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Eddie Baily obituary

Footballer key to Tottenham's 1950-51 league title success
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Eddie Baily on the ball for Tottenham Hotspur away against Blackburn Rovers in August 1948. Photograph: Colorsport
Wed 13 Oct 2010 16.14 EDT

The Tottenham Hotspur and England footballer Eddie Baily, who has died aged 85, went through a series of metamorphoses in his long career. As a player, he was, at first, the quintessential cheeky Cockney, a dazzling technician, a razor-sharp passer of the ball, excitingly quick in thought and movement, one of the best inside-forwards of his era. The way he played was reflected in the way he behaved off the field: self-confident, ebullient, sometimes to the point of arrogance.

But as a Tottenham coach, he emerged as a kind of robust lightning conductor to the dour Yorkshire-born manager Bill Nicholson, with whom he had played in the club's successful teams of the 1940s and 1950s. Then in later years, Baily became somewhat subdued.

Born in Clapton, in the East End of London, he began to attract notice in the mid-1940s as a member of the Finchley team of amateurs, then known as a Tottenham nursery. There he had a notable partnership at inside-forward with another future Spurs star, George Robb. Drafted into the Army, Baily served in Germany, and there became an outstanding member of the British Army on the Rhine representative team. He came very close to signing as a professional for Chelsea, but in the event, Spurs managed to keep him. It is hard to imagine the success of their push-and-run sides, under Arthur Rowe, without him.

Rowe, had been coaching in Hungary just before the war and, partly in consequence, wanted to build a Spurs team on the basis of "one-two" passing, alias push and run; a ball quickly given and immediately returned. The tactics worked wonderfully well. In the 1949-50 season, Spurs, long in the Second Division and overshadowed by their north London rivals, Arsenal, won the Second Division Championship, and in 1950-51 promptly won the Championship itself. Baily was a salient member of that team, and his partnership with a rapid left-winger in Les Medley was especially productive.

The first of Baily's nine international caps for England arrived in difficult but not unexceptional circumstances. In those days, England, with the manager, Walter Winterbottom, subjected to the whims of a so-called selection committee, tended to throw players in at the deep end. In the 1950 World Cup, in Brazil, they had just suffered the appalling humiliation of losing 1-0 to the US, in Belo Horizonte. If they were to stay in the competition, they had to beat Spain, in Rio. Baily was picked for that game, and played well, but England somewhat unluckily lost 1-0, and out they went.

For the next couple of seasons, Baily was in and out of the England team, scoring five goals in encounters with Northern Ireland and Wales, and involved in two against a powerful Austrian team. At Wembley in November 1951, his was the spectacular fall which enabled his Spurs colleague, Alf Ramsey, to equalise from a late penalty. The following May he played spiritedly against the Austrians in Vienna, where England won, thanks to a bravely taken goal by Nat Lofthouse. Baily's last international appearance came in a drawn match with Northern Ireland in October 1952.

After 69 goals in 325 appearances for Tottenham, in January 1956 he moved to Port Vale, and the following October to Nottingham Forest. There he continued to play with distinction, though the years and his new club's different tactics inevitably tempered his game. It was no longer the old, quicksilver push and run. Baily now was the senior professional, cleverly organising things in midfield, making shrewd use of the ball, complaining, on the train back to London after games, of what he disparaged as "marking".

Though, with a total of 14 goals in 68 matches, he had helped Forest return to the First Division in 1957, the following year he moved back to London and very near to his birthplace, joining Leyton Orient. After his final couple of years as a player, Baily became a coach, and in 1962-63 Orient achieved their sole season in the First Division. He was still very much the cheeky chappie, noisily exuberant.

However, it was a very different Baily who joined Nicholson as assistant manager and coach at Tottenham in 1963. A small man, barely 5ft 7intall, he had always relied on sheer skill and quickness. But now, woe betide the player who incurred his wrath. From his seat on the touchline, he would yell imprecations, even if there were no chance of the player hearing.

Martin Chivers, a big, gifted, somewhat casual centre-forward was an especial object of his sporadic spleen. In his book about Spurs, The Glory Game, Hunter Davies recounts an incident in Bucharest in 1971, where Spurs were playing an aggressive Rapid team in the UEFA Cup. Having abused Chivers throughout the match, Baily had the pleasurable mortification of seeing him score a remarkable goal. Davies described the look on Baily's face as, almost choking, he struggled for words, finally managing to gasp a compliment, which Chivers disdained.

But Joe Kinnear, a Tottenham defender for a decade from 1965, praised both Nicholson and Baily as a couple of gentlemen, with Baily taking the flak from the players on Nicholson's behalf. As time went by, Baily seemed to become increasingly disillusioned by the behaviour of the modern player, paid so vastly much more than he had ever earned. He deplored the way that such players would go out on the spree after a match, insisting that the thing to do after a match was to rest. He recalled how he, in his playing days, would push the baby's pram down to the shops.

His disillusion increased when he was obliged to leave Spurs in 1974 to become chief scout for West Ham United. Yet well into his coaching days he retained his exceptional skills, able to elicit admiration from the Spurs players when, in the gym, he would consistently hit targets with the ball that were quite beyond them.

He is survived by wife, Elsie, son, Graham, and daughter, Jane.

Edward Francis Baily, footballer, born 6 August 1925; died 13 October 2010