He's bowing out but Howard's way can lead England to a glorious future

HE was the last English manager to win the title and chief architect behind St George's Park, the crown jewel of his road map to success.

Howard Wilkinson is retiring this summer aged 80 after a lifetime as one of the most important and unheralded English football.

figures in Sergeant Wilko won the last Football League Championship with Leeds in 1992, before money replaced glory as the game's prime currency, and for one night only he was England manager, as a caretaker, 25 years ago after Glenn Hoddle was axed.

For the last 33 years, he has been chairman of the League Managers' Association, a trade union for coaches he hatched with former England manager Graham Taylor, offering solidarity to survivors and solace to casualties of the ghastly annual sack race.

Next month, Wilkinson (right) will receive an OBE and he is relishing the honour - apart from his wife's insistence that he wears a top hat - before handing over the LMA baton to Martin O'Neill.

He bows out with the game much-changed from his glory days at Elland Road.

"Football is not like a painting on the wall which doesn't get any better as time goes by," he said. "Thirty years later, that portrait in the gallery still doesn't crack a smile.