Howard Wilkinson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Howard Wilkinson (born 13 November 1943 in Sheffield) is a former English football manager.
[edit] Playing Days
Wilkinson has played for Sheffield Wednesday, Boston United and Brighton & Hove Albion. He went on to become the coach and then player-manager at Boston United before taking his first full managerial role at Notts County.
[edit] Notts County: Working alongside a legend
Wilkinson began his coaching career at Notts County where he was taken on and tutored by County's legendary manager Jimmy Sirrel.
[edit] Sheffield Wednesday: Establishing himself at the top
From 1983 until 1988 he was the manager of Sheffield Wednesday, where he established his reputation as a manager despite never having been a successful player. His first season saw Wednesday win promotion to the First Division and they were still there when he left four years later.
[edit] Leeds United: Promotion success and title glory
Wilkinson's greatest success as a manager came after moving to Wednesday's Yorkshire rivals Leeds United in 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 whom became captain, Vinnie Jones (who Wilkinson guided to a whole season with only 3 yellow cards), Mel Sterland, Chris Fairclough and Lee Chapman. Following the promotion, Wilkinson immediately offloaded Vinnie 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 Leeds played 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 Éric Cantona in February 1992. Leeds won the last championship of the old-style Football League First Division in 1992. He also guided Leeds to the Charity Shield in 1992, beating 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, he was sacked.
[edit] Spell with the F.A
Soon after leaving Leeds, 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.
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; inheriting a team who were unbeaten and yet to concede a goal, he lost three of his six matches in charge and was replaced by David Platt ahead of the 2000-02 campaign (Taylor would, ironically, end up back in charge, two years later). He returned to the role of caretaker of the senior team in October 2000 following the departure of Hoddle's permanent successor Kevin Keegan, overseeing a 0-0 draw in a World Cup qualifying match against Finland.
[edit] Sunderland: Ill-fated comeback in management
In 2002 he left the staff of the Football Association to return to club management at Sunderland with current Burnley FC manager Steve Cotterill as his assistant. However, his time there was nothing short of a catastrophe, and he was sacked before the end of the 2002-03 season as Sunderland languished at the bottom of the FA Premier League with a then league-history-worst total of 19pts.
Bizarrely, Wilkinson has been quoted as saying his time at Sunderland was a success - he seems to be the only one who thinks so.
[edit] Short-lived comeback in China
He briefly returned to management in March 2004 taking charge of Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua but left two months later due to personal reasons.
[edit] Coaching at Leicester
In October 2004, he was temporarily appointed as first team coach of Leicester City.
[edit] Wilkinson's distinction
To date, Wilkinson is the last English manager to have coached a team to the English league championship title. Since his win with Leeds in 1992, the four subsequent winning managers have been either Scottish (Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish), French (Arsène Wenger) or (most recently) Portuguese (José Mourinho).
[edit] Back to Meadow Lane
In December 2004, Wilkinson returned to Notts County where he became a non-executive director.
| Preceded by Jimmy Sirrel |
Notts County manager 1982-1983 |
Succeeded by Larry Lloyd |
| Preceded by Jack Charlton |
Sheffield Wednesday manager 1983-1988 |
Succeeded by Peter Eustace |
| Preceded by Norman Hunter (Caretaker) |
Leeds United manager 1988-1996 |
Succeeded by George Graham |
| Preceded by Glenn Hoddle |
England national football team manager 1999 |
Succeeded by Kevin Keegan |
| Preceded by Kevin Keegan |
England national football team manager 2000 |
Succeeded by Peter Taylor (caretaker) |
| Preceded by Peter Reid |
Sunderland manager 2002-2003 |
Succeeded by Mick McCarthy |
