Warnock Revisited

Ben Meakin reevaluates his relationship with Mr Neil Warnock

Words: Ben Meakin

I have a complicated relationship with Neil Warnock. Not literally, I’ve never met the guy. But for my formative years – in life, and with football – he was there. Inescapable. Unavoidable. Dependable. But also unknowable, unfathomable, occasionally unlikeable.

The last twelve months have sent many United fans on a journey of trying to untangle Sheffield United Football Club from Chris Wilder. Remembering that they are two separate entities: that Wilder has departed, but the red and white stripes live on. Because they were so inextricably linked, for what felt like such an epic journey: Chrissy Wilder and Alan Knill, overlapping centre-backs, one of our own, the lot.

But before all that, there was Neil. Neil the Blade. A fan. One of us. Gets the club. Gets the fans! 

Getting to know Neil

Let me just lay the scene here for my experience with United managers in the years Before Neil. I got into football too late for Dave Bassett to be anything more than a manager that most grown-ups wanted rid of. Howard Kendall seemed good, but then he was gone. Nigel Spackman ditto (retrospective apologies to Howard Kendall for suggesting that those two managers merit mention in the same breath). Steve Thompson wore sunglasses in the end of season video and just seemed like he was having a really lovely time.

Steve Bruce – well, he took a stand by marching the players off the pitch at Highbury after that goal, but that was about the only time I ever felt anything particularly positive about him then or (especially) since. Adrian Heath was “hell, we could actually get relegated here” levels of disastrous and never managed in England in anything other than a caretaker capacity ever again. Heath was so dreadful an appointment that Sheffield United PLC’s chairman, Mike McDonald, quit at the same time as he left the club.

And after Heath, came Neil Warnock. On December 2nd 1999 he arrived, joining from Bury and giving an astonishing charm offensive of an interview to the media. You can read the extended version here – and I really do recommend it – but let me summarise the hits for you:

• Claims the Blades are his “dream job” (okay, that stacks up)

• Plays down his own ability and reputation as a manager and reminds everyone that there’s “no money” available

• Compares the sale of Brian Deane and Jan Aage Fjortoft to the day Kennedy was assassinated

• Mentions he attended the last Sheffield derby and was blown away by the atmosphere

• Not-so-subtly suggests Wednesday were looking to get a draw, “as always”

• Remembers being in short trousers (TMI?) and crying at being knocked out of the FA Cup

• Drops a cliche about wanting to put “No 12 on my teamsheet as the crowd”

• Lays out the ambition of being the best club in Sheffield – and in the Premier League

Pow! He even finds time to refer to himself in the third person.

As a teenage Blades fan who hadn’t really connected with any manager up to this point, I absolutely lapped this up. It was the best thing I’d ever heard. Sheffield United managers didn’t talk like this. He gets the club! He gets the fans! It was great.

And boy, did it start great. A day after this interview, United beat Portsmouth 1-0 at the Lane thanks to a dazzling Paul Devlin goal – our first win in ten games. Fewer than 11,000 fans were in attendance. We won the next game 2-1 against Blackburn, then a 2-0 away win at playoff-bound Birmingham on Boxing Day. We then beat Fulham 2-0 in front of a whopping 17,375 fans and suddenly Neil had won four out of four in his first month as Blades manager, and the Heath-induced relegation nightmare had swiftly dissipated.

Indeed, Warnock won his first six home matches as United manager, culminating in a 6-0 win over West Brom. After his appointment at the start of December, we would lose just one home game for the rest of the season.

Needless to say, I was loving this. I could even overlook the fact that we went winless in our final nine games of the season, scoring just five times in the process, because we had one of our own in charge, 17 years before “one of our own” was even a thing. 

And yet… we finished 16th that season. 10th the next. 13th in 2001-02. You know what happened in 02-03… although we were soon back scuffling in midtable with consecutive 8th-place finishes.

Crossroads

Here I arrive at a Neil crossroads, if you will, for the following season – 2005-06 – we did something I’d already accepted I’d not see from United, and won promotion to the Premier League (née Premiership). We did so without any splashy signings, the squad instead made up of those who’d been here a while (Paddy Kenny, Chris Morgan, Phil Jagielka, Michael Tonge, Steve Kabba) and a sprinkling of wily, low-cost veterans like Neil Shipperley and David Unsworth. 

This squad caught fire early, won 12 of its first 14 games and finished second only to record-breaking Reading in the Championship table with 90 points (the same amount of points Fulham just accrued on the way to being talked about as “the best Championship team ever”, incidentally).

This was Neil’s masterpiece. He’d taken his boyhood club from the brink of a relegation scrap a few years before, to the promised land of the Premiership. He’d left Wednesday in the dust, with a double in the derby under his belt. And he’d done it with a core of homegrown talent in the lineup (plus, in Alan Quinn, Leigh Bromby and Derek Geary, three players nicked from across the city and converted from villains to heroes). 

Like I said: Neil’s masterpiece. How could it not be? One of our own taking us to the very top, in a way that few could have scripted any better. How could I not love the man unconditionally, after that? How could any Blade?

Well… somehow, Neil managed to taint this season. Not irreparably, of course. There can’t be a United fan out there that didn’t enjoy 2005-06. But among the glorious march to the top flight, there were a few seeds planted that meant that, when Warnock departed after the following year’s relegation, few Blades thought it was a poor decision.

He was all set to join Portsmouth in November, for starters (I’m sure Neil would – and probably did – paint this picture differently, but some reports suggest that the only reason he didn’t leave for Pompey was that Milan Mandaric had a change of heart and turned to Harry Redknapp instead).

He spent a small fortune on Ade Akinbiyi and Geoff Horsfield in January, disrupting an attack that had been perfectly fine in an apparent act of self-harm. He oversaw a panic-inducing run in February and March where United picked up 1 point from 4 games and an insurmountable lead over third place suddenly became somewhat more-mountable, amid rumours of dressing-room fallouts.

United did get it together and clinch promotion with three games remaining, but there was still time for the Neil piece de resistance as he was sent off in the dead rubber against Leeds for losing his rag with referee Graham Poll (I reiterate: this game was a dead rubber, against the team who had been chasing us for promotion, and we weren’t even losing). He was given a touchline ban that meant he had to sit in the stands for our first game back in the top flight.

At the time, I was more than ready to overlook all these moments – and I’m restricting myself just to things from 2005-06 here, which means I haven’t even mentioned “the Battle of Bramall Lane”. I was ready to sweep them under the carpet emblazoned with “He’s a Blade” in big letters on it. This was my first promotion as a fan, and United’s first for 16 years. He had made my club relevant again. There was so much credit in the bank.

One of their own

But now, 15 years after Neil left the club, some of those things I swept under the carpet are beginning to creep back out into the daylight. Neil isn’t really Neil anymore. He’s “Warnock”, or even “Colin”. A man who half-joked that he hoped that people would chant “Warnock’s a wanker” for a whole minute when he passes away. He’s no longer a Blade. He’s an Eagle, a Ranger, a Miller, a Bluebird. United may have been the club at which he had the longest tenure, but he’s no longer one of our own – he’s one of theirs as well.

There became the aching, almost meme-level familiarity of the gushing platitudes he’d dish out to every new club. These are the best fans, this is the biggest club, this is my proudest achievement. There was a sense he was doing all this deliberately, almost as if to goad Blades fans – the same way he refers to us as “Sheffield” despite (surely) knowing that that’s only one step down from calling us “Wednesday” in the guaranteed-to-piss-off-United-fans spectrum.

It would be a stretch to say that every successive United manager has refrained from post-match mardiness at things outside of their control – even Wilder lapsed into it occasionally – but Neil cranked it right up to 11. And then snapped the handle off so there was no cranking it back down again.

It was easy to buy into at the time – this “us against the world, everyone’s out to get us” mentality – but in hindsight, it’s hard for me not to feel faintly embarrassed by it all, even if it was a deliberate, strategic bit of man-management. They weren’t all out to get us, it transpires.

There’s also our own pitiful record against Warnock the manager at his myriad clubs before and since – 3 wins in 14 games, signed off with a fairly comfortable 2-0 win by Boro over Slavisa Jokanovic’s United earlier this season. I came to dread going up against one of his teams – the last-day draw with his Crystal Palace side in 2009 proved immaterial in the end as other results went against us, but the sight of Neil celebrating a late draw at Bramall Lane in front of the Cardiff fans in 2018 did stick in the craw somewhat. 

But he’s a professional. Whatever. You can still tone it down a bit, can’t you?

Don’t misinterpret me here. That sly old git still raises a smile almost every time I see him pop up on TV. I never fail to watch a Twitter video clip involving him (“LINO! LINO!”, “You’ve got to fucking die to get three points”, etc etc) whenever it pops up on the timeline. Instead of feeling antagonised at him saying “Sheffield” even as he painstakingly refers to our opponents, Bristol City, by their full name rather than the city itself, I shake my head and give a despairing grin. 

Neil’s a character. There hasn’t been one like him since and, if he is now finally retired for good (spoiler: he’s not), then I can honestly say football is a less-interesting place than it was, and I will miss him. Even if he does drive me up the wall most of the time.

Like I said, me and Neil: it’s complicated.

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Ben Meakin is the creator and co-host of BladesPod, a Sheffield United podcast. You can follow him on Twitter and find BladesPod wherever you get your podcasts.