The new king of Elland Road: Christmas Eve, 1995

The longer a football manager goes on managing, the more of their own history they have to contend with. When he took Leeds United over, in October 1988, Howard Wilkinson swept away reminders of the club's glorious past under Don Revie. He was clearing space, physical and mental, for a new team to create new history.

After seven years in charge Wilkinson's world was becoming cluttered again. Now the history was his. Leeds had failed to live up to the glories of his first three seasons, that brought two titles. Manchester United, the foes he'd vanquished in 1992, had won the first two Premier Leagues. They'd done it with help from Eric Cantona, who Wilkinson had sold to them. Blackburn Rovers had won the third, after taking David Batty away from Leeds. As the new-look league was discovering itself fans were wanting more entertainment to match the hype, but Wilkinson was haunted by his non-telegenic sense of humour.

Then there was Sheffield Wednesday. Wilkinson had played for them, managed them, got them promoted to Division One, then left them for Leeds when their ambition didn't match his own. He'd reassembled the best of them — Mel Sterland, Lee Chapman — with the ones they wouldn't buy, and on the way to the league title Leeds won at Hillsborough, 6-1. That was the start of 1992. Now, at the end of 1995, he'd taken his current Leeds team there and lost 6-2. A handful of Leeds fans had chanted, 'Wilko out!', and his next chance to win them over was a home game, on Christmas Eve, against Manchester United. That meant, probably, defeat. And it meant everyone talking at Wilkinson, about Cantona, again.

Wilkinson agreed to talk to The Times about things. He listed his achievements as a manager, then quoted Alan Sillitoe's character Arthur Seaton in the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: "All the rest is propaganda." The Independent didn't get any quotes at all. After fifteen phone calls asking for an interview, Howard's secretary finally told them he was too busy. He did, after all, have a lot to sort out.

"This is completely my responsibility," he'd said after the crushing defeat at Hillsborough. "I pick the teams, and I choose the tactics." He blamed himself for picking Gary Kelly and Tony Yeboah, even though both were exhausted from international duty. But he hinted that something more fundamental was at issue. "Sometimes in your career you reach a crossroads and we have reached that point," he said. "We can't keep losing goals the way we have been doing and must get back to playing the sort of football which wins matches."

What would that look like, and would it make enough people happy enough? Asked about being regarded as a long-ball merchant, a 1980s manager in a 1990s world, Wilkinson told The Times that, "Labels and stereotypes are for lazy minds." But there was tension in his Leeds team between his reliance on experienced players who would help him sleep at night — Paul Beesley, Richard Jobson — and the sort of expensive thrill-seeking that had eventually led managing director Bill Fotherby to Tomas Brolin. Brolin had scored his first goal at Hillsborough, the ball bouncing off his head as he fell to the floor, but it was proving difficult to get him, Tony Yeboah and Gary McAllister working together while the rest of the team was so fragile. "We played like a side capable of scoring six goals and defended like a side capable of conceding six," Wilkinson said. The Times drew attention to one of his mantras, pinned up in the changing rooms: 'Good football is winning football'. He had to win against Manchester United.

That might have meant a return to classic 4-4-2 route one football, but Wilkinson was never as straitjacketed as his detractors made out. In the 6-2 at Hillsborough he'd cycled from 4-4-2 to 3-5-2 to 4-3-3, trying to get Leeds back into the game, and for Manchester United he went with 4-3-1-2. There was a change in goal, with Mark Beeney replacing John Lukic behind a back four of Gary Kelly, David Wetherall, Richard Jobson and Tony Dorigo. Midfield was anchored by Carlton Palmer, with Gary Speed and Gary McAllister around him. Tony Yeboah and Brian Deane were partners in attack, and with licence to roam between them and the midfield, Tomas Brolin was free to be himself.