George Kay is one of Southampton’s lost managers in history who went onto achieve greater accomplishments after his spell at the old Dell in the 1930s.
At the end of the 1946/47 season Kay lifted the Division One (now Premier League) title for Liverpool by a single point over closest rivals Manchester United on 56, when it was two points for a win and one for a draw up until the inauguration of the Premier League in 1992.
Three years later his Merseysider’s reached the FA Cup final, however the occasion would prove to be far from successful. After 90 eventful minutes at Wembley Liverpool were knocked down 2-0 by Arsenal, with two goals flown in by prolific striker in his day Reg Lewis who single handily stole the Cup from the hands of Kay.
Despite losing the Cup final within the space of four years since the reformation of the football league programme, after the Second World War, Kay had made up for his earlier misfortunes. Inside The Manchester born managers first year in charge at the Kop he struggled to get the ball rolling after 12 games, he gathered only three victories and four draws with the rest of the games resulting in defeat. At the end of the 1936/37 season The Reds finished 18th in the First Division narrowly avoiding relegation, but by the time he’d left in 1951 Liverpool were a top half team at the highest level of English football.
After finishing his first two years in management at Third Division Luton Town, where Kay was able to take the Hatters to best sixth place, he was brought down South to take hold of the managerial reigns of Southampton in 1931 after Arthur Chadwick resigned.
Unfortunately the “enthusiastic” Kay was unable to make the most of his five year tenure at the Saints. Every campaign of his saw Southampton finish in the bottom half of the Second Division table and endure financial difficulties. This led to the club having to sell main talisman Ted Drake in 1934 which didn’t go down well with the fans. The former Saints born and bred striker would go onto leave for Arsenal, where to this day he holds the record for the most goals (7) scored in an English top-flight game of football.
In 1936 Kay was asked to step down as manager so Southampton could restabilise their financial situation.
When a player Kay made his greatest impact at West Ham United from 1919 to 1926 where he made 237 appearances in the Hammers back line scoring 15 times.
In 1923 Kay and the East Londoners reached the first ever FA Cup final held at Wembley. Once the fulltime whistle was blown, Kays side failed to lay the hammer suffering a 0-2 blow to Bolton Wanderer’s where he started his playing days at in 1911. It was also called the “White Horse Final” due to pictures seen from the day of a mounted policeman on a horse who tried to disperse 10,000 spectators who broke free from one section of the crowd.
Within 31 years of that famous Cup Final day Kay passed away in 1954 at the age of 62 after having fought illness for a few years already which had forced him into finishing his football career at Anfield in 1951.
