He’s bowing out but Howard’s way can lead England to a glorious future
HE was the last English manager to win the title and chief architect behind St George’s Park, the crown jewel of his road map to success.
Howard Wilkinson is retiring this summer aged 80 after a lifetime as one of the most important – and unheralded – figures in English football.
Sergeant Wilko won the last Football League Championship with Leeds in 1992, before money replaced glory as the game’s prime currency, and for one night only he was England manager, as a caretaker, 25 years ago after Glenn Hoddle was axed.
For the last 33 years, he has been chairman of the League Managers’ Association, a trade union for coaches he hatched with former England manager Graham Taylor, offering solidarity to survivors and solace to casualties of the ghastly annual sack race.
Next month, Wilkinson (right) will receive an OBE and he is relishing the honour – apart from his wife’s insistence that he wears a top hat – before handing over the LMA baton to Martin O’Neill.
He bows out with the game much-changed from his glory days at Elland Road.
“Football is not like a painting on the wall which doesn’t get any better as time goes by,” he said. “Thirty years later, that portrait in the gallery still doesn’t crack a smile.
“But football has changed, and the picture is still changing. What people thought was magic in the past might now be considered ordinary.
“Look around you and change is everywhere – from pristine pitches all year round to play-offs, five substitutes and VAR… none of those things were around when I started out as a manager.
“Whatever you think of VAR, it is part of the progress the game has made.
“You may be frustrated by mistakes being made in applying it, but the aim of VAR is to make decisionmaking more accurate, and as time moves on science will find ways of doing it.
“That is the nature of science – if it didn’t evolve or influence our daily lives, we would still be travelling everywhere by horse.”
Wilkinson was completing his ‘A’ licence coaching badge aged 35 at Loughborough when Notts County manager Jimmy Sirrel called offering him a role as joint manager at Meadow Lane – and their double act flourished by throwing stones.
“I found a ladder which led to a gantry with an elevated view of the game,” said Wilko.
“I couldn’t ask Jimmy to go climbing up there, but it gave me a better view of the pitch.
“If I saw something that needed addressing, I would scribble a note, wrap it round a pebble and drop it to Jimmy down below. These days you would just use a mobile phone or one of those (Bluetooth) headsets. There you go – another advance driven by science.”
Wilkinson’s teams were not always afforded high marks for artistic impression, but results were usually more impressive.
One manager told him, after a pre-season friendly at Bristol City, “Play that way and you’ll be relegated.” Wilkinson (right, with Gareth Southgate) was celebrating promotion nine months later.
He said: “What always niggled me was being told how I liked to play and even now I’m constantly annoyed by talk of playing the ‘right’ way.
A doctor has to treat the patient according to his needs, not according to the doctor’s wishes or ideology.”
But by far his greatest achievement, as the FA’s technical director, was establishing St George’s Park as the nerve centre of English football. “I accepted the job on the premise that we could create a better place for young players and coaches to develop and improve,” said Wilkinson. “Coincidence or not, since it opened the England men’s team have reached a World Cup semi-final and the Euro 2020 final, and the Lionesses have won the Euros and reached a World Cup final.”
When history judges Wilkinson’s contribution to English football, he will be up there with the visionaries, not down there with the chancers.
“Would I do it all over again? Absolutely,” he said. “On paper, winning the title with Leeds would have to be the high point of the journey, but I’ve taken real satisfaction from other jobs.
“I’ve been lucky to stay on that road, but now I need a pit-stop at the services.”
Even now I am constantly annoyed by talk of playing the ‘right’ way