To Leeds United fans, FA Cup glory at Wembley means one thing.
Mick Jones charging down the right, reaching the byline and finding a cross. Allan Clarke meeting it with the diving header that sunk Arsenal and delivered Leeds’ only Cup final victory, in 1972.
There have been few happy days at the national stadium since then for Leeds. Indeed, the last time they lifted a trophy there was in 1992, when Eric Cantona’s hat-trick helped Howard Wilkinson’s team defeat Liverpool 4-3 in the Charity Shield.
Leeds had become league champions earlier that year, captained by Gordon Strachan, one of the club’s most influential players of the last century. Though Strachan was only a late substitute in that Liverpool game, even scoring what he calls ‘one of the best own goals ever’, his legacy at Elland Road was already secure.
Strachan joined Leeds from Manchester United for £300,000 in March 1989 and they finished 10th in the old Second Division that season. Only three years later, Leeds won the third league title in their history.
Strachan’s contribution to that rise cannot be overstated. With his impressive fitness and ferocious will to win, he was the perfect captain and the catalyst for the rebirth of Leeds, who had not been in the top flight since 1982. Now, with Leeds one step away from their first FA Cup final since 1973 as they prepare to meet Chelsea at Wembley on Sunday, he is ideally placed to assess their progress under Daniel Farke this season.
Gordon Strachan made 236 appearances for Leeds between 1989 and 1995, helping take them from the second tier to the First Division title
The Scot celebrates winning the Charity Shield on Leeds’ last triumphant visit to Wembley – their supporters will be back on Sunday for an FA Cup semi-final with rivals Chelsea
Strachan speaks to Daily Mail Sport at Coventry’s CBS Arena – he left Leeds for Coventry as a player, then went on to manage the Sky Blues for five years
‘I have said to Leeds fans that they couldn’t ask for any more from the players this season,’ he says. ‘The players they have are doing as much as they can.
‘None of their players can be embarrassed or sad at any of their performances. You cannot argue with this squad because they have done unbelievably well, as has the manager.
‘When you look at the talent they have, I don’t think they’ve left anything in the dressing room in any game. That’s all you can ask for.
‘They are at peace with themselves and it’s a fantastic feeling as a player when you think, “This is as much as I can do”.
‘There is nothing worse than finishing a game with regrets and I don’t think in the last six months, Leeds could ever say that. They took a wee while to get going but they’ve always been hard to beat. That’s reflected in the noise at Elland Road, which has been fantastic.’
When a team comes close to a significant milestone, comparisons with the past are natural. Wilkinson’s title-winning team featured one of Leeds’ greatest midfields of modern times – Strachan, Gary McAllister, David Batty, Gary Speed – and won a bruising duel with Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 1992.
Farke’s team are not yet at that level. Like the title winners, they are an organised, united group closing in on Premier League survival, but without the individual talent of the side Strachan captained. Instead, Strachan sees more similarities with the 1990 promotion-winning team – in which Vinnie Jones played.
Speaking in his role as an ambassador for Coventry Building Society, Strachan said: ‘You had lesser-known players in that team like Peter Haddock, Mike Whitlow, Andy Williams. They couldn’t have done any more than they did. They were a group like this one in terms of mindset.
‘When you look at the talent they have, I don’t think they’ve left anything in the dressing room in any game,’ says Strachan of Daniel Farke’s squad. ‘That’s all you can ask for’
Strachan (front row, third from left) with his team-mates at Wembley in 1992. He says the current crop remind him of the group that won promotion in 1989-90
‘The ones who won the league were the more talented squad – the group that took over, with players like Rod Wallace, Tony Dorigo, Gary McAllister. In that Charity Shield game and at the end of the title-winning season, we had Eric Cantona in his prime, when things were going right for him.
‘The game has changed and there are different ways of winning games. We were like four-wheel drives – any time, any conditions, anything. Nowadays, players are more like Formula One cars.’
Strachan has happy memories of life in the fast lane. He won the European Cup Winners’ Cup with Aberdeen, managed by Ferguson, in 1983. He also had a stint with Coventry, whom he went on to manage between 1996 and 2001.
After Coventry, Strachan was in charge of Southampton, Celtic and Middlesbrough. He won 50 caps for Scotland, playing in the 1982 and 1986 World Cups and managed them from 2013-17. As a player and manager, he won 16 major trophies.
Now 69, Strachan is as sharp and bright-eyed as ever though there are none of the spiky remarks that made his post-match interviews notorious. If there are any regrets about a 43-year career at the sharp end, he hides them well.
In 1998, when George Graham left Leeds suddenly to join Tottenham, Strachan was wanted again at Elland Road. In the end, he stayed at Coventry and the job went to David O’Leary, who led an exciting young team to the Champions League semi-finals in 2001. That year, Coventry were relegated under Strachan and have returned to the Premier League only this season.
‘I’m sure (there was interest) but the conversation stopped quite quickly because I was at Coventry and whatever you think, I am a loyal person and I couldn’t leave,’ Strachan explains. ‘I couldn’t leave (former Coventry chairman) Bryan Richardson and everyone else. I couldn’t do it.
Now 69, Strachan is as sharp and bright-eyed as ever. If there are any regrets about a 43-year career at the sharp end, he hides them well
He turned down the chance to return to Leeds as manager out of loyalty to Coventry. ‘There are ups and downs in life… with the Leeds thing, I am quite happy it never materialised’
‘When I think about it, it’s the best thing that happened to me because I’m happy with the relationship I have with everyone at Leeds – the fans, everybody else.
‘I don’t know how that might have gone if it hadn’t worked out there for me as a manager. If I came back in another life, I’d want to come back as me and do it all again, even the disappointments.
‘There are ups and downs in life. So with the Leeds thing, I am quite happy it never materialised.’
The odds will be against Leeds this weekend, regardless of Liam Rosenior’s sacking and the off-field dramas at Chelsea. The Blues have an expensive squad full of internationals and if they turn up, Farke’s men will find it tough. Yet as Strachan proved so memorably at Elland Road, nothing is impossible.
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