Leeds United legend Allan Clarke fears club could go down 50 years after FA Cup triumph

Half a century ago, Allan Clarke picked up an FA Cup winner's medal from the Queen after his diving header proved the winner against Arsenal.

On the same day, this earnest scribbler won a runners-up bronze medal for playing the violin at the Watford Music Festival, returning home just in time to see Leeds United legend Clarke stooping to conquer from Mick Jones' cross.

Show us your medals? If the eight-year-old violinist's screeching was a tribute to scalded cats, Clarke was top cat at Wembley in the Centenary FA Cup final.

This weekend, Leeds play Arsenal again – with the stakes arguably even higher. While the Gunners are chasing a return to Champions League orbit, Leeds suddenly look most vulnerable to join Norwich and Watford back in the foothills. “I'm worried for the supporters,” said Clarke, now 75 and still a fiercely loyal torchbearer for the empire Don Revie built at Elland Road – to the extent that he still insists on calling Leeds' greatest manager 'Gaffer' 33 years after his death.

The former England striker known as 'Sniffer' – once Britain's most expensive transfer signing at £165,000 in 1969 - is also righteously sniffy about the lop-sided landscape of a league where money talks loudest. He said: “Staying in the Premier League is a big achievement in itself now because it's not a level playing field any more.

"You can go out and spend £1billion to buy success when you are owned by a foreign government and money is no object. But even if Leeds United went out and spent hundreds of millions now, they would never, ever replicate what the Gaffer built. These fans deserve to watch a team in the top league because they stayed loyal when the club was going through hard times not so long ago.

"But I