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| May 21, 2006 | Sunday | Rabi-us-Sani 22, 1427 |
Leeds eye return to big-time
LONDON, May 20: Leeds United, one of the biggest clubs in English football, stand just one step away from a return to the Premiership after a two-year absence.
They go head to head with Watford in the Championship play-off final at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on Sunday, looking to finally bury four years of anguish which saw the club plumb the depths to become football's laughing stock.
David O'Leary led his expensively assembled squad to a Champions League semifinal against Valencia five years ago.
But the scale of their debt became apparent inside a year when they were forced to sell the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Keane, Jonathan Woodgate, Lee Bowyer and Robbie Fowler.
Within two years Leeds were relegated after a 14-year stay in the top flight.
O'Leary was sacked in 2002, and while Terry Venables, Peter Reid and Eddie Gray tried to keep the club in the Premiership, the unheralded Kevin Blackwell assumed control in the unfamiliar territory of English football's second tier.
Leeds were in administration with debts of almost 100 million (175 million dollars), and previously outspoken and media-savvy chairman Peter Ridsdale left after revealing he had “lived the dream” in his quest to make the Yorkshire club a major European force.
Former Chelsea chairman Ken Bates arrived to try to stabilise Leeds and has kept faith with Blackwell despite sacking a series of managers during his 22-year spell at Stamford Bridge.
Blackwell secured a play-off place in his second season in charge, but also admitted receiving death threats from a militant section of the club's support.
Ironically, one member of Blackwell's early backroom team was Watford manager Adrian Boothroyd, who enjoyed an unremarkable lower-league playing career before going into coaching and then management.
His appointment as successor to the popular Ray Lewington at Vicarage Road 14 months ago surprised most in football, but Boothroyd learned much of his trade at Leeds, and even hails from nearby Bradford.
Ken Bates came in and we were saved, but still the drama carried on.
Big-name managers were linked with the club every two minutes and you thought
Boothroyd, 35, was youth development officer at West Brom before becoming Blackwell's third-in-command in 2004.—AFP
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