Described by Dixie Dean as ‘one of the finest half backs in the history of the game’, Cliff Britton shared a quarter century long association with Everton as player and manager. Its first part was distinguished and Britton won the FA Cup, Second Division title and England honours. The latter – as Everton’s first ‘proper’ manager with playing and managerial experience already on his CV – was, by contrast, notable largely for its mediocrity, as he struggled to arrest Everton’s post-war decline.
A son of the west country, Britton started out playing local football as a teenager with Hanhem UM. In 1926, aged 17, he joined Bristol Rovers, and after 50 appearances joined Everton in 1930. He played enough games to earn a Second Division Championship medal in the 1930/31 season, but missed out the entirity of the following campaign when Everton lifted the First Division Championship. Everton’s selectors had deemed him too fragile for the rigours of the First Division and he was instead blooded as an outside right in the Central League.
Finally, in the 1932/33 season, Britton made a wing half slot his own. He made a crucial impact in that season’s victorious FA Cup run, setting up Everton’s first two goals in the final against Manchester City.
An extraordinarily gifted player, cultured on the ball and supreme in the pass, Britton dispelled the notion that a defensive player needed to rely on brute force to be a success. He was, recorded a 1936 profile, ‘One of the most gentlemanly and unassuming players in the game. An artiste in ball control and delightful to watch. Revels in linking up with the forwards, whilst his accurate lobbed centres are ever a menace.’
‘I suppose my asset was more on the ball and in a creative sense,’ he said in 1970. ‘I was not a big, powerful player –generally my playing weight was little over 11 stones – but I liked to read the game and come forward.’
Throughout the 1930s, Britton was an integral part of the Everton set up, a gifted member of a team that usually entertained, but often flattered to decieve. Everton’s league positions were mediocre and provided stark contrast to the club’s roster of illustrious players. They finished the 1933/34 season fourteenth, the next season eighth; 1935/36 sixteenth, 1936/37 seventeeth and 1937/38 fourteenth. Towards the end of the latter campaign, with Everton vaguely threatened by relegation, a veteran Jock Thomson was recalled at left half and Joe Mercer took Britton’s place. In the next twenty months Britton made just one further appearance, but Everton won the First Division title.
In 1934 Britton made the first of nine England appearances, against Wales at Cardiff. He played in one of England’s most distinguished teams, but is arguably better remembered for his part in the country’s war time internationals, when he formed a famous partnership with Mercer and Stan Cullis. ‘At the time of the openng of the war Britton was thirty,’ the author Jack Rollin recalled in Soccer at War. ‘Thus he entered an Indian summer of a career in which he certainly contributed towards thrusting sunlight on to many England performances.’
After the war Britton turned to management with Burnley and quickly proved one of the most outsatnding young bosses in football. In his first season he won promotion from the Second Division and took Burnley to the FA Cup Final, which they lost to Charlton Athletic. A year later he led Burnley to third place in the First Division.
Everton, by contrast, had suffered disaster after diaster in the post war era. Theo Kelly was manager, but had no aptitude for or real experience of the role or its demands. Everton had haemeragged their best players from the great pre-war team, mostly as a result of Kelly’s lack of man management skills. The board of directors meanwhile interfered in team affairs with disastrous effect. In early-September 1948 they were involved in a flurry of activity, making Albert Juliusssen – one of the worst acquiations in the club’s history – a record signing, and selling Jock Dodds – one of the few players to rise above the mediocrity of the post war years. They carried these dealings out whilst actively searching for a ‘professional manager’, rather waiting to see if the new man actually sanctioned them.
Their appointment was, of course, Britton, which, given his experience at Everton as a player and the outstanding potential shown at Turf Moor was the correct one. In agreeing to become Everton manager Britton laid down precise terms of employment to which the board agreed. These included: ‘Full power over everything appartaining to the players.’ He was given a salary of £2,000 per year and a five year contract.
The new manager was soon aware of the scale of the task facing him at Goodison. A minute from a board meeting on November 8, 1948 noted: ‘Mr Britton detailed his opinions of the playing personnel, on which only two or three seemed to be of the required First Division calibre.’ Britton detailed some targets and the board gave him a massive budget to acquire players.
He was allowed to approach Middlesbrough’s Wilf Mannion, a brilliant inside forward who shone for club and country. But his failure to buy him for Everton highlighted the difficulties in signing players during this era. Mannion was on a highly publicised strike at the time and desperate to leave Ayresome Park; he hadn’t played for Middlesbrough in months and any right minded chairman would have been desperate to sell him. But despite Britton bidding a British record £25,000 for him, Middlesbrough would not sell Mannion. A £16,000 offer to buy the Arsenal wing half Alex Forbes met a similar rebuttal; likewise Liverpool’s Cyril Done and Wolves’ Johnny Hancocks.
Instead Britton was forced to look at players from places like Doncaster, Rotherham and Ireland, where Everton visited on an end of season tour. It was a difficult situation, but Everton’s scouting system – with directors dispatched to watch players – was antiquated compared to that which Matt Busby was instituting at Manchester United.
There were predictably dismal consequences on the pitch. Everton finished 1948/49 eighteenth, and in the same position the following year, when relegation was only averted on the last day of the season. In November 1950 the board gave Britton a ‘unanimous vote of confidence’ but things did not improve on the pitch. Everton were relegated at the end of the 1950/51 season after finishing rock bottom of the First Division.
Britton had been in charge for nearly three years at this point, with ample time – even given the difficulties in the transfer market – to make his own impression on the team. But a month into the 1951/52 season, he blithely announced to the board that his team was not good enough to gain promotion and that he should be allowed to pursue a policy of giving youth players a chance. Such young players as Dave Hickson, Tony McNamara and TE Jones were given opportunities, but Everton muddled along in the wrong part of the Second Division for too long. They finished the 1951/52 season seventh and 1952/53 sixteenth – the worst two league positions in the club’s history. Only an FA Cup semi final appearance in March 1953 – added to one made three years previously – alleviated a dire situation for Evertonians.
Britton, however, was held in high regard by an inherently complacent Everton board. Despite his failures, in September 1953 he was made General Manager and given a new contract worth £2650 per year, plus a large house in Thornton and a car. When he finally won promotion back to the First Division, he was given a bonus of £2000 for getting Everton out of a predicament he had put them in. These were significant amounts at a time when players were earning around £15 per week.
There were, however, brief signs that Britton’s long term view might reap dividends. In March 1955, Everton moved up to fourth place, just four points behind league leaders Chelsea and with three games in hand. Ultimately Everton’s lack of quality showed through: instead of emerging as title challengers, they won just one of their last ten games and finished eleventh.
Although he had signed some good bargains, Britton’s record in the transfer market was questionable. Thwarted in his efforts to sign Mannion or Hancocks, in 1950 he made Harry Potts Everton’s record signing – a less than successful acuqisition. Even by the mid-1950s, the core of his team – Peter Farrell, Tommy Eglington, Cyril Lello, Wally Fielding – he had inherited from Theo Kelly. In September 1955 he caused consternation by selling Dave Hickson to Aston Villa and dropping John Willie Parker – leading scorer the two previous years.
Britton’s time in the Goodison hotseat came to a messy end in February 1956. As the directors planned a five week, ten game end of season tour of the United States they decided to appoint H.R. Pickering, a longstanding member of the backroom staff, acting manager in Britton’s absence – but without telling Britton first.
On hearing the news Britton was furious and after taking legal advice, claimed Everton were in breach of contract. He claimed two years salary as compensation and the termination of his contract. A panicked board agreed to rescind the offer to Pickering and wrote Britton a grovelling letter stating that they possessed ‘a collective desire to remove any sense of grievance which, you may entertain, however misconcieved it may be.’
Britton was not assuaged by the attempts at reconciliation. He attended an emergency board meeting at which further attempts were made to smooth the ill feeling. Instead Britton exploded into a rage, threatening that he ‘could ruin the reputation of every director’. According to a later statement by the board (and backed up by a copy of the document he presented them) he said that the the only way he would stay was if the board paid for a 40 year lease on his house. When this was rejected, Britton stormed out of the meeting, calling the directors ‘despicable men.’
Everton’s chairman, Ernest Green, was dispatched to calm him. He told Britton the view of Everton’s legal counsel that his walk out represented a breach of contract not by Everton, but by him, Britton responded that he sought no further part in the management of the club – and so ended his seven and a half year reign at Goodison. His demands for compensation were seemingly never met.
Britton made a quick return to management with Preston North End and brought the sort of success to Deepdale that had proved elusive at Everton. In 1956/57 Preston finished third and a year later came runners up. But Britton's disciplinarian approach was unpopular with his players – as it had been at Goodison, where there was a view that his ideal team would be comprised of 11 teetotallers.
‘He was obviously power mad,’ recalled Tom Finney, who was his star player at Deepdale, the sort of footballing genius Britton never got to manage for Everton. ‘I didn’t care for him and couldn’t tolerate the ridiculously overstrict and unsympathetic way in which he dealt with players… Cliff just didn’t know how to ease off and it led to some almighty rows.’
Britton resigned after Preston were relegated from the First Division in 1961. He then became manager of Hull City, winning the Third Division Championship in 1965/66. He held the position until 1970, but promotion to the top flight proved elusive.