Two goals a minute, three times: when Leeds went to Derby in the FA Cup, 1996
The Baseball Ground's half-time song was, 'Brian Deane is a wanker', and Jim Smith's tactic was to keep five at the back but also two up front and keep up the sort of pressure that had striker Marco Gabbiadini trying to get to the ball through Richard Jobson's face. It worked.
Derby County's Jim Smith had been a manager long enough that he'd signed Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson, as a player, for Boston United. That was 1971, and in 1996 they were still friends, whose teams had played each other already in pre-season and the League Cup. "The thing about Jim," Wilkinson said, "is that when you're with him you just have to enjoy life."
Without Jim, and with Leeds United, Wilkinson had not been having a good time. All had seemed rosy when, after a winless month, his players won the War of the Roses at Elland Road and followed it up, as their captain Gary McAllister had insisted they should, with victory at Bolton Wanderers. The last game of 1995, though, was a self-defeat. Leeds lost 2-0 at Everton, despite playing against ten after the 20th minute. Their first game of 1996 was a fog-bound 0-0 draw with Blackburn Rovers that a visiting reporter described as an abdication of 'moral responsibility' to entertain fans being charged £19 to sit behind the goals and wish they hadn't.
Wilkinson was being careful with his criticism and, in his role as chair of the League Managers Association, calling for a winter break. "If my players had not played for a week before the Blackburn game, I would have had to hold up my hand and say it was eminently forgettable, but I think I have to defend them," he said, after games on Christmas Eve, December 27th, December 30th and New Year's Day.
Performances had declined as fatigue increased. Tomas Brolin had been excellent against Manchester United and Bolton. Against Everton, with McAllister struggling to get free of John Ebbrell in midfield and Phil Masinga playing with Brian Deane in place of the absent Tony Yeboah, Brolin had dropped deep but found nobody to link with. Against Blackburn, he'd avoided replicating McAllister's job, but couldn't find any work of his own out wide. The sight of Nigel Worthington looming down the left wing towards him would have frozen anybody.
An FA Cup third round trip to the in-form, free-scoring leaders of what is now the Championship was going to be too much, Wilkinson thought, for Brolin. It wasn't the cold. Brolin had proven on the ice at Bolton that, even after the lush years in Parma, he hadn't forgotten how to be Swedish. But a potential giant-killing at the Baseball Ground, with all its connotation of Clough and Revie and Norman Hunter belting Franny Lee, was not going to be the best stage for his record signing's playmaking skills. Derby's sweeper, Igor Stimac, was a likely obstacle of flair, too. Better to rely on the power of Tony Yeboah, for the last time before the African Cup of Nations, and the battering Brian Deane could give their back three.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
It was a prescient move. Deane was the main man of the match, and the home fans' main menace. The game began in a thundering, Brolin unfriendly style, and referee Peter Jones — proudly wearing a newly bestowed Fifa patch on his shirt — had to enforce order by booking Gary Kelly in the fifth minute. After twenty minutes of hard play, Deane's tackle on Stimac did unexpected damage and he was stretchered off, replaced by Paul Trollope and a chorus of boos whenever Deane touched the ball. Ten minutes later, when Mark Ford launched a ball forward into County's empty half, Gary Rowett decided he couldn't risk the boos and rugby tackled Deane on the half-way line to stop him running onto Ford's ball towards goal. Jones sent him off.
Rowett wasn't happy. After he'd got changed and reappeared in the tunnel, Sky Sports took the opportunity of broadcasting his opinion of the incident, live to their viewers. "Well, I mean it was pretty obvious, I thought, to everyone, really. Well, except the ref," he said, huffing sarcastically. "I mean, he got in behind me with a ball and it was just a case of, his arms were all over me really. He's a big lad and I just fell on his legs," he claimed, chuckling like someone who has no idea how all those stolen goods got into his garage. "I mean, it was as simple as that. I still can't believe it."
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