at Leeds was the final year of his degree course, so he played for the reserves while training part-time. He made a brief debut in the First Division, on 3 September 1991 at Elland Road as a late substitute against Arsenal; Leeds went on to win the 1991–92 league title. He remembers it as "With 20 minutes to go, we were 2–1 down and I was on the touchline ready to go on, then Lee Chapman scored and the gaffer (Howard Wilkinson) told me to sit down again. But he threw me on for the last two minutes. I always tell people that made the difference in winning the title!" As his teammates took the league trophy on a celebratory open top bus tour, Wetherall chose to revise for his examinations, a decision he came to regret, because "those experiences don't come around that often". Though the revision bore fruit: he graduated with first-class honours. Wetherall made his first start for Leeds in the newly formed Premier League in September 1992 against Southampton, scored his first goal for the club the following March to secure a draw at home to Chelsea and finished the 1992–93 season with 13 league appearances. He "noticed a massive difference in [his] fitness coming in full-time after just having two blasts a week." In the 1993–94 season, he established himself as a regular first-team player. The following season, he scored in a 2–1 defeat of defending champions Manchester United, and continued his knack of scoring vital goals with a last-minute equaliser to avoid an embarrassing defeat by Walsall of Division Three in the 1995 FA Cup. In the replay, he scored for both Leeds and Walsall, the own goal taking the match into extra time. Leeds finished in fifth place in the league, and Wetherall was chosen manager Wilkinson's player of the season. Wilkinson also singled him out for praise for his performance in a 3–0 UEFA Cup first-round win against AS Monaco in Monaco in September 1995, though they were heavily defeated by PSV Eindhoven in the next round. Wetherall played in the League Cup Final in 1996, his first major final, but Leeds were outclassed, beaten 3–0 by Aston Villa. In the 1996–97 season, Wetherall played less regularly as new manager George Graham experimented with defensive combinations, though by the following season he had re-established himself in the starting eleven, sometimes acting as