Howard Wilkinson, the most controversial tactical genius in English football, reveals the blueprint for success that has seen him take the club everyone once loved to hate to the summit of the First Division.

The Renaissance of Leeds under 48-year-old Wilkinson's tutelage has been remarkable. Within three years of taking charge of a club that wallowed near the foot of the Second Division he led them to the top of Division One and embarked on a dual for the title with arch-rivals Manchester United. Perhaps his greatest achievements at Leeds have been to rid United of their bully-boy on-field image and the spectre of the hooligan following that once haunted the Yorkshire Club.

Wilkinson has been panned as the soccer pragmatist who would destroy English football with his long ball tactics at Sheffield Wednesday, yet his current Leeds team have been praised as one of the most attractive in the country. That is Wilkinson's great strength. He is the only man to guide three teams to promotion to Division One and he has achieved that success in very different ways. He is respected by his managerial counterparts who named him as the inaugural chairman of the League Managers Association.

Strongly tipped as a future England manager, Wilkinson explains the personal decision which he believes has cost him his chance of succeeding Graham Taylor, and he reveals why he had to turn down the opportunity of becoming a tax-free millionaire to maintain his pursuit of glory with Leeds United.

The mass ranks of Leeds supporters call themselves 'Sergeant Wilko's Barmy Army'. For the first time the man himself frankly reveals the inspiration that drives him inexorably forward in fulfilling his personal goals.