Upon his retirement from playing in 1973, McCreadie joined the coaching staff at Chelsea having made 410 appearances for the club. The side won the Cup Winners' Cup the following season, but McCreadie missed the final in Athens through injury. He had attended an East Stirling match to watch another player named Gourlay, but "this left-back – I thought, "why the hell are you playing here?

He was also a Scotland international, winning 23 caps between 1965 and 1969 after making his debut against England.

McCreadie started his footballing career with amateur Scottish side Drumchapel before moving to Clydebank Juniors and then East Stirlingshire. Edward Graham McCreadie (born 15 April 1940) is a Scottish former footballer who played at left-back, mainly for Chelsea. Mears then relented and offered him the car but with his sense of pride he did not come back to the club as he had already made his mind up. In April 1975 he was appointed manager but by this stage the team was in decline with the club heavily in debt and he couldn't prevent relegation to the Second Division.

Nevertheless, McCreadie re-built the side – taking the captaincy from John Hollins and giving it to 18-year-old Ray Wilkins in the process – and with no money to spend, put together a team of youth players and veterans from the club's heyday. A talented and pacy attacking full-back with impressive timing, McCreadie was a regular starter in the Chelsea sides of the 1960s and 1970s alongside the likes of Bobby Tambling, Peter Osgood and Charlie Cooke.McCreadie left for the North American Soccer League in the late 1970s and was appointed manager of the Memphis Rogues, with whom he played one game in 1979, [5] and later the indoor Cleveland Force before finally retiring from football in 1985.