Simon Johnson smiles as he begins listing the strikers he was training alongside as a teenager emerging on the fringes of Leeds United’s first team. Mark Viduka. Alan Smith. Michael Bridges. Robbie Fowler. Robbie Keane. “Looking back,” he says, “I had no chance!”

But Johnson had a different mindset when he was a cocksure young goalscorer working his way through the ranks at Thorp Arch. “At the time I was like, ‘Yeah, I can compete,’” he says. Without that self-belief, he would never have been at Leeds in the first place. A Brummie lad who grew up supporting West Brom, Johnson’s first trial at Leeds ended in rejection. He was told he wasn’t quick enough, returning home and working so hard on his speed with future Olympic sprinter Mark Lewis-Francis — who happened to be a neighbour — that what was initially viewed as a weakness soon became one of his biggest strengths. Eight months after that initial trial, he was moving to Leeds aged 15, living in digs with a family in Barwick-in-Elmet. By the age of 16, he was training with the first team under David O’Leary, learning from some of the best strikers in the country.

“I genuinely didn’t think anything of it,” he says of leaving home at such a young age. “When the opportunity was presented, I was like, ‘Oh my God, get me up there.’ When I look back at it now, it was very young, but there were quite a few young lads that had made that move. There was Jamie McMaster and a few that came over from Australia and a few from Ireland, so it wasn’t just me.

“I feel so privileged to have had that experience, man. Honestly, it’s just ridiculous — the players that we got to watch train and things like that. It’s just mind-blowing. For finishing, it was probably Robbie Fowler who stood out the most. There was hardly any backlift, there was no real power. He just used to find the bottom corners all the time.

“Viduka and Smithy with their back to goal — that was a part of my game where I really struggled to be fair, I had to really work on that, but around that time I don’t think there was anybody better than Smithy and Viduka with their back to goal. They were so good. Viduka obviously had a larger frame, whereas Smithy was a lot slighter, but he was fucking really strong and aggressive. And then obviously Robbie Keane had crazy ability, Bridgey had crazy ability.”

With so many internationals ahead of him, Johnson had to go out on loan to experience his first taste of senior football, joining Hull at the start of the 2002/03 season. At that time, Hull were in the fourth tier of English football, managed by former Liverpool midfielder Jan Molby. The two clubs agreed a season-long loan deal, but Johnson preferred a more short-term arrangement, even if it did lead to a slightly awkward faux pas with his new boss.

“Obviously I always wanted to be part of Leeds’ first team. That was my dream, that was my goal. I didn’t understand the loan system at all. It was just something that was really alien to me. I think you’re easily forgotten about if you go away for a whole season so I just said, ‘I don’t really want to do that, I’ll do a month and see how it goes.’

“I started on the bench and I came on against Bristol Rovers and made my debut for them and scored. Then I think the next game was down at Exeter and I was on the bench again. I was just used sporadically. Jamie McMaster had been at Chesterfield and was in a really similar position. He came back to Leeds and told us that he said to the manager there, ‘If I’m not playing, there’s not much point in me being here,’ so I just thought that was the done thing.

“I was frustrated at Hull because I wasn’t playing as much as I anticipated, so I went and said the same thing to Jan Molby. I’ve done this without speaking to any staff at Leeds. I’ve just done it off my own back because I thought it was the thing to do. When I went back to Leeds, [Leeds coach] Roy Aitken turn to me and said, ‘You need to fucking get back there, they’re paying your wages for the next two weeks.’

“I had to go back to Hull with my tail between my legs and all the players obviously knew what was going on so it wasn’t great. People will have a certain perception of me for the way I handle things there, but I was young and inexperienced and I didn’t fully understand the way things should work.”

While Johnson can laugh at his mishap, it was borne out of a confidence and drive to break through at Leeds. When he eventually returned to Thorp Arch, he knuckled down and scored regularly for the reserves, earning the appreciation of Eddie Gray. With Gray’s backing, he made his first-team debut under Peter Reid as a substitute in a 6-1 win at Charlton.

“It was an absolute dream,” he says. “It was just so relaxed, because there was no pressure really. The lads had done all the hard work and it was just, ‘Go on and enjoy yourself the last ten to fifteen minutes.’ We had a throw-in and I was trying to put my hand behind my back and hold their defender Richard Rufus’ shirt to keep him from getting the ball if it came to me. He uppercutted me in my ribs, so that was a nice welcome to the Premier League. But what a dream come true. I was absolutely buzzing.”

Timing is everything in football, and Johnson fell between two eras at Elland Road. He was too young to have benefited from the opportunities given to O’Leary’s ‘babies’, instead emerging at a time when Leeds were splashing the cash on big-money stars. By the time he made his debut at Charlton, he was coming off the bench with James Milner, a future England international, with another waiting in the wings in Aaron Lennon. Again, Johnson can smile looking back.

“Me and my dad very rarely spoke about my football in depth really, but I got married a few years ago in Greece and it was a night before the actual day. We just sat down having a drink and eventually he came out with, ‘Milner showed you guys how to do it.’ He just lived and breathed football, and I was somebody who enjoyed other aspects of life. And again, I wouldn’t change anything because I feel like it’s moulded me into the person that I am today.

“But Milner, what a fantastic talent and what a fantastic advocate for young aspiring footballers. I think he’s an amazing, amazing footballer and person. I remember one of his first ever training sessions with the first team, and he’s just sat like three people down, literally where they’re on their bum, and slotted one into the net.

“I think that was the moment where I thought to myself, ‘Fucking hell, man. I’ve been grafting my tits off for two years and this kid’s just going to come through.’ I wasn’t being envious because he was a great kid and we got on and he’s actually really funny. But when there was him and I knew Aaron Lennon was not far off as well, things were starting to creep into my head. I was like, ‘This is going to be a bit tricky now.’”

Johnson appeared twice more as a substitute towards the end of the 2002/03 season, in a defeat to Blackburn and the famous 3-2 win at Arsenal, before playing the full ninety minutes in a 3-1 victory over Aston Villa in the final match of the campaign. The following season he had a short loan spell at Blackpool, only to return to Leeds when the club was financially imploding, embroiled in an ultimately doomed relegation battle.

After making a further five appearances in the Premier League towards the end of the relegation season, Johnson hoped he would be given more opportunities in the Championship, only to become one of a number of players who fell out with new manager Kevin Blackwell. Now a coach himself, running his own academy that allows teenagers to combine playing football with studying, Johnson finds it even harder to understand the attitude of Blackwell, who would openly mock him in training if he missed the target in a shooting drill, even if he’d already scored his previous chances. In a previous interview, Johnson said of Blackwell: “I just wanted to knock him out.”

“I think it’s well documented that Kevin and I have never really seen eye to eye,” he says more diplomatically now. “I actually didn’t realise that quite a few people shared the opinion. I’m quite an intense coach myself, but my players will always know that I love them and care for them and if they ever need me at any point they can always pick up the phone and I’m there.

“He just absolutely annihilated you at any given opportunity. I look back now and I find it really weird the way he was. Really weird. From a selfish perspective I actually thought, ‘This is my time,’ even though I knew me and Kevin Blackwell didn’t get on. I just assumed he would see me as an asset given what I’d done the last two years at the club, scoring freely in the reserves.

“I think a lot of people that are not involved in football directly, you could say certain things to them and they won’t believe you, but it’s just the way certain people are and if you’re not mentally tough enough to deal with that kind of thing I would advise you not to get into that game because it happens all the time.”

With Blackwell showing no intention of making Johnson part of his plans, he was once again sent out on loan, joining Leeds’ Championship rivals Sunderland under Mick McCarthy. Sunderland ultimately won the league that year while Leeds toiled in mid-table, but when McCarthy expressed an interest in signing Johnson permanently, Blackwell recalled him back to Leeds, only to loan him out again to League One sides Doncaster and Barnsley. With his contract expiring at the end of the season, Johnson discovered he was going to be released by reading a headline in the Yorkshire Evening Post.

“I’m sure it’s in my scrapbook somewhere. I’m sure the headline was ‘Surplus To Requirements’. It was heart-wrenching. I moved up there when I was 15 and I’ve gone through all these managers — O’Leary had me training with the first team when I was 16, Terry Venables put me on the bench, Eddie Gray had heavy involvement, Peter Reid was the first one to give me my debut.

“And then I’ve got this guy, Kevin Blackwell, who before he’d come to the club as a coach had a preconceived idea of who I was because we used to beat his Sheffield United academy team and be a bit lairy with that. His decision around me wasn’t based on football. It couldn’t have been because I’d done too well over the last two seasons.

“This isn’t me blowing my own trumpet, this is me just stating facts — there was no player at the club who had done what I’d done in the reserves. There just wasn’t, and that includes the likes of Milner and Lennon. It’s supposed to be a process, right — you do well in the youth team, you get moved on to the reserves. You do well in the reserves, you get a chance at first team level.

“I’d gone through that process over the three years and done what I needed to do, so he couldn’t be basing his decision to not include me in his plans on football. That’s just not possible. So it had to be sort of more of a personal thing, right, which I took really badly, but looking back now I’m at peace with it after all this time.”

In the space of three years, Johnson played in the top four division of English football between Leeds and his various loan moves. Upon his release, he admits he fell out of love with the game, bouncing between clubs in League One and League Two. After a spell at Darlington, he helped Hereford win promotion to the third tier and reach the fourth round of the FA Cup, beating Leeds at Elland Road along the way. But within a year of that promotion he’d dropped down to non-league.

“At Hereford there was a really good group of lads. We were favourites to get relegated but we ended up getting promoted, which was an amazing season. There were a few clubs that were giving me a little nudge but nothing ever came of it. Truly, that was the only season after I’d left Leeds where I enjoyed football. I just didn’t enjoy it. I was just doing it because I got paid for it. I was struggling to adapt to that style of football.”

Having experienced the rollercoaster of being a professional footballer at all levels of the game, Johnson is an ideal coach and mentor for his young players to learn from. Reflecting on his career, there is no bitterness or regret. He regularly laughs and smiles at the memories he made and the characters he met. Regardless of how things ended at Leeds, he still occasionally travels to Elland Road for games, and even concedes that the boy who grew up supporting West Brom might have switched allegiances.

“I’ll always follow Leeds,” he says. “There was a time until probably about four years ago when I just couldn’t decide between West Brom and Leeds. And then someone really put me to the test and I had to make a decision. I thought, ‘Okay, it is what it is.’ I’m West Brom born and bred, but you just can’t compete with a club giving you your dreams.” ⬢