Fotherby on Tour: Des Walker
"Howard Wilkinson has been very persistent," about coming from Arsenal, said David O'Leary. "He would like to pair me with Des Walker if they are successful with a bid to Sampdoria."
Transfers are one of modern football's obsessions, because they represent football without its messy reality: why watch some donkey playing for your team, when you can imagine the difference being made by a prime stallion? The best players are usually out of reach for all but the richest clubs, but in the 1990s Leeds United's managing director, Bill Fotherby, had his own ideas about the word 'unattainable'.
As the Peacocks returned from Division Two to Europe with one of the best teams in our history, Fotherby's pursuit of top transfer targets created a shadow team of world stars fans could keep in the back of their minds while watching, say, Carlton Palmer instead.
For the next few weeks, we're going to follow Fotherby on his travels around Europe, chasing the biggest and best transfers, wondering how close he got to his targets, who we signed instead, and what might have been if Bill's will could have forced history into being just a tiny bit different.
In case you missed the previous parts, so far:
Diego Maradona ⭑ Pairing England's most-hated footballer with England's most-hated football club would have sunk the likes of Emlyn Hughes into tabloid column apoplexy for months. Which would have been fantastic.
Trevor Steven ⭑ It's easy to understand from the adjectives — diligent, hard-working, cultured-but-disciplined — why Trevor Steven appealed to Howard Wilkinson. Besides, he already had Steve Hodge, so might as well collect another midfielder Diego Maradona had run rings around in 1986.
Duncan Ferguson ⭑ Jim McLean wanted a clause in the deal with Leeds preventing them from selling Ferguson to Rangers. But Duncan Ferguson really, really, really wanted to play for Rangers.
Who was signing?
Des Walker had something few centre-backs in his time could claim, that few centre-forwards could deal with: pace. In the mid-1980s there were still fixed ideas about typologies on the pitch, so if a player was fast he was put on the wing and if a player was slow he was put in the middle. Maybe that's why Walker struggled to find the right club as a youngster, and why the right club turned out to be Nottingham Forest, where Brian Clough was revelling in the unorthodox.
Forest fans sang, 'You'll never beat Des Walker', and he was a problem for orthodox strikers because, well, see above: there were slow, lumbering Niall Quinn types, or slow, aggressive Mick Harford types, and they were all better at grappling than running. Against Walker, grappling was never the issue, because his running speed — and his speed of thought — meant he would anticipate and intercept before the ball got anywhere near his opponent. If a striker did get the ball that was no problem either, as Walker would simply chase after them and take it off them with a sliding tackle timed with such precision that he was hardly ever booked because he was hardly ever late.
In the 1980s Forest finished 3rd in the First Division three times, and at the end of the decade they dominated cup football, winning the League Cup twice, the Full Members' Cup twice, and reaching the FA Cup final in 1991 — when Walker conceded an unfortunate own goal in defeat to Spurs. By that time he'd caught the world's attention with England at Italia '90 and Forest had to sweeten their deal with Walker to keep him at the City Ground. He stayed for two more years in return for a £1.5m release fee, meaning when the right bid came — from Sampdoria, in summer 1992 — he could negotiate a big wage at his new club.
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How close did we get?
The Titanic was unsinkable, and Des Walker was unbeatable, until they weren't. Walker's struggle in Italy wasn't altogether abstract in England, because Channel 4 were showing Serie A matches on Sunday afternoons and, as the 1992/93 season went on, showing less and less of Des Walker. He'd started brightly with Sampdoria, winning the pre-season Makita Tournament at Elland Road, but a flurry of mistakes against strikers like Gabriel Batistuta and Jean-Pierre Papin culminated in him being hauled off, at Inter, after half-an-hour. His manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, said Walker was out of the team because he'd realised left-back Marco Lanna — the player David Batty had shoved into the West Stand at Elland Road in July — couldn't play left-back, and had to be in the middle; moving Walker to left-back revealed he didn't have the passing qualities or the attacking instincts for the job. So, amid Sampdorian 'politics' and Eriksson's admission that the club had simply bought too many centre-backs, stories were soon circulating that Walker would be sent back to England after just one season.
One slight hitch was that Walker's Sampdoria experience looked to have affected his England form, and if few in football watched Channel 4, plenty were paying attention to his 52nd game for England, a World Cup qualifier against the Netherlands. England were winning 2-1 when, with four minutes left, Marc Overmars emphatically ended the 1980s by — horror — beating Walker for pace. Worse, Walker's reaction was to chase after him, pull his shirt, and give away a penalty. A month later Walker was at fault again in qualifiers against Poland and Norway, a draw and a defeat. Top English clubs started getting cold feet about bidding for a player many were blaming for the precarious state of qualifying England for USA '94.
That was an opening for Leeds who, after ending their First Division title defence one place above relegation from the new Premier League, urgently needed to revamp the team. 1992/93 had been the first season of the new backpass laws, meaning goalkeepers couldn't pick up passes anymore, and football's new flow had played havoc with the offside trap that used to keep defenders Chris Fairclough and Chris Whyte up around the halfway line. The big space behind them was now full of pacy centre-forwards, and just the place for Walker to bring speed and anticipation in place of Whyte's classic stopping skills.
Walker had some connections to Elland Road. There was Brian Clough, to start with, but he'd started out in Forest's team by partnering Paul Hart, the former Leeds defender who was now heading the academy. After Hart, he played alongside Chris Fairclough, who had put some of that Cloughie class into a more physical frame before winning the top two divisions with Leeds.
Chris Whyte was transfer-listed, Leeds were in the market for an upgrade, and Sampdoria's price was dropping all the time. Des Walker seemed perfect for Leeds, but he didn't do press interviews, so we only have another defender's word to go on about this possible transfer. Here's someone we'll come back to later: "Howard Wilkinson has been very persistent," about coming from Arsenal, said David O'Leary. "He would like to pair me with Des Walker if they are successful with a bid to Sampdoria."
What did they do instead?
It's hard to explain this right now but trust me, in 1993, Sheffield Wednesday were sort of a big deal. Since finishing 3rd when Leeds won the title they'd convinced Chris Waddle they were going to win the Premier League and, while not quite making good on that, they'd come 7th and got to both the FA Cup and League Cup finals, losing both to Arsenal. As well as Waddle they had England goalkeeper Chris Woods, wannabe England striker David Hirst, the glamour of Swedish international right-back Roland Nilsson and Ireland great John Sheridan. They also had loads of money, helpful for dealing with Walker's Italian wages. By paying £2.7m for Walker they were able to boast about beating 'Leeds, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Nottingham Forest' to sign him, and get themselves ready for a decade of unprecedented glory. Or relegation within seven seasons, whichever.
Who did we buy instead?
See above. It's not entirely fair to say Leeds signed David O'Leary 'instead' of Walker, but he was the only defender coming in until John Pemberton arrived in November, from Sheffield United, for £250,000. Let's not worry too much right now about Wilko's proposed partnership between O'Leary and Walker, as the 35-year-old's part in his new manager's plans was scuppered by a ruptured achilles in his third game. But he was back for the season's last home match, against Walker's Wednesday, a 2-2 draw in which Leeds were going with very modern ideas, using a back three of O'Leary, Fairclough, and rising star David Wetherall.
What might have been?
What stands out from Walker's Wednesday career is the consistency. He played 361 games for them, never less than 36 league matches a season. In his first season he won player of the year, recapturing his pre-Sampdoria form and paying back all that Wednesday were paying for him. Forest teammate Garry Birtles said, "He's similar to Roy Keane. He sets himself high standards and expects everyone else to perform to those." Wilkinson had wanted O'Leary to keep up Strachan-like standards at Leeds, but Des Walker might have done just as well. All this plus pace? Leeds could have used some of that as the decade became cluttered up with Carlton Palmer, Paul Beesley and Richard Jobson. Des Walker and Chris Fairclough sounds like a great combination; Des Walker and Lucas Radebe could have been incredible.
Such 'might have been' dreams always depend on things running smoothly, though, and there was no guarantee of that. Where Strachan lived clean and followed the latest diets, Walker was a heavy smoker and the other thing he had in common with Roy Keane, according to Keane himself, was his lifestyle: "a world-class playboy and the man for the night-time adventures." Former coaches remember his obstinance, "a cantankerous bugger" who "wanted things done his way — you had to be very careful how you put things to Des"; he was "suspicious of authority, but (had) a superb attitude on the pitch". That, and his reluctance to speak to the press, make Walker seem something like David Batty in party mode, and Howard Wilkinson had a hard enough time with Batty without adding a smoking and drinking cousin to the mix.
Then again, Walker rated Brian Clough as his best ever manager, for reasons that sound familiar from Wilko's doctrine. "Simple and effective. He didn't ask you to do something you weren't good at, you had to do what you were good at. You had to have courage to play for him. You had to be able to make a mistake and get on with it." It seems unlikely, though, that Wilko would have ever unlaced his defender's boots for him after a game. Clough would turn to the rest of the team afterwards, and tell them, "If you lot play like Desmond, I’ll take your boots off as well." ⭑彡