Wilkinsons greatest success as a manager came after moving to Wednesdays Yorkshire rivals Leeds United in October 1988. He soon drilled discipline into a lacklustre squad and earned the affectionate nickname Sergeant Wilko, a play on the old TV character Sergeant Bilko. The team won the Second Division in 1989–90 after the signings of Gordon Strachan who became captain, hardman Vinnie Jones (who Wilkinson guided to a whole season with only three yellow cards), Mel Sterland, Chris Fairclough and Lee Chapman. Following the promotion, Wilkinson immediately offloaded Jones and brought in Gary McAllister from Leicester City and John Lukic was brought back from Arsenal. He also helped players who had come up through the youth team, Gary Speed and David Batty, to mature to the new level of football. In Leeds first season in the First Division they performed very well for a newly promoted team and ended the season fourth in the league. Wilko felt further improvement was required on the squad and brought in Rod Wallace, Tony Dorigo and Steve Hodge finalising his best squad with Eric Cantona in February 1992. Leeds won the last championship of the old style Football League First Division in 1992. As of 2012, Wilkinson is the last English manager to have coached a team to the English league championship title; the six subsequent winning managers have been Scottish (Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish), French (Arsène Wenger), Portuguese (José Mourinho) and Italian (Carlo Ancelotti and Roberto Mancini). He also guided Leeds to the Charity Shield in 1992, beating then-FA Cup holders Liverpool 4–3 at Wembley. However, his subsequent time at Leeds was less successful, and even though he guided the team to the League Cup final, after a poor start to the 1996–97 season including a 4–0 defeat to bitter rivals Manchester United, on 9 September 1996, he was sacked.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 18:19:49 +0000
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