Howard Wilkinson
Howard Wilkinson is an English football manager.
From 1983 until 1988 he was the manager of Sheffield Wednesday, where he established his reputation as a manager despite never having been a successful player. Wilkinson's greatest success as a manager came after moving to Wednesday's Yorkshire rivals Leeds United in 1988, where he won promotion to the First Division in 1989 and followed this with the last championship of the old-style Football League First Division in 1992. However, his subsequent time at Leeds was less successful, and after a poor start to the 1996-97 season, he was sacked. Soon after this he was hired by the sport's governing body in England, the Football Association, to act as its Technical Director, overseeing coaching and other training programmes at all levels of the game.
In his position as Technical Director of the FA, he managed the England team on a caretaker basis in 1998 for a friendly against France following the sacking of Glenn Hoddle. He returned to the role as caretaker manager for a second time in 2000 following the departure of Hoddle's permanent successor Kevin Keegan, overseeing a 0-0 draw in a World Cup qualifying match against Finland. Following this he acted for a time as the permanent coach of the England Under-21 team, but was not particularly successful in this role.
In 2002 he left the staff of the Football Association to return to club management at Sunderland. However, his time there was not a success, and he was sacked before the end of the 2002-03 season as Sunderland languished at the bottom of the Premier League.
