​It’s been a bit frustrating for LUFC fans lately, hasn’t it? Actually, that’s usually been the case since I first started trying to give the boys a hand in 1967. If it isn’t biased officials or nonsensical, average managers putting one or two words together before they reach their limit, or ex-players who wouldn’t have been able to lay a finger (or toe) on Leeds United, we seem to be in a permanent maelstrom of discontent, with the sunshine of hope and the clouds of doom exchanging places much too often.

A draw at Villa would have been a wonderful result, had we not conceded that equaliser so late on, especially as you could drive the 65 bus through Aston without even seeing a defender at the moment. The City game saw such a great effort go unrewarded. Yet again, one momentary lack of concentration did for us.

And so to Sunderland (hopefully my SatNav will never, ever announce that place as my final destination). I predicted that it would be a horrible game, and it was even worse than that, wasn’t it? Undoubtedly, still feeling the physical effects of the Saturday game, I felt the mental tiredness was key. Karl Darlow will be as haunted by Diarra’s one poor shot on target, just as I have been by Ian Porterfield for all these years… It seems we are now going to be playing them in a ‘friendly’ in New Jersey in the summer. It will take more than disputes over jumpers for goalposts to keep everyone sane; and what a recipe for pre-season injuries…

Please note that I haven’t even mentioned refereeing standards in this piece. Many years have passed between now and my days as a trusting butterfly.

I’ve been ambivalent about cup runs this season, so rarely have they runneth over with optimism. In retrospect, I feel good that we provided a flickering candle of light in Sheffield Wednesday’s season of darkness, only to have it snuffed out, like a goal disallowed by some yawning VAR machine operator. No, I really am not going to go there…

With Premier League survival as our priority, the FA Cup results in Derby and Birmingham were obviously good (eventually), especially as nobody would ever want to lose to either of those two, and yet there has been this nagging doubt about how useful they would prove to be. I would never want Leeds United to lose to anybody, obviously, but Norwich City – for the fourth time in the FA Cup - still feels like a bit of a sideshow.

It does give us a chance to reset our minds as much as our legs, with some getting a rest, and I guess tactically we may set up to play it more as a Championship match? Trying a few new things with players and formations – and, yes, I do believe that Daniel Farke has shown this season that he can be much more fluid than we might have thought – cannot be a bad thing in a game that doesn’t really matter. I would still hate to do a Wigan Athletic, though.

I particularly liked Daniel’s call to arms for more ‘brutality’ in attack. Funnily enough, my mind went back to the early 1970s when we played Norwich four times in 16 days. Yes, Pep, we know better than most what fixture congestion is all about. Go back to your cocktails and your runners-up medals.

Our first encounter with the Canaries (is that gas, or just a bad smell?) came in an FA Cup fourth-round tie just over 90 years ago, when, after a 3.3 draw at Carrow Road, we managed to lose 2.1 in the replay. On 13 January 1973, we met them for a second time in the cup, this time in the third round, drawing 1.1 in Norwich, after which David Lacey said, in The Guardian: “Leeds United are most of the things that Norwich are not, and probably all that they would like to be.”  Another 1,1 draw followed, in the replay back in Leeds, mainly due to an exceptional performance by Norwich goalkeeper Kevin Keelan.

We then had to travel back to Norwich – and anyone who has made the journey there from West Yorkshire will know how long that is, with the will to live being questioned long before you eventually get there – for a First Division match. Leeds won it 2.1 with goals from Joe Jordan and Allan Clarke. ‘Legendary’ manager Ron Saunders, who had seen his side outplayed in all three matches, had the audacity to say afterwards: “Leeds carry professionalism to the extreme. It borders on intimidation.”

Back at Villa Park for the second cup replay, Norwich might have wished they had missed the bus altogether. Perhaps Norwich players adopted an ‘unprofessional’ approach when kicking Allan Clarke on the knee, then, which forced him off the pitch for a while? No matter, he scored a hat-trick in a 5.0 win, which was one of United’s best performances of the season.
Terry Brindle, writing in the Yorkshire Post, said: “The old white magic flowed as of old at enchanted Villa Park last night as Leeds United swept into the fourth round of the FA Cup with uncanny ease. It was a magnificent performance, one laced with flair, confidence and creativity. Norwich, for all their earnest endeavour, could not match Leeds on those terms. They could only stand, as we did, and admire the rich talents of a United team which suddenly threw off all suggestion of weariness and hesitation. I have never seen Leeds United play better.”

This momentum took us all the way to the final, but you all know what happened there …

​​Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.​ You can also read it in Spanish!

​We all knew that being back in the Premier League would put Leeds United back in the spotlight, having bossed the Championship in terms of goals, points and media interest.

Not only are the first and second tiers of English football the toughest in the world, but they also provide the most excitement. And by excitement, I don’t mean (literally) throwing in the towel when a penalty decision goes against your team, or taking a penalty when all you can see is your own, individual name in lights instead of the possible ending of fifty years of heartbreak for your team. The con in AFCON was there for the rest of the world to see.

Like many LUFC fans, I was really concerned after the Villa game when we had so many players running on empty in the second half, accumulating injuries and seemingly trapped in an inflexible downward spiral. I have always supported Daniel Farke – goodness knows, he deserves it after all the terrible cards he’s been dealt – but I did worry about his/our capacity to change and show our true footballing value.

I liken what happened at the Etihad to Conte discovering at Arsenal that his Chelsea team were far more suited to a back three, a formation he then largely stuck with, changing it tactically when required. We’ll never know how accidental our shift in tactics was, or whether it had been one of the plans already being considered in the background. Regardless, we now look so much more fluid and far more confident going into matches against any opposition, don’t we? I do believe that Daniel’s obviously increased confidence in allowing himself to make changes is wonderful to see, especially after all of those nonsensical doomsayers swarmed out of the Norfolk woodwork. Remind me, where are Norwich in their league again?

And so to Everton. We have a lot of history with them, don’t we, having first played them just over 100 years ago, on 17 September 1924? We won that first Division One meeting 1.0 at Elland Road, but lost our first three league meetings at Goodison Park. If you look up Hill Dickinson, they describe themselves as ‘Your progressive-thinking legal partner.’ I’m not sure whether I’d have described Everton as a progressive team since those heady days of the mid-1980s. In terms of partners, they’ve made some pretty poor choices off the pitch in recent years, haven’t they? Money talks, of course, but it’s hardly exciting, is it?

Either lazy or bored journalists (or both) are this week making much of Don Revie’s discussions with the Everton board, back in 1973 (and possibly before that, too). The unsigned contract isn’t news. We’re not in Washington Post territory here. Don had been born and brought up in poverty in Middlesbrough and was understandably anxious about financial security all of his life. The promise of more money on a longer contract for a manager who thought he had taken his team as far as he could pales into significance compared with the self-important shenanigans of ‘managers’ today, doesn’t it? Please do not ever show me the way to Amorimo…

Discussions did take place with Everton, with some saying it unsettled the players as they flew out to Salonika for the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final that May. Let’s be clear, yet again: we were cheated out of that trophy. Not by Milan’s players, as might sometimes have been the case, but by a referee in cahoots with who knows which organised crime unit at the time. Revie’s fears over money were not the same as those who sought to gain it through corruption. All of it smacks of an ongoing smear campaign, all these years later, and long after the FA’s despicable behaviour towards both him and his family.

Oh, and the manager and players promptly swept all aside the following season in winning the League, again. How that must have upset so many in Lytham St. Anne's, Lancaster Gate and Fleet Street.

My own enduring image of Goodison is of Neville Southall sitting in his own goalmouth at half-time in August 1990 as we announced our return to the top flight with a fine 3.2 victory. However, when researching my book, The Leeds United Story, I am guessing that some Leeds United fans will remember ‘The Battle of Goodison,’ which took place on 7 November 1964 (two and a half years before I started following the Mighty Whites!).

Again, we had just re-joined the top flight under Don and were sitting in fourth place as Bobby Collins led us back to his old stomping ground with a point to prove. We won it 1.0 with a goal from Albert Johanneson, but that doesn’t really tell the story of an ill-tempered and extremely physical match, with Everton full-back Sandy Brown sent off after just five minutes for punching Johnny Giles, crunching tackles, including Willie Bell being knocked unconscious, and missiles being hurled onto the pitch.

After 36 minutes, the referee took the players off to calm them down for 10 minutes. This was the first time in a Football League match that play had to be suspended for a cooling-off period. Colin Harvey of Everton declared that: “an air of menace pervaded the ground,” while Jack Charlton – yes, Big Jack - described the Goodison Park crowd as: “the worst before which I have ever played.”

The nature of the match was publicly condemned, framed very much in terms of the aggressive upstarts from Leeds taking on the schooled professionals of Everton. The tag of 'Dirty Leeds,' mooted before, would stick to our team after this infamous battle on Merseyside.

Let them say it. Let them carry on thinking it. Just let them also remember, grudgingly, that we also played some of the finest attacking football this country has ever seen. Our team goal away at Sunderland will probably remain as the goal of the season, and it’s as exciting to be a Leeds fan now as it has been at any time in the last sixty years.

Safe journey for all of those making the trip into the unknown for the first time.

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

I’m not sure how many of you remember Brent Ford & The Nylons? They were a Birmingham-based punk band, but their name derived from the only thing people outside of London could recall about Brentford in the 1970s: Brentford Nylons.

The company was set up in nearby Chiswick and was essentially a retail mail-order firm, also opening high street shops as its success peaked. The business then went into decline and is now just another victim on the timeline of economic history.
Memories of its product are mixed – you really either loved it or hated it – and many people will only remember the brand at all these days because of a series of TV ads fronted by DJ Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman.

Brentford FC never enjoyed the same kind of brand awareness. In my case, growing up, it was because Leeds United had only played them once in my lifetime – a League Cup tie back in 1961 – when I was just one. I don’t remember it. Apparently, we won 4.1 at Elland Road.

We’d first met in November 1935 in a First Division match at Griffin Park, which finished 2.2. My first recollection of them was also in a draw – 0.0 – on 12 December 2009. That was a League One game, almost exactly 16 years ago and still at Griffin Park.

What a lot had happened in the 48 years since 1961 and 2009! We had been crowned Football League Champions three times and spread the Leeds United brand to the far corners of the world. Brentford were in the third tier.

Since then, of course, Brentford’s fortunes have changed, as has their real estate. The data-driven club now resides at the Gtech Community Stadium, and statistics show that it has continued to be an unhappy hunting ground for LUFC. We’ve only actually won four times at Brentford in all competitions, ever. It may not feel quite like Brighton, or even Fulham, but we don’t usually need the Thames Barrier to fail in order to drown in the capital.

Remember our 2.0 defeat there on Easter Monday 2019? Seeking resurrection after the Wigan disaster, we were never given so much as a glimmer of hope.

No doubt LUFC fans this week will be talking about the Great Escape of 22 May 2022, when Jack Harrison’s last-minute goal, following Raphinha’s penalty, gave us an unlikely 2.1 win and safety from relegation – the first team to start the final day of a season in the Premier League's relegation zone and stay up since, er, Wigan, eleven years earlier.

How Jesse Marsch lapped up the applause at the end of that match. I remember crying uncontrollably, the sheer relief washing over me. For a while, I saw it as a great day. Except it wasn’t really, was it? In the revisionism that history provides, it was merely a stay of execution – just as the back-to-back Liverpool and Bournemouth wins the following season would prove to be.

I never saw Daniel Farke as the one trick pony that Marsch undoubtedly was, but I had often been concerned about the timing and choice of his substitutes. There’s nothing new in this. I still wish Jimmy Armfield had brought Duncan McKenzie on in Paris. However it has happened – fan pressure or owners orchestrating a PR campaign to hide their own mistakes – Farke has recently shown the kind of tactical flexibility we suspected was always in there, just allowing stubbornness to prevent him from trying something different, albeit with the limited squad he has to choose from.

Well, we’ve looked more compact and physically aggressive since that second half at the Etihad, haven’t we? The players we recruited seem to have fitted into the new system far better, don’t they? We’re scoring more goals, aren’t we?

So why should I be looking at Sunday’s fixture with such trepidation? Brent Ford & The Nylons unfortunately did a cover of 19th Nervous Breakdown. Let’s hope we march on together to a different beat down there. Will it be emotional? Not arf!

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

The international break is an odd time for football fans, isn’t it? If your country is involved in qualifying for a major tournament, then you still have something to invest time and energy into. If not, it’s like the wasteland that time forgot.

There’s the added complication of whether or not your club players appeared for their countries, and if so, quite apart from exhaustion due to the travel times involved in flying to the far corners of the globe, did they play many minutes? More importantly, did they not get selected because of injury while away on international duty, or get injured if they did?

Ao Tanaka played the first of Japan’s friendlies, but not the second. Is this somehow ‘good’ or is there something we don’t yet know? Brendan Aaronson played most of the USA’s first match, but only the last 15 minutes of the second. No doubt he’ll still be racing through Arrivals, dribbling his case between bemused onlookers, before passing it to a complete stranger.

Jaka Bijol captained Slovenia in Graham Potter’s latest false start in Sweden, while Gabriel Gudmundsson came on for the Swedes in the second half. Hopefully Bijol rediscovered some kind of passing technique, while Gudmondsson will hope not to be passed over for, or by, a winger.

Leeds United’s top scorer Joe Rodon will be feeling good after Wales’ recent victory, while we all wait and see whether Dan James has damaged his hamstring in scoring such a good goal in Cardiff.

To name but a few.

So, who will be the real villains as we welcome Aston Villa to Elland Road on Sunday? Will one player stand out, or will the teams cancel each other out?

Unai Emery has shown tactical nous both here and across Europe, and Villa were playing really well before the break. I think it’s fair to say that we’re not quite so convinced by Daniel Farke’s ‘survival path’ reassurance, after two dismal LUFC away appearances.

Then, of course, there are the bean counters who always focus on costs rather than benefits, or blame ‘the system’ for their own shortcomings.

We’re at home again (at last!), but in football history since the first time we met – a 3.0 FA Cup defeat at Villa Park in February 1924 – we’ve lost more against them than we’ve won. There is also little consistency in our head-to-heads. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, sometimes we draw. Although there are no certainties in football, this is a game where the uncertainty is genuine.

I remember being excited about the new football season starting in August 1975, but also anxious to try to deal with the pain of Paris, yet. As now, I wasn’t entirely sure of what to expect. In the event we beat Aston Villa away at Villa Park 2.1 in our opening match. Leighton Phillips had put the home side ahead after just seven minutes, but two goals from my all-time favourite player Peter Lorimer sealed the victory for us.

So, if we go behind again on Sunday, we have to keep the faith, keep fighting.

Even the great Leeds team lost to them home and away in Villa’s relegation season of 1966-67, including a 2.0 reverse at Elland Road on my birthday, 25 February 1967.

Many will remember a bonkers game from April 2019 when our promotion push, already imploding after that Bad Friday defeat to Wigan, came to a juddering halt.

Liam Cooper had introduced Villa striker Jonathan Kodjia to the Elland Road turf before Tyler Roberts, instead of putting the ball out, passed it to Mateusz Klich, who was allowed to run through an outraged Villa defence and curl a low right-foot shot just inside the post. There was a bit of a discussion after this, during which Ahmed El Ghazi attempted to air kiss Patrick Bamford, who slumped to the floor holding his face. Marcelo then ordered the Leeds players to allow Albert Adomah to run through to score, almost unchallenged (only Pontus Jansson was unable to read the script in time), into an unguarded net. The 1.1 draw ensured Sheffield United (remember them) were promoted automatically.

18 months later, after our own promotion, Bamford’s hat-trick showed Villa how to score in their own backyard, in a 3.0 win. How we cheered!

So, after a two-week break for some of our players and long journeys for others, I really do not know what to expect on Sunday, other than passion and noise. But then you can always be certain of that from Leeds United supporters, at home or from a long way away.

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

Leeds United first faced Brighton & Hove Albion on 24 September 1960 – almost exactly seven months after I was born – in a Second Division match away at The Goldstone Ground. We lost 2.1 that day and have lost more than we’ve won against them.

We certainly haven’t beaten them very often in more recent times, have we? In fact, LUFC have only been victorious twice in the last 18 league encounters since leaving League One in 2010, and each of those was at Elland Road.

We didn’t manage to beat them in our previous six Premier League matches and have never won at the AMEX.

Just by way of cutting through the doom and gloom for a moment, we didn’t lose to them at all during our Glory Days (mainly because we were, literally, leagues apart!)

Unfortunately, I (and most non-French writers) still tend to think of them as a ‘small club’ despite their league results, cup runs, and remarkable progress since returning to the city in 1999 after opting to sell their ground two years earlier to have a little break in the Kent countryside.

It is even more incredible, given that they sell their best players to Chelsea every summer and yet their form doesn’t seem to be that badly affected because of it. Usefully, it doesn’t really improve things that much at Stamford Bridge either.

I remember clearly our matches at the Withdean Stadium, a horrible little open-air sports ground, remembered by some for the teeming rain, but by most for Fabian Delph’s winner, on 17 January 2009, when he ran practically the length of the ground and the rest of the East Sussex coastline to score a wonderful goal and seal a 2.0 win.

In fact, we did even better the following season when we’d got our act together, packed our bags, and decided to leave the League One comedy tour, winning away 3.0. Our goals that day came from Robert Snodgrass, Jermaine Beckford and Neil Kilkenny. Ah, those names, those goals, the last time we won there!

It feels like yesterday, doesn’t it, and yet it was almost 16 years ago.

Brighton moved into the AMEX just over a year later, in 2011. Although our first trips to the seaside were accompanied by excited expectation, disappointment has quickly rolled in with the black clouds, like so many days out on the south coast.

Brighton, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth… what could possibly go wrong?

The young Seagulls flew out of Arsenal’s reach for much of last night’s League Cup match at Highbury, which was 0.0 at half-time, before the young Gunners blew them up. Hopefully, there will be one or two tired legs, but, for many observers, it would still be a shock if we got anything down there.

Our increased physicality and undoubted competitiveness have already been proven, though. I think we might give them the best match for years.

‘Are we there yet?’ Well, not yet, but we did beat a team from London last Friday and, hopefully, Danny Welbeck will be just as wasteful on Saturday as he was in THAT cup tie at THAT place across the Pennines. I’m not clutching at straws; they’re hollowed-out rabbits’ feet, honestly...

The tide has to turn sooner or later, doesn’t it?
​
Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.​

​Leeds United head to Molineux again on Saturday afternoon, hoping for another clean sheet – and not at the away end for once.

Unfortunately, I have a sense of doom, which has absolutely nothing to do with the current Leeds team (before the haters see this opinion piece as fuel) and everything to do with football history.

Most LUFC fans will remember some memorable encounters against Wolves, not least those in the Premier League when we invaded the West Midlands, each time looking to get out of trouble towards the bottom of the league.

On 18 March 2023, we won 4.2, after being 3.0 up early in the second half. Illan Meslier – never one to turn down une pièce de théâtre – then promptly hurtled out of his goal to get a better view of Wolves defender Jonny’s volleyed finish flying past him and into an empty net.

Cunha then made it 3.2 before Jonny (whose terrible defending had helped lead to our third goal) really stamped his presence on the game and his studs on Luke Ayling, who had accepted the invitation to score our second goal. Down to 10 men, Rodrigo made it 4.2 in injury time, a result that lifted Gracia’s team four places and two points above the bottom three.

Quite ridiculously, while writing this, I felt my heart begin to pound in the hope that it might have been enough to save us from relegation…

Exactly a year earlier, also in the Premier League, Wolves found themselves 2.0 up at half-time before Jimenez, who had already been booked, collided with Meslier chasing a 50-50 ball. Referee Kevin Friend – defying every piece of official advice when it comes to games featuring Leeds - decided the Mexican was at fault and produced a second yellow card.

Wolves had been in total control up to that point and had been cruising past us in the laybys on the wings favoured by Marsch. In the chaos that followed, the 10 men were hit by an onslaught from the Whites, with Bill again scoring – this time, an injury-time winner.

We were saved, but the executioner’s axe wasn’t staved off for long, was it? If anything, sticking with Marsch meant that, in my mind anyway, we were still doomed.

On 7 April 1973, 50 years and a lifetime earlier, the two teams faced each other at Maine Road in front of 52,488 in that year’s FA Cup semi-final. The teams had fought out an attritional 0.0 draw just before this match, and with Jack Charlton pulling a hamstring and Leeds having to reorganise their defence, while Wolves goalkeeper Phil Parkes seemed destined to keep out everything we could throw at him, my radio couldn’t have announced the half-time whistle quickly enough.

In those days, though, we had Billy Bremner – quite simply the best captain we have ever had and possibly our greatest player, who never bothered about time or officialdom, simply never knowing when he and his team were beaten. As in the cup semi-finals of 1965 and 1970, he popped up with the winner.

As the cup holders, we were favourites to win it again, but that other team just got in the way of us, in the same way as the corrupt referee did in the Cup Winners’ Cup Final a few days later. Suffice to say, I couldn’t drink Mackeson for years afterwards as the name reminded me too much of that other team’s nickname.

So, three wins against Wolves, which simply preceded doom and gloom. So Leeds, that.

When we first moved to Worcestershire, on hearing that I was a lifelong Leeds United fan, our new neighbour, Paul, told me that he had been part of the police presence at the most infamous meeting between the two teams to date.

It came, of course, a year earlier, at Molineux on 18 May 1972. Paul had been drafted in to help control a crowd of 53,379, the biggest turnout at the ground for five and a half years and one which has not been bettered since.

Leeds had won the FA Cup on the Saturday for the first and only time but were forced to play Wolves in the First Division on the Monday evening, such was the contempt for our club that even the monstrous fixture congestion of 1970 had failed to modify in supposedly higher places.

Writing in The Guardian, Eric Todd commented:

‘For the second time in two years, the Fates, with whom may be associated the Football League, are making it very hard for Leeds United to win anything…I believe that Leeds have been treated scandalously and are having to pay the penalty for lack of foresight by the League and the FA

Sympathy can find little room in football these days, but sooner or later the League and the Football Association must realise that the football season is far too long and far too congested with a multitude of competitions. There is no space to manoeuvre and none to provide for contingencies, such as bad weather, replays and international demands.’

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Leeds would become League champions for the second time in three years and do the Double if they avoided defeat (mathematically, a draw might have allowed Liverpool to finish above Leeds on goal average, but they would have had to beat Arsenal 11-0 at Highbury, and that’s an awful lot of late, injury-time goals!).

In those days, referees stuck to their tasks. Phil Parkes collided with Allan Clarke in the area, yet appeals for a penalty were turned down. In the 25th minute, after Bremner's shot was blocked, the ball ran again to Clarke on the edge of the area with his lob towards goal being turned away with both hands by Bernard Shaw. His namesake may have enjoyed drama even more than Meslier, yet appeals for a penalty were turned down.

Although Leeds United had been accused of attempted bribery before the match, it was apparent for all to see during the game itself that all that glittered was not gold.

Munro and Dougan put Wolves 2.0 ahead before Billy – again – smashed a goal back. It wasn’t enough. We lost 2.1, and I was distraught. I had to have the next day off from school. My Mum cited ‘a bad cough and cold,’ but, really, I was just heartbroken.

Derby won the title, with triumphant manager Brian Clough moaning that ‘I believe they played four and a half minutes of injury-time at Molineux - if seemed like four and a half years to me.’

Try 44 days…

If we do win on Saturday, let’s hope some of the dark clouds will move away this time. But we are Leeds, and we know how it goes: the downs follow the ups, especially when faced by a pack of wolves.
​
Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.​

Fifty years ago, to help me get over the devastating Leeds United field trip to Paris, my parents took me on a different kind of road trip to the north-east coast. We were accompanied on the radio for a lot of that journey by two sound engineers from Trojan Records – Jeff Calvert and Max West – who called themselves Typically Tropical. Their hit ‘Barbados’ has been bouncing around my head again this week, slightly amended, as I declare loudly and to nobody in particular: ‘Oh! We’re going to The Emirates.’

I wonder what songs the radio was playing on the way back from LUFC to Everton on the M62 on Monday night? One thing’s for certain, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall would have been looking out of the coach window, wistfully wondering why the lights at Elland Road are brighter than anywhere else he’s ever been to or, more likely, checking in the side mirror that Ethan Ampadu wasn’t still coming after him.

It was great to start with a win over Everton, wasn’t it? If he’d spent a few minutes longer at Elland Road David Moyes’s eyes would probably have burst out of his head. They will no doubt get better, but I think we will too.

So now we march on to face Arsenal on Saturday. We first played them on 20 December 1924. They weren’t in an especially Christmassy mood as we lost at Highbury 6.1. James Brain scored four of their goals. Hopefully, we now have the intelligence, data and physicality – not to mention Daniel Farke’s disarmingly understated Germanic ambition – to make more of a game of it.

We’ve had some great battles with The Gunners over the years, haven’t we? I can just remember the League Cup win in 1968, before which Terry Cooper dreamed that he’d score a winning goal. Don Revie had him on toasted cheese and mushroom sandwiches every night for months after that, hoping he’d be able to repeat the performance.

Four years later, we had the ‘Clarke... One Nil!’ FA Cup final, which I can recall much more clearly. The goal, obviously; the injury to Mick Jones, obviously, but what stayed with me for the longest time was Norman Hunter’s masterclass in defence. Everyone knows about his tackling, but his reading of the game in that match in particular was absolutely fantastic. Hopefully our new centre-halves have taken a look on YouTube…

The game I still have my own dreams about (and not good ones) also came in the FA Cup, in the fourth round. We’d already drawn 1.1 with them at Highbury before returning for the replay at Leeds on a Wednesday evening, 2 February 1983. After the nightmare of relegation the previous season, we again matched Arsenal all the way until practically the end of extra time, before Aidan Butterworth somehow got on the end of Terry Connor’s cross to put us 1.0 up in the 118th minute. After that goal, I was swept around on a one-way tour to parts of the Kop that I’d never been to before. Utter and Glorious Mayhem.

We are Leeds, though. Graham Rix – never one to avoid a punt – equalised from 30 yards just two minutes later and, suitably satisfied with his evening’s work, the referee then blew the whistle. We lost the second replay at Highbury, obviously…

Finishing as runners-up in the Premier League for three seasons in a row and Champions League semi-finalists last season, Arsenal are undoubtedly one of the best club sides in Europe we’re going to face this season. Neville wouldn’t want to come near us, and Carragher has no doubt already written us off. Nobody expects us to get anything from the game, so it’s a bit of a free hit for Leeds with the pressure off. However, if that means we can spread our wings…

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

​It feels great to wake up and know, with certainty, that Leeds United are back in the Premier League, doesn’t it? Playing with the ‘big boys’ from Brentford and Bournemouth; finally redeveloping Elland Road to make it fit (and full) for future generations, and watching Match of the Day again, albeit without Gary.

Even after teaching Oxford how to manage a football match on Friday, it was with some trepidation that I welcomed Stoke City to my television screen on Bank Holiday Monday. The sight of Michael Brown looking as though he wanted to slide tackle the cameraman each time the spotlight fell upon him reminded me of the robust games we’ve had against The Potters in the past. Could a wet Tuesday evening in Stoke translate successfully via a wet afternoon in Leeds?

Our early encounters with Stoke were not encouraging. Originally formed as Stoke Ramblers in 1863 (presumably wandering endlessly and aimlessly across the endless clay deposits of Staffordshire), they changed their name to the far more progressive ‘Stoke’ in 1878, and we first met them more than 40 years later, in 1920. We waited for seven matches until they achieved City status before beating them in the league – a Division Two game on Christmas Eve, 1927, which we won 5.1.

I suspect the fans streaming out of Elland Road that day were, as for those lucky enough to get tickets on Monday, dreaming of a bright and shiny future. We lost the return game in Stoke in May 28 by the same scoreline: 5.1. In fact, until Monday, we hadn’t beaten them home and away in the league since 1988/89. In Howard’s day; in Howard’s way.

When people mention Stoke, my mind is inevitably taken back to the old Victoria Ground on 23 February 1974 when Tony Waddington’s men ended our 29-match unbeaten run in the league, 3.2. It’s more than 50 years ago, but it still hurts, especially as we were in total control of that match.

I also have my own pre-Christmas memory – almost 60 years on from that first league win – on 21 December 1986. I was being driven home for Christmas by a friend (not Chris Rea, just for clarification) in a Reliant Robin three-wheeler, which was missing a door on the passenger side. I still shiver at the memory, not helped by our 7.2 defeat in Stoke.

That game was also in the second tier, as was Marcelo Bielsa’s introduction to the Leeds fans in an unforgettable 3.1 win on 5 August 2018. That was the beginning of our last great adventure, which was as exhilarating as it was disappointing when Jesse Marsch showed us that he had the tactical nous of a baked bean.

After achieving 90 points last season and 94 already in this one – after two summers of discontent and disruption – I still do not understand why some of the LUFC fans are so sceptical of Daniel Farke’s abilities. He has hit the target three times now (only Joël Piroe beat this on Monday) in achieving promotion to the Premier League. This season was especially impressive when, having lost key players to greed in the summer, we promptly lost our midfield to injury in the space of a couple of matches in the autumn.

He isn’t Bielsa, and we don’t know how he will manage in the top tier – even if he does (should) get proper financial backing this time. The football may not be as exciting as it was five years ago, but after watching the game on Monday, are we falling so far short?

Leeds fans are entitled to their opinions as all football fans are. It cannot always be beautiful, but I don’t expect us to be losing 5.2 at Brentford or 4.1 at Bournemouth next season either.

Yes, there will need to be investment in the squad, and, yes, we’ll be linked to every player from the football heartlands of Andorra to Zimbabwe over the summer. Isn’t that what we all wanted, though? To be part of the bigger picture again?

Next season we’re not going back to throwing clay in the Potteries. We can leave the Prestons and the Blackburns behind to welcome the mighty Ipswich Town to their little Lancashire fiefdoms…

When Leeds United aren’t in the Premier League, almost every sensible fan, club chairman and washed-up football pundit would have to admit that there’s a piece of the jigsaw missing. Now we have to solve the puzzle of how to establish ourselves again and stay there. Revenge over those cheats from Italy and Germany can wait for a bit longer.

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.​

When I used to watch Leeds United in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was easy to imagine that they were an invincible team. This was especially true when that golden forward line had put us 1.0 up. Jack Charlton and Norman Hunter would normally then lock the game out from that point onwards, making sure that it was a painful experience for any opposition player trying to find that elusive key.

Sometimes, the lock was picked – either by our own Gary Sprake, showing that he was human, after all - or by officials who were more open to corruption than Leeds winning. I thought of this sorry part of our history this week when ‘assistant referee’ Darren Williams yet again ruled out a perfectly good Leeds goal against Middlesbrough for offside. His colleague thought it would be good to level things up in the second half, so he ruled a Leeds goal out too. Generally, though, against odds seemingly stacked against us, we used to close games out and win.

We weren’t invincible, of course. Only two teams have managed unbeaten league seasons – Arsenal in 2003-04, and our opponents on Saturday: Preston North End. They managed it in the very first Football League season of 1888-89, also winning the FA Cup that year to become the first Double winners. It’s crazy to think back to the nineteenth century, isn’t it? Professionalism had only been officially accepted in 1885; handlebar moustaches were still de rigueur, and Neil Warnock started primary school…

We first played Preston in the league on 13 September 1924, winning 4.0 at Elland Road and then 4.1 in our first visit to Deepdale four months later. Preston were also our opponents in our first post-war league match on 31 August 1946. We lost that away match 3.2, notable also for the debut of young winger Tom Finney, surely one of Preston’s finest players.
Things didn’t improve that season as we came bottom of the First Division, relegated with just 18 points - a record which stood for nearly forty years until Stoke City ‘beat it’ in 1985 with 17.

Preston have never come close to being invincible again. They retained their league title the following season, but apart from another FA Cup win in 1938, there hasn’t been much for them to shout about in the lower leagues. Which is where Paul Heckingbottom comes in, I suppose: recognising his limitations and apparently more interested in his own image than that of his team.

Barnsley-born, his approach when replacing Thomas Christiansen as Leeds United manager was attritional and equally ineffective. Under his management, Leeds won only four more games that season, falling from 10th place when he arrived, to another mid-table disappointment of 13th. Heckingbottom was sacked on 1 June 2018 after just four months in charge of a big club.

If Heckingbottom subtly invites us to wipe that wry smile off his face, then one of his predecessors as Preston boss positively asked for his to be punched, hard. Preston North End were our opponents in the play-off semi-final first leg match at Elland Road on 5 May 2006. The match was an abrasive, bad-tempered affair. Preston scored first, only to have their goal cancelled out by an Eddie Lewis free kick. Preston’s then manager, the acerbic Scotsman, Billy Davies, declared smugly that: “It is tremendous to come here in front of their biggest crowd of the season and get what is a fantastic result. It is a case of job done.”

Except that it wasn’t. In the second leg at Deepdale, three days later on 8 May 2006, the tie was still all square with another very physical match being poised at 0.0 at half-time. After the second-half kick-off was delayed by 25 minutes due to a floodlight failure, Leeds scored two goals through Rob Hulse and defender Frazer Richardson. However, in a feisty, almost brutal finale, Leeds players Richard Cresswell and defender Stephen Crainey - who had been a stalwart of the Leeds defence - were sent off. 11 yellow cards were shown in total (one for Preston and 10 for Leeds). The nine men of Leeds held out though for a 2.0 win and went through to the final, 3.1 on aggregate. We obviously don’t talk about the final, Cardiff or the many hours stuck on the M4…

So, I’m expecting a nasty, niggly game on Saturday and a hostile atmosphere, with the Preston fans driving over the hills in their Mini and hoping that they, in tandem with the referee (who also thought it would be fun to play the beautiful game unfairly in this season’s away game) can breach the Elland Road fortress as their Lancashire neighbours did. Thankfully, Burnley are now more obsessed with not conceding goals than scoring them.
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Whatever they can collectively throw at us, this season is far from ‘job done.’

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.​

​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.​