David Rocastle (part one) ⭑ From A-Z since '92
It said a lot that was true about David Rocastle's ability that he was transferring from the champions of 1991 to the champions of 1992.
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.
David Rocastle should have been the perfect new player for the champions, for Howard Wilkinson's Leeds United, in 1992. Instead the club's record transfer was one of the club's most significant blunders, with repercussions Wilkinson could never get under control. Many fans point to selling Eric Cantona in November 1992 as the moment it all went wrong for Leeds in the new Premier League. Spending £2m to buy Rocastle from Arsenal five months earlier was the bigger mistake.
It was all done, from Leeds United and Howard Wilkinson's point of view, and Gordon Strachan's, with the best intentions. The final months of the title run-in had been agony for Strachan, the team's inspirational captain. It was the legacy of tearing a hamstring twenty years earlier, when he was fourteen. Internal bleeding had calcified into a lump that was now rubbing against his sciatic nerve. He limped to the end of the season, almost: he was left out at Liverpool, subbed off against Coventry, and couldn't get past half-time in the decisive, dramatic match at Sheffield United.
A summer of rest didn't cure the problem, so at the start of pre-season Strachan spoke to the manager alongside whom he'd rebuilt Leeds United. "As far as Gordon was concerned he was to be ruled out from then on," Wilkinson said. "He didn't anticipate playing top class football with that back injury, and he told me: 'Find yourself another man, gaffer'."
There were few better candidates to take over from Strachan than Arsenal's David Rocastle. Rocky had spent the first half of the 1980s bouncing around the same London mazes that took some young black footballers straight through to the First Division with Arsenal — Chris Whyte, Paul Davis, Michael Thomas — and sent others, like his friend Ian Wright, on a loop. Rocastle was turned down by Millwall and was considering a career as a PE teacher when Arsenal took him, at fifteen, into their academy.
A year later Arsenal's chairman, David Dein, took a look at him in the youth team. "I remember coming home excitedly from the match and telling all my family, 'I’ve just been watching the nearest thing to a Brazilian footballer you’re ever likely to see – and he comes from Lewisham!'" Dein told FourFourTwo, in 2021.
Rocastle spent the second half of the 1980s living up to that excitement for Arsenal, and much more. He was quiet, and modest, but a leader: his dad had died, aged just 29, when David was a five-year-old boy but the eldest of his mother Linda's five children. He didn't shrink from responsibility as he grew up, or when required in the First Division. He was sent off at Old Trafford in 1987 for kicking out at Norman Whiteside, prelude to a brawl between the two teams in 1990 in which Rocastle had to be restrained by opposing goalkeeper Les Sealey, after which both teams were docked points.
He was eighteen months away, at that point, from his second First Division winner's medal. They went with a League Cup winner's medal he'd won in his breakthrough season, 1986/87. The year of Arsenal's 1988/89 title was his best, playing in all 38 games, earning the Young Player of the Year award for a second time, winning his first England caps.
The Brazilianish flair, and the temper he controlled into leadership and determination, were combining in one of English football's best new talents: a graceful right winger with the work rate of a central midfielder. His only flaw was scoring relatively few goals, a consequence of him selflessly making chances for others. Football journalist Brian Glanville described him as a 'far more rational player' than his exuberant rival for the England wing, Chris Waddle; but he was still capable of extraordinary skill. At Old Trafford again, in 1991, Rocastle won the ball from Neil Webb in the centre circle, accelerated away from Paul Ince's slide tackle, bamboozled Bryan Robson with a stepover and chipped Peter Schmeichel, the 6ft 4in goalkeeper, scoring off the bar from 35 yards.
Rocastle's second title, in 1990/91, was less satisfactory. Left out of Euro '88 by England, he'd not recovered from a knee injury in time for the 1990 World Cup, and fitness was starting to bother him. He only played sixteen times in the title campaign, and although his involvement increased to 39 games in 1991/92, manager George Graham was moving Arsenal in a new direction. He was prizing workrate over flair, clean sheets over creativity, and moving Rocastle into central midfield where he was less effective. Graham's idea, in summer 1992, was to sell Rocastle and buy either Geoff Thomas from Crystal Palace — who refused to let him leave — or John Jensen, a battler from Brøndby who came for £1.1m.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
As a viable replacement for Strachan at Leeds, Rocastle's only rival was Trevor Steven, to whom Wilkinson turned when George Graham initially refused his interest. Extracting one England right-midfielder from the complications between Rangers and Marseille was too much bother, though, so Wilkinson called Graham again. "With a little persuasion from me perhaps," Wilkinson said, Graham, "agreed to sell David at a time which was a bit premature for him."
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