Len Glover
A series of niggling injuries spoiled both the beginning and end of Lenny's City career, but in the interim seasons his left-wing skills and pace bemused many an opposing full-back, and it was a genuine tribute to both his ability and personality that he became a firm favourite of the usually highly-critical Popular Side supporters, whose anticipatory roar whenever Lenny received the ball must have unnerved many an adversary.
He had first faced City as a Charlton teenager in the League Cup during 1962/63, and the £80,000 fee Matt Gillies paid for him five years later represented at the time an English record for a winger. Lenny's goals saw City through the first two rounds of their 1969 Cup run to Wembley (though his fitness to start the Final came down to a gamble), and two years later he regularly ripped Second Division defences apart as City sped to promotion.
Back in the top flight he laid on many of Frank Worthington's goals, and when City's entertaining 'nearly' team reached the Cup semi-finals in 1974, Lenny claimed the equalising (though eventually consolational) goal in the replay against Liverpool. After returning from America, he was involved in one last FA Cup campaign, with the oddest of results: having played for Kettering in a First Round victory over Tilbury in November 1977, Lenny had his elegibility officially queried by the losers - and Kettering eventually went out of the Cup after a replay had been ordered by the FA!
Subsequently retiring to the role of publican, he made a surprise return to football in the summer of 1994, when taking on the manager's role at Harlow Town; and in fact registered himself has a player in mid-season, making a brief active comeback in January 1995 as the first 50-year-old to appear in the Diadora League, shortly before resigning.
BACK TO FAMOUS PLAYERS















