On Saturday, should you care to, you can read my first take on Howson’s sale in the new issue of The Square Ball. Without giving too much away – so promise me you’ll still buy it, okay? – here’s how I end the article:
It seems you can fleece the fans with promises of the Premier League, but you can’t fleece Jonny Howson. If he has looked our board in the eye when they told him, “We want to match your ambition,” and he’s not believed a word – well, vale, kid, and here’s to you. It’s an inherent cruelty of football that means Howson has that option, and we don’t.
I was thinking about this again tonight, as I browsed through today’s news roundup.
‘That morning, when we hit the road, a lady came up by the name of Louella Harrigan and she said, "Regardless, we got to take back our country from Kenneth Bates, and whatever we’re going to do we’re going to march this morning, and we are going to take our country back! This lease must be revoked, and Kenneth Bates must go!”’ – George Malone in ‘A Patriotic Man’.
It’s an idea, anyway. At the moment, Mike Grella is back in Yorkshire having reported for pre-season training with Leeds United but expecting to leave for pastures new before the season starts, and no nearer to becoming a soccer hero. If it’s ever going to happen for Mikey – and Hollywood dictates that one day, it will – you get the feeling he’s going to have to do something radical first.
The most disturbing aspect of Ken Bates’ impact at Leeds United has been his effect on us, the fans. We’ve changed; or rather, he has changed us. The most fundamental way this change expresses itself is in the way that we express ourselves – it’s right there, in the way we talk about Leeds United. Ken Bates has stolen our narrative of ourselves; he has blunted our desire to write our own history, to give vocal form to what we want from Leeds United Football Club.
Out of all the players from the 1993 squad, it hurt the Leeds fans most to lose Whelan; and it hurt Whelan the most to leave. For Noel Whelan was Leeds born, and a Leeds fan to the core. “I got a call from Howard Wilkinson on a Sunday morning to say can you come in,” Noel told TSB, when we asked about the move to Coventry. “Straight away I was sitting in my bed crying because I knew it was happening. I went into his office and he said they’d accepted an offer and I walked out, Billy Bremner hugged me and… you know, it still gets me now.” As Whelan rose to success at Coventry, and then struggled to find a home among a series of clubs after leaving Middlesbrough, there remained a sense that Noel really should still have been playing for us. “You never forget where your heart is,” said Noel. “I only ever scored once against Leeds and I didn’t celebrate, but the Leeds fans did, which says it all really.” When Snowy left the Leeds fans had an uneasy sense that yet again the heart of the club was being sold out; like the clear-out of Gray’s team in the mid-eighties, like David Batty in 1993, and like Alan Smith to come in 2004, the board always seemed ready to sell our own.
Leeds United’s recently arrived on-loan midfielder Barry Bannan has wasted no time in joining new teammates Sanchez Watt, Lloyd Sam, Andy O’Brien, Mike Grella, Neil Kilkenny and the highly irritable Kasper “Bore Off!” Schmeichel on social-networking/bullshitting website Twitter (ahem; my profile can be found here), opening up another insight into the fascinating life of a footballer for the edification of us mere mortals. Except, no bugger would believe it was really Barry – well, some of us have been burned before (hi, fake Aidy White!). To soothe the naysayers, young Bannan took the step of uploading a photo of himself holding a piece of paper with his Twitter username on it.
There, problem solved! A quick and effective solution, and now nobody can doubt that it’s Barry himself. Except, The Square Ball has had word from a top-secret insider at the club that the process of taking and uploading that photograph wasn’t quite as easy as it sounds; apparently Master Bannan had to have quite a few goes at it before getting it right. Surely all Barry had to do was write his name on a piece of paper and hold it up to the camera – what could possibly go wrong with that? Well, quite a lot by the looks of things – see for yourselves…
In the second part of our preview of The Square Ball magazine’s exclusive interview with Howard Wilkinson, Moscowhite writes about stammering and yammering at his hero over the phone; about Sergeant Wilko’s willingness to take the brickbats, as well as the bouquets; and about how what someone doesn’t say can often tell us much more than what they do. The full interview is published this weekend in issue seven of The Square Ball magazine, along with a fantastic centre spread by The Beaten Generation, on sale at Elland Road on Saturday (or from our online shop).
The Square Ball issue seven goes on sale at Elland Road on Saturday (or from our online shop here), and includes a fantastic interview with our legendary former manager Howard Wilkinson, by TSB forumite The Flying Pig. To whet your appetites, Moscowhite (who helped with the interview) will write on the blog tomorrow about what we learned from the experience, about Howard and about his legacy at Leeds; but first Moscowhite takes a look back at the Wilkinson era, and remembers how Sergeant Wilko took a broken down football club that was firmly in the doldrums and, with a ten year vision and the backing of an ambitious board, built a modern football club that we could be proud of.
Back in November, Gary McSheffrey warmed up for Leeds United’s visit to the Ricoh Arena by moaning to the Coventry Telegraph about his continued maltreatment at the cruel hands of the dastardly Simon Grayson.
We at The Square Ball were intrigued by the mindset of the kind of man who thinks that one fluked goal is enough to earn a contract at Leeds, and who complains about the man-management of a man who isn’t his manager. We were also, frankly, a bit worried about “Doyler,” who we sort of liked while he was here. Through a protracted process of negotiation (which may or may not have involved Noel Whelan, McSheffrey’s bins, and a crate of WKD), we laid our hands on some explosive extracts from McSheffrey’s diary, which shocked the world of football when we published them in The Square Ball magazine issue four.
With Gary due in Leeds this weekend, for his first visit to Elland Road since he stank the place out like a backed-up bog while on loan, we got back in touch with our Coventry insider who supplied The Square Ball with more fragments from Blue Sky Thinking: The Secret Diary of Gary McSheffrey.
