If the advent of the Premier League promised glitz, glamour, and excitement, fixtures between Leeds and Ipswich did their best to piss on the parade. After Tony Dorigo scored the only goal of the game with a second-half penalty in February 1993, Martin Searby wrote in the Sunday Times:

‘It was all too clear for all too long that it was going to take an Act of God, or referee Reed, to decide this awful example of the once-great game; one side wasn’t interested in scoring until it was too late and the other couldn’t have found the target if it had had bells on.’

Without the creative spark of Gary McAllister, whose run of 110 consecutive appearances came to an end, Howard Wilkinson reshuffled his team into a back five. “It was an eminently forgettable game,” Wilkinson said. “Oddly, the last two matches we have played have been pretty awful affairs, but we have got two decent results out of them. Up to Christmas we were playing pretty good open stuff, but not getting the results. I suppose that’s what football is all about.” While supporters were bored to tears, the suits in the executive boxes were entertained at half-time by a selection of the greatest goals scored by Peter Lorimer.

Dusting off the VHS tapes would have been preferable to watching the next two meetings between the clubs, both ending 0-0. After the second, Louise Taylor wrote in the Sunday Times:

‘If Ipswich always play as negatively as this, they will alienate an awful lot of away crowds.
…
‘The East Anglians’ dedication to unfailingly taking the defensive option — at least eight men were behind the ball at all times — smothered Leeds, leaving the Yorkshire supporters stifling yawns and entertaining dark suspicions that the millions Howard Wilkinson has invested in the embarrassingly anonymous (David) White and the alarmingly docile (Brian) Deane represents money down the drain.’

At least Wilkinson would have been satisfied with a couple of draws, unlike a 2-0 defeat to an Ipswich team destined to finish bottom of the league in November 1994 that left him “annoyed and disappointed”.

By January of the 1994/95 season, excitement was for teams other than Leeds. Noel Whelan had seven goals in the first three months of the campaign but never scored for the club again. Around the turn of the year, Leeds went four games without a goal, and their hopes of qualifying for the UEFA Cup were fading.

Then Tony Yeboah started playing.

“Sure, I’ve taken a gamble,” said Wilkinson, who had only seen Yeboah play on TV. “But that’s how all transfers are these days — whether you’re spending £3m or thirty bob.” Yeboah was signed from Eintracht Frankfurt not just to score goals himself, but also to remind his teammates how it’s done. “We’ve not scored enough goals in the last eighteen months,” added Wilkinson. “We need somebody who can improve our goal difference by ten or twelve goals and if you’ve got a striker scoring a lot, there’s a tendency for other players to score more as well.”

Even while Yeboah was waiting to establish himself in the side, the signing had the desired effect. Shortly after he arrived, Phil Masinga scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 FA Cup win over Walsall, and two more in a 4-0 victory against QPR, when Yeboah made his debut as a second-half substitute. After coming off the bench to score his first Leeds goal in an FA Cup defeat at Old Trafford, Yeboah scored six times in his first six Premier League starts. When Ipswich visited Elland Road at the start of April, they were facing a different Leeds.

Yeboah’s impact had been so emphatic that Eintracht Frankfurt were already trying to re-sign him. Jupp Heynckes, the manager who had stripped Yeboah of the captaincy and ostracised him and Jay-Jay Okocha in training, had surprisingly resigned, and Frankfurt wanted to rectify their error. Yeboah wasn’t interested. His only aim was to fire his new club into Europe, even turning down a call-up for Ghana’s African Cup of Nations qualifier with Sierra Leone so he could keep playing for Leeds.

Ipswich were coming off the back of a record 9-0 defeat to some team from Salford, but Yeboah showed no sympathy. Within four minutes, he ran onto a through ball from Gary McAllister, left the goalkeeper on the floor with a shimmy of his hips and opened the scoring. Lee Chapman was playing up front for the visitors; in contrast to Yeboah, Chapman’s lunging headers made him look like a striker from a bygone era.

Gary Speed hadn’t scored for five months, but Yeboah had given him a blueprint to follow. Rod Wallace played Speed in on goal, and he found the bottom corner with the outside of his boot without taking a touch. By half-time it was 4-0, Brian Deane winning the ball back next to the centre circle and leaving his strike partner to sprint away from the defence and do the rest, before Yeboah controlled Tony Dorigo’s cross and sent the goalkeeper diving in the wrong direction to complete his hat-trick.

To Dorigo, Yeboah’s finishing was pure sorcery. A striker might only have a second to finish a chance, but when the ball was at Yeboah’s feet, that second seemed to last longer. “I’m usually more excited than he is,” Dorigo told The Independent. “I want to shout, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’ But he’s incredible. He just relaxes and tucks it in. I’ve seen so many goals where the ‘keeper has been the first one to commit himself and Tony puts it the other way. It’s an art he’s got.”

Like all great artists, Yeboah tried his best to explain his process, but couldn’t escape the fact it was something innate. “It’s about concentration,” he said. “But you also have to be relaxed. If you’re too aggressive you can miss. I try to create my opening and then cool down. Normally, in a one-on-one situation, the goalkeeper will go one way. That’s why I always wait. I’m never nervous. It’s not easy. But then scoring goals is something I’m used to.”

He had been playing for Leeds for a little over two months. With ten goals in ten games, he was already their top goalscorer. Reporters agreed that if Leeds hadn’t eased off in the second half, Ipswich would have followed their 9-0 defeat by conceding double figures. Wilkinson could be notoriously difficult to impress, yet even he couldn’t hide his wonder. “Perhaps it’s too often used,” he said, “but I thought his finishing was world-class — every goal.”

The only disappointment for Yeboah came when he was walking back to the car park with the match ball and discovered a large dent in his new Renault Laguna. But it was going to take more than that to have him pining for a return to Frankfurt. “The papers always want to speculate but it doesn’t bother me,” he said. “I like it very much at Leeds. The people are very friendly and the fans are very good. I love it here.” ⬢