As with Alf, what Jimmy lacked in pace, he made up with the phenomenal accuracy of his passing – ‘he could land a ball in a bucket from 60 yards,’ says the journalist Brian James. And Alf felt that Leadbetter’s usage of the ball from the deep could tear apart defences, just as Alf had done in the glory days of push-and- run.

Orthodox wingers were still the order of the day. Ramsey, however, confused and confounded opponents by instructing his left winger, Jimmy Leadbetter, to play a deep-lying role to the left of centre of midfield. Jimmy did this to devastating effect in 1961–2. He probed and prodded and used his astute vision and superb distribution to create numerous openings for his forwards. Opposing right backs who had been used to marking orthodox left wingers were unsure as to what to do. Because Jimmy played so deep, right backs were in a quandary. They didn’t know if they should forsake their normal position and be sucked into midfield to close down on Jimmy and thereby create space for the Ipswich left half John Elsworthy or stay put. Most opted for the latter and as a consequence Jimmy Leadbetter proved Ipswich’s unlikely hero. To look at Jimmy, you’d never think that here was a player blessed with football genius. The comic actor Sid James looked old when he was in his early twenties, but in his sixties Sid didn’t appear to look any older. This was the case with Jimmy. His gaunt features, receding hairline
and thin, bony frame made him appear more like the man from the Pru calling to collect the weekly insurance money than a top-flight footballer. Appearances, however, can be deceptive. Jimmy was a highly gifted, mercurial player with a very sharp football brain.

The focal point was Leadbetter, the converted outside-left: ‘I was supposed to be the left-winger but I wasn’t playing that game, I was pulled back, collecting balls from the defence – the other full-backs wouldn’t come that far out of defence to mark me so I had space to move in. As I went further forward, I could draw the full-back out of position. He wouldn’t stay in the middle of the field marking nobody, he felt he had to come with me. That left a big gap on the left-hand side of the field. That was where Ted played. He needed space, but if you could give him that and the ball, it was in the back of the net. With the lighter balls they play with nowadays, Ted could have scored from the halfway line because he could hit a ball! He didn’t always know where it was going himself, he had such swerve on it. Many a time the goalkeeper would go to the left and the ball would fly off to the other side! I enjoyed feeding people like Ray and Ted. It was a pleasure to give them the ball!’ As Alf’s former Southampton colleague Joe Mallett comments: ‘When he went to Ipswich, he deployed two players in deep positions, because as a player he had found himself in great difficulty when he had to look for his winger. If the winger went deep, he wasn’t sure whether he should go with him or stay at home. If the winger at Ipswich went deep, he had a lot of space to run with, to run at the full-back, which was exactly what Alf didn’t like to face as a player. He thought of his own deficiencies and built his team accordingly. This was revolutionary at the time, because wingers all stayed in the attacking half, alongside the full-backs.’ In Leadbetter, Ramsey saw so much of himself. Alf had been a better player – his collection of caps illustrated that perfectly well – but the two shared many characteristics. Both were slow, verging on the ponderous, but mentally each was razor sharp, quick to spot an opening, fast to react. Each had worked hard and become influential passers, their lack of pace forcing each to think deeply, concluding that crisp, timely and perfectly measured pass could do far more damage, far more quickly than running with the ball.