the job but he lost out to the former Burnley and Sunderland manager Jimmy Adamson.
Now, had Leeds chosen differently, I'd have thought at the time that we'd acted both harshly and misguidedly in not making sure that Book was happy to stay at Maine Road. Now, though, to a large degree I regard this as a missed opportunity. I'd have been intrigued to see what Bobby Robson might have done at City with the squad that Book would have left him, the funds he could have raised from a couple of big sales and a decent transfer budget (but not one of the stratospheric levels applied to sign Malcolm's targets). Notwithstanding that we'd still have had Swales in charge and that would have boded ill, I actually think that Robson in the hot-seat might have turned out rather well. I certainly think we'd have avoided the serious on-field decline and crippling debt that beset us once Malcolm had left for the second time. Imagine a City that didn't have to limp through the 1980s after being financially crippled at the start of the decade. Even with the dreadful Swales in the chair, it could all have been very different.
I judge Book, on the other hand, more harshly than I did back then. He failed in my view to build on the position we were in after finishing second in 1977. Mick Channon was a quality player, but in a position that didn't need strengthening in our squad. We required a replacement for Colin Bell, which the Southampton forward very definitely wasn't and if you read Dennis Tueart's autobiography, you'll know that the Channon deal in effect also ensured Tueart's departure, arguably weakening us overall. A year later, we spent big on Paul Futcher, who admittedly seems to have been a sought-after player at the time owing to his appearances for the England under-21 side but who proved not to be nearly good enough and who again didn't address our issues in the middle of the park (forcing us to move for the cut-price and also ineffective Colin Viljoen instead).
So with the benefit of hindsight, I reckon that the board's reported plan of replacing Book with Bobby Robson would actually have been a sound idea. I think Book had lost his way and a fresh approach with maybe three key new signings would have invigorated the club without costing the earth. Moreover, though we can never know for sure, I suspect that the board ultimately feared being criticised for what would have been seen as harsh treatment of a great club servant in Tony Book. Yes, in my view, the most likely reason for reappointing Malcolm was that Book would stay if they did so, given that he basically owed Allison his professional career. I wish the directors had had the courage of their convictions.