It’s difficult to work out how much I envy the day to day lives of the current Leeds United squad, knowing the punishing demands and expectations they must adhere to at Thorp Arch under Marcelo Bielsa. I feel more in common with John Sheridan, a professional footballer in a very different time, who makes playing for Leeds United sound as idyllic as my childhood fantasies.

Sheridan appeared on the always candid Under The Cosh podcast back in November, and is worth a listen. Frank Lampard making cocktails with Gary Neville this ain’t. Over two parts, Sheridan is wonderfully sweary, bouncing from stories of ripping off his own shirt and fighting with Ron Atkinson, who was only wearing a towel, to why he couldn’t impress Brian Clough (“he was always pissed, wasn’t he?”). But nothing else sounds so brilliantly fun as Fridays when Billy Bremner was manager of mid-1980s Leeds, when Sheridan could look around at training and realise he was playing eight-a-side with assorted members of Don Revie’s team, depending which friends his manager had decided to call.

“I was lucky at Leeds,” Sheridan says. “I played under Billy Bremner after Eddie Gray. Eddie got the sack while we were 5th or 6th in the Championship [then Division Two] and then Billy Bremner comes in. I’m thinking, ‘Fucking hell, the managers are better than the players.’ They used to join in training, it was frightening.

“We always had ex-players come in and join training. Norman Hunter, Mick Bates, Terry Yorath. They trained like they were still playing. They used to always come in on a Friday when you have an eight v eight before a game. Norman Hunter would be playing at the back and he’d steam into you. I remember, ‘Norman’s ball!’ was all he ever used to shout. Then you’ve got Billy Bremner looking [one way] then taking the piss out of you and passing it over [another]. It’s frightening, honestly.

“You’re going to learn off them. Even when I was in the team, I used to watch when Billy Bremner and Eddie trained with us and think, ‘How does he do that? Why’s he so good?’ When you’re a young player and you’ve got someone like Norman Hunter coming in, he was a great fella and would talk to you. Peter Lorimer, those type of players, they’re frightening. You can only talk and ask them about things.”

Training against club legends on a Friday and playing for Leeds’ first team on a Saturday couldn’t fulfil Sheridan’s insatiable football fix. He’d been released by his boyhood club Manchester City as a teenager as he was struggling to tear himself away from the life his friends were living, often playing for City’s academy on a morning before appearing for his local Sunday League team, Stretford Vics, later in the afternoon. As a twenty-year-old pro, he went to watch his brothers playing in an amateur semi-final. After they lost a player to injury and went behind 3-1, Shez came on as a sub in Leeds shorts and trainers, scoring a hat-trick. When the referee enquired who the mystery substitute was, Sheridan thought he was about to be rumbled as a ringer. “He’s good, isn’t he?” the ref asked. “I want to put his name forward for the inter-league team.”

There’s a restlessness to Sheridan, meaning it didn’t matter what level he was playing at. He describes his friends playing in a “big, big tournament”, and he’s referring to a five-a-side competition at Moss Side Sports Centre offering a holiday to Malta for seven people as a prize. Naturally, Sheridan joined his friends’ team for the quarter-final onwards, playing on Friday nights — wearing a bobble hat and hoping nobody would recognise him — before driving back across the Pennines to play for Leeds on Saturdays. Malta was “brilliant”, apparently.

It comes as no surprise to hear Sheridan describe himself as “old school”. Speaking two months before becoming manager at Oldham for the fourth time, he insisted there was no rush to return to the dugout after failing to avoid relegation to League Two with Swindon last season. Across his sixteen years as a manager, the game has changed, players have changed, and Sheridan acknowledges he needs to change. After losing both his parents around a year ago and becoming a grandad for the first time, learning how to adapt to modern football is low down the list of his priorities. He misses being able to shout at Sean Gregan, and knowing Greegs would cope and get the message. Asked a leading question about whether modern players are “soft as shit”, Sheridan begins saying, “I wouldn’t say that,” before reconsidering his answer. “Some of them are soft as shit. They really annoy me because they are that soft.” Crucially, he caveated his response by saying he could only be tempted to return to management at a former club where he has unfinished business. For Shez that usually means going back to Oldham, and since Harry Kewell then Keith Curle (among others) have left his old club seven points from safety at the bottom of League Two, that’s where he’s gone.

Sheridan describing himself as “old school” explains his lack of animosity towards Howard Wilkinson, who sold Elland Road’s biggest hero of the 1980s to Nottingham Forest in summer ‘89. Sheridan envisaged spending his entire career at Leeds but knew it was unlikely to work out for him under Wilko. So did Wilkinson.

“I just didn’t like the way he played and his training,” he says. “I think it was time for me to leave, even though I’d have stayed. The style of play didn’t suit me. Howard did brilliantly to get the team out of what they were struggling to get out of. He identified the players he had to get in. I remember the Sheffield Wednesday team he had before he came to Leeds. They were a physical, strong, good team. Even though I wanted to stay, I didn’t think it would suit me, and I think Howard had made his mind up more or less about me.”

It was the polar opposite with Eddie Gray, the man who gave Sheridan his debut and was the biggest influence on his career. Typically, Shez’s story of Eddie’s kindness involves getting into trouble first. He had returned to Manchester with his leg in a cast after breaking it against Barnsley, missing four or five months of the season. A few days before the cast was due to be removed, he decided to cut it off himself using a little saw. Later that night, he was running home, turned a corner, and suddenly starting being chased by a black Labrador “barking its fucking head off”. Sheridan tried to escape by jumping over a flower bed, hitting his leg in the exact same spot as his break, and was left lying in a flower bed in the Manchester rain until he was found and carried home. He kept the story of what had happened quiet, but was sidelined for another three or four months. While the rest of his teammates were on holiday at the end of the season, Sheridan was trying to get back fit.

“This is where Eddie Gray was probably my biggest influence,” he says. “I was in pre-season on my own doing rehab and Eddie Gray must have done every day with me. For two, nearly three months, he was in every day with me. He got me to the fittest I’ve probably ever been. We went abroad somewhere and won this tournament and I hit the ground running.

“He got me as fit as anything. Unbelievable. It was only because he was there. I wouldn’t have done it myself, would I? He was there constantly, doing every run I was doing, everything.”

Learning to avoid Norman Hunter’s tackles, trying to guess where Billy Bremner was going to pass a ball, training every day with Eddie Gray. No wonder John Sheridan could make playing for Leeds United look as cool as it should. ⬢