David Healy ⭑ From A-Z since '92

(This part three of three — start with part one here, then part two)

Leeds United were, in the cliched vernacular, a basket case club in October 2004. Perhaps the definitive basket case club. But it was still Leeds United, and that still counted for something.

Leeds had gone from the Champions League semi-finals to the Coca-Cola Championship in three years. They'd sold their best players and a lot of bad ones too, been taken over by a local consortium who sold the training ground to raise funds, and maybe worst of all had gone from Nike kits to Diadora. Instead of competing with Real Madrid in Europe and Arsenal and Manchester United in the Premiership, Leeds were being dragged into rivalries with Burnley and Preston North End.

The upside was that, no matter how hard those clubs laughed at our giant falling hard to their level, Leeds United was still Leeds United and if it no longer had the power to compete in the Champions League, it did have the power to take the piss. 

"Laughable," was how Preston chairman Derek Shaw described United's £100,000 bid for their striker David Healy. Leeds quickly upped their offer to £200,000 and Shaw called that "totally unacceptable". He had a point. 

Preston had signed Healy for £1.5m as a 21-year-old who had just made his long awaited debut for Manchester United, the team he'd moved to from Killyleagh in 1995. "Not enough pace and not enough height," Alex Ferguson said, but he figured his friend in charge at Deepdale, David Moyes, could do good things with him.

For Preston, Healy hit 44 goals in 153 games, making an immediate impact in Moyes' team alongside Jon Macken or Richard Cresswell, helping them reach a play-off final. Moyes' successor Craig Brown was initially less impressed, loaning Healy to Norwich, but when he came back he was voted player of the year. 

He was already player of the century for Northern Ireland. Even before he'd left Old Trafford, five goals in his first seven internationals had made Healy a star at home. With his thirteenth and fourteenth goals, in a tour match against Trinidad & Tobago, he became Northern Ireland's record goalscorer within 35 appearances. George Best had called him, "Phenomenal". 

Healy was now 25 and in the last year of his Preston contract. Since the play-off final North End had finished 8th, 12th and 15th, and had now replaced Craig Brown with Billy Davies. A three year extension was being offered to Healy, and the chance to become one of Preston's highest ever earners, up there with Tom Finney, but like his fans back home he was wondering what it would take for him to become a Premier League player. It would take, he reckoned, a transfer to Leeds United.

"Ever since I knew Leeds were interested, it was just a matter of time," Healy said after he'd finally made his debut, but that match was a long and controversial time coming. Preston fans were furious with Healy for also saying things about Leeds like —

"I can't praise this place enough, the facilities, changing rooms, it's all geared for the Premier League. I know they're not in the Premier League flying high like they were a few years ago, but to me they're a massive club with a lot of history and so many great players down the years. Even for this game there were 30,000 fans out there and they gave me a warm reception."

— mild enough from any new signing, only Healy had said all this after playing at Elland Road for Preston North End, after Leeds' first two bids had been knocked back and while Preston were denying knowledge of a third, and after he'd clapped and waved to the Leeds fans who had cheered him and sung, 'Healy wants to play for Leeds'. 

"I went out to win the game for Preston because I'm a professional and will be a North End player until told otherwise," he went on. "So I'll give it everything until then. (But Leeds fans) will have seen the papers and read the interest and it was flattering to see such a vocal support behind the goal, chanting my name to give them a wave."

Healy played and scored in Preston's next game, a 2-1 win over QPR, and played in a 2-0 Carling Cup defeat at Moyes' Everton. It took more than two weeks and more than four bids to complete the transfer, when Derek Shaw said, "Leeds United have finally come back to me and offered what I asked them for two weeks ago." An initial £450,000 rising to £750,000 was believed to be the final offer, although where the money was coming from was a separate issue: the move was announced on the same day as United's chairman, Gerald Krasner, questioned whether a consortium bidding to buy the whole club had the funds.

Healy was not worried about stepping into that chaos. His old Preston teammate Sean Gregan was already at Leeds and ready to reassure him, as was an old pal from Manchester, Paul Butler. "Leeds is a massive club with massive history and it's the next step on the stepping stones for me," Healy said. "Preston are ahead of Leeds at the minute but I see Leeds as a club who will be pushing into the Premier League. Everything made up my mind about Leeds, coming to the training ground the first time, they are a big, ambitious, Premier League outfit. So there was no doubt really." 

His starry-eyed joy wasn't dimmed by a 2-0 defeat to Wigan on his debut at Elland Road. Just pulling on a Leeds shirt had been enough. "It's been a long time coming, I've been looking forward to this moment for three or four weeks," he said. "It's still a buzz to be here and I can't believe it's happened now. I'm a part of Leeds United and part of the great tradition. I just want to do well now."

Healy started with more grinding of his former fans: his first two Leeds goals came in a 4-2 win at Deepdale, where the hostile audience were further appalled by his exuberant celebrations. Then another grind began, of playing football for Kevin Blackwell, who went from complaining about having no cutting edge in attack to maintaining the only way to accommodate all his forwards was to play 4-3-3, 4-5-1 without the ball, which meant playing Healy wide on the left. On the right was usually Aaron Lennon, and they'd be either side of Brian Deane or Rob Hulse. 

Healy finished joint top scorer anyway with seven, the same as Deane — who scored four of his goals in one game against QPR. He was frustrated but understanding, and optimistic that summer signing Eddie Lewis — an American winger coming from Preston, where he'd given Healy excellent service from the left — would free him to play through the middle. "Last year it was a case of circumstances because of the bodies we had," he said. "We did get some decent results with me out there and I scored a few goals but, hopefully, I'll get the chance to play as a mainline striker this season. That's where I've played most of my football and I want to prove to people that I am a mainline striker."