From the New Statesman
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/07/last-champions
The Last Champions
Leeds United’s title win of 1992 was the last of its kind in many ways.
November 1992. Éric Cantona joins Manchester United from Leeds United
for £1.2m. In the previous season, the last of the old First Division,
Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds had beaten Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United to
the title, the arrival of tempestuous France striker Cantona in February
supposedly being the catalyst for Leeds’ triumph. They clinched the
honour when Manchester United lost 2-0 to Liverpool, after which
Ferguson told the ITV cameras that “Leeds haven’t won the league.
Manchester United have lost it.” The following season, Cantona became
the creative centre of Ferguson’s United as they ended their 26-year run
without a title. The narrative formed that Ferguson succeeded in
handling Cantona, the difference between winning the league and losing
it, where Wilkinson ultimately failed – the first of many managers seen
off by Ferguson as his side dominated the new Premier League.
But is this fair? In his new book, The Last Champions: Leeds United and
the Year That Football Changed Forever (published by Bantam Press), Dave
Simpson busts the Cantona myth – he only scored three goals for Leeds in
1991-92, none of which changed matches – and breaks the mould in
exploring team-building. The current fashion in football writing is to
examine how managers built dynasties: Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the
Pyramid shows how Herbert Chapman won consecutive titles at Huddersfield
Town and Arsenal, how Helenio Herrera made Internazionale into Italy’s
leading club and how Valery Lobanovsky brought long-term success to
Dynamo Kyiv, whilst Graham Hunter’s book on Barcelona praises the
structural planning that made them the world’s most technically advanced
club. Conversely, Simpson asks how Wilkinson achieved his singular
success and why it has been so neglected within the history of English
football, and even within that of Leeds United.
This was Leeds’ third (and, as it remains, last) championship. The
previous two were won by Don Revie in 1969 and 1974, after which he
became England manager and was replaced, infamously, by nemesis Brian
Clough, whose 44-day reign was dramatised in David Peace’s dark,
paranoid novel The Damned United. Revie turned Leeds from Second
Division also-rans into a domestic and European force, changing their
kit from blue and yellow to white to channel the spirit of Real Madrid,
his club’s insularity infuriating Clough and others but proving central
to their decade-long challenge for major honours.
Leeds’ long decline began in the mid-Seventies; the board appointed
several former members of Revie’s team as managers in unsuccessful
efforts to recapture the past. In 1982, under Revie favourite Allan
Clarke, Leeds were relegated; he was replaced by another, Eddie Gray,
and then Billy Bremner, neither of whom could return them to the First
Division. Finally, in October 1988, with Leeds fighting demotion to the
Third Division, Bremner was sacked. As we learn here, managing director
Bill Fotherby, having already made an audacious effort to sign Diego
Maradona, tried to persuade Bobby Robson to quit England for Leeds –
Robson declined but recommended Sheffield Wednesday manager Howard
Wilkinson, who agreed to step down a division, convinced that he could
revitalise the former champions.
Wilkinson, a pragmatic and intelligent disciplinarian, succeeded where
Clough failed in removing all Revie mementoes; he reorganised the board,
demanding influence over all aspects of the club. Breaking up cliques,
introducing harder training and dropping several players, ‘Sergeant
Wilko’ quickly turned Leeds around, winning the Second Division in 1990
and finishing fourth in 1991 before his unexpected and unrepeated
victory the season after.
Wilkinson signed a certain type of player to get Leeds out of the Second
Division and another on promotion, making notorious ‘enforcer’ Vinnie
Jones central to his midfield before replacing him with playmaker Gary
McAllister. Jones was the first of Wilkinson’s buys to be dumped: a
constant theme throughout, with so many interviews with ex-players
closing with melancholic reflections on the brusque manner of their
exits. (In this, there’s continuity with Simpson’s previous book, The
Fallen, where he attempted to trace everyone who’d been in The Fall with
the group’s only constant member, Mark E. Smith, who said that running
it was like managing a football team: “sometimes you’ve got to replace
the centre-forward”.)
In a manner seldom attempted, let alone achieved since, Wilkinson turned
uncapped and unheralded players into champions: none of his first-choice
centre-forwards, central defenders or his goalkeeper were
internationals. In summer 1991, backed by millionaire socialist chairman
Leslie Silver, Wilkinson spent heavily on England stars Steve Hodge, who
never quite established himself, and Tony Dorigo, who did, as well as
quick forward Rod Wallace (unlucky never to be capped) from Southampton
for a club record £1.6m.
We don’t learn too much about Wilkinson’s tactics, which were dismissed
as crudely direct, somewhat unfairly: he used goalkeeper John Lukic and
overlapping full-backs Mel Sterland and Dorigo to get the ball into the
box quickly and often, usually aiming for target man Lee Chapman, but
also constructed a midfield of great power and guile, allowing Leeds to
dictate play far more than basic long-ball sides. He was adaptable,
using 22 players throughout the season (during Aston Villa’s similarly
unanticipated title win of 1980-81, Ron Saunders picked just 14). In his
greatest single tactical move, he responded to winger Speed’s injury
before the Aston Villa game by introducing an extra defender, using
Chris Fairclough to mark Villa’s main threat, England winger Tony Daley,
out of the match. Leeds dominated, and won 4-1.
Clearly written by a fan, Simpson has most affection for those players
taken from non-League clubs, with Carl Shutt, who began with Spalding
United and who frequently scored crucial goals after coming off the
bench, emerging as his favourite. Touchingly, Shutt and Simpson seem to
have limitless time for each other, with ‘Shutty’, who was ‘always one
of us’ and who now works as a travel agent, accompanying Simpson to
Morrison’s to continue their interview after his digital recorder runs
out of battery.
This is less true of Cantona, Shutt’s polar opposite, to whom Simpson
manages to pose a single question about Leeds at a press conference
where the footballer-turned-actor appears alongside Pelé in Manchester.
Perhaps predictably, Cantona remains enigmatic, providing little insight
into his inability to fit into the club’s culture. (Sadly, neither he
nor Simpson recall that after Cantona expressed his love of French
Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, Leeds fans flooded Cantona’s house with
Sylvester Stallone videos.)
Too many of Wilkinson’s squad peaked in 1992, and changes besides Rupert
Murdoch’s £304m television deal triggered their decline. The new
back-pass rule prevented Wilkinson from using Lukic as a playmaker; his
inability to handle the shift of power from managers to players resulted
in the loss of Cantona, around whom he might have rebuilt, far earlier
than necessary. It was this loss, and Leeds’ failure to win an away
match in the inaugural Premier League season or progress in the new
Champions League, that overshadowed Wilkinson’s reputation. He recovered
to secure two more top-five finishes and reached two League Cup finals,
but this was not enough to escape from Revie’s shadow.
The academy that Wilkinson created produced a stunning array of talent,
including England internationals Alan Smith, Paul Robinson, Jonathan
Woodgate, James Milner and Aaron Lennon, but he couldn’t stay in the job
long enough to see them into the side, he and his club failing to adapt
to the new culture, being sacked in September 1996 after a 4-0 loss to
Manchester United. Retaining players such as Jon Newsome on £400 per
week was no longer possible – soon Leeds were shelling out £20,000 per
week – and the board’s attempts to float Leeds on the stock market were
as disastrous as the expensive signing of Sweden star Tomas Brolin, who
soon fell out with Wilkinson, leaving an overweight shadow of the player
who lit up the 1994 World Cup (and whose name, strangely, doesn’t
feature in Simpson’s book).
Certainly, Ferguson coped far better with the sweeping changes to
football culture, building a dynasty and controlling the memory of his
1991-92 failure: The Last Champions is a welcome reclamation of
Wilkinson’s success, however transient it proved to be. Perhaps the
narratives produced in the dominance of a small clique of hyper-rich
clubs with superstar players provide intrigue for global television
audiences, with their ceaseless stories of revenge, but the triumphs of
teams like Wilkinson’s offered interest for fans of provincial teams
without stars, suggesting that well-organised units could succeed
without the kind of money that later came into English football from Sky
TV and then the US, Russia and the Middle East. As Simpson so wistfully
explains, we shall probably never see their like again.
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PETE CASS (1962 - 2011) Rest In Peace Mate
