Having hauled himself up by his bootstraps from Plough Lane to score that famous goal at the San Siro by dint of his own labours, it comes as no surprise that Dennis Wise is an advocate of old-fashioned hard work. Given the size of the task facing him at Leeds United it is just as well.

Wise possesses an almost Thatcherite zeal for self-improvement, with his weekday routine neatly illustrating his work ethic. The 39-year-old leaves his family home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, Disraeli’s old stomping ground, at 6am to make the three-hour drive to Leeds’ training ground 12 miles north of the city, only to be greeted by a bunch of underachieving footballers and a ten-hour shift at the office before crawling back into bed close to midnight. No wonder his legendary baby face is showing signs of wear and tear.

Such dedication enabled Wise to make the most of what he concedes was his modest playing ability and underpins his fledgeling managerial career, as he explains in his first interview since taking the Leeds job. “What I try to do is give as much as possible, and work as hard as possible,” Wise said. “I’ve always done that as a player and will be exactly the same as a manager. I wasn’t blessed with the most skilful talent but had people around me who were.

“I don’t know about pinning players against the wall, but I would tell them what I thought. And they’d be all right, they’d respond. I’m very straightforward and like players who like a bit of hard work. They only come here for 7½ hours a week and all I ask is that they work hard for 7½ hours. It’s not a lot is it?”

To judge from the parlous state in which he found them, Leeds’s players had been doing more partying than practising, with the club’s position at the bottom of the Coca-Cola Championship partly owing to fitness levels that would embarrass a pub team. The bloated figure of Michael Ricketts, released last summer, did not say much for the training methods of Kevin Blackwell, Wise’s predecessor.

The solution was to put the players through a second dose of pre-season training designed by Antonio Pintas, a fitness coach Wise worked with at Chelsea but who is now at Juventus, with a record of three wins from seven games in charge suggesting there has been a partial response. “There was obviously something not quite right,” Wise said. “The fitness was not fantastic. There were a lot of things it could be put down to, a bad pre-season, players being brought back too early and niggling injuries. I was fitter than a few of them at my age.”

As the players have responded, so have the club’s fans, with Wise viewed with greater respect than a cheeky cockney could ever have imagined in the capital of the Republic of West Yorkshire, if not yet with complete affection.

“I get judged all the time because of the player I was, but don’t take a blind bit of notice,” Wise said. “If I did I’d be in a sorry state, I’d be in a mental home if I worried about what people said about me. But the fans have been fantastic and surprised me. The first game I came to was against Southend, we were 3-1 down and they were still singing. I thought, ‘Jesus, there’s a good bunch of punters here’. If this place was packed it would be frightening.”

With Ken Bates having raised prices to Chelsea levels without offering West End entertainment — tickets cost as much as £36 for some matches — sell-outs are unlikely, but Wise is adamant he can take Leeds back to the big time. “I won’t be putting any dates on it,” he said. “The club is big enough and in time we’ll get there. Everyone at the club from the cleaning lady to Ken Bates has that ambition. It’s not about the money, it’s about the achievement. It’s easy to turn around and moan about finances, but they have nothing to do with it. There’s been some managers do it on a small budget and some managers do it on a big budget.

“This is a massive club and there are so many pluses. The facilities, the people, the players who want to play for Leeds United. I’m telling you, there’s loads of them and the phone never stops ringing. If you can’t enjoy coming here you may as well pack it in.”

Wise’s father-son relationship with Bates remains as friendly as ever, but he leaves no doubt as to who calls the shots. “Batesy’s all right, still driving me potty,” he said. “He comes over whenever he can but I speak to him every day. I rang him quite early this morning so he was quite grumpy. It’ll never be a test of our friendship as he’s the guv’nor. When he decides to get rid of me, he’ ll get rid of me.”

If Bates ever does make that call then Wise will surely take it on the chin.