Jackie Harrison, unsellable workhorse of the wing
Perhaps his style is just fated to go under the radar with fans who want excitement, goals, dancing celebrations. Jackie Harrison, under most circumstances when Leeds score, tends to just look relieved.
The last testimonial game I went to was Lucas Radebe's, and it was wonderful. Gordon Strachan, Gary McAllister and Gary Speed back on the pitch together (David Batty was named on the squadsheet but obviously didn't play. I don't think he even turned up). Tony Yeboah. Lucy Ward scoring in front of the Kop and being tackled mid-celebration by Vinnie Jones. The Leeds team was jointly managed by Howard Wilkinson and Kevin Blackwell. The World XI was managed by Sam Allardyce and featured Matt Kilgallon. Radebe scored a penalty and everyone had a lovely time in the May sunshine, at the end of a dour season in the Championship when all our worst post-Champions League fears had been confirmed — apart from the ones still to come. It was nice, for one afternoon, to brush all that away and have Nigel Martyn back in goal, Olivier Dacourt in midfield.
The next one should be for Liam Cooper, when next summer marks a decade of service to Leeds United that nobody could have expected when he arrived from Chesterfield. He was bought almost on a whim, after chairman Massimo Cellino spotted him during a pre-season friendly, then out of sheer bloodymindedness, after Chesterfield refused our first bids and Cellino got mad about it. He also saw how bad our opening day pairing of Jason Pearce and Scott Wootton looked against Millwall and realised he had to pay any price for something better. Better, at the time, was Liam Cooper, although he had a hard road to proving that was good enough. Lifting the Championship trophy and captaining Leeds in the Premier League will always answer any lingering doubts about Only Coops' status in United's history — he will go down as one of the good ones. And a testimonial will be well deserved, because it's not only been a lack of good players that has meant none since Radebe. Players just don't stay at clubs for a decade anymore.
You'd never have bet on a decade of Liam Cooper. But what about Jackie Harrison? He now has a contract with Leeds United until the summer of 2028, ten years from his arrival on loan from Manchester City in summer 2018. I don't know what three seasons on loan do to his chances of a testimonial game, but you'd need a cold heart to argue against it if he's still here at the end of this deal. You might also, though, wonder how come Harrison ended up staying that long. When people talk about Leeds and ambition, they talk about moving on from the Championship winning side, and to them, another five more years of Jackie doing the same old things on the wings might feel like five years of standing still.
Harrison is a bit of a problem for people who crave excitement, who want Premier League titles and European football, because despite his billing as a tricky winger and despite that glorious first touch of his, Harrison is essentially an unsellable workhorse of the wing. I can easily imagine him still being here in five years because why would you ever let him go? As the £22m fee some idiot agreed with Leicester in January proved, he's not currently the sort of player clubs will bid life-changing amounts for. If people do start bidding telephone numbers for him, he will have improved so much we'd want to keep him. But with his consistent output of goals and assists, and his incredible resistance to injury, how much would we have to pay to replace him? Probably at least £20m-£30m. At that price, and given every transfer is a gamble, you might as well keep him and play it safe.