Alan Smith ⭑ From A-Z since '92
Alan Smith did play for twenty seasons, but only six were for his hometown club, and like so much of the Ridsdale and O'Leary years, he left more questions than answers about what might have been made of everything Leeds, and Smith, had going for them.
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, then check out all the players featured so far on this page. Or you can keep going below, with me and the O'Leary era's biggest hope, Alan Smith.
No player plots more exactly the exhilaration and bitterness of the David O'Leary and Peter Ridsdale era at Leeds United than Alan Smith. From 1998 to 2004, he's the beginning and the end, the delight and the tedium, the emblem of hope and the symbol of squandered opportunity. Leeds had a team of players who should have built a dynasty to rival the Revie era, now rarely spoken about with any pleasure as a result of the club's self-defeating refusal to wise up.
The brilliant Champions League campaign of 2000/01 is the best example of how joy was riding a treadmill. Included in those games were some of Smith's best moments: combining with Mark Viduka's heel for the winning goal away to Lazio, running on to David Batty's through ball to make it 3-0 away to Anderlecht and celebrating with iconic nonchalance. But Smith had started the first group stage game, away to Barcelona, with a high first minute foul on Rivaldo that drew Frank de Boer's ire: "You can play hard but what he did was unacceptable. It wasn't just the foul on Rivaldo or the one on Cocu, when he should have been sent off. Whenever the ball was gone, Smith went on to hit the opponent's legs." And he ended it crying in the changing rooms after the semi-final against Valencia at the Mestalla, when he concluded his Champions League contribution with a red card for going two-footed through Vicente in the last minute.
Call it bookends, call it a treadmill, call it coming full circle, this was Smith's pattern behind the brilliance: make a mistake, swear he'd change, make the same mistake again. Over time his routine became as stale as David O'Leary's patter about his team of "babies" — Leeds fans who had loved that, and Smith, when it was fresh, became desperate for them all to grow up.
In the beginning, it was Alan Smith who poured fuel on the fire that O'Leary and Eddie Gray were kindling with their wünderkinds after George Graham had gone. They'd immediately gone with youth, taking on Roma with Jonathan Woodgate, Stephen McPhail, Ian Harte and Harry Kewell, trusting Paul Robinson in goal in the Premier League when Nigel Martyn was injured. But none caught the eye or the imagination like Smith when he came on as a substitute with Leeds 1-0 down against Liverpool, while seeking only their second win at Anfield in nineteen attempts. His first touch was a goal, bringing his blond curtains and choirboy cheeks into millions of homes on Match of the Day; Jimmy Hasselbaink added two more to give Leeds a 3-1 win. And Smith kept scoring, ending the season with nine goals, as many as Kewell and Lee Bowyer in far fewer games. Smith also ended the season with seven bookings, and a headline grabbing performance in Arsenal's title decider at Elland Road, when he wound up the Gunners' experienced back four with his tackles, his strength, and his chat.
His status as a modern Leeds hero was sealed by his birthplace: Leeds. He was the most local of O'Leary's babies and steeped in lore. David Batty had watched him playing for Rothwell Juniors when Smith was just ten, and become friends with the tiny, aggressive blond who must have reminded Batty of himself. Leeds fans, when Smith broke into the first team, soon saw the likeness. Eddie Gray raised him through the youth and reserve teams, after a short spell at the national Lilleshall academy ended in homesickness. Legendary striker Allan Clarke was quick to praise him. "He has bags of self-confidence and that touch of selfishness in front of goal all top strikers need. But if you are looking at a direct comparison with me, I reckon the two things we share are arrogance and aggression."
Smith was a modern Leeds lad who had grown up with Leeds United posters on his wall and embodied the popular virtues of the club's favourite past players, at a time when the Premier League was just beginning to reap its own hype. And that made him marketable in ways that Peter Ridsdale's new PLC couldn't ignore. He had everything Leeds United wanted: aggression for the fans, an accent the city could identify with, good looks for the advertisers, his work as a teetotal community champion for public relations, and goals. It's a quirk of history but the city has never produced its own consistent high-scoring strikers: John Charles was a centre-half from Swansea; Allan Clarke and Mick Jones were bought in to complete a team otherwise raised in-house. Smith looked like becoming that long promised Leeds-born striker, and the rhetoric was soon ramping up. "Alan Smith will never leave this club as long as I'm the manager," said O'Leary. TV show Soccer AM asked Smith, "Is there a team you'd never play for?" "Yeah," he replied. "Man United."
Being so exuberantly Leeds was probably Smith's downfall. First, someone Leeds fans love so much will be someone everybody else loves to hate. As the yellow card count started overtaking his goalscoring, with red cards and controversy thrown in, Smith was an excuse for dredging up old Dirty Leeds debates in which what made him beloved by Loiners was condemned by the press. One hysterical report in The Times called him 'Snarling and spiteful': 'His arms flailed everywhere, he left his foot in, he berated the match officials; and he celebrated his second goal with a distasteful kiss full on the lips of Gary Kelly, his team-mate. What next?' For a player being condemned for kissing, the answer was 'more bad press', whether it was justified or not.