Howard Wilkinson

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Howard Wilkinson
Personal information
Date of birth	13 November 1943 (1943-11-13) (age 65)
Place of birth	Sheffield, England
Playing position	Winger
Senior career1
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
?–? 1962–1966 1966–1971 1971–1977	Sheffield United Sheffield Wednesday Brighton & Hove Albion Boston United	? (?) 022 0(3) 129 (18) 219 (34)
Teams managed
1975–1976 1979–1982 1982–1983 1983–1988 1988–1996 1999 1999–2001 2000 2002–2003 2004	Boston United England C Notts County Sheffield Wednesday Leeds United England (caretaker) England U-21 England (caretaker) Sunderland Shanghai Shenhua
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. * Appearances (Goals)

Howard Wilkinson (born 13 November 1943 in Sheffield) is a former English football player and manager.

Despite having a low profile playing career, Wilkinson embarked on a successful managerial career. He won the First Division championship in 1992 with Leeds United, the final season before the creation of the Premier League. As of 2008, he remains the last English manager to win the top flight league in England. He later had two spells as caretaker manager of the English national team.

His son Ben is a professional footballer, currently playing for York City.

Contents 1 Playing career 2 Managerial career 2.1 Notts County 2.2 Sheffield Wednesday 2.3 Leeds United 2.4 The Football Association 2.5 Sunderland 2.6 Later career 3 Honours 3.1 As a player 3.2 As a player manager 3.3 As a manager 4 Managerial statistics 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Playing career

This section requires expansion.

Born in Sheffield, Yorkshire Wilkinson began his playing career with local team Sheffield United, before joinging cross-city rivals Sheffield Wednesday. After just 22 league appearances he joined Brighton & Hove Albion where he played well over a hundred league matches. His final club was Boston United. Whilst there, he won several Northern Premier League titles. It was at the Pilgrims where he began his managerial career, being appointed player manager in 1975. He won two more Northern Premier League titles as the manager.

[edit] Managerial career

[edit] Notts County

Wilkinson began his full time coaching career at Notts County where he was taken on and tutored by County's legendary manager Jimmy Sirrel. After Sirrell left, Wilkinson assumed control of the team for the 1982–83 season, County managed a reasonable return of 52 points achieving a finish of 15^th in the First Division.

[edit] Sheffield Wednesday

In June 1983 Wilkinson dropped a division to become manager of Sheffield Wednesday, where he established his reputation as a manager despite never having been a big-name player. Wednesday won promotion from the Second Division in his first season and Wilkinson maintained their place in England's top flight for the next for years – with a highest finish of fifth in the 1985–86 season. An Owl through and through, he still to this day, remains faithful and involved with his team.

[edit] Leeds United

Wilkinson's greatest success as a manager came after moving to Wednesday's Yorkshire rivals Leeds United in October 1988. He soon drilled discipline into a lacklustre squad and earned the affectionate nickname "Sergeant Wilko", a play on the old TV-show Sergeant Bilko. The team won the Second Division in 1989–90 after the signings of Gordon Strachan who became captain, hardman Vinnie Jones (who Wilkinson guided to a whole season with only three yellow cards), Mel Sterland, Chris Fairclough and Lee Chapman. Following the promotion, Wilkinson immediately offloaded Jones and brought in Gary McAllister from Leicester City and John Lukic was brought back from Arsenal. He also helped players who had come up through the youth team, Gary Speed and David Batty, to mature to the new level of football.

In Leeds' first season in the First Division they performed very well for a newly promoted team and ended the season fourth in the league. "Wilko" felt further improvement was required on the squad and brought in Rod Wallace, Tony Dorigo and Steve Hodge finalising his best squad with Eric Cantona in February 1992. Leeds won the last championship of the old-style Football League First Division in 1992. As of 2008, Wilkinson is the last English manager to have coached a team to the English league championship title; the four subsequent winning managers have been Scottish (Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish), French (Arsène Wenger) and Portuguese (José Mourinho). He also guided Leeds to the Charity Shield in 1992, beating then-FA Cup holders Liverpool 4–3 at Wembley. However, his subsequent time at Leeds was less successful, and even though he guided the team to the League Cup final, after a poor start to the 1996–97 season including a 4–0 defeat to bitter rivals Manchester United, on 9 September 1996, he was sacked. Howard Wilkinson made one of the worst transfer decisions ever when selling Cantona to Alex Ferguson in November 1992. At that point Leeds were the reigning English champions with Cantona their talisman. Wilkinson's decision to sell the Frenchman for £1.2m led to Man Utd winning the title and heralded their 16 years of dominance.

[edit] The Football Association

Four months after leaving Leeds, in January 1997, Wilkinson was hired by the sport's governing body in England, the Football Association, to act as its Technical Director, overseeing coaching and other training programmes at all levels of the game. Under him the FA began the National Football Centre project.

In his position as Technical Director of the FA, he managed the England team on a caretaker basis in 1999 for a friendly against France following the sacking of Glenn Hoddle. Following this he acted for a time as the permanent coach of the England Under-21 team, controversially selecting himself to replace Hoddle's choice of manager, Peter Taylor. Wilkinson was unsuccessful in this role; despite inheriting a team who were unbeaten and yet to concede a goal, he lost three of his six matches in charge. Wilkinson resigned from the post in June 2001,^[1] to be replaced by David Platt (Taylor would, ironically, end up back in charge, three years later). He returned to the role of caretaker of the senior team in October 2000 following the resignation of Hoddle's permanent successor Kevin Keegan, overseeing a 0–0 draw in a World Cup qualifying match against Finland.

[edit] Sunderland

In 2002 he left his role as FA technical director in order to return to club management at struggling Premier League side Sunderland, with Steve Cotterill as his assistant.^[2] However, his time there was nothing short of a catastrophe, and he was sacked in March 2003,^[3] as Sunderland languished at the bottom of the Premier League with a then league-history-worst total of 19 points. He won only two league games out of a possible twenty.

[edit] Later career

Wilkinson briefly returned to management in March 2004, taking charge of Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua on a short term contract, but left two months later due to personal reasons.^[4] In October 2004, he was temporarily appointed as first team coach of Leicester City, following the departures of manager Micky Adams and coach Alan Cork.^[5] Wilkinson returned to Notts County in December 2004 where he became a non-executive director.^[6] He held a coaching role as technical director from June 2006 until September 2007 when he left the club altogether.^[7][8]

He is currently the chairman of the League Managers Association.^[9]

On January 9th 2009 Wilkinson was confirmed as the new Technical Director of Sheffield Wednesday.^[10]

[edit] Honours

[edit] As a player

Boston United

• Northern Premier League Title winner: 1972–73, 1973–74

[edit] As a player manager

Boston United

• Northern Premier League Title winner: 1975–76, 1976–77,

[edit] As a manager

Leeds United

• Second Division Title winner: 1989–90
• First Division Title winner: 1991–92
• FA Charity Shield winner: 1992
• Football League Cup runner-up: 1995–96
• FA Youth Cup winner: 1993

[edit] Managerial statistics

Team	Nat	From	To	Record
				G	W	L	D	Win %
Boston United		1975	1978
Notts County		July 1982	June 1983	44	17	20	7	38.6
Sheffield Wednesday		June 1983	October 1988	255	114	73	68	44.7
Leeds United		October 1988	September 1996	400	173	112	115	43.3
England		1999	1999	1	0	1	0	0.00
England U-21s		1999	2001
England		2000	2000	1	0	0	1	0.00
Sunderland		October 2002	March 2003	27	4	15	8	14.8
Shanghai Shenhua		2004	2004

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Howard Wilkinson career stats at Soccerbase
• Howard Wilkinson management career stats at Soccerbase
• Full Managerial Stats for Leeds United from WAFLL

Links to related articles v • d • e England C national football team – Managers Wilkinson (1979–82) · Owens (1997–02) · Avory (2002–03) · Fairclough (2003–) v • d • e England national under-21 football team – Managers Sexton (1977–90) · McMenemy (1990–93) · Sexton (1993–96) · Taylor (1996–99) · Reid (1999) · Wilkinson (1999–2001) · Platt (2001–04) · Taylor (2004–07) · Pearce (2007–) v • d • e Boston United F.C. – Managers Cringan (1934–35) · Vaughton (1935–36) · Greaves (1936–37) · Tunstall (1937–48) · McGraham (1948–49) · Ithell (1950–52) · Tunstall (1952–54) · Middleton (1954–57) · King (1957–60) · Middleton (1960–61) · Todd (1961–64) · Tunstall (1964–65) · Donovan (1965–69) · Smith (1969–72) · Jobling (1972–75) · Wilkinson (1975–76) · F. Taylor and Bolland (1976–77) · Walker (1977–79) · Phelan (1979–81) · Froggatt (1981–84) · Mann (1984–86) · O'Brien (1986–87) · Kerr (1987–90) · Cusack (1990–92) · Morris (1992–94) · Sterland (1994–96) · Fee (1996–98) · Evans (1998–2002) · Thompson (2002–04) · Rodwell (caretaker) (2004) · Evans (2004–07) · T. Taylor (2007–08) · Welsh (2008–2009) · Scott and Hurst (2009–) v • d • e Notts County F.C. – Managers Browne (1883–93) · Featherstone (1893) · Harris (1893–1913) · Fisher (1913–27) · Henshall (1927–34) · Jones (1934–35) · Pratt (1935) · Smith (1935–36) · McMullan (1936–39) · Parkes (1938–39) · Towers (1939–42) · Womack (1942–43) · Buckley (1944–46) · Stollery (1946–49) · Houghton (1949–53) · Poyser (1953–57) · Lawton (1957–58) · Hill (1958–61) · Coleman (1961–63) · Lowe (1963–65) · Coleman (1965–66) · Burkitt (1966–67) · Beattie (1967) · Gray (1967–68) · Wheeler (1968–69) · Sirrel (1969–75) · Fenton (1975–77) · Sirrel (1978–82) · Wilkinson (1982–83) · Lloyd (1983–84) · Barker (1984–85) · Sirrel (1985–87) · Barnwell (1987–88) · Warnock (1989–93) · Walker (1993–94) · Slade (1994–95) · Kendall (1995) · Nicol (1995) · Murphy (1995–96) · Allardyce (1997–99) · Scott (1999–2001) · Brazil (2001–02) · Dearden (2002–04) · Mills (2004–05) · Thordarson (2005–06) · Thompson (2006–2007) · McParland (2007–) v • d • e Sheffield Wednesday F.C. – Managers Dickinson (1891–1920) · R. Brown (1920–1933) · Walker (1933–1937) · McMullan (1937–1942) · Taylor (1942–1958) · Catterick (1958–1961) · Buckingham (1961–1964) · A. Brown (1964–1968) · Marshall (1968–1969) · Williams (1969–1971) · Dooley (1971–1973) · Burtenshaw (1974–1975) · Ashurst (1975–1977) · Charlton (1977–1983) · Setters (caretaker) (1983) · Wilkinson (1983–1988) · Eustace (1988–1989) · Atkinson (1989–1991) · Francis (1991–1995) · Pleat (1995–1997) · Shreeves (caretaker) (1997) · Atkinson (1997–1998) · Wilson (1998–2000) · Shreeves (caretaker) (2000) · Jewell (2000–2001) · Shreeves (2001) · Yorath (2001–2002) · Green (caretaker) (2002) · Turner (2002–2004) · Smith (caretaker) (2004) · Sturrock (2004–2006) · McAuley (caretaker) (2006) · Laws (2006–) v • d • e Leeds United A.F.C. – Managers Ray (1919–20) · Fairclough (1920–1927) · Ray (1927–35) · Hampson (1935–47) · Edwards (1947–48) · Buckley (1948–53) · Carter (1953–58) · Edwards (1958(c)) · Lambton (1958–59) · Taylor (1959–61) · Revie (1961–74) · Clough (1974) · Lindley (1974(c)) · Armfield (1974–78) · Lindley (1978(c)) · Stein (1978) · Lindley (1978(c)) · Adamson (1978–80) · Lindley (1980(c)) · Merrington (1980(c)) · Clarke (1980–82) · Gray (1982–85) · Gunby (1985(c)) · Bremner (1985–88) · Hunter (1988(c)) · Wilkinson (1988–96) · Graham (1996–98) · O'Leary (1998–2002) · Venables (2002–03) · Reid (2003) · Gray (2003–04(c)) · Blackwell (2004–06) · Carver (2006(c)) · Geddis (2006(c)) · Wise (2006–08) · Williams (2008(c)) · McAllister (2008) · Grayson (2008–) (c) caretaker v • d • e England national football team – Managers Winterbottom (1946–62) · Ramsey (1963–74) · Mercer (caretaker) (1974) · Revie (1974–77) · Greenwood (1977–82) · Robson (1982–90) · G. Taylor (1990–93) · Venables (1993–96) · Hoddle (1996–99) · Keegan (1999–2000) · Wilkinson (caretaker) (2000) · P. Taylor (caretaker) (2000–01) · Eriksson (2001–06) · McClaren (2006–07) · Capello (2008–) v • d • e Sunderland A.F.C. – Managers Watson (1888–96) · Campbell (1896–99) · Mackie (1899–1905) · Kyle (1905–28) · Cochrane (1928–39) · Murray (1939–57) · Brown (1957–64) · Hardwick (1964–65) · McColl (1965–68) · Brown (1968–72) · Elliott (1972) · Stokoe (1972–76) · MacFarlane (1976) · Adamson (1976–78) · Merrington (1978) · Elliott (1978–79) · Knighton (1979–81) · Docherty (1981) · Durban (1981–84) · Robson (1984) · Ashurst (1984–85) · McMenemy (1985–87) · Stokoe (1987) · Smith (1987–91) · Crosby (1991–93) · Butcher (1993) · Buxton (1993–95) · Reid (1995–2002) · Wilkinson (2002–03) · McCarthy (2003–06) · Ball (2006) · Keane (2006–08) · Sbragia (2008–09) · Bruce (2009–)