​It’s probably appropriate that Leeds United’s first match after the international break (twists, sprains and other injury niggles also expected) should be against Swansea City. The first person to come into my head whenever that team’s name comes up is, of course, John Charles: one of LUFC’s greatest players.

Manager Major Frank Buckley’s scout discovered Charles at what was then Swansea Town when he was just sixteen years’ old. The club changed their name to Swansea City in 1969 after Swansea was given city status, and the M4 about ten years later, although most people have given up the will to live by the time they eventually get there. Disillusioned with lack of game time in South Wales, Charles was persuaded to have a trial for Leeds and joined the West Yorkshire club. His mother had initially thought this impossible as he didn’t have a passport!

John Charles made his league debut for Leeds United as a 17-year-old centre-half on 23 April 1949 in a 0.0 draw at Blackburn Rovers. He was particularly effective in the air after Buckley had made him leap up and head the crossbar, as though it was the ball, causing him persistent headaches - which he was happy to pass on to any other player who got in his way.

We don’t have such a colossus as him at the moment, do we? However, our more balanced team this season does have goals in it all over the pitch and the same determination not to be beaten, as witnessed last time out at QPR after the sun (and the moon and the stars) had conspired against us yet again.

I suppose it’s better to be going for promotion than worrying about relegation, although, in anticipation of the next eight matches, the nerve endings are already tangled up in my head. Perhaps heading a crossbar would have been more satisfying?
The match against them that I remember most was actually our worst ever defeat to Swansea. It came at the Vetch Field. Vetch is also known as Poor Man’s Peas - one of the first domesticated crops grown by neolithic people. I did say that it was a long way from anywhere and that time moves slowly out west… We lost 5.1 on 29 August 1981 in our first league match of that terrible season, at the end of which we were relegated.

John Toshack’s Swansea had won three promotions in four seasons climbing from the fourth tier to the First Division in 1981. They were out to make a statement; and did, finishing in a club-record sixth place that season. However, as with our own ups and downs (though not quite so bad), they then went all the way back again: relegated to the Fourth Division in 1986 – much like the rise and fall of Northampton Town in the 1960s.

Formed as Swansea Town in 1912, they played in the Southern League before joining the new Third Division of the Football League in 1920 (as did Portsmouth and QPR – subject of my two previous posts). We first played them on 8 October 1927, winning 5.0 at Elland Road, and didn’t lose to them until 1949 - although that was only four matches further on and more to do with us being in different leagues and a World War than any great defensive record.

We’ve won twice as many games against them as we’ve lost, and Don Revie’s Leeds secured promotion back to the First Division at Swansea Town on 11 April 1964 with a 3.0 win. Leeds scorers that day were Johnny Giles and two from Alan Peacock.

I also remember a third-round FA Cup win against Swansea Town on 3 January 1970, 2.1, on our way to the final when Giles also scored, as well as Mick Jones.

Naturally, we’re all remembering that amazing game against them at the Liberty Stadium back in November when we got out of jail at 4.3; not to mention the four goals we also put past them down there last season.

Pablo Hernández - who had also played for Swansea City – secured immortality among Whites supporters with his goal in a 1.0 win in our promotion season under Bielsa, but let’s not forget that we lost the home league fixture against them that season – also 1.0 at Elland Road.

For all the Joël Piroe doubters ever since Daniel Farke brought him to Leeds from Swansea, let’s also be mindful that in 1978 Jimmy Adamson brought striker Alan Curtis to the club – also from Swansea – in a real statement signing at that time. Apart from a stunning solo goal at Southampton in October 1979, it’s very hard to remember much else.

So, we need to march on together as we have always done. We go again. This particular match may not end 7.0, as happened last time against a club from South Wales, but just a 1.0 win could again be priceless! Whatever happens, it won’t be a swan song.

This post first appeared on ​No Place I'd Radebe

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.​

​Having survived the traditional, attritional approach to football that is Millwall, Leeds United now move on to a different part of the capital.

We don’t often win in London these days, do we? Queens Park Rangers (QPR if we want to give them less credit) – our opponents on Saturday – are symptomatic of this malaise. We’ve lost our last four consecutive matches there in league or cup.

Formed originally in 1882 as Christchurch Rangers, they merged with St Jude’s Institute from the Queen’s Park area of West London in 1886, emerging from this piece of Victorian football alchemy as QPR.

From 1917 – apart from a couple of brief stints at White City in the early 1930s and early 1960s – QPR have played their home matches at Loftus Road in Shepherd’s Bush. Akin to playing in a cardboard box, it is a particularly unpleasant and claustrophobic destination for LUFC, having lost almost half of the games we have played there to date.

Known at the moment as the MATRADE Loftus Road Stadium - after its sponsor, which seeks inward investment for Malaysian suppliers - its 18,439 capacity is rarely tested, apart from when they import Leeds United fans for the day. And, yes, we’ll be taking more than the transit van load of Millwall fans at Elland Road this week.

As in our previous piece on Portsmouth, QPR joined the Football League in 1920 – the same year as us, but in the new Third Division as opposed to the Second from where we quite rightly looked down upon them, structurally and geographically.
We first came across them in a third-round FA Cup tie in London on 9 January 1932 which we lost 3.1. We faced them next in the late 1940s, losing both of our first two league games against them. In fact, it wasn’t until 3 November 1951 that we beat them anywhere (at the eighth attempt): 3.0 in a Second Division match at Elland Road. QPR were relegated at the end of that season, and we have often been playing in different leagues throughout our respective football histories.

Our first victory at Loftus Road didn’t come until 24 January 1969 in the First Division. Mick Jones scored the only goal of the game as we added that 1.0 win to an amazing unbeaten sequence of league matches. After losing at, er, Burnley on 19 October 1968 we didn’t lose in the league again in that glorious season as we stormed to our first league title.

On 27 April 1974 Jones’s strike partner Allan Clarke scored the winner in a 1.0 victory there to celebrate our second title. We’d already been assured of it after Arsenal’s win at Anfield three days earlier. A Guard of Honour welcomed the Leeds players on to the pitch for their rightful crowning as champions, and there was little blue and white to be seen, only white. The capacity was larger, then, with 35,353 crammed in – at least three of them playing with their hoops.

More recently I remember well the 2.0 away victory in the League Cup on 7 November 1978 when Ray Hankin and John Hawley scored in a 2,0 win as we got all the way to a two-legged semi-final defeat to Southampton. Yes, Southampton: who’d have thought…

The 4.0 aberration down there last season effectively killed our automatic promotion chances almost exactly 50 years to the day after Sniffer’s winning contribution to this particular North-South rivalry.

It’s time to go again; and bring home the points again. On On On.

This post first appeared on ​No Place I'd Radebe

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.

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​For some reason, I had thought that Portsmouth FC were an older club than they actually are, perhaps along with the likes of Aston Villa and Everton who were among the 12 clubs to form the world’s first Football League in 1888.
In fact, Portsmouth were formed ten years after this, on 5 April 1898. Admittedly this is 21 years earlier than Leeds United’s emergence, and six years before Leeds City were founded. However, Pompey joined that Football League in 1920 – the same year that we did.

While we joined the Second Division, they were founding members (perhaps that’s where I’d got the notion from!) of the new third tier. Known as the Third Division for just the one season, it was then split into Third Division (South) and Third Division (North) as more teams joined, making it more logistically feasible to play games regularly without having to travel such long distances. Remember that on May 3rd when we pop down to Plymouth…

I can’t see that Leeds City ever played Portsmouth in a competitive match so the first Leeds team to play them would have been Leeds United in the first round of the FA Cup on 13 January 1923 – a 0.0 draw at Fratton Park. We won the replay four days later, 3.1, at Elland Road.

Don Revie’s first match in charge of Leeds ended in a 3.1 defeat on 18 March 1961, also at Fratton Park, but after our promotion in 1964 we didn’t play them again for almost 20 years.

It is back in the FA Cup that my personal memories of Portsmouth – other than as a naval base – really begin. On 15 February 1997, the sides met at Elland Road in the fifth round of the competition. Having lost to mighty Darlington in that season’s League Cup we’d managed to get past Crystal Palace after a replay and Arsenal at Highbury (at the first attempt) before drawing second-tier Portsmouth at home. Unfortunately, two Lee Bowyer goals weren’t enough as we lost 3.2.
Two years later – on 23 January 1999, in the fourth round – we repaid the compliment with a comprehensive 5.1 win on the south coast, before deciding to opt out of the competition in the fifth round at Tottenham (after a replay) to concentrate on the league. We finished fourth that year, also destroying Arsenal’s hopes of the title (remember that late Hasselbaink goal at Elland Road?)

However, the match against Portsmouth that stands out above all others for me came in the Premier League, at Fratton Park on 8 November 2003. In the previous match, we’d been destroyed by, er, Arsenal as the ‘Invincibles’ beat us 4.1 at Elland Road. We proved at Portsmouth that we were anything but. The loyal crowd in Leeds had shown tremendous support for manager Peter Reid but, after a long day’s journey into the known, it was washed away with the torrential rain.

In a truly hapless display, we lost 6.1. Alan Smith had quickly equalized their opening goal from two minutes earlier before the rest of the sky simply fell in. Two of Pompey’s goals that day came from Gary O’Neil. I often wonder what happened to him…
 
Seth Johnson and Roque Junior were in our team that day. Johnson surely couldn’t have believed his good fortune at how much he was being paid to play for Leeds United before everyone realised that he couldn’t actually play that well, and we could no longer afford to pay into his retirement fund. Junior never grew up to become the defender Reid had promised he would when making him his pre-season marquee loan signing from Milan. In the seven matches he turned out for us - in which he preferred to play the role of a statue rather than a defender - we conceded 25 goals.

It was a terrible time for our club, wasn’t it? Off the pitch, there could be no defence for the financial mess we had been led into, while pitchside we were all wondering whether our defence was already on the beach.

Reid was sacked two days later (and, thankfully, we never saw Junior again either) as Eddie did his best to save us for a second, consecutive season. As we all know, it didn’t work. We lost four of our final five league games - including Portsmouth completing a league double over us in a 2.1 win.
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Let’s hope it’s a fine day on Sunday.
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This post also appeared on ​No Place I'd Radebe 

Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.