club's 45 goals in the league and added two more in other competitions. Just four years later Maccabi Tel Aviv found themselves for the first time in a relegation battle, with the final week of the 1975–76 season seeing no less than nine clubs battling it out to stay in the upper tier. Maccabi beat Beitar Jerusalem 2–0 with goals from strikers Rachamim Talbi and Benny Tabak, thus escaping what would have been the first drop in the club's history. In April of that same year, leaders of the English Football League First Division, Queens Park Rangers, arrived in Israel for a friendly to face a Maccabi Tel Aviv side bolstered by three of the Israeli Premier League's brightest stars of the time: Maccabi Netanya strikers Mordechai "Motaleh" Spiegler and Oded Machnes and Beitar Jerusalem midfielder Uri Malmilian. Maccabi won the match, 2–1, with goals from Malmilian and Spiegler. A year later and once again Maccabi Tel Aviv went from near disaster to the league summit, securing in the 1976/77 season their second double of the decade. They won the title three points ahead of Maccabi Jaffa and with 47 goals, the highest number in the league. Striker Vicky Peretz finished as the league's leading goal scorer with 17 league goals and another five in IFA Cup competition. But it was Benny Tabak's lone goal against Beitar Tel Aviv in front of 30,000 spectators at Bloomfield Stadium that earned Maccabi the IFA Cup and their second double in the space of seven years. Among the great Maccabi players of the time were strikers Benny Tabak and Vicky Peretz and the late Avi Cohen, who earned the nickname "Libero" (from the Italian, a fullback who is given freedom – libero – to roam from his position to play a role in offence as well) and is thought to be one of the greatest defenders in the history of Israeli football. One of his most memorable goals was in a 2–0 derby victory over Hapoel Tel Aviv in 1978, when the defender struck an absolutely unstoppable ball from the edge of the area straight into the opposition net. Vicky Peretz and Benny Tabak are remembered as two of the greatest strikers in the history of the club, with the former scoring 67 and the latter 121 goals in the yellow and blue jersey of Maccabi Tel Aviv. 1980s The 1980s saw a