It’s often said José Mourinho … don’t worry, this isn’t another column about José Mourinho ... it’s often said he could start a 22-strong media‑accredited brawl in an empty press room. But for services to the field of unnecessarily inflammatory quotation, deliberately incendiary riffing and consequence‑disregarding button‑pressing, Mou is the spiritual love child of Mahatma Gandhi and bed-in era John Lennon when compared with Bob Lord.

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On Sunday, Mourinho takes his side to Burnley, Lord’s old fiefdom, for a fixture that 60 years ago sparked wild scenes. In 1958, Lord, a wholesale butcher, was midway through the process of turning Burnley into one of the most successful clubs in the country. As chairman, he oversaw the construction of a modern training ground, implemented a successful youth development programme and appointed Harry Potts as manager. Potts would lead Burnley to the title in 1960, while Lord would go on to commission a couple of shiny stands at Turf Moor, both opened by his pal Edward Heath. An admirable body of work; Lord was an extraordinary man.

But his intense focus sometimes led to his missing the bigger picture. Quite literally when he made the myopic decision to chase the BBC cameras away during the 60s, when Match of the Day was busy turning players into stars and local clubs into nationally beloved institutions. That decision was mainly based on a misreading of the eternal importance of gate receipts, though Lord – a bluff, tell-it-as-I-see-it Lancastrian straight from central casting – was also wary of “a move to get soccer on the cheap by the Jews who run TV”.

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That observation caused a mass walkout from the Variety Club dinner at which he was the guest of honour. Small mercies but at least he apologised later. No such mea culpa was forthcoming before Burnley’s match against United in March 1958, which in retrospect was always going to kick off thanks to Lord’s old-school approach to grief management. Following the Munich tragedy, the world of football had rallied round. Liverpool were straight on the phone offering help; Aston Villa’s manager Eric Houghton drove Stan Crowther to Old Trafford and insisted his striker sign to ease the crisis. But when United inquired about the possible purchase of Burnley’s winger Brian Pilkington and striker Albert Cheesebrough, Lord’s response was short and not altogether sweet.

“I am just sick and tired of the whole business,” he boomed, 10 days after the disaster. “United may be in a jam but if they think they are coming to Burnley to pick roses off the tree, they better have second thoughts. When clubs offered to help it was with players sufficient to keep them ticking over, not to supply them with the cream of the country’s footballers. They’ll just have to fight their way out of it. They went into this of their own accord.”

Lord accused United of running around like Teddy Boys and said they risked losing the sympathy of the public post-Munich

Little surprise that when United rocked up at Turf Moor, they were ready to roll. Mark Pearson, the young left‑back, was sent packing for scything down the Burnley striker Les Shannon. Crowther picked up a booking, then went in for a finisher on the put-upon Shannon and was extremely lucky not to walk too. Harry Gregg responded to a penalty-area scramble by adopting a boxer’s stance and threatening to warm Alan Shackleton’s lugs; Shackleton fell backwards in surprise and was pinned to the floor by the fuming keeper.

At one point United’s stand-in manager, Jimmy Murphy, refused to return the ball from the dugout and was accordingly reprimanded by the referee. After the match he stormed into the Burnley dressing room to trade ideas and opinions with Shannon over a tackle on Bobby Charlton. Drinks sent to the United dressing room came whistling back in the saloon-bar style. Incidentally, the score was 3-0 to Burnley.

Lord doubled down on his earlier pronouncements, accusing United of “running around like Teddy Boys. It looks as if they don’t like losing. If United continue to play like this, they’ll lose the sympathy the public have for them”. Murphy pointed out that defeat was not really the issue, as they had been expecting to lose every match after the crash anyway. Aggrieved, he described Lord’s views as “shocking and disgraceful”.

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Which, to modern eyes, they were. Yet contemporaneous reporting suggests Lord had not wandered too far off piste. He claimed 80% of his mailbag agreed with him, while the Burnley Express and News described United as “bewildered Babes who have realised suddenly that the world is not all sympathy and adulation but a place of grim struggle and stern justice”.

The United-minded were in lockstep: the famous Times correspondent Geoffrey Green, who had fallen hard for the Babes and would later pen United’s official centenary history, delivered his verdict: “Matt Busby once said: ‘I aim to make footballers of my boys.’ They had better remember that … or tarnish a fine name. There is a limit to sympathy.”

Eye-opening analysis by today’s mores. Post‑traumatic stress was almost certainly an issue; Gregg, only 37 days before his donnybrook with Shackleton, was saving lives on the Munich runway. Then again, this was only 13 years after the second world war and generations had become inured to tragedy, the widespread loss of young life and the harsh necessity of carrying on regardless. In that context, Lord’s comments are perhaps easier to understand if not necessarily forgive. Either way, any post-match controversy generated on Sunday will have nothing on this.