Alan Sheehan ⭑ From A-Z since '92

This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme. Or you can keep going below, with me and Sheezdogg, Alan Sheehan.

Alan Sheehan misfired, flickered and faded from left-back at Leeds United. It always felt like the next game would be his game, but the next game came and it'd have to be the next game. Leeds, in League One, couldn't afford to wait through all the games it would take for Sheehan to prove his Championship credentials.

You can choose plenty of examples of 2007/08 season's chaos to illustrate the situation at Elland Road, starting with administration and the fifteen point deduction and moving from there. To talk about Sheehan, we'll walk through January, when Leeds used the transfer window to sign Neil Kilkenny, Bradley Johnson, Peter Sweeney and Seb Sorsa. Then, days before the deadline, manager Dennis Wise cited his desire to move back to London while quitting Leeds to take a job as sporting director with Newcastle United, and title-winning legend Gary McAllister took over. In the two days before the window closed, Darren Kenton's loan from Leicester was made permanent, Anthony Elding and Lubomir Michalik were bought, and Sheehan was loaned in, also from Leicester. When the three new players lined up against Tranmere at Elland Road they were the 36th, 37th and 38th used by Leeds that season; only Andrew Hughes, Jermaine Beckford and Matt Heath had played in the season opener at Tranmere in August.

Sheehan was 21, dropping from the Championship to prove himself by taking over from twenty-year-old Ben Parker, who was sent on loan to Darlington, and helping Leeds up whence he'd come. Here's how it went: within a month, McAllister's new assistant Steve Staunton had recommended a loan move for Aston Villa's left-back Stephen O'Halloran. Publicly, McAllister pointed out that Leeds had been struggling for several seasons to field a consistently fit and good quality left-back, and he "wanted a bit more cover and a bit more strength there. I want things to improve in that area." O'Halloran was not the player to provide it: he injured his ACL in the warm-up before his debut and went straight back to Villa.

To Sheehan's credit, he was more forthright about the need for O'Halloran than McAllister had been. "Being honest, I would have to say the standards I set myself were unacceptable in the first four games," he said. His fitness hadn't been up to scratch after coming from the reserves at Leicester, but extra training got him to the point, at the start of April, when headlines could viably call him United's 'loan hero'. Sheehan had arrived with the reputation of a free-kick specialist but only two goals to his name. At Doncaster, against Neil Sullivan, he lined one up from 25 yards to the left of the D and, using his left foot, swung a powerful shot over the wall and across the goal into Sullivan's far top left corner. The technique involved his standing leg kicking out to his right as the ball went rocketing off; the result was special enough, and as the winning goal it got Leeds back within a point of the play-offs.