When Howard Wilkinson left Sheffield Wednesday to become Leeds' manager, in September 1988, the football world was genuinely surprised. It was easy to see why the United board had, at last, abandoned the idea of opting for ex-players as mangers, but what was in it for Mr. Wilkinson? Why leave a team in the top half of the old first division to take over Yorkshire rivals who were sliding towards the third?

Clearly, Wilko saw the possible future for our club. Unlike Sheffield, this was a one club city, with potentially massive support and a proud past. However, not even the most optimistic fan could have guessed that within four seasons he would not only gain us that elusive promotion back to the top flight, but the Championship title itself.

Wilko's first move was to rid his offices of all the references to the Revie years. Of course, these were rightly held up, proudly, by the board as memories of our golden years, but Wilkinson felt that the ghost of Revie, which had hung over the clubs failures of the previous decade, needed to be banished - if we were to start looking to the future.

In Howard's first season, he steadied the ship. It wasn't until a mid-table position had been comfortably secured that he started to make the signings which would have a major influence over the next few seasons. Chris Fairclough was snapped up from Spurs for £500,000 shortly before transfer deadline day but the move which caused the biggest stir was the £300,000 transfer of Gordon Strachan from Manchester United. Wilko would later rightly describe this as the best move of his managerial career.

Wilkinson's close season spending went into overdrive. Unlike previous years, when we were snapping up journeymen and lower division pros, these were all fascinating, if at times, bewilderingly original buys: Mel Sterland, John Hendrie and, of course, Vinnie, to mention but a few.

The hype was tremendous as we approached our opening game, away to Newcastle. Of course, in keeping with Leeds' traditional flair for anti climax, we were beaten 5-2. However, this was not a true reflection of a bizarre game or of a season which would bring that elusive promotion. At this point, everything Wilko touched turned to gold. The manager, the team, the club and the fans were all on the crest of a wave as our surge up the division two table was bolstered by yet more inspirational signings. A few eyebrows were raised when fans' favourite, Ian Baird, was sold to Middlesbrough to be shortly replaced by Lee Chapman, who was not seen as the most technically able or agile forward around and had had more clubs than Arnold Palmer. Yet, at Leeds he would enjoy his greatest triumphs.

Whoever could forget the run-in to that monumental promotion campaign? With our main rivals, Sheffield United and Newcastle, clinging on to our shirt tails for dear life, we faced the Blades at Elland Road on Easter Monday, trouncing them 4-0. Then came our final home game against Leicester City. With a win essential, Mel Sterland gave us a first half lead. Yet I have never heard Elland Road silenced so emphatically as when McAllister, then playing for our opponents, smashed home a brilliant equalizer past Day. More anti climax? Surely not. It would be Strachan who would have the last laugh, scoring an even more spectacular goal and giving us a 2-1win. At Bournemouth, a 1-0 win sealed promotion. The seemingly impossible had been achieved, we were back where we belonged and Wilkinson was regarded as the Messiah.

In the close season, he continued to startle. Vinnie, who had become a folk hero with his battling displays, would be sacrificed at the higher level by new signing Gary McAllister. McAllister's signing was symbolic in that he chose us over several of the high profile clubs. We were no longer regarded as second best. Under Wilko, things were changing. Equally brave was the decision to replace Mervyn day, who had never let us down, with John Lukic.

Our first season back at the top saw continued progress. The midfield quartet of Batty, Strachan, McAllister and Speed was becoming widely regarded as the best in the division. Our defence was solid and up front Lee Chapman was proving to be an inspirational signing. He would finish the campaign with an unbelievable 31 goals - and as the country's top marksman. In the league we were consistently in the top half dozen and finished a highly creditable fourth. In the FA Cup we were only beaten after three replays, in the fourth round, by Arsenal, who would finish as league champions, and in the league cup we lost, over two legs, to Manchester United, despite dominating the Elland Road game. Howard Wilkinson had transformed our fortunes in just a couple of seasons yet the peak had still not been reached. This was to be achieved in the 1991-92 season with, of course, our crowning as League Champions.

Over the summer, the classy Dorigo signed from Chelsea for £1.3 million and Rod Wallace from Southampton for £1.6 million. They were to prove two of the final pieces of the jigsaw. After beating Liverpool 1-0 at Elland Road, in September, Leeds were never to fall out of the division's top two places. This was the stuff of which dreams are made. Of course, if you were to choose a team to have a head-to-head battle with, it would have to be Manchester United, wouldn't it? Desperately striving for their first championship for a quarter of a century, they were always favourites and following a nightmare result against Manchester City, at Maine Road in April, it looked like another Revie-esque 'nearly' season might be looming. But how wrong the doubters were. With Eric Cantona added to the fold and scoring a dazzling goal in a 3-0 home win against Chelsea, we carried on winning while Manchester United endured the kind of collapse only normally associated with English cricket teams. As the season neared its close, it looked increasingly likely that things would be drawn out to the final weekend of the season - but, on the penultimate Sunday, in Sheffield and Liverpool, things took a dramatic and almost surreal turn in our favour.

At Bramall Lane, on Sunday April 26th, a bizarre football match was decided by a 77th minute own goal of comic proportions, by Sheffield's Gayle. We had won 3-2, meaning that Manchester United now had to get some sort of result at Anfield that same afternoon. In a live nationally televised game they were beaten 2-0. As the cameras flashed back to Chappy's house, where he was sitting watching the game with McAllister, Batty and Cantona and the champagne began to flow, Leeds fans worldwide realized that the impossible had happened. Wilko had delivered us the First Division championship for the first time since the days of don Revie. What's more, this would be the very last league championship of its type. The following year would mark the beginning of a new era in English football, with the start of the Premiership.

In many ways, I think Leeds rate of progress from 1988 to 1992 surprised even Wilkinson himself. He was often quoted as saying that the championship challenge had come a year earlier than expected. Whatever the case, by April 1992, Wilko's Leeds had reached their peak and things would never again be quite the same over the last four years of his reign. As documented earlier, until now, Wilkinson's forays into the transfer market, both ingoings and outgoings, had always paid dividends. But over the second half of his time at the club, his luck started to run out. Of course, the most dramatic example of this came in November 1992 with the transfer of Cantona to Man Utd for just £1.2 million. They say we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the news of the JFK and Lennon shootings were relayed. For Leeds fans, much the same can be said of the Cantona transfer. That a man who, in less than six months at Leeds, had become a god, could be allowed to move to our sworn enemies for a fraction of his true worth, at a time when we were ourselves struggling was almost too much to bear. The fact that we, and Wilko, then had to watch in horror as they went on to win trophy after trophy under his influence was even worse. It was perhaps fitting, then, that in 1996 it was to be Cantona's goal in a 4-0 drubbing at Elland Road that eventually led to Howard's dismissal.

Then there was the Rocastle fiasco: buying a player who was clearly not match fit, and refusing to play him at all costs,despite the wishes of the fans. There was Frank Strandli, who Wilko infamously likened to "a young David Hirst". All too briefly, he was to pair up with another top signing, Brian Deane. Although Deano became something of a folk hero at Leeds, mainly due to bags full of honest graft, he was never going to be the goalscorer we needed to replace Chappy. He never had been, even in his days at Sheffield United. On his off days at Leeds - and there were a few to choose from - he would have had trouble hitting a barn door. Wilkinson's move for Tomas Brolin, however, topped the lot. After a protracted deal, that was on, then off, then on again, he would spend much of his time sitting on the Leeds bench, paradoxically trying to lose weight and get match fit.

1992 to 1996 had less highs than lows. The highs? Consecutive top five finishes in 93-94 and 95-96 (How happy would we have been with this, a decade earlier?), the all too brief opportunity to see Tony Yeboah (one of the most natural finishers I've had the pleasure of seeing), a sparkling UEFA cup performance against Monaco and the emergence of a thriving youth set up. The lows? Finishing 17th in 92-93 as reigning champions (without a single away victory all season), the inexcusable sales of Batty and Whelan, Wilko's embarrassing all too public fall outs with Brolin and Yeboah and, most notably, the ignominious Wembley defeat, in 1996, against Aston Villa.

Our first cup final appearance for over twenty years should have been a marvelous experience but few fans were optimistic, following poor form in the lead up to the game. However, the shambolic display at Wembley was too much to bear, with Wilkinson (the man who had single-handedly turned round the club's fortunes just a few years earlier) becoming the only manager in living memory to have fans calling for his dismissal on the day of a final. He later said, "I was emotionally disemboweled". It was the beginning of the end. Having seen his team lose six out of their last seven matches, in 96-97 and make a poor start to the following campaign, the board finally lost their patience with Howard. The club, now under the control of Caspian, wanted a fresh start and appointed George Graham. But how would Howard Wilkinson be remembered, in an overview of the club's overall achievements? Surely, only second to Don Revie. Thanks, Howard.