Chivers, who has died aged 80, was the frontman of Nicholson’s swashbuckling side from the early 1970s, winning the League Cup twice as well as enjoying UEFA Cup success.<\/p>\n
Son of a Southampton docker and German mother, Chivers, who attended Taunton’s Grammar School, started his career with the Saints – having written to the club for a trial – and made his first-team debut at 17.<\/p>\n
Helping Southampton secure promotion to the top flight in 1966 under Ted Bates, Chivers continued to flourish alongside Welsh striker Ron Davies. After making it clear he wanted a transfer, a move to White Hart Lane followed in January 1968 for what was then a club and British record fee of \u00a3125,000, with Spurs winger Frank Saul going in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n
Rumour had it Nicholson was on the lookout for a forward who could hold the ball up to play alongside Jimmy Greaves and Alan Gilzean, someone in the mould of Bobby Smith, who had been an integral part of Spurs’ 1960-61 double-winning side – and ‘Big Chiv’ apparently fitted the bill.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Former Tottenham and England forward Martin Chivers, who has died aged 80. Photo credit: Dominic Lipinski\/PA Wire.<\/p>\n
However, having bought a townhouse in Epping, which was further away from the Cheshunt training ground than Nicholson would have liked, Chivers soon found himself at loggerheads with his new manager over more than his choice of residence.<\/p>\n
Nicholson would continue to challenge Chivers over what he saw as a lack of physicality in attack, a trait which the forward would later make his own.<\/p>\n
“One Friday, Bill came up to me and gave me two tickets to go and watch Geoff Hurst because he wanted me to see how he held the line,” Chivers recalled in a 2016 interview with the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n
“I was quite insulted, to be honest, because I was the record transfer at the time and he wanted me to watch another striker, but he wasn’t stupid – I learned a lot watching Geoff that night.”<\/p>\n
Chivers added: “It was an odd time with Bill. He was frustrated with me and I with him. I had suffered a bad knee injury not long after getting to Tottenham and all these arguments were hard on my confidence.”<\/p>\n
That serious knee injury at the age of 23 had threatened to derail Chivers’ Spurs career before it had got started.<\/p>\n
Indeed, such was the extent of the problem, the club had been in touch with the insurance company.<\/p>\n
But following extensive rehabilitation – which included running up and down the terraces carrying Spurs trainer Cecil Poynton – Chivers eventually returned to action stronger than ever.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the fans thought I’d made it,” Chivers recalled in an interview with the Tottenham Hotspur Opus.<\/p>\n
“Then, there was a famous game at home against Stoke City in October 1970. I got a couple of goals, one which could be considered my best.<\/p>\n
“I curled the ball round Gordon Banks after knocking Dennis Smith off the ball – which was no mean feat – and that was it. I was back.”<\/p>\n
Chivers went on to help Nicholson’s side reach four finals in as many years and scored both goals in the 1971 League Cup win over Aston Villa at Wembley.<\/p>\n
Spurs – with England World Cup winner Martin Peters having joined from West Ham and Greaves going the other way – finished third in the old First Division in 1971.<\/p>\n
![\"(l-r)](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/c18d1442-0536-4cc7-ab09-d08b5fe53952.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
(l-r) Mike England, Ian Gilzean, Martin Chivers, Ralph Coates and Joe Kinnear of Tottenham Hotspur pose with the 1972 UEFA Cup. Picture: Action Images<\/p>\n
The 1972 UEFA Cup final against Wolves saw Chivers take centre stage – and once more having been spurred on following a half-time dressing down from Nicholson.<\/p>\n
After heading Spurs in front at Molineux during the second half before Wolves equalised, Chivers then crashed home a 25-yard thunderbolt to give Spurs a late 2-1 lead to defend back at White Hart Lane.<\/p>\n
“I just unleashed the hardest shot I ever hit in my life,” Chivers told uefa.com in 2015 when looking back at what was the inaugural UEFA Cup final.<\/p>\n
“And I thought: if that’s anywhere near the goal, that’s going to trouble the goalkeeper – and it just flew in the back of the net. When you hit those old balls hard, it was like a missile.”<\/p>\n
In the second leg, a 1-1 draw, with captain Alan Mullery on the scoresheet, proved enough to secure Nicholson’s men another European trophy to add to the club’s 1962-63 European Cup Winners’ Cup success.<\/p>\n
The 1972-73 season saw Chivers again in fine form, finishing with 33 goals, as Spurs went on to lift the League Cup once more with a 1-0 win over Norwich and also reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup, losing to Liverpool on the away goals rule.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Tottenham Hotspur celebrate with the League Cup after their 1-0 win: (back row, l-r) John Pratt, Cyril Knowles, Pat Jennings, Martin Peters, Mike England, Steve Perryman, manager Bill Nicholson, Martin Chivers, Alan Gilzean; (front row, l-r) Ralph Coates, Joe Kinnear, Terry Naylor, Phil Beal<\/p>\n
Spurs suffered more European heartbreak the following season when beaten 4-2 on aggregate in the 1974 UEFA Cup final by Dutch club Feyenoord.<\/p>\n
Chivers had long topped Spurs’ European scoring list with 22 goals before he was overtaken in 2013 by Jermain Defoe and then later also Harry Kane.<\/p>\n
“That team was like a family,” recalled Chivers, who later became close friends with Nicholson, the pair sharing a mutual respect. “We played with a small squad, we all knew each other, we all knew our strengths, we stuck together.<\/p>\n
“We were lucky to stay away from serious injuries – even when 75 per cent fit we still played, they strapped us up and we went out there.<\/p>\n
“We loved the traveling and the club looked after us so well. They were such exciting times.<\/p>\n
“We scored a load of goals in Europe, not just me, everyone. It was tremendous. They were such great days and we loved every moment.”<\/p>\n
Chivers scored 13 goals in 24 appearances for England, winning his first senior cap in 1971. His last game came in the 1-1 draw against Poland at Wembley, when a memorable performance from goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski helped deny Sir Alf Ramsey’s side a place at the 1974 World Cup.<\/p>\n
“I was the top marksman in the country and rightly or wrongly people expected goals. That night I had been unable to deliver and it hurt,” Chivers said in his 2009 autobiography ‘Big Chiv: My Goals in Life’.<\/p>\n
With Nicholson having resigned to be replaced by Terry Neill in September 1974, the 1975-76 season proved to be the final campaign at White Hart Lane for Chivers, who had been struggling again with injury, before joining Swiss club Servette.<\/p>\n
Chivers made a total of 367 appearances for Spurs, scoring 174 goals to sit in the top five on the club’s all-time list.<\/p>\n
He later had spells back in England at Norwich and then briefly Brighton, managed by his former Spurs team-mate Mullery, before a stint as player-manager at Southern League Dorchester. Chivers also played at Norwegian side Vard and had 10 games for Barnet in 1982-83.<\/p>\n
After his retirement, Chivers stepped back from the game to run a hotel and restaurant in Hertfordshire.<\/p>\n
In May 2008, Chivers took up a role as the National Development Manager to the Football Association and also did media work with BBC Radio.<\/p>\n
He remained a regular at Tottenham home games and was a member of the club’s matchday legends hospitality team.<\/p>\n
Chivers is survived by his wife Julia, their sons Nick and Luke, as well as his daughters Andrea and Melanie, along with grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chivers, who has died aged 80, was the frontman of Nicholson’s swashbuckling side from the early 1970s, winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112,3568],"class_list":{"0":"post-233684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tottenham-hotspur"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}