Getting Leeds' football rolling

GARY McALLISTER is expounding his novel theory of why his native west of Scotland has produced a disproportionate number of great football managers.

"It's all to do with the Gulf Stream," he declares. With a grand, curving sweep of the hands, like Ian McCaskill in his pomp, he explains how warm ocean currents from the Gulf of Mexico eventually create a micro-climate on the west coast. "That's why we've got palm trees," McAllister says with an exile's pride. "You see," he adds, tongue in cheek, "educated as well."

Pressed to be less frivolous, the Leeds United manager of three months suggests there is something about "the Scottish voice" that transmits "wisdom and authority". As a relative novice in his transient trade, McAllister is keen to stress that he is not remotely worthy of being bracketed with Jock Stein, who briefly managed Leeds 30 years ago; Matt Busby, who came from Orbiston near his birthplace in Motherwell; Bill Shankly, of whom he ventures a brilliant impersonation, or Sir Alex Ferguson. "But," he says, "it's something to aspire towards."

McAllister, 43, stands in his spacious office at Thorp Arch, Leeds' impressive rural training centre, as he talks, a baseball cap emblazoned with a saltire on his desk. When he arrived in late January, after Dennis Wise defected to Newcastle, Leeds' defiantly bright start had faltered while hot air emanated from all sides over the 15 League One points docked by the Football League last August for the manner of the club's exit from administration.

Last Thursday, the season-long stand-off between Leeds chairman Ken Bates and League president Lord Mawhinney was resolved when an independent tribunal ruled that the points penalty was fairly imposed. Instead of going into yesterday's game with Gillingham with a chance of winning the divisional title, Leeds must take their chances with Doncaster, Carlisle and Southend in the lottery of the play-offs, starting at home to Carlisle on Friday night.

For McAllister, who had always worked on the basis that they would receive nothing, the dispute is history and the play-offs are an exciting opportunity. "I've never experienced them but I know what to expect. As a Liverpool player I won three medals in cup-tie football, including the UEFA Cup. I feel I know how to set a team up to get results away in the two-leg business. Gerard Houllier was good at that. People expect you to win at home. Sometimes you can be more dangerous away."

Two years ago, Leeds reached the final for a place in the Premier League by winning at Preston after drawing the first leg at Elland Road. They were then humiliated 3-0 by Watford in the Millennium Stadium final. "What an anticlimax that was," McAllister says. "It was very similar to the 1996 League Cup final when we (Leeds] lost to Aston Villa at Wembley. Even the score was the same. I'd use that experience in discussing with the players the mindset you need in a game like that, when the occasion can override the football."

As the definitive modern midfielder, capable of scoring, defending, pressuring opponents and playing a short or long pass with equal precision, McAllister used to revel in the big-match atmosphere. Cruelly, he is probably remembered more for his penalty miss as Scotland captain against England at Euro '96 than for the haul of medals amassed with Leeds and Liverpool.

That anomaly, however, fits in with a curious aspect of his career: he is known as much for what he did not do as for his achievements. When it came to leaving Leicester, McAllister rejected not only Brian Clough (at Nottingham Forest) but also Celtic (in Billy McNeill's second spell in charge). As a Leeds player, he turned down Rangers during Walter Smith's first reign.

His meeting with Clough, when the great man questioned his manliness because he was wearing cowboy boots, has been well chronicled. McAllister recalls it as "pretty bizarre" yet admits to a "wee twinge of regret" that he never played for a manger whose purist principles he admired. As for spurning the Old Firm, he simply did not want to go back to Scotland's more modest venues after sampling Highbury, Old Trafford and White Hart Lane.

On joining promoted Leeds in 1990 for a then-princely £1m, he combined with Gordon Strachan, David Batty and Gary Speed in a midfield whose all-round quality evoked comparisons with Don Revie's engine room of Peter Lorimer, Billy Bremner, Johnny Giles and Eddie Gray. "It was a bit of a revolution," McAllister says. "Things were starting to happen. We came fourth in our first season, so when (manager] Howard Wilkinson said we were contenders to win it, we didn't doubt it.

"I'm not sure a team coming up now could win it like we did in '92, given the way money has changed the game. But I'm certain Leeds will get back to the Premier League and I hope it's me that takes them there eventually. When this club gets momentum going, it's hard to stop. If we start moving up, investors will want to come in and players will want to join us. When we bring them to Thorp Arch they find it hard to say no. There's not many with better facilities."

The state-of-the-art complex – like the fact that yesterday's sell-out crowd for the visit of Gillingham was the season's best outside the top flight – makes it easy to overlook the fact that Leeds' momentum has been downward since the spend-spend-spend days when Peter Ridsdale and David O'Leary were in cahoots. McAllister sees their natural place as alongside Aston Villa, Everton, Tottenham and Newcastle in the group beneath the Big Four, but is realistic about the task of restoring such status.

"People say we're a big club. At the moment, all we are is a well-supported team in the Third Division. The potential is there, though. When I managed Coventry I was little more than a fire-fighter, selling players and reducing the wage bill. Here it could be different. If we did get out of this league, I can't imagine we'd go into the Championship looking just to consolidate. Get this place on a roll and it could really be something."

Leeds, having erased the 15-point deficit under Wise and Gus Poyet in the fastest possible time, were toiling with one win in seven when Bates summoned McAllister. He found confidence low and it took five games to record a victory. They have hardly looked back since, making him wish he and his No.2, Steve Staunton, and coach Neil McDonald had arrived "just a few games earlier".

Increasingly, in terms of personnel and style, it is his team. He made local midfielder Jonny Howson, 19, Leeds' youngest captain since Bremner, and took Dougie Freedman, 34, on loan from Crystal Palace, the ex-Scotland striker's "know-how and vision" giving Leeds a new dimension alongside the pace of 20-goal Jermaine Beckford. "We haven't said 'no passes over 20 yards' or 'there must be 25 passes in a move'. We've just emphasised the importance of not giving the ball away cheaply. There's this big debate about why England and Scotland haven't qualified, but it's simple; their ball-retention isn't as good as others."

McAllister has no objection to the long ball – "there's no better sight than a goal coming from a 60-yard pass to a striker with pace" – but like the west of Scotland giants, he wants to achieve progress playing "proper football". If Leeds take the first step via success in the play-offs, a warm front reminiscent of the Gulf Stream will sweep west Yorkshire.