Football is a small world, where plotlines can become convoluted. Take Coventry City in the mid-nineties. Ron Atkinson was their manager. In March 1995, he took Gordon Strachan from Leeds as his player-assistant, a player he’d managed at Manchester United but failed to sign for Sheffield Wednesday when he chose Leeds. In 1996, they bought Gary McAllister. They already had Noel Whelan, who had been made to live in Strachan’s house after putting his already injured ankle through a shop window. Up front was Darren Huckerby, who scored four goals in two games against Leeds before we gave in and bought him. We might as well add Paul Telfer to our list, for coming out of retirement to play for Leeds in 2008, when Gary McAllister was the manager.

Let’s throw ourselves into the midst of all this, then, at Highfield Road just after Christmas in 1997, when Manchester United are visiting. Atkinson is now working upstairs, and Gordon Strachan is in the dugout. McAllister is missing, but not Whelan, given much too much room in the penalty area to pick his spot past Kevin Pilkington after just twelve minutes. Unlike his goal against them for Middlesbrough later in his career, Whelan doesn’t celebrate this one with a Leeds salute, although he swears he once wore a Leeds shirt under his Coventry kit at Old Trafford, hoping to score and whip it out for the world.

The worst solo goal you’ll ever see equalises things, as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer stepovers his way past nobody and scores from an angle. I’d be embarrassed if I was him. Teddy Sheringham should also be pretty ashamed about giving them the lead at the start of the second half by heading in unmarked from about a yard off the ground.

Let’s have some proper football, with Huckerby at the heart of it. Huckerby was a strange sort of winger. He had incredible pace, which Leeds in particular didn’t like facing, but he was strong, too. With four minutes left, he gets the ball from a throw-in on the left, and with John Curtis hanging on to his shoulders, drags the defender down the line and into the penalty area, where for some dumb reason Henning Berg kicks him. Dublin’s seniority — and his history as a big money outcast from Old Trafford — means he takes the penalty, and after he hits the top corner, he has Whelan on his back to celebrate.

I’m sure Huckerby wanted to score that, but within sixty seconds he has a better one. He gets the ball on the right, with three difficult opponents between him and the goal. First, three defenders, who he has to beat twice each. Second, his own brain, which when he came to Leeds always seemed to hinder his end product. Third is Noel Whelan, who by popping across his dribble on the edge of the penalty area, panicking, and jumping out of the way, came closer to tackling Huckerby than Gary Neville. The end result: the ball rolling into the bottom corner, a 3-2 lead, the 88th minute.

There was still time for a 92nd minute free-kick that David Beckham took great pains to line up as a shooting chance, before feeling great pain and embarrassment when he slipped while taking it and the ball bounced hilariously wide to safety. This is what we want, sometimes: a bunch of players we know getting one over on the team we hate so we can laugh at them. Even if, at the time, we only knew Huckerby for what he’d done to us, not yet for us. “I don’t remember much about the goal,” he said, “apart from the impression of leaving a string of United bodies behind me. I never saw their faces.” ⬢

(This post is free to read from The Square Ball magazine season 34 issue 5. Click here to read more)