Howard Wilkinson

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Howard Wilkinson
Personal information
Full name	Howard Wilkinson
Date of birth	13 November 1943 (1943-11-13) (age 64)
Place of birth	Sheffield, England
Playing position	Winger
Senior clubs1
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1962-1966 1966-1971 1971-1977	Sheffield Wednesday Brighton & Hove Albion Boston United	022 0(3) 129 (18) 219 (34)
Teams managed
1975-1976 1982-1983 1983-1988 1988-1996 1999 2000 2002-2003 2004	Boston United Notts County Sheffield Wednesday Leeds United England (caretaker) England (caretaker) Sunderland Shanghai Shenhua
1 Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. * Appearances (Goals)

Howard Wilkinson (born 13 November 1943 in Sheffield) is a former English football manager. His son Ben is a professional footballer currently playing for York City.

Contents 1 Playing career 2 Managerial career 2.1 Notts County 2.2 Sheffield Wednesday 2.3 Leeds United 2.4 Spell with the F.A 2.5 Sunderland 2.6 Later career 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Playing career

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] Managerial career

[edit] Notts County

Wilkinson began his coaching career at Notts County where he was taken on and tutored by County's legendary manager Jimmy Sirrel. As County's manager for the 1982-83 season, County managed a reasonable return of 52 points.

[edit] Sheffield Wednesday

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, having achieved a high of 5th place in 1985-86.

[edit] Leeds United

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 who 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 Eric Cantona in February 1992. Leeds won the last championship of the old-style Football League First Division in 1992. As of 2007, Wilkinson is the last English manager to have coached a team to the English league championship title; the four subsequent winning managers have been Scottish (Alex Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish), French (Arsène Wenger) and Portuguese (José Mourinho). 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. Under him the FA began the National Football Centre project.

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. Wilkinson resigned from the post in June 2001,^[1] to be replaced by David Platt (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

In 2002 he left his role as F.A. technical director in order to return to club management at Sunderland, with Steve Cotterill as his assistant.^[2] However, his time there was nothing short of a catastrophe, and he was sacked in March 2003,^[3] as Sunderland languished at the bottom of the FA Premier League with a then league-history-worst total of 19pts.

[edit] Later career

Wilkisnson briefly returned to management in March 2004, taking charge of Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua on a short term contract, but left two months later due to personal reasons.^[4] In October 2004, he was temporarily appointed as first team coach of Leicester City, following the departures of manager Micky Adams and coach Alan Cork.^[5] In December 2004, Wilkinson returned to Notts County where he became a non-executive director.^[6] In June, 2006 he took on a coaching role when he was appointed technical director a post he held until his departure from Notts County in September, 2007.^[7][8]

He is currently the chairman of the League Managers Association.^[9]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Howard Wilkinson management career stats at Soccerbase

Sporting positions
Preceded by Peter Reid	England national under-21 football team manager 1999–2001	Succeeded by David Platt

v • d • e Boston United F.C. – Managers Cringan (1934–35) • Vaughton (1935–36) • Greaves (1936–37) • Tunstall (1937–48) • McGraham (1948–49) • Ithell (1950–52) • Tunstall (1952–54) • Middleton (1954–57) • King (1957–60) • Middleton (1960–61) • Todd (1961–64) • Tunstall (1964–65) • Donovan (1965–69) • Smith (1969–72) • Jobling (1972–75) • Wilkinson (1975–76) • F. Taylor & Bolland (1976–77) • Walker (1977–79) • Phelan (1979–81) • Froggatt (1981–84) • Mann (1984–86) • O'Brien (1986–87) • Kerr (1987–90) • Cusack (1990–92) • Morris (1992–94) • Sterland (1994–96) • Fee (1996–98) • Evans (1998–2002) • Thompson (2002–04) • Rodwell (2004c) • Evans (2004–07) • T. Taylor (2007–) (c) caretaker

v • d • e Notts County F.C. – Managers Browne (1883–93) • Featherstone (1893) • Harris (1893–1913) • Fisher (1913–27) • Henshall (1927–34) • Jones (1934–35) • Pratt (1935) • Smith (1935–36) • McMullan (1936–39) • Parkes (1938–39) • Towers (1939–42) • Womack (1942–43) • Buckley (1944–46) • Stollery (1946–49) • Houghton (1949–53) • Poyser (1953–57) • Lawton (1957–58) • Hill (1958–61) • Coleman (1961–63) • Lowe (1963–65) • Coleman (1965–66) • Burkitt (1966–67) • Beattie (1967) • Gray (1967–78) • Sirrel (1969–75) • Fenton (1975–77) • Sirrel (1978–82) • Wilkinson (1982–83) • Lloyd (1983–84) • Barker (1984–85) • Sirrel (1985–87) • Barnwell (1987–88) • Warnock (1989–93) • Walker (1993–94) • Slade (1994–95) • Kendall (1995) • Nicol (1995) • Murphy (1995–96) • Allardyce (1997–99) • Scott (1999–2001) • Brazil (2001–02) • Dearden (2002–04) • Mills (2004–05) • Thordarson (2005–06) • Thompson (2006–2007) • McParland (2007–)

v • d • e Sheffield Wednesday F.C. – Managers Dickinson (1891–1920) • B. Brown (1920–1933) • Walker (1933–1937) • McMullan (1937–1942) • Taylor (1942–1958) • Catterick (1958–1961) • Buckingham (1961–1964) • A. Brown (1964–1968) • Marshall (1968–1969) • Williams (1969–1971) • Dooley (1971–1973) • Burtenshaw (1974–1975) • Ashurst (1975–1977) • Charlton (1977–1983) • Setters (1983c) • Wilkinson (1983–1988) • Eustace (1988–1989) • Atkinson (1989–1991) • Francis (1991–1995) • Pleat (1995–1997) • Shreeves (1997c) • Atkinson (1997–1998) • Wilson (1998–2000) • Shreeves (2000c) • Jewell (2000–2001) • Shreeves (2001) • Yorath (2001–2002) • Green (2002c) • Turner (2002–2004) • Smith (2004c) • Sturrock (2004–2006) • McAuley (2006c) • Laws (2006–) (c) caretaker

v • d • e Leeds United A.F.C. – Managers Ray (1919–20) • Fairclough (1920–1927) • Ray (1927–35) • Hampson (1935–47) • Edwards (1947–48) • Buckley (1948–53) • Carter (1953–58) • Lambton (1958–59) • Taylor (1959–61) • Revie (1961–74) • Clough (1974) • Armfield (1974–78) • Stein (1978) • Adamson (1978–80) • Clarke (1980–82) • Gray (1982–85) • Bremner (1985–88) • Wilkinson (1988–96) • Graham (1996–98) • O'Leary (1998–2002) • Venables (2002–03) • Reid (2003) • Gray (2003–04) • Blackwell (2004–06) • Wise (2006–08) • McAllister (2008–)

v • d • e England national football team – Managers Winterbottom (1946–62) • Ramsey (1963–74) • Mercer (caretaker) (1974) • Revie (1974–77) • Greenwood (1977–82) • Robson (1982–90) • G. Taylor (1990–93) • Venables (1994–96) • Hoddle (1996–99) • Keegan (1999–2000) • Wilkinson (caretaker) (2000) • P. Taylor (caretaker) (2000) • Eriksson (2001–06) • McClaren (2006–07) • Capello (2008–)

v • d • e Sunderland A.F.C. – Managers Watson (1888–96) • Campbell (1896–99) • Mackie (1899–1905) • Kyle (1905–28) • Cochrane (1928–39) • Murray (1939–57) • Brown (1957–64) • Hardwick (1964–65) • McColl (1965–68) • Brown (1968–72) • Stokoe (1972–76) • Adamson (1976–78) • Knighton (1979–81) • Durban (1981–84) • Robson (1984) • Ashurst (1984–85) • McMenemy (1985–87) • Smith (1987–91) • Crosby (1991–93) • Butcher (1993) • Buxton (1993–95) • Reid (1995–2002) • Wilkinson (2002–03) • McCarthy (2003–06) • Keane (2006–)