Dennis Wise

Why we hate him: Runt friend of taxi drivers and sleeping teammates everywhere.

At present Dennis Wise is still getting away with it. Somehow, he is considered a valuable member of the football community; someone who can be trusted with bringing Leeds United out of the mire and some even see him as a potential Premiership manager. Such opinions of the man will surely be short lived.

The plucky little mercenary left Swindon after three months in charge last October, taking the reins at Elland Road after Ken Bates had given Kevin Blackwell the boot. Yes, that Ken Bates, the annoying anti-Santa white-bearded ignorant oul fella who put Chelsea millions in debt before the Russians took over.

Football fans had enough reasons to dislike Leeds (racism, O’Leary, Bowyer, Alan Smith) without Bates taking over. Now that Wise is there though it seems even their own fans can’t stand the side.

Leeds are now staring squarely at the prospect of plying their trade in the third tier of English football. The Champions League semi-final earlier this decade seems a long time ago. As does the days when David O’Leary was considered a half decent manager, but surely even he would be more welcome in the Elland Road dugout than Wise.

Some of you might say that with me being a Liverpool supporter Dennis never really had a chance in my book. He did after all play for two of the Scouse side’s biggest bogey teams – Wimbledon and Chelsea. This may be true but it didn’t stop me finding a way to like Robbie Earle (before his days as a commentator); Dave Beasant (who also played for both sides) or the majority of the Chelsea team that Wise captained for several years.

Wise, with his small man’s complex included, began his reign of slightly comedic ‘terror’ in midfield at Southampton but a “disagreement” with the manager – Lawrie McMenemy – saw him leave the club. He was 18 and moved to Wimbledon where they famously won the FA Cup against some team or other. By 1990 he was seen as a decent enough prospect for Chelsea to break their transfer record and sign him for £1.6 million.

So began 11 years of the little git hacking at opponents ankles for the Stamford Bridge outfit, whenever he could reach them that is. He would win FA Cups, a Cup Winner’s Cup and a League Cup. He would play with Gullit, Vialli and Zola among others and, let’s be honest here, generally wasn’t all that bothersome during that time.

You see, and I only realised this when I started writing this particular Okeydokefootball Hate, you don’t dislike Dennis Wise until you stop and are forced to take notice of him.

When he was a Chelsea player you could forget about his presence and concentrate on the other elements that made the team so watchable during his period there. You could ignore his cockney claptrap in interviews and wait for Zola to say something gracious.

Okay, I suppose there were times he stood out as the considerable prick he could be both on the pitch and off it. In 1995 he was convicted of assaulting a London taxi-driver and given a three-month prison sentence, which was later overturned on appeal.

Then there was that incident in 1999 when he was accused of biting Marcelino Elena of RCD Mallorca in a Cup Winners' Cup tie. In the 1998-99 season he missed a total of 15 games through suspension. Plenty of ankles kicked, very little good football played; best ignored this bloke.

But it was once he left he headed for smaller sides and found them to be goldfish bowls that he was exposed as a distasteful little fool. He left for Leicester in 2001 and his online biography states this was a “less successful” time in his life.

So that’s how you put making 17 league appearances before being sacked by the club in September 2002 after fracturing team-mate Callum Davidson's jaw with a punch (delivered by brave little Dennis while Davidson slept) on a pre-season tour of Finland. This incident and his subsequent failed claim of unfair dismissal saw Wise become one of the most hated men in the game by Leicester fans. We understand.

Theo Paphitis, chairman of Millwall, saw something he liked in Wise however and made him player-manager. Perhaps he looked at Millwall’s fanbase, looked at Wise, thought of the words ‘chip on shoulder’ and put two and two together. To be fair, they mixed for a while as Wise guided them to the FA Cup final in 2004 – their first ever – where they were beaten to a pulp by Man United.

The score said 3-0 but it could have been ten, while Wise was incredibly lucky to stay on the pitch, throwing himself into tackles left right and centre, all of which seemed to result in free kicks. One yellow came, amazingly no red followed no matter how many times he clattered into United’s midfield determined to leave a frankly pathetic mark on the game. They were beaten, well beaten, and Wise’s time as a top player were most certainly gone.

He would move full circle back to Southampton after a disagreement with the new Millwall board at the end of the 2004-05 season, joining them a free transfer during the summer of 2005. He made 12 league appearances for them before ‘Appy ‘Arry Redknapp resigned to kiss and make up with Portsmouth. Wise was then briefly joint temporary manager of the club with Dave Bassett.

However, he left the club in December 2005 when the club decided to appoint George Burley as the new manager. Wise, the board felt, was presuming too much about getting the position, and obviously they looked at his patchy league record at Millwall rather than the glitz and uber-violence of the FA Cup final appearance.

A spell at Coventry followed where he played some decent football before joining Swindon with fellow former Chelsea star Gus Poyet by his side as assistant manager. But, as mentioned before, the two left for Yorkshire where they are now carefully dismantling the stature of Leeds United FC.

Wise says he wants a return to the ‘dirty’ Leeds of the past while the club’s legends turn away in disgust. He signed up Tore André Flo, another ex Stamford Bridge man, to help out the strike-force. It hasn’t worked, and despite the fact that they have the excellent Norn Iron forward David Healy amongst their ranks, they should be relegated.

Bates, Wise and Leeds may be together for a while yet, an inflated sense of their own importance may bond them together for some time in fact. Glancing back to the recent past, Wise once said that his sacking at Leicester was a “disgrace”, so we can add self-delusional in his case as well. Sorry Leeds fans, the third division couldn’t happen to a nicer fella.

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JJ Worrall