Andy Couzens ⭑ From A-Z since '92
I can imagine Howard Wilkinson, in his more wistful moments, remembering that Andy Couzens never gave him any trouble, never let him down, fond of him in ways he never was about Tomas Brolin.
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, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.
Or you can keep going below, with me and the West Yorkshire Beckham (sort of).
Howard Wilkinson's post-title teams had a way of making exciting youngsters seem like grizzled old pros. While Manchester United's class of '92 were played up for their glamour, looks and skills — even the Nevilles, even Robbie Savage — the players who beat them in the FA Youth Cup final in 1993 came through into the Premier League in dribs and drabs looking like the honest workhorses that, in the end, most of them were.
Andy Couzens was the archetype. Found locally in Shipley, he was brought into Paul Hart's youth team and gradually moulded from a right-back to a defensive-minded midfielder. Then when he was put in the first team he'd sometimes end up on the wing. He played 28 times in the Premier League, helping to keep a club that was more cash-strapped than it liked to let on afloat in the top half of the top flight, and when times and Leeds moved on and it was time for Couzens to leave, he went to Carlisle. They were in what we now call League One, and soon League Two. By the time he was 25, after injuries and a move to Blackpool, Couzens had decided professional football wasn't for him after all.
The quick descent from the Premier League to the bottom rung, and the early retirement, should not imply that Andy Couzens was not a good footballer. But he was involved in a predicament that was not of his making after Leeds United won the First Division title in 1992. That raised expectations of a repeat that the players, after 1992, couldn't deliver. Winning the league had not been part of manager Howard Wilkinson's ten year plan when he sketched it out in 1988, and if you pretend the title never happened you can see where Couzens should have fitted in. The plan was to get promoted as quickly as possible through big, quick spending on First Division players in Division Two, and to use their experience — most of them were in or near their thirties — to establish Leeds in the new Premier League. The club would grow steadily in mid-table while Wilkinson turned his attention to building the new academy at Thorp Arch which, by 1998, would begin producing players with the quality to challenge for Europe and a Premier League title: Alan Smith, Jonathan Woodgate, Paul Robinson, Stephen McPhail and so on.
Andy Couzens was supposed to be part of those middle seasons, after promotion but before challenging for honours. Wilko did not put much work into the youth team in his first few years in charge, apart from the wise appointments of Dick Bate and Paul Hart to run it. That, it turned out, was enough, as they raised standards immediately anyway, finding better youngsters, teaching them better, producing a higher level of footballer. A more knowledgeable one, anyway. The talent in Manchester United's youth team was defeated over two legs by the teamwork in Leeds United's, and the value of that crop of players to Howard Wilkinson was that they knew how to do their jobs. Like the thirty-somethings Wilko kept buying from Sheffield clubs — John Pemberton, Carlton Palmer, Paul Beesley — these were young at heart players with the attitudes of old pros, and that's probably what he loved about them. I can imagine Wilkinson, in his more wistful moments, remembering that Andy Couzens never gave him any trouble, never let him down, fond of him in ways he never was about Tomas Brolin.