Graham's Leeds make shaky start

SO GEORGE GRAHAM did not return to football with a bang, let alone a bung. Within a minute of his inaugural match as manager of Leeds United, he had received the unsolicited gift of a goal from his new team. But Coventry City scored twice in eight minutes early in the second half and Graham took no profit from an afternoon which he ended by hoarsely denying a Saturday morning headline.

Even the hoarseness had an innocent explanation. After 19 months out of football - the year's ban for receiving irregular payments on foreign transfer deals at Arsenal plus a seven-month sabbatical - Graham's voice was not ready for immediate use on the training pitch.

As to the headline, well this concerned the manner of Graham's arrival at Elland Road following the dismissal of Howard Wilkinson early last week. Graham, the report alleged, had been paid a six-figure retainer by Leeds's new owners, the Caspian Group, to hold himself ready in case Wilkinson went. Readers were invited to consider Graham's rejection of other job offers, Manchester City for example, and to put two and two together.

Graham dismissed the report. "I had a laugh about it," he said, band I deny it emphatically. Everybody's got the wrong idea about other things, what happened at other clubs. Everybody's got completely the wrong end of the stick. I wanted to come back at the top with a top team."

Leeds are hardly that at the moment but the potential is obvious. Yet there is, as Graham admits, much to do if the team is to regain the prestige briefly held when Wilkinson won the championship four years ago.

In terms of league position, there would appear to be no comparison between the club's situation now and the job taken on by Don Revie when Leeds made him their manager in 1964. At that time the team were heading for the old Third Division. When Wilkinson was sacked they were in the top half of the Premier League and until Saturday had not lost away from home.

Yet in the modern game, totally dominated by money and run by people ever more impatient for success, Graham could he said to have a more difficult task on his hands. It took Revie three years to get Leeds promoted and another four to win a trophy, the 1968 League Cup. They did not win the championship until 1969. Graham's employers do not give the impression of being prepared to wait so long.

Revie was appointed by Harry Reynolds, a craggy rough diamond of a self-made millionaire who lived in a two-up-two-down terraced house and was a Leeds United man to the core. Graham has been brought in by a group of city slickers with an eye for a business opportunity.

For Caspian, a large part of Graham's appeal lay in the fact that during his nine years at Arsenal he won as much as Revie did in 13 years at Elland Road. But he will need time.

At Highfield Road, Leeds played not so much like a team going nowhere as a team wanting to go somewhere but waiting to be shown the way. Injuries had weakened the side but the attitude was more committed than it had been in the latter days under Wilkinson.

The experience of Ian Rush and Mark Hateley had a calming effect on the teens and twenties around them and Palmer did not rush up as many blind alleys as usual. Martyn's class in goal was seen at its best on the stroke of half-time, when he diverted a shot from Telfer on to a post, and for a while the defence looked less porous.

In the end, however, defending a lead for 89 minutes proved too much for Leeds, who had gone ahead after 51 seconds when Rush laid back Gray's centre for Couzens to beat Ogrizovic with a well-struck shot inside the right-hand post.

Coventry's first victory of the season eased the pressure on their manager, Ron Atkinson, who had already received the traditionally mixed blessing of his chairman's vote of confidence. Salako ran through the opposition from the halfway line to bring the scores level after 57 minutes and Whelan, like McAllister a former Leeds player, volleyed in the winner eight minutes later after Dublin had headed on Borrows's free kick.

How much longer is this pathetic excuse for a manager going to be allowed in charge of Sky Blues?" demanded one reader in a pinkly indignant letters' page of the Coventry classified. A little while yet, after Saturday's mildly encouraging performance.

Atkinson's team talk had been enlightening. Let's have one of those old-fashioned Saturdays where we come to a game, have a pre-match meal, get the right result, and go out and have a few drinks. It seems to work better than all that tactics rubbish."

Would that life for the modern football manager was still that simple. But as to why they still did the job, well Graham had his own answer.

"Whether it's success or failure you just want to carry on, and carry on and carry on, he observed. "What else can you do? We're football people. We love it. It's in our blood."

Well said George, Howard Wilkinson could not have put it better.