Les McDowall

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Les McDowall was an English football player and manager. He managed Manchester City between 1950 and 1963, and then Oldham Athletic until 1965.

Mcdowall was the longest serving manager in the clubs history spanning 13 years, having played for and captained City in the late thirties and forties he briefly moved to Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground to take up the managerial post before being brought back to Maine Road in 1950 and installed as manager.

The Club was languishing in the second tier of English football, Mcdowall set to work building a solid team and soon saw the fruits of his labour, with the Club returning to the first division the following season.

Solid if unspectacular progress was made in the early fifties, with some notable results along the way; the most significant being a handful of derby victories against Manchester United. Mcdowall was an innovator, undoubtedly ahead of his time, inspired by the great Hungarian side of the era he pioneered the use of wing backs and the deployment of a forward playing between the strikers and midfield. These revolutionary tactical systems, more commonly associated with the game as we know it today, were not an instant success however and City leaked more than five goals in a game on three occasions in the 1955-56 season.

Don Revie was a key player in McDowall's team and it was with Revie that he masterminded the Revie Plan, centered on the plan's namesake playing in a withdrawn striker's role. McDowall's tactical brainstorming and tinkering, which had generally been met with scorn and derision from the majority of fans at Maine Road, eventually bore fruit and the club was rewarded with consecutive appearances in the FA Cup finals of 1955 and 1956, winning the latter against Birmingham City.

The mid fifties were the high points of McDowell's career as manager of Manchester City. An ageing team and limited resources saw the club begin to wane and fall towards the foot of the first division by the beginning of the sixties, culminating in relegation to the second division in the 1962-63 season. With relegation came the end of McDowall's tenure at Manchester City. He went onto manage Oldham Athletic.

As well as being an innovator, McDowall must also be commended for being at the forefront of introducing foreign players into the English game, most notably Bert Trautman, the German prisoner of war, who played in goal for Manchester City for the majority of McDowall's time at the Club. Coming so soon after the Second World War, the move was met with anger and derision among many in the football community; however Trautman remains among the most loved and fabled Manchester City players to this day.