Ian Greaves

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Ian Greaves
Personnel
Surname Ian Denzil Greaves
birthday May 26, 1932
place of birth Crompton ,  England
date of death January 2, 2009
Place of death Ainsworth ,  England
position defense
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
until 1953 Buxton United
1953-1960 Manchester United 67 (0)
1960-1961 Lincoln City 11 (0)
1961–1962 Oldham Athletic 22 (0)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1968-1974 Huddersfield Town
1974-1980 Bolton Wanderers
1980-1982 Oxford United
1982 Wolverhampton Wanderers
1983-1989 Mansfield Town
1 Only league games are given.

Ian Denzil Greaves (born May 26, 1932 in Crompton , † January 2, 2009 in Ainsworth ) was an English football player and coach . As part of Manchester United's "Busby Babes" , the defender won the English championship in the 1955/56 season. Later he was almost three decades coach in English professional football and particularly successful with Huddersfield Town , Bolton Wanderers and Mansfield Town with respective promotions.

Athletic career

Player career

Greaves joined Manchester United from Buxton at the age of 21 . As a tall and robust defender, he seemed a bit cumbersome and not many predicted a football career at the highest level for him. After his debut on October 2, 1954 against reigning champions Wolverhampton Wanderers (2: 4), he then represented the injured Bill Foulkes on the right defender position in the season 1955/56 . He did this in 15 league games on the way to the English championship so much to the satisfaction of coach Matt Busby that the meanwhile recovered Foulkes only recaptured his previous place in the following season. In the successful title defense in the season 1956/57 Greaves took only a minor role with three league appearances. In February 1958, he was not part of the Manchester United squad, who flew to Belgrade for the away game in the European Cup and had an accident on departure from the return flight stopover in Munich .

After the "Munich Air Disaster", Busby's assistant Jimmy Murphy Greaves called the left defender and there he completed the final of the FA Cup , which was lost 2-0 to Bolton Wanderers . In the subsequent 1958/59 season he remained a constant on the left before a knee injury heralded the end of his time in Manchester. In December Greaves left the club in the direction of the second division side Lincoln City . However, he did not stay there for half a year before he let his active career end with Oldham Athletic until 1962.

Coaching career

The first head coach station of Greaves was from 1968 Huddersfield Town . He led the club two years later to win the second division championship and the associated promotion to the English House of Lords. There he managed to stay up, but in the second year Greaves went back to the second division with Huddersfield and in the following year it even went down to the third division before he left the club in 1974 after a dispute with the management. Then Greaves joined the Bolton Wanderers , who then played in the Second Division. He was initially an assistant to Jimmy Armfield before it moved to Leeds United as the successor to Brian Clough . On the recommendation of Armfield, Greaves was promoted to Bolton's new head coach - four hours before the home game against FC Orient on October 5, 1974. He rejuvenated the team in the following years and initially led it into the secured midfield. The first highlight was reaching the semi-finals of the League Cup in 1977 , which the club had never achieved before. The following year, Bolton rose as the second division champion in the English first division and Greaves then received the award for best second division coach, after he had already won the monthly ratings in January 1975, November 1976, August 1977 and October 1977 for the club.

The further course of the sport was similar to that in Huddersfield. First Greaves succeeded in having Bolton relegation , but for the second year followed the crash to the bottom of the table . In January 1980 he was released, although two days earlier he had reached the fifth round of the FA Cup with his men. Significantly responsible for the dismissal were the increased expectations in the club, which Greaves could not meet, although he had exceeded the record transfer amount for new signings four times - and especially with Len Cantello had been "wrong".

In the same year 1980, Greaves took on the next coaching job at Oxford United and two years later he worked briefly with Wolverhampton Wanderers . After another assistant position at Hereford United , he took over the reins of Mansfield Town from January 1983 . He led Mansfield to promotion from the fourth division in 1986 and a year later to victory in the Freight Rover Trophy . The engagement ended in February 1988 and Greaves then worked for various clubs in the scouting area .

He died near Bolton in January 2009 at the age of 76.

Title / Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ponting, Ivan: Manchester United Player by Player . Hamlyn, London 1998, ISBN 0-600-59496-3 , pp. 36 .
  2. ^ Marland, Simon: Bolton Wanderers - The Complete Record . DB Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-1-85983-972-0 , pp. 227 f .
personal data
SURNAME Greaves, Ian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Greaves, Ian Denzil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Crompton
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 2009
Place of death Ainsworth