Andy Keogh ⭑ 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, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.

Or you can keep going below, with me and a nearly-Bergkamp of the lower leagues.

Andy Keogh's return to Leeds United on loan in 2011 was a prodigal story and almost a happy one. He was a link to the Champions League era, tenuous but never mind, and a messenger from an alternative history in which Kevin Blackwell might have backed precocious, promising youth rather than picking up players from the downslopes of EFL hills.

"Aaron Lennon and James Milner were both Leeds lads — and they are now sure to be on the plane to South Africa for the World Cup," said Eddie Gray, in 2010, reviewing Blackwell's time in charge. "But there are many other home-grown youngsters who I could mention. Players like Andy Keogh, Alan Smith, Scott Carson, Matthew Kilgallon and Fabian Delph," who could have been the nucleus of a team like Gray had managed in the mid-1980s when he was picking John Sheridan, Scott Sellars, Denis Irwin and Andy Linighan. They were not ultimately successful as a team, but they played decent football together and fans are still fond of them in ways they never were of John Oster, Steve Guppy or Danny Cadamarteri. The post-Premier League cost-cutting didn't give fans a team built around Simons Johnson and Walton, that they might have enjoyed more. For every Frazer Richardson, there were two Paul Butlers.

The Champions League link was through Keogh's career at the Thorp Arch academy, starting when he moved from Dublin to Leeds as a teenager in 2003, just before David O'Leary's team broke up. "Mark Viduka was the epitome of hold-up play, of how to roll defenders, to use your body, how to score goals," Keogh said later. "Mark Viduka was the nicest man I met in football. He always had time for the young guys, always went out of his way to talk to us and to make sure we were okay — not just about football but about life. He knew how hard it was moving away from home."

As a youngster Keogh had been compared not to Viduka but to Alan Smith, mainly for his blonde hair dyed even blonder, and played his way into contention for Ireland while on loan with Scunthorpe and Bury. Getting into contention for Leeds was more difficult, though, and he was only given four minutes in a game in the League Cup while Blackwell persisted with Michael Ricketts and Julian Joachim. All Leeds got from Scunthorpe for Keogh, when they signed him permanently, was £50,000, that they spent on Ian Moore.

Scunthorpe manager Brian Laws, coming up to a decade in charge, got the perfect foil for his young goalscorer Billy Sharp, who had been similarly discarded by Sheffield United. Nigel Adkins inherited them and the pair led Scunthorpe out of League One, scoring 38 goals between them, although Keogh made a £650,000 move to Wolves a couple of months before promotion was sealed. Most of the goals were put away by Sharp, but Keogh had got 15 of his own from their old-fashioned partnership of provider and finisher.

Keogh had learned the knack of hold-up play from Mark Viduka, but not the finishing touch, and that made things difficult for him after he broke up with Sharp. He did all the important things a forward should, and he was a great teammate in the attack. But he was never a prolific scorer and the low counts in his columns overshadowed the good work he did setting up goals for others. In the Championship, few strikers were as incisive as Billy Sharp continued to be, and that meant Keogh was usually setting up great chances for players who wouldn't take them. In that case it was tempting for a manager to replace Keogh with another supposedly out-and-out striker to increase the likelihood that someone in the penalty area could finish, and put the burden of creating onto the wingers or midfielders. In other words, Wolves — and the teams Keogh went on loan to, Cardiff City and Bristol City — didn't want an EFL Bergkamp when they could have as many Jay Bothroyds as they wanted.

Keogh's path back to Leeds felt ordained by his connection to Scunthorpe. Sharp would be a Leeds player eventually. Jermaine Beckford had established himself as a Leeds player with a successful loan to Glanford Park, and when he moved on after promotion from League One in 2010, Gary Hooper was heavily linked after scoring 50 in two seasons for Scunthorpe. And if not Hooper, Andy Keogh. In the end that season was about Billy Paynter, Ross McCormack and Davide Somma failing to dislodge Luciano Becchio as Leeds went for back-to-back promotions, but Keogh finally joined Simon Grayson's squad at the start of 2011/12, after Paynter had flopped and Becchio and Somma had been injured.