In recognition of his services to the club, Liverpool asked their recently retired manager Bill Shankly to lead the team out onto the field.

The match is mostly remembered for Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan being jointly dismissed from the field by referee Bob Matthewson in the 60th minute after they had a fight.

The FA Disciplinary Committee imposed tough punishments, but were themselves heavily criticised by people in football who doubted their competence.

In one case, at Liverpool, there was a straightforward solution which resulted in their young team taking, in the words of Leeds United's own website, "a vice like grip on the English game".

Reserve team coach Joe Fagan was promoted to be Paisley's assistant, and the Liverpool success story continued into the 1980s and beyond.

[15] Problems quickly surfaced, beginning only two days later when Mike Bamber, the Brighton chairman, accused Leeds of reneging on a "gentleman's agreement" to compensate his club for Clough's services.

[18] The 1975–76 Rothmans Football Yearbook stated frankly that the 1974–75 season opened on 10 August "with a shabby Charity Shield game at Wembley".

[16] It criticised "continuous brawling" among the players, which climaxed in the joint dismissal of Kevin Keegan and Leeds captain Billy Bremner for "swapping punches".

[19] The match started badly with an incident in the first minute of play, a tackle by Leeds striker Allan Clarke bringing down Phil Thompson who needed treatment.

[17] Phil Boersma opened the scoring for Liverpool in the 20th minute when he was first to reach the loose ball that had been blocked by David Harvey from a shot by Keegan.

[17] The match was notorious for the fistfight between Bremner and Keegan, who were jointly dismissed by referee Bob Matthewson after sixty minutes' play.

The final score was 6–5 and Liverpool were presented with the Charity Shield by Sir Stanley Rous, who had recently retired from his role as President of FIFA.

[16] On 15 August, a Harrow resident called Tony Barlow applied to a court of law requesting that summonses be taken out against Bremner and Keegan "for behaviour in a public place likely to cause a breach of the peace".

[16] On 28 August, the FA Disciplinary Committee charged Bremner and Keegan with "bringing the game into disrepute" and imposed what Rothmans described as "an unprecedented punishment".

[25] On top of their automatic three-match suspensions for being sent off, the FA fined Bremner and Keegan £500 each and banned them until the end of September, meaning they missed eleven matches each in total.

[25] In answer to this criticism, the chairman of the disciplinary committee, Vernon Stokes, admitted that "the punishments might not have been quite so severe" if the match had not been played at Wembley and shown on television.

In later years, he reflected on the 1974 Charity Shield and said: "Billy Bremner's behaviour was scandalous, producing one of the most notorious incidents in Wembley history".

[7] In response, the Leeds United website states that it was probably "six of one and half a dozen of the other", and that Clough's "one-eyed version of events" was coloured by his nightmare experience at the club.