Queens Park Rangers technical director Chris Ramsey has opened up on what it was like as a black player in the 1970s and 80s.
The former Tottenham academy coach, who managed the Hoops in 2015, was a guest on a special TalkSport programme last week which focused on racism in our national game and how things have progressed over the years.
And Ramsey, who returned to Loftus Road at the beginning of this year as the club's technical director, opened up on what it was like being a "first generation" black player in England.
Ramsey said: "Socially there were a lot of problems, the National Front and what went on and football clubs were used as a vehicle for a lot of political opinions and anyone playing at that time had to put up with a lot of things that people would be appalled by now.
"What you were being called was routine language and how people described people as routine language I don't think a lot of players now would understand how difficult it was and how thick skinned you had to be.
"You got the obligatory banana and the obligatory monkey chants wherever you went and the hardest thing I think for most people is turning a blind eye to poor behaviour and poor language that you really shouldn't have had to put up with."
Ramsey, who started his youth career with Bristol City in 1978 and moved on to Brighton & Hove Albion, also said how good Brighton manager Alan Mullery was with him when he was a player.
"Alan Mullery was brilliant for me," the 55-year-old admitted. "I was getting monkey chants and abuse and at half-time in one game he pulled me aside in a friendly, fatherly manner and said 'look, people are only doing that because you're doing well, what you've got to realise is people want to be like you and because you're doing well you're going to get this abuse.'
"He had a chat with me, helped me to see I couldn't keep retaliating every time someone did something to me because that would be my downfall."
Things are much different now, but Ramsey believes more still needs to be done.
He said: "It's come a long way since those days back in the 70s.
"I think what happens is you do get lots of people who say 'you don't get any racism' because this country is such a melting pot and it appears that everybody gets on, but there's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes, covert behaviour that doesn't allow people to move to where they need to be.
"Unless we start unearthing that covert behaviour, it's going to stay the same, it will look nice on the top but it will be very different behind the scenes.
"All the main stakeholders that govern football, all of them, they're all in it together, they all benefit from each other, so whoever benefits from it has to be the one to get in there and unearth the poor behaviour that stops people from moving on."
