Two sides to Warnock's story of success

Neil Warnock's CV, part one: Promotion with Notts County 1990 and 1991. Promotion with Huddersfield 1995. Promotion with Plymouth 1996. Promotion with Sheffield United 2003?

Neil Warnock's CV, part two: Public feuds with Graham Turner 1990, Stan Ternent 1995-present, Gary Megson 2002. Phil Thompson 2003.

Like many of football's great characters, Neil Warnock's personality is split. You think of Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough, campaigners for workers' rights but often utterly ruthless when dealing with their own staff; or Kevin Keegan, who could go from giving two press conferences a day to not speaking to his local paper for six months. Then there is Sheffield United's manager, a charming, engaging and successful man who is probably the most widely disliked coach in football; though not by those who have played for him.

His achievements this season have been enormous. Born in Sheffield in a house which stood on the halfway line of a football pitch, Warnock is on the verge of bringing the club he supported as a boy back into the Premiership. Had United beaten Liverpool and Arsenal in games they should, and might, have won respectively, he would have taken a club, whom most of their own players thought incapable of promotion, to the finals of the Worthington and FA Cups as well.

"It was only when I watched the FA Cup final that I realised how close we were to one of the majors, even though I feel asleep watching it with my little boy in my arms." Warnock said. "When you step back at the end of a season, one or two things might hit me that haven't hit me yet."

It is worth remembering that Warnock's first task last summer was to reduce the wage bill at Bramall Lane and that, contrary to the image most people have of his sides (raised elbows and long balls), the Blades have played sharp, incisive football to reach this afternoon's First Division play-off final.

"If you were to ask every club in the First Division about their wage bill, I think we would be in the bottom five. I'm still accused of being a long-ball merchant. It was true at one time because you have to adapt to your circumstances; my players at Notts County couldn't pass water, so you can't get them to start passing the ball. As a manager, whether it's Sunday League or Premier League, you only play systems to suit the players you've got."

Should Warnock lose the first of his five play-off finals this afternoon, he may not be able to keep some of those players. He joked that United's progress in the Worthington Cup, which raised £1.6m, ensured he would not have to sell any of his young talent such as Michael Tonge, Phil Jagielka and Michael Brown before the season's end. He needs victory over Wolves to guarantee that the likes of Brown will remain in Sheffield this summer.

"It's the only chance I've got of holding on to the best players. There are so many whose careers could be up in the air. Defeat may mean having to break up the team and I would not want to be here to do it. I think the directors know that. I'm not daft; if we don't go up Michael Brown with one year left on his contract... I can't do anything about that, I'll just have to pull another rabbit out of the hat for no money."

Warnock has prepared for this year's play-off as he has all the rest. The squad have been taken to The Belfry for a few games of golf and afterwards there will be the family holiday to Cornwall. Curiously, like Kenny Dalglish, who was so stressed during Blackburn's encounter with Derby in 1992 he thought he was having a heart-attack, Warnock has found the semi-finals worse than the finals.

"When Notts County were playing Middlesbrough I remember feeling physically sick. I didn't have time to feel sick in this semi-final, against Nottingham Forest, there was that much happening." United, two-down, fought back to win 4-3.

It was matches like these that meant Warnock finished runner-up to Everton's David Moyes when the League Managers' Association voted for its man of the year. But it is said of Ken Livingstone that the nearer people get to London's mayor the more dislike him and it may be true of Warnock, who came nowhere in the First Division managers' poll. He was, apparently, surprised to be greeted by the Portsmouth manager, Harry Redknapp, and his assistant, Jim Smith, wanting to share a drink after a game.

"You have to say he is a reprehensible, horrible fellow in the dug-out," the former Wolves manager, Graham Turner, said. "Off the pitch, away from the action, he is a charming man and good company, but it is as if he grows horns and a forked tail when he sits in that dug-out."

"I feel sorry for the club; they don't get as much credit as they should because they are my team," Warnock said with a hint that it just might be true.

"People get intimidated by his honesty," his striker Carl Asaba added. "He says what people think but are not brave enough to say. He has lowered the wage bill and turned this club around. He's a boardroom dream isn't he?"

In fact Warnock has tended to fall out with virtually all his chairmen but it would have been fascinating to have seen the results had he accepted Ken Bates' offer to manage Chelsea a decade ago. "He is like me; he gets tainted because he says things that sell papers. I'm not saying he's not got faults but, when he showed me his five-year plan for Chelsea, with the hotel complex, I said: 'Who are you kidding?' I wouldn't have lasted five years to see it, mind."