THE rehabilitation of George Graham began in earnest yesterday with his installation as the new manager of Leeds United.

The former Arsenal manager's painful exile from football ended when he accepted the onerous responsibility of guiding the Yorkshire club towards a more prosperous and clearly defined future just 24 hours after the sacking of Howard Wilkinson.

As Wilkinson emptied his desk and removed the mementoes of his eight years in charge at Elland Road, Graham breezed in, a man clearly anxious to forget the recent past. "If we can get it right here we can be up there with the big giants of football," he said after stepping, back on to the big stage.

Graham's return to the sport comes some 10 weeks after he had completed a one year suspension from all football activities imposed after he was implicated in the now infamous transfer "bung" scandal.

Leeds chairman Bill Fotherby insisted that Graham's past indiscretions were taken into account when the brief search for Wilkinson's successor got under way. "Yes, we did discuss what had happened to him but we decided it was not relevant," he said.

The club's owners, Caspian are likely to provide their new manager with a transfer fund of around £10 million. Graham's initial targets are likely to be Arsenal's Ian Wright, Steve Bould and Nigel Winterburn indeed, any experienced Arsenal player whose future could be said to be uncertain as Highbury awaits new manager Arsene Wenger.