Dan Harding ⭑ From A-Z since '92
Kevin Blackwell was not the right manager for nurturing the kind of young talent Leeds had, back in the early days of the David O'Leary era, made a habit of bringing in, of whom Dan Harding was the last hurrah.
This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.
Signing Dan Harding in summer 2005 now looks like post-relegation Leeds United's last grand attempt to flex, before plunging into League One two years later. Harding was there for that, too, coming back with Ipswich Town on the day Leeds United went down.
He'd come up in football as a youngster with Brighton & Hove Albion, and there too are two diverging trajectories. In 2005 Brighton were the Withdean Wanderers, condemned to playing far from home in a barely converted athletics stadium, clinging to hope that a public inquiry and cash from somewhere would let them build a new ground in Brighton.
Until then, they were struggling to pay players, making sure Bobby Zamora's wages were covered first so he wouldn't want to leave. And while their youth system was still churning out quality, they were struggling to hold onto their talented youngsters. Youngsters like Dan Harding, an England Under-21 international left-back named in FourFourTwo magazine's top fifty of the best players outside the Premier League.
Things were working for Brighton on the pitch, though, even then. Harding ended his first full season as a winner in the Second Division — now League One — play-off final at the Millennium Stadium, and stayed in Mark McGhee's team as they stayed in the Championship, finishing 20th. How long Harding would stay with them, though, was a long running issue. Brighton wanted Harding to sign a contract extension that would guarantee them a large transfer fee if he left; they also didn't want him to leave, because any fee they got would be swallowed up by their financial problems. Harding, unconvinced, let his contract run down.
"There is no doubt in my mind, if we'd had a stadium we would have kept Dan Harding," McGhee fumed. He was angry about a lot of things where Dan Harding was concerned. "He has gone off believing bigger is better," he added, arguing that Leeds United weren't either of those anymore, that Harding would live to regret the move. Brighton were equally unhappy with Leeds chairman Ken Bates' offer of £250,000 for a player they valued over £2m, and miffed when when a tribunal set the fee at £450,000, with another £400,000 dependent on appearances, promotion and international caps.
"I've had no contact from (Leeds manager) Kevin Blackwell, which is a poor show right away," McGhee went on. "Worse than that, I've had no contact from a player who has been at the club since he was twelve years old and who has been treated properly. The whole matter is a disgrace, the way they have handled it."
Harding hardly held back with his response to McGhee. "People are always going to make snide comments like that," he told the Yorkshire Evening Post. A factor in the move was that, as a youngster when his dad was stationed with the army in Germany, Leeds United's title-winning team of 1992 had always been on the telly and he'd become a fan. "I'm not a diehard Leeds fan and I'm not from the area," he admitted, but he'd been at Elland Road with his dad — a Wolves fan — for the FA Cup quarter-final between the teams in 1998.
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