Eddie Gray (footballer, born 1948)

Edwin Gray (born 17 January 1948) is a Scottish former football player and coach.

Gray was a cultured winger, who was an integral member of the legendary Leeds United team of the 1960s and 1970s, later twice becoming the club's manager.

As the Leeds team grew in stature and experience through the 1960s, Gray became a vital component of the team.

He made his first team debut on New Year's Day 1966, less than three weeks before his 18th birthday, and would go on to play for the club for almost 20 years.

A winger in the classic mould, Gray was feted in world football for his ability to beat opposing full backs for skill, pace and thought.

In 1968, he was in the Leeds team which won the League Cup and the Fairs Cup double, scoring winning goals in both semi-finals, including a memorable individual goal against Brian Clough's Derby County in the semi-final of the League Cup.

However injury meant he missed the second leg of the Fairs Cup final.

He was then an important part of the team that won League championship a year later, making 33 appearances and scoring five goals, during a season in which United scored a record number of championship points and lost only two matches along the way to conquering the title.

Gray played in 12 full international games for Scotland between 1969 and 1977.

His two goals against Burnley in 1970 feature in Leeds United's Greatest 100 goals – the second of which is widely regarded as the greatest Leeds United goal of all time and recently featured in The Times as one of the five greatest ever goals.

However it was in 1970 that he would make his most famous appearance in a Leeds shirt.

The team was chasing a unique "treble" of League championship, FA Cup and European Cup with Gray in sparkling form.

He had already scored what many fans of the club call the greatest goal ever by a Leeds player – a solo run past several Burnley players which involved flicks and dragbacks as he somehow got to a shooting position from a position on the goal-line well to the left of the goal – when his day came at Wembley for the 1970 FA Cup Final against Chelsea.

Gray's marking full back was David Webb, a steady but undistinguished defender whom, for the 90 minutes and extra-time period, Gray tormented.

Webb was repeatedly left on his backside or looking the wrong way as Gray ghosted past him, including one run where he cut inside onto his 'weaker' right foot and crashed a shot against the crossbar.

Though Leeds dominated the match, the game still ended 2–2 and a replay was required – Gray had taken the corner which had allowed Jack Charlton to open the scoring.

In the replay, Chelsea changed tactics and put the more uncompromising Ron Harris on to Gray and as a result, the danger was snuffed out – Harris badly injured Gray with a brutal tackle to the back of the knee.

Chelsea won 2–1 and, in a final twist, it was Webb who scored the winner.

Leeds lost the League championship race to Everton and the European Cup semi-final to Celtic, thereby ended with nothing.

Gray's frequent battles with injury started, and he missed more than half of the 1970–71 season, during which Leeds again snatched League championship defeat from the jaws of victory but won the Fairs Cup for the second time against Juventus.

He found devastating form again for part of the 1971–72 season in which he was part of the team that destroyed Manchester United and Southampton consecutively at Elland Road, by scorelines of 5–1 and 7–0; the match footage of both games would become iconic.

Later in the same season he featured in the team which won the 1972 FA Cup Final against Arsenal and featured again in the following cup final which Leeds surprisingly lost to Sunderland.

He missed the controversial 1973 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Final defeat to A.C. Milan, and missed most of the season in 1973–74 when Leeds won the League title again thanks to more injury woes.

These injuries had become so frequent that when Brian Clough succeeded Don Revie at Leeds United, he began his first team meeting by stating that if Eddie Gray had been a horse, he would have been shot long ago.

His performance on the wing earned the famous tribute from Revie that when he plays on snow, he doesn't leave any footprints.

Gray played in the team which reached the 1975 European Cup Final in Paris, featuring in the home victory against the Spanish champions Barcelona in the semi-final, during which Gray tormented his marker de la Cruz and pushed Barcelona onto the back foot, allowing Leeds to dominate.

However, he was left from the starting line up for the final by manager Jimmy Armfield, which Leeds would go on to lose controversially to Bayern Munich.

Also featuring in this campaign was his younger brother Frank, who had likewise come through the ranks at Elland Road.

This was the swansong of the great Don Revie team (Revie himself had left a year earlier to take over as England manager) and Gray's teammates started to leave the club.

Besides his two stints with Leeds, Gray also managed Whitby Town, Rochdale and Hull City during the 1980s.

By the early 1980s, Gray was the only player from any part of the Revie era still at the club (although Peter Lorimer and David Harvey would later make comebacks).

Converted to left back, Gray prolonged his career and was in the side which was relegated under former teammate Allan Clarke in 1982.

He was appointed MBE in the 1983 Birthday Honours.

Gray was born in Glasgow and brought up in the city's Castlemilk district.

He was a schoolboy international for Scotland.

He had aspirations of signing for his boyhood team Celtic, but signed professional forms with Leeds United at the age of 16.

In 2000, Gray was voted as the third Greatest Leeds United player of all time, surpassed only by his club captain, Billy Bremner (No. 1) and John Charles (No. 2).

He was also voted into the Greatest Leeds United team of all time.

On 9 May 2013, Gray was also appointed as Leeds United football Ambassador.

Gray was also inducted into the English Hall of Fame on 25 September 2013 at an awards evening in Manchester.