Hook, line & Lee Erwin - The Square Ball 22/10/21


GONE FISHING

Written by Rob Conlon

We’ll always have Terry George to thank for the image of Lee Erwin fishing a football out of the Leeds and Liverpool canal with a shirtless Casper Sloth. Leeds United’s official 2016 calendar was absolutely definitely photographed by George, who was shown camera in hand in the video trailer, and not by Italian photographers Ales&Ales (with creative direction by Riganera) even if they did shoot exactly the same calendar for Massimo Cellino’s Cagliari in 2014, have photos from the Leeds calendar on their business Instagram, have since worked with Cellino at Brescia in the same style, and even (inexplicably) won an award for the Leeds one without mentioning Terry at all. Anyway, the sheer lunacy of all that provides a fitting snapshot of the club at the time. For Erwin and Sloth, it was probably their most notable contribution as Leeds players.

Every Leeds fan had a different breaking point during the wilderness years. I can only salute the brave souls that stuck it out until the end, but for me it came during the Steve Evans season. The best I could feel was complete apathy, which was an improvement on the usual hatred towards the owner, manager, and a number of players (Guiseppe Bellusci, I’m looking at you). I’d moved back to Leeds after studying at university in Nottingham but decided my Saturday afternoons were better spent earning a few quid in a brain-melting part-time job than watching Leeds United.

I didn’t hate Lee Erwin. He was simply another transient character passing through Elland Road who there was no point getting to know, making it all the more surprising when I recently realised he actually got to start a league game in the Championship, elevating him above contemporary obscurities Dario Del Fabro, Zan Benedicic and Brian Montenegro.

After making nine cameos off the bench under Evans, Erwin was finally trusted to start as Leeds hosted Wolves in April 2016, 43 league games into the striker’s debut season. The game took place on the day Leeds announced that people daft enough to buy season tickets for the following campaign would receive 25% of their money back if the club failed to reach the play-offs, rising to 50% if they managed to sell 15,000 tickets. It was an ambitious target, given only 17,694 people had enough enthusiasm to visit Elland Road that afternoon. These were different times. Stuart Dallas couldn’t get into the team on his birthday ahead of makeshift wingers Erwin and Lewie Coyle, while Kalvin Phillips was being kept on the bench by Toumani Diagouraga and Luke Murphy.

Even more surprising than Erwin’s name in the line-up was the result, Leeds 2-1 Wolves, pushing the club briefly into the bright lights of the top half (before failing to win their final three games and finishing a more familiar 13th). Aside from a turn and shot past the post from the edge of the box, Erwin’s main involvement was watching Chris Wood find different ways of not scoring in the first half. At least he got to celebrate both goals in quick succession, a rocket into the top corner from Sol Bamba and a tidy finish from Diagouraga, before being replaced by Jordan Botaka, moments before Wolves pulled one back. Evans described Leeds’ performance in the second half as “quite stunning” and suggested his side had deserved to score seven in the second half, to go with the four Wood should have scored in the first, “but Leeds being Leeds we concede late and have to rely on a big save from our goalkeeper.”

Erwin did enough to keep his place for the next game, but lasted just 45 minutes before being replaced at half-time. It was his last appearance for Leeds. He joined Oldham on loan for the next campaign, where he finished as top scorer under John Sheridan, one of seven moves in five years.

The signs we shouldn’t have expected too much from Erwin were there from the moment he joined on a three-year deal, with Leeds paying a compensation fee to Motherwell. He had scored six goals in his breakthrough season in the Scottish Premiership, but five came in his last nine appearances. Celtic and Sheffield United were among the interested clubs, but Leeds managed to broker a deal through Ross McCormack’s agent Derek Day, despite Cellino being investigated by the FA for an illegal payment to Day as part of McCormack’s transfer to Fulham. Cellino was later banned for eighteen months for breaching the FA’s agent regulations, with Day also fined.

Erwin’s most important goal for Motherwell, the opener at Ibrox in a relegation play-off against Rangers, had been overshadowed by events at the end of the second leg, when opposition defender Bilel Mohsni was sent off for kicking Erwin in the back of the leg then punching him in the face. Mohsni tried confronting Erwin again after the game as he boarded the team bus, and clearly has a thing against obscure Leeds United forwards. Asked in an interview who is the most boring person he has met, Mohsni replied, “At Southend I played with a guy called Ryan Hall who was decent but he loved to talk about it. Every Monday you had to listen to him going through everything he did and how good his left foot was.”

Under Uwe Rosler, Erwin was regularly named on the bench but never made it onto the pitch, and joined Bury on loan a week after Cellino said he would not be loaned out. By the time Erwin returned, three games later, Rosler had been replaced by Evans.

“I’m the first to admit the move to Leeds from Motherwell was a case of having too much, too soon,” Erwin told the Daily Record in 2019. “I was too immature to deal with all that came my way. I’m honest enough to admit there were times when I wasn’t as professional as I could have been.

“I’m not the type of person to harbour regrets but I wish I had the chance now to move to a club like Leeds, as I’m no longer that kid of a few years ago who had so much growing up to do. I would deal with things a whole lot differently, that’s for sure. It was the first time I had to cope with living on my own. I hadn’t experienced anything like it and Leeds United are a massive club so it takes a bit of getting used to. There was a lot of exposure on me and I just wasn’t mature enough to deal with it.”

He has not exactly settled down since returning from his loan at Oldham to be told he had no future at Leeds by yet another coach, Thomas Christiansen. A year at Kilmarnock produced eight goals before he made an eye-catching move to Iranian club Tractor. Erwin only played seven times for Tractor, but scored a seven-minute hat-trick against Zob Ahan, the fastest in Persian Gulf Pro League history. Erwin celebrated those goals in front of a capacity crowd of 66,000 at Tractor’s Sahan Stadium, but some of his other games were played out in front of empty seats, much like being back at Elland Road. “Playing in Iran was torture,” Erwin said. “I’ve never been in prison but I’d imagine that’s how it feels. I spent most of every day sitting in my hotel room.”

A two-year deal at Ross County lasted just one, and Erwin, now aged 27, is at St Mirren. After he scored in pre-season, manager Jim Goodwin gave Erwin, “a special mention because I criticised him at the end of last season. I felt he was overweight, too heavy and sluggish at times.” That has translated to fourteen minutes of league football so far this season amid reports of interest from Turkish side Altay SK. It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Erwin, as if a year at Leeds is all it took to consign a promising prospect to the career of a journeyman. If it’s any consolation, he’s not the only person trying his best to forget that year. And he can always cherish memories of that day by the canal with Casper Sloth.

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