Leeds United 1-0 Middlesbrough: Practical Heroics

1989/90 is still the touchstone promotion for Leeds United; the image of Gordon Strachan holding the Barclays League Division Two championship trophy aloft like excalibur is still an image we long to recreate, twenty-five years later.

If we could just find ourselves another Strachan; if we could only get our hands on a new Batty, a new Jones. Their names are like runes that cast a spell for promotion; and they quite often include Chris Whyte, even though he didn’t actually join until we were back in Division One. But the jumbled memories just show what a long time ago it all was.

The slightest analogy between that season and the present is always seized upon as if it might somehow be a sign that we’ve found the secret formula again, even if it involves a defeat and a quirk of the fixture list. The Second Division title season began with a “shocking” 5–2 defeat away at Newcastle; “shocking” was the word Jason Pearce used to describe our 2–0 defeat at Millwall last week. Both teams, twenty-five years apart, returned to Elland Road to play Middlesbrough.

In 1989 the game was played on a tense and nervous night; the rebuilding process had built anxiety all summer and losing at Newcastle had piled on the pressure, and Elland Road was a tense place. Middlesbrough finally succumbed to a cruel, late goal and the tension was suddenly released: Leeds United were on their way to Division One.

We’ll have to wait and see whether this Saturday’s game was the beginning of a resurgence at Leeds, but the echoes are there if you want to hear them, and not only in the fixture list. Of course, there are also the clangs of difference that emphasis that this season is not being done Howard’s way.

The main difference is in the leadership. Massimo Cellino is leading from the top at Elland Road, making himself the primary driving force behind the club - “I can drive the boat on my own” he said recently - but Leslie Silver and Bill Fotherby’s genius was to employ someone who would do all that stuff for them, and let him get on with it with their full backing.

Although he used to prowl the touchline in a tracksuit much like Dave Hockaday, Wilko has more in common with Cellino than the coach. Wilkinson demanded that the culture change at Elland Road, a reinvention of everything from the team to the ground to the staff to the fans, that went far beyond the remit of a normal football manager. His ten year plan gave the club its focus and direction, and ten years after the plan began, Leeds were in the Champions League.

Cellino is likewise leaving no corner unswept, no lightswitch unflicked in his quest to change the culture again at Elland Road; the newest puzzles on Saturday were the late opening of the turnstiles, now only open for an hour before the game (how much will that really save?) and the curious case of the missing Kop Cat (but what about the kids?). What Cellino doesn’t have, or doesn’t appear to have, is a plan - a clear mission statement that explains where we’re going, and how all the changes contribute to is getting there - or the desire to employ somebody who has one.

Wilkinson, after that opening day defeat in 1989, hardly had to change a thing. He knew he’d signed the right players, and he knew he had them doing the right things; he knew where he could get reinforcements if he needed them. A 5–2 defeat wasn’t part of the plan, but it didn’t mean the plan was no good.

Cellino, on the other hand, has been provoked into action by the defeat against Millwall; on his return from holiday, the opening game brought him face to face with the fact that whatever the plan had been this summer, it had barely been acted upon despite all the energy that had been expended upon it. Here was a club that was supposedly being transformed in every department, but here was a team that, at the end of the Millwall game, consisted of ten of last season’s outfield players plus Silvestri. Somehow, after a summer of hectic change, everything was still the same.