£15,000, making his debut in March 1951. He made 155 senior appearances for Villa (148 in the League), before being sold during the 1954–55 season. In 1954 Blanchflower was bought by Tottenham Hotspur for a fee of £30,000, and during his ten years at White Hart Lane he made 337 League appearances, and 382 total appearances (scoring 21 goals). The highlight of his time at Spurs came with the 1960–61 season. With Blanchflower as captain Spurs won their first 11 games, a record for the top flight of English football and eventually won the league by 8 points. They then beat Leicester City in the final of the FA Cup to become the first team in the 20th century to win the League and Cup double, not achieved since Aston Villa in 1897. Blanchflower was voted FWA Footballer of the Year in 1958 and 1961. In 1962 he helped Spurs win the FA Cup, scoring a penalty in the final against Burnley. In 1963 he captained his side to victory over Atlético Madrid in the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup. During his time with Spurs he also had a short spell with Toronto City, alongside fellow Football League players Stanley Matthews and Johnny Haynes. Making his debut in 1949, he earned 56 caps for Northern Ireland, and in 1958 captained his country when they reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup. He was the first Northern Irishman to achieve a half century of caps when he played against Wales in 1962. On 4 December 1957 he captained the Northern Ireland team against Italy in Belfast, in a bad tempered game that came to be known as the "Battle of Belfast"; Blanchflower attempted to keep the peace as the game turned nasty. He finally announced his retirement as a player of 5 April 1964 at the age of 38, having played nearly 400 games in all competitions for Spurs and captained them to four major trophies. In 1965, Blanchflower briefly came out of retirement to play for Durban City. Blanchflower played three times for the club in the National Football League. Career as manager Following his retirement as a player, Blanchflower coached at Spurs for a number of years, and double-winning manager Bill Nicholson intended for Blanchflower to be his long-term successor. When Nicholson resigned from the club in 1974 however, Blanchflower found himself being passed over in favour