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SHAUN DERRY ON QPR's PROMOTION, NEIL WARNOCK and LEEDS UNITED
Yorkshire Evening Post

Friday 17 August 2012

Leeds United: Whites in safe hands with Warnock - Derry INTERVIEW

Shaun Derry in match action for QPR against Leeds United.

Published on Friday 17 August 2012 02:00

Former Leeds United cult hero Shaun Derry tells Phil Hay the club is in safe hands with his old boss Neil Warnock.

If there is such a thing as a knack of winning promotion to, from or within the Football League then Neil Warnock has it. Queens Park Rangers’ ascent to the Premier League in 2011 equalled a record which the Leeds United manager intends to hold alone by the end of this season.

Only Dave Bassett and Graham Taylor can join him in laying claim to seven separate promotions over the course of their managerial careers. So what was their secret and what is Warnock’s? At QPR, Shaun Derry saw a simple formula. “We had a cracking squad and a manager who knew the game, knew the division and knew how to handle pressure,” he says. “It sounds quite obvious when you say it like that.”

The 2010-11 season was a success like few others in all of Warnock’s days. It might be superseded only by a season which gives him all that he wants from his time at Elland Road. QPR were relegation fodder when Warnock embraced them but Championship winners 14 months later. Derry maintains that without the uncertainty created by the dispute involving Alejandro Faurlin, the club would have won the league by Easter.

There are comparisons to be made between QPR in May of 2010 and Leeds United as they were at the start of this summer. In short, both clubs were in need of a vision which combated their mediocrity and gave rise to some optimism.

Warnock’s advantage at Loftus Road was the financial clout which made Derry, the former Leeds midfielder, one of a clutch of credible signings. Paddy Kenny was another and Adel Taarabt the most eye-opening. Warnock has been less fortunate this summer and, on that basis alone, it is difficult for even him to know if Leeds will have the same bite.

“The day I signed for QPR, I went home and said to my wife ‘something good’s going to happen here,” Derry recalls. “I’d spoken to the manager and, to be honest, Neil was Neil – pumped-up, enthusiastic and really clear on what the plan was. The lads who’ve signed for Leeds this summer will know what I’m talking about. He’s great at selling a move to you.

“But the biggest factor was the squad. It was absolutely immense. Our strongest line-up was quality from front to back but the bench was different class too. You’d be struggling in a game and Neil would throw on Tommy Smith or Rob Hulse, lads like that. It got us out of trouble so many times. That season’s a perfect example of what happens when you get things right – the manager, the squad, everything.”

Not quite everything was perfect. The controversy created by QPR’s signing of Faurlin, a deal which led to accusations of third-party ownership and multiple charges from the Football Association, cast a shadow over QPR and the upper third of the Championship throughout the second half of the season.

The club denied any wrongdoing but newspaper reports regularly pondered the range of penalties available to the FA, ranging from a heavy fine to a punitive points deduction. The implications of a points deduction inflicted on the Championship’s long-time leaders were vast and the threat caused deep uncertainty about which teams would be promoted, which would finish in the play-offs and where QPR would ultimately reside in the table when the web untangled itself.

QPR’s promotion was secured provisionally with a game to spare, courtesy of a 2-0 win at Watford. It was only in the hours before their final match, at home to Leeds, that the FA announced that no points deduction would be imposed. Warnock had promised as much all along, saying: “You’ll have read quite a lot in some papers but I can tell you most articles fall into the category of ‘never let the facts get in the way of a good story’.”

“I don’t dwell on it much because we finished up with the title and the medals,” Derry says. “That’s what people remember. But it was quite a tough time. I honestly think we’d have destroyed the league if it hadn’t been for that.

“When we won at Watford there were celebrations but you knew that a decision (on the FA charges) was due a week later. It was quite hard not to sit at home worrying about it. You read the papers and you watch the news and in your weaker moments you start to fear the worst. But from the manager and the club it was reassurance, reassurance, reassurance.

“Only Neil knows how stressful that period was for him but it can’t have been easy. He was the person dealing with the media and the person most involved on the playing side. I think that’s why he has people like Mick Jones, Ronnie Jepson and Chris Short around him, colleagues he trusts and – in a way – allies who’ve been with him for a long time. It won’t have been all on his shoulders.

“Perhaps there were moments behind closed doors when they expressed doubt to each other but that was never transmitted to the players, not once. All we heard from Neil was ‘you’re the best team in the league, go on and win the title.’”

It was a different mantra to the mood at QPR at the start of the season. Cautiously optimistic is how Derry describes it.

“The club had just about been relegated the season before,” he says. “They’ve been quite fortunate to get out of trouble. So you had to see everything in context.

“There were quality players coming in all the but you still ask questions. How will the team gel, is it the right formula, how strong are other teams going to be? Honestly? I thought we’d be looking at top six.”

His expectations and those over everyone else were raised dramatically when QPR negotiated their first 19 games without defeat. Two results stand out in Derry’s mind: a 3-0 win at Sheffield United on the second weekend of the season and a 2-2 draw at Derby County at the end of August, earned by injury-time goals from Patrick Agyemang and Jamie Mackie.

“Sheffield United struggled quite badly that year but beating them 3-0 at their place amazed me,” Derry said. “I’d played at Bramall Lane so many times over the years and that simply didn’t happen.

“But Derby was the turning point. We were two down with 90 minutes gone and to get a point from that game was ridiculous. I remember Neil coming into the changing room afterwards and saying ‘now you all know what you can achieve this season.’ From there it was 19 games unbeaten, as good a run as you’re ever going to get in the Championship.”

It ended in strangely submissive fashion, with Watford winning 3-1 at Loftus Road on December 10. Eight days later, QPR were beaten again by Leeds in front of a raucous crowd at Elland Road, unable to muster any reply to two goals from Max Gradel.

In an interview with the YEP at the time, Derry broke from convention and stated that the end of Rangers’ unbeaten streak was a good thing. He still believes that it was.

“If you go unbeaten right through the season then great, you win the league,” Derry says. “But what I found was that the run started to put pressure on us the longer it went on. As stupid as it sounds, the players were trying not to lose and it affected our performances. That’s how I saw it. If you look at the games against Watford and Leeds, we were hardly in them. We were well beaten.

“Afterwards, everyone knuckled down and went back to doing what we’d been doing before. It was like a fresh start. We only lost four more games. But I’m not saying the unbeaten run wasn’t crucial. I reckon that any team who get promoted automatically – and this will apply to Leeds – need to have a long spell where they’re playing well and putting results together. If you look back over the years, every promoted team does it.”

Derry keeps his Championship winners’ medal in his sock drawer, hidden from view. Like Warnock, past achievements seem to bother him less than the next one. “I’m very proud of that season but you quickly move on to the next stage and the next challenge,” he says. “When you’re involved in football, the question isn’t what you’ve won but what you’re going to win next. The time to look back is when you’re finished – in my opinion anyway.” Yorkshire Evening Post

 

Great man and spokesperson - very down to Earth and honest.

Must pick up on one point though...

I missed the point in the season where Hulse was physically catapulted onto the pitch causing the opposition to scatter and us scoring in the ensuing confusion. Sure I'd remember that...

 

It obviously plays on the old "never underestimate the opposition" ploy - they see no-pulse and they take their foot off the gas, leading to us winning the game in stoppage time....