David Wetherall ⭑ From A-Z since '92

Howard Wilkinson is rightly remembered first for Leeds United's transformation between 1988 to 1992, but perhaps not enough for the contrasts he sustained. You can go on comparing: 1986 to 1994, 1982 to 1996. Short timeframes but big differences. 

Leeds fans were disappointed by the failure to win more honours after the First Division title and build a new era of glory. But it would have been easier than many people realised for Leeds to lurch much further the other way, back to where they'd so recently been.

David Wetherall was one of the keys to keeping Leeds United in and around the Premier League's top five. Certainly Wilkinson, his manager for most of the 1990s, loved him. Perhaps he always respected Wetherall's request, in the youth ranks at Wilko's Sheffield Wednesday, to study Chemistry full-time and football on the side, and how Wethers was no less committed to football for that.

After bringing him to Leeds, Wilkinson found a much needed source of stability in Wethers, a player around whom he could try building a new defence. Wetherall was the manager's player of the year for 1994/95 season and his surprise choice for praise after games like the Yeboah 3-0 match in Monaco. It wasn't because Wetherall was always the best player but because, in his manager's view, he was the most improved. Wetherall embodied a prized virtue of Wilkoism: through hard work, he kept getting better. 

Some of that desire for improvement may have been down to Wetherall's slow starts in youth football. One was enforced, a growth disorder behind his teenaged knee that stopped him playing any sport for eighteen months. The second was perhaps a consequence of the time that left him for studying, but was still a choice: after coming up with four As in his A-levels, he didn't want to waste an offer from Sheffield University. Eight hours a day, four-and-a-half days a week, he was a Chemistry student. The rest of the time he was in Mick Hennigan's Sheffield Wednesday youth team. 

Hennigan followed Wilkinson to Leeds as his assistant, but neither of them ever forgot a good player. Especially a Sheffield born and raised Wednesdayite like, first of all, Jon Newsome. Another defender, he was another of their former youngsters, and when Wednesday manager Ron Atkinson let his contract lapse, Hennigan found out about it. And after agreeing a move to Elland Road in summer 1991, Newsome passed on that Wetherall was out of contract too. They ended up coming as a pair, for £275,000.

Newsome scored two late season goals that were vital for that season's First Division title, but Wetherall had sought renewed permission from Wilkinson to complete the final year of his degree. That didn't stop the manager putting him on the bench early in the campaign at Old Trafford, and bringing him on for a few minutes against Arsenal at Elland Road. It also didn't stop Henningan playing him 32 times in the reserves. A combination of exams and feeling he hadn't contributed kept Wetherall away from the citywide day of celebration after the title in May 1992. In an interview in 1995 he recalled playing his final reserve game of the season straight after an exam in the afternoon, and realising midway through the match, "Damn — I answered question seven wrong!" But for 1992/93 he was 21, a graduate with first class honours, and ready to play football full-time.