Norwich City for a fourth time

​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!

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