Wilkinson, having been persuaded to drop a division from Sheffield Wednesday, became the eighth manager to take on his mantle. Like Revie, he found them floundering in the old Second Division after a decade of decline. They stood 21st, below Plymouth, Hull, Walsall and Bournemouth, and the previous home crowd was 15,600.Unlike most of his predecessors, who included several ex-Leeds players, Wilkinson was not in awe of Revie. Lest that statement sounds bizarre, given Leeds' failure to build on the championship triumph of 1992, it is instructive to examine the state of the club when he succeeded Billy Bremner eight years ago.Fourteen years had elapsed since Don Revie left Leeds as champions. Leeds' Coca-Cola Cup final flop in March was, ironically, the beginning of the end which came yesterday. The Elland Road club were clearly not prepared to risk letting him complete an unhappy hat-trick. Ultimately, Wilkinson became the victim of his own success, or more accurately of the expectations he raised. At the start of the year, as he approached a quarter of a century in a profession he entered at 28 as player-manager of Boston United, Wilkinson had never taken a team to Wembley, never been dismissed and never been relegated.

"Those who have been sacked already and those who will be sacked in the future." Until the new owners of Leeds United decided enough was enough, Wilkinson himself appeared immune to the inevitable. "There are just two types of manager," Howard Wilkinson once decreed. He is under no financial pressure to jump back in, having reputedly left Leeds with a pay-off of over pounds 1m under the terms of the three-year contract he signed in March.. Meanwhile, Gunnar Halle, Oldham's Norwegian defender, found his pounds 250,000 move across the Pennines cancelled yesterday.As for Wilkinson, he intends to take a break from football, possibly until after his 53rd birthday in November. Ian Rush, the team captain, is understood to have a clause in his contract allowing him to leave in the event of a change of manager. But the last board had one agenda and this board's agenda is slightly different." Paul Hart, Leeds' director of youth coaching, has been named as caretaker manager.