BRINGING it all back HOME If we all work together here, who knows what can happen?
LEEDS’ RENAISSANCE HAS REMINDED HOPKIN WHAT CAN BE ACHIEVED WHEN HARD WORK IS ALIGNED WITH INGENUITY... NOW HE HOPES TO TAKE A LEAF OUT OF BIELSA’S BOOK BY REJUVENATING BOYHOOD CLUB MORTON
If we went one up, then we always felt we would not concede
HE was a force in the journey to the land of milk and honey for Leeds United. Now, among many other duties, he helps organise foodbanks for Morton. Much may have changed in the world of football. David Hopkin hasn’t.
Born in the very shadow of Cappielow, the 50-year-old can reflect on the rise and fall and rise again of Leeds and talk passionately about his plans for the Greenock side he now manages. But he is a living exemplar of the maxim that the more things change, the more they remain the same.
A midfield cog in the Leeds team who moved relentlessly towards Champions League football a quarter of a century ago, he watches with fascination as the all-whites captivate English football with a brand of play so reckless and exciting that it makes Russian Roulette seem as dangerous as musical chairs.
Hopkin finds comparisons in the present Leeds team to the side he joined in 1997, even down to the character and style of the managers.
George Graham may seem the most unlikely football twin for Marcelo Bielsa but Hopkin finds much to link the Scot and Argentine. ‘He made us work,’ he says of Graham. Bielsa, too, is a tough taskmaster but Hopkin points out that much of what has been described as revolutionary in football was there at Elland Road when he joined.
‘We were coming in at nine and getting home at half three, four. That was unheard of then,’ he says of arriving in Yorkshire from Crystal Palace.
‘We had our body fats taken three times a week. The calorific content of what we ate was measured,’ he says of the Graham regime.
‘Training was at a high standard. Defend, defend, defend. That old chant of 1-0 to the Arsenal or 1-0 to Leeds…well, George loved that. So did the team. If we went one up, we felt we wouldn’t concede. We were drilled and drilled and drilled. So Bielsa is taking them back to that state of mind.’
Bielsa, of course, differs in his approach to defending. The rough rule of thumb as Leeds prepare to meet Sheffield United in a Yorkshire derby tomorrow is that his team need four goals to win a match. They scored three in their first EPL match against Liverpool. And lost. Four in their next match against Fulham. And won... just!
But Bielsa’s work ethic chimes with that of Graham. If the Leeds players of the late 1990s had to work overtime, those now wearing the famous jersey can regularly expect to start training at 9am and end at 6pm, with a nap at a hotel breaking up the day.
Graham and Bielsa share a dedication to structured training sessions and a propensity to blood youngsters. So does Hopkin.
‘Training sessions under George were meticulous,’ he admits. ‘The players had full respect for him and I’ve tried to instil that when I’m managing. I don’t have the money to spend they had back in the day or Marcelo has now but the principle is the same and that is to make players better. That’s what I tried to do Livingston and, hopefully, you will see that at Morton.’
Hopkin, too, remembers vividly the Graham approach to introducing youngsters.
‘First, the decision to come to Elland Road was easy for me. I had played there with Palace in a cup game just before the move and the atmosphere was astonishing.’ He also appreciated Graham’s vision for the club.
‘George saw they had spent a lot of money on older players and he wanted to change that. He cleared the field. He brought in youthful players.
Hopkin, at 26, was almost a veteran as a flood of young players came into the first team.
He adds: ‘There were boys like Alan Smith, Harry Kewell, Ian Harte, Gary Kelly, Jonathan Woodgate. They had all been playing in the reserves. The club was going to explode.’
The youngsters did not suffer from apprehension. ‘We were playing at Anfield,’ recalls Hopkin. ‘I had a shot blocked. Alan Smith, with his first touch in Premier League football, aged about 18, curls it past David James. Woodgate was playing centre-half as a teenager. Everything seemed to work. I go down to Leeds a lot and I see similarities of what the feeling is like now under Bielsa as to what it was then.’
But then Graham left for Tottenham with David O’Leary, his assistant, stepping up.
Hopkin left after three years at the top end of the table with Leeds finally qualifying for the Champions League.
O’Leary brought in Mark Viduka, Robbie Fowler and Rio Ferdinand as Leeds gambled on breaking through to the very elite with Champions League football a necessity to keep the wheels on an increasingly expensive machine.
‘Aye, the rest is history,’ says Hopkin. Or maybe hubris.
Leeds were enjoying success. But at a price. They overstretched under chairman Peter Ridsdale.
The last four of the Champions League was no consolation as O’Leary left after publishing an illconsidered book and the club rued a spending spree that accumulated debt. Teetering on the brink of insolvency, players were sold and the descent into the lower regions of the English game was assured. From 2004 to 2020, the club endured their longest spell outside the top tier in a history stretching back to 1919 until Bielsa then led them back to the promised land in the summer.
Hopkin, in the meantime, had finished a distinguished playing career and had extraordinary success at Livingston before a disappointing spell at Bradford.
‘I didn’t want to stay at a club and take money for the sake of taking money,’ he says of that six-month managerial spell in Yorkshire. There is strong sense of frustration he could not make the changes he wanted at a club ‘haemorrhaging money’.
Morton offer a different challenge. But, again, he sees similarities with Leeds.
‘Both have strong links with community,’ he explains. ‘Leeds is a one-club city and it was impossible not see how important the team was to the fans when I was there. The postman wore a Leeds shirt. I’m a Morton supporter, a former player and I was born right outside Cappielow in Sinclair Street. It’s a job I’ve always wanted.’
It was therefore a post taken on through passion rather than glamour. ‘I had three players signed when I came in,’ he says.
Hopkin steadied the ship and a fine run after Christmas promised much before Covid struck. ‘I’ve had to go with young players. I have no problem with that because I have a fantastic group.’
Josh McPake, the 19-year-old Rangers forward, has joined that cadre on loan. ‘I will try to give them the chance I got,’ adds Hopkin. ‘I will give my heart and soul to make them better.’
He is aware of his responsibility to the community that surrounds the club. ‘That was a big part of Leeds and still is. The players would go out into schools and clubs. We would make time before the warm-up to sign autographs. We want to have the same feeling here. We have a chaplain and I’m always asking him what the team can do to help the community.’
Hopkin stresses, though, that most important day for a football club is a Saturday. He knows results bring happiness to demanding fans. It is why he is delighted for the Leeds hordes.
‘They had been waiting on this promotion for so long. They are loyal people, very decent, very straightforward, very similar to Scots. They have been waiting and waiting and now they will be a force in the Premier League with Bielsa. They can eventually push into the top five.’
And what of Morton? ‘If we can work together, everything comes together, who knows what can happen? My strongest point is to galvanise a club’, he says. ‘I did that at Livingston and I want to do it here. The fans demand everything but, if you give them everything in return, they are forgiving, loyal people.’
It would be extraordinary
Hopkin could replicate Leeds and end a famous club’s stay in the lower divisions by leading Morton if not back to the land of milk and honey, then to the league of Killie pies. He won’t make vainglorious predictions but has his ambitions.
The currency of the Leeds story was money burned and now money earned. The matter of finance at Morton is less gaudy, with a restricted budget squeezed further with the depredations inflicted by coronavirus.
But as his old club sits at the top table in England, there is a warming tale of cash and carry Cappielow. ‘We organised a food collection,’ says Hopkin. ‘People were driving from miles around and dumping bags of food. It was brilliant. Then this elderly gentleman comes up to where I’m standing with Davie MacKinnon (chief executive), hands over an envelope and walks off. There was 200 quid in it.’
It’s half a century since Hopkin opened his eyes on Sinclair Street. It is moving to see that humane values have survived with an envelope not only containing money but conveying an unwritten message of duty and solidarity.