A tribute to Strachan, McAllister, Batty, Speed & a superb Leeds team - Planetfootball.com 25/12/21
Steven Chicken
Strachan. McAllister. Batty. Speed. If you were tasked with
building the archetypal midfield quartet from scratch, Leeds United’s 1992
midfield would be your model.
The 35-year-old savvy veteran and inspirational captain,
slighted by his former mentor and with a point to prove.
The tough-as-nails young local lad who would put himself on
the line for the cause.
The intrepid, spry and versatile left winger who came up
through the youth academy.
Strachan. McAllister. Batty. Speed.
You can’t live in Leeds for very long without becoming very
familiar with those four names, always presented in that exact order, always
rolling off the tongue as easily as you could name members of your own family,
always spoken with the utmost reverence.
In 1990, Leeds won promotion back into the top flight in
Howard Wilkinson’s first full season in charge after eight long and difficult
years in the Second Division.
Gordon Strachan, signed from Manchester United and installed
as captain, has consistently described that promotion season as the favourite
year of his career.
He told the Daily Mail: “I know we won the main
championship, but to win the Second Division was the most wonderful experience
of my life.
“Every Saturday for home games, there was nothing like it. The crowd used to drag the ball into the net. I loved that group.”
Strachan endured a torrid time in his last three years at
Manchester United following his reunion with Alex Ferguson, but he played the
finest football of his career at Elland Road, providing leadership to
youngsters Gary Speed and David Batty alongside midfield partner Vinnie Jones.
Jones departed for Sheffield United following the subsequent
promotion campaign, paving the way for another Scot, Gary McAllister, to join
from Leicester City.
He proved to be the final piece of the puzzle for Wilkinson,
a precision implement in comparison to Jones’ undoubtedly effective
sledgehammer.
Leeds’ first season back in the top flight saw them finish a
phenomenal fourth, an outstanding achievement in itself for a newly-promoted
side.
But in the following campaign, all three of the sides that
finished ahead of Leeds – Arsenal, Liverpool and Crystal Palace – struggled to
carry their form over into the new season.
Fight for the title
It left the door open for Manchester United to challenge for
the title alongside Leeds, with Sheffield Wednesday and Manchester City keeping
the pace well enough to keep things really interesting at the top.
Both Uniteds were in especially good form in the first half
of the 42-game 1991-92 campaign: by Boxing Day both sides had lost just once
each (Leeds to Palace, Man United to Wednesday), with Ferguson’s men holding a
two-point advantage with two games in hand.
However, a poor start to the New Year for the Red Devils
give Leeds the opportunity to make up ground on their great trans-Pennine rival
– and they took it.
Lee Chapman’s hat-trick helped Leeds to a 6-1 win at
Hillsborough on January 12 in a particular highlight for Leeds, even in a
season where they scored three goals or more in 13 of their 42 games.
It could scarcely have been more perfect: a heavy win over title-challenging local rivals to go top of the table.
But in a title race that was described by the Guardian’s
David Lacey as “the league title nobody appeared to want”, Leeds were almost as
capable as shooting themselves in the foot as Manchester United.
A 2-0 defeat at Oldham in early February pushed Leeds back
into second place.
Then, immediately after they reclaimed top spot a month
later with a 3-1 win over Spurs at White Hart Lane, they lost 4-1 away to QPR –
bizarrely, the same scoreline by which QPR had beaten Manchester United at Old
Trafford on New Year’s Day.
However, Leeds responded in fantastic style, pulling off a
5-1 win over Wimbledon, with Chapman again scoring a hat-trick to claim his
14th goal in 30 games.
That left Leeds two points ahead of Ferguson’s side, whose
three games in hand were both an opportunity and a burden.
The Red Devils beat Southampton to go top, but a draw
against Luton and then a 2-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest allowed Leeds to
return to the summit with their 2-0 win over Coventry, with David Fairclough
and McAllister both scoring.
Ferguson’s men were still just a point behind with a game in
hand – but they surprisingly lost it to bottom club West Ham, who had won just
seven of their 39 games all season.
Completing the job
So on April 26, 1992, Leeds went to Sheffield United with
their destiny in their own hands.
Wilkinson’s team talk could not have been simpler: win, and
if Liverpool beat Manchester United later that afternoon, you’ll be champions.
It was a crazy game.
Alan Cork threatened to spoil the party by poking home a 28th-minute goal, but a bizarre Wallace equaliser just before the interval gave Leeds hope: Speed closed down a clearance and got his right foot to it, then the ball cannoned into Wallace’s thigh and looped into the goal – despite a Blades defender’s manful effort to punch it off the line Luis Suarez-style.
Home goalkeeper Mel Rees had been clattered by both Wallace
and his own defender in the build-up to the goal, and McAllister exploited that
by looping a free kick to the far post, leaving Rees in no man’s land and
allowing Jon Newsome to put a diving header into the open goal.
Chapman disastrously turned John Pemberton’s powerful cross
into his own goal to almost instantly wipe out Leeds’ advantage, but the final
farcical goal was in Leeds’ favour.
Blades captain Brian Gayle took a much-too-heavy touch with
his thigh on the edge of the box and, mindful of the lurking Wallace and
Cantona, attempted to head it back to Rees – succeeding only in lobbing the
onrushing keeper to give Leeds victory.
Liverpool promptly did their bit in the later kick-off,
winning 2-0 through Ian Rush and Mark Walters, and the title was back at Elland
Road for the first time since 1974.
It was a monumental achievement: Wilkinson’s 10-year plan
for a Division Two club, achieved in just three. Until Leicester City’s heroics
in 2016, that was the last time a club had won the title so soon after
promotion into the top flight.
Leeds’ defence of the title went even more disastrously than
Leicester’s, but Wilkinson had succeeded in returning Leeds to the top of the
game, and they would remain competitive for years to come.
Their finest moment in the years that followed came in
2000-01 and that Champions League challenge, with Batty the only player still
at the club from their 1992 triumph.
Yet despite a fine career for Leeds (two spells),
title-winning Blackburn, two second-placed finishes with Newcastle, and 46
England caps, Batty still can’t quite believe he played such a key role in his
hometown side’s title triumph.
He told Daniel Chapman of The City Talking in 2015: “It’s
weird, I would say midfield was the strongest part of those teams, but it’s
weird you including me in that, because I don’t — the others are all good names
in the game, aren’t they?”
Sadly, not all of that great midfield are still with us.
I’ve reported on hundreds of games over the past decade, but
none of them even come close to the emotion of Leeds’ 2-0 win over Millwall on
December 3, 2011 – the first match at Elland Road after the tragic death of
Gary Speed.
Football has cause to pay its respects tragically often, but
even allowing for his young age and the circumstances of Speed’s death, this
was different.
The effusive tributes came from all quarters, and lasted
from the moment the crowd entered the stadium to well after the final whistle.
When McAllister, Strachan and Batty laid a wreath in the
centre circle, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, Millwall fans included.
Speed was a hero at Leeds. He had come through the ranks as
a trainee at the club, and the Welshman was held as one of their own every bit
as much as Leeds born-and-bred Batty.
He will live long, long in the memory as one-quarter of the
most complete midfield English football has ever seen.
Strachan. McAllister. Batty. Speed.
By Steven Chicken