Lure of Yorkshire hard to resist for new Middlesbrough manager Neil Warnock

Despite moving to Cornwall in the mid-1990s, Neil Warnock has always found Yorkshire hard to resist.
Neil Warnock chats with Middlesbrough defender ????Neil Warnock chats with Middlesbrough defender ????
Neil Warnock chats with Middlesbrough defender ????

Warnock made his Football League managerial debut with Scarborough in 1987. He took over joint relegation favourites 12 months earlier but after a poor start signed goalkeeper Kevin Blackwell from Barnet and beat them to the Conference title. Scarborough were a point off the top of Division Four when, on New Year’s Eve 1988, he tired of chairman Geoffrey Richmond’s interference and resigned.

Warnock returned to the Broad Acres in 1993 for Huddersfield Town’s final Leeds Road season. It began with one win in eight and losing 5-0 at home to Arsenal in the League Cup but ended with a Wembley final, lost on penalties. They were back the following season to win the Division Two play-offs. Within days, he left for Plymouth Argyle after falling out with the chairman.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In December 1999, Derek Dooley told Warnock, “Happy birthday, your dream’s come true.” He was going to manage second-tier Sheffield United.

Neil WarnockNeil Warnock
Neil Warnock

They escaped relegation but his first two full seasons were mediocre. In 2002-03 they reached League Cup and FA Cup semi-finals, and the play-off final. Promoted in 2006, a distraught Warnock resigned when they controversially went straight back down.

The second of seven Leeds United managers in two years, he was sacked on April Fool’s Day 2013 after 14 months.

Saving Rotherham United from Championship relegation in 2016 is his proudest achievement. They were six points adrift when he was parachuted in for 16 matches.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Something similar at Middlesbrough could be the perfect end to a 1,500-game career, but the 71-year-old will always find management – and Yorkshire – hard to turn down.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor