Up at the end of the eighties: three trips to Roker Park
Howard Wilkinson was never afraid that his way might be wrong — you could only do what you believed in and take your result. But if the result was that he was right, well, he absolutely loved that.
1988/89
Leeds United looked like a club that had run out of options. After Allan Clarke had taken them down to Division Two, and after the reactions to sacking Eddie Gray and Billy Bremner for not taking Leeds back up again, the board at Elland Road couldn't risk appointing another club legend as manager. And yet they'd ended up with a legend in the dugout in October 1988 anyway: Norman 'Bites Yer Legs' Hunter, assisting caretaker Peter Gunby, as United went into a tailspin towards Division Three and fans rioted over the sacking of Bremner.
After a 2-1 defeat at Brighton, Gunby was lamenting the team's inability to get over the managerial change. "I was shattered at the way some of our players went about their work," he said. "When he said goodbye to them, Billy stressed that they were paid by Leeds United and it was up to them to do their best for the club, irrespective of what happened to the manager or whoever was in charge."
Leeds were 21st going to Roker Park to play 20th placed Sunderland on 4th October 1988. It was the Peacocks' lowest league position since relegation in 1982. The glory years had never seemed so far away; now hope was disappearing with history. Sunderland was the worst possible destination for Leeds in this mood. Fresh from winning Division Three the previous season, they were ascendant architects of arguably the worst moment of United's glory years, when they and their Revie-hating manager, Bob Stokoe, reared up from the Second Division to beat Leeds in the 1973 FA Cup final.
They now boasted a ghost of United's greatest era, Frank Gray, about to turn 34 and playing for the Mackems as a sweeper. Marco Gabbiadini was the greater threat, giving Sunderland the lead after a mix-up between Mervyn Day and David Rennie put the division's hottest striker in front of an empty net he could lob into. Although Bobby Davison equalised, another Rennie mistake gave away a goal to Billy Whitehurst, and it was a struggle for him and Noel Blake to stop Sunderland putting more of their dominance on the scoreboard. A midfield of John Sheridan, Vince Hilaire, John Stiles and David Batty had been overrun, and if the club was not completely broken, it was fractured along lines between the uselessness of its team and the ambitions of its board, seeking someone to put things back together again.
Chairman Leslie Silver and managing director Bill Fotherby were pursuing the biggest managerial names they could think of — Howard Kendall, Graham Taylor, Arthur Cox, Bobby Robson, although they denied any notions of Brian Clough — but what was there at Elland Road to tempt any of them, to prevent these pie-skied pursuits evaporating like their manic bids for Diego Maradona?
1989/90
By March 1990 the whole world of football had an opinion on Leeds United. Howard Wilkinson, after talking Leslie Silver through his dossiers on United's players, staff and directors, had agreed to leave his beloved Sheffield Wednesday and take Leeds on his 'route one' back to the top — which meant spending money. Bill Fox, Blackburn Rovers' chairman and president of the Football League, had been unimpressed when his team drew 1-1 at Elland Road in the third game of the season. He told United's manager, "Wilki, management's not about all these big transfers you're involved in," that the true test was, "Managing without brass."
"I've done it your way," 'Wilki' told him, "now I'm doing it my way, and I know which I prefer. Let's discuss it again next May, shall we?"