I woke up on Monday with an underlying sense of depression that upset me because life is good, then I remembered I have a long term dysfunctional relationship with Leeds United.
We had lost the day before, which is not unusual lately, other results were not to our liking and now we are probably going to be relegated.
I have supported Leeds for 50 years and think I have some objectivity about the ‘ups and downs’ we sing about in the club’s anthem, Leeds! Leiden! Leiden! But as much as I try to keep some perspective, the fact that the brilliant Marcelo Bielsa promotion of three years ago and the subsequent top-10 finish have been wasted really makes me uneasy.
How could we go from playing his total football, which even red players like Gary Neville and Roy Keane admired, to not building a Premier League squad around him, then firing him and replacing him with a human motivational poster in Jesse March before we stumble through two more emergency appointments until we reach the impending drop?
When they fired Bielsa, it was like they killed Santa Claus. Real. Leeds fans who love him call themselves Bielsa Widows. Last spring his dwindling team was in freefall, but that was mainly down to a huge list of injuries and after enjoying success with the Argentine maverick, the biggest disappointment is that the board couldn’t forge a relationship that allowed Bielsa Bielsa could be while the club built a deep enough squad that fans didn’t look to Eddie Gray’s 15-year-old second cousin, Archie, for hope.
Leeds may be relegated from the Premier League this weekend after a nightmare campaign
Supporting the club is a landscape of good and bad experiences and reflection on the past
With gallows humour, the fan base jokes about their tendency to peak and then fall off
James Brown, the former charged and GQ editor, is a lifelong supporter of Leeds United
I would rather have been demoted with Bielsa and come back again than where we are now. He wasn’t perfect, but he was inspiring. I think he would have bounced back. Now LUFC WhatsApp and Twitter discussions burn late into the night, a bonfire of anger, blame, sadness and black humour. The most common old fan stance is ‘Leeds that’. We peak and then fall.
An undulating landscape of good and bad experiences, and once the present is broken, you can’t help but think back on lots and lots of memories of the past. I will support Leeds in whatever division we are in, but I’d rather I didn’t look back.
As a little boy I lived opposite our striker Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke, on the outskirts of Leeds. My mother and his wife, Margaret, were friends and I was in and out of their house playing with their poodle Pele, trying on Allan’s English caps and watching him unpack his suitcase after the 1970 World Cup. Being so close to my hero lived, anything seemed possible, but there were so many great things about the club back then.
The football, of course, but the sock tags and the smiley badge and the yellow Airtex away kit, admiral with blue and white stripes on the arms. Our players led Scotland, Ireland, Wales and even England. As a child, Peter Lorimer had the best chance in football and Jack Charlton had won the World Cup. Norman Hunter was also on the squad. This is the stuff that ensured a lifetime of loyalty, love and obsession.
When I left Leeds and started a magazine career in the 1980s, first at NME and then in the 1990s as an editor of men’s titles like Loaded and GQ, I got as many Leeds players in my magazines as I wanted. Then in 1998 I started a new kind of official club magazine with the energy of the men’s magazines and the humor and passion of the terraces. It was like a fanzine with full access to the playing staff. They were brilliant times.
On the plane to Madeira for a UEFA Cup match, my big curly brown hair was tucked between Lee Bowyer’s Bash Street Kids spiked crop and Lee Sharpe’s platinum blonde mop, while behind us goalkeeper Nigel Martyn sang the theme from the Hair Bear Bunch cartoon.
Brown grew up opposite striker Allan ‘Sniffer’ Clarke (left) on the outskirts of Leeds
Marcelo Bielsa wasn’t perfect, but he was inspiring and would definitely have bounced back
Following Leeds is all-consuming and supporters have now braced themselves for the worst
Legendary Ghanaian striker Tony Yeboah once sold me his brand new BMW Z3 sports car before it was even delivered when he left for Hamburg. At the start of the 21st century, David O’Leary’s ‘babies’ gave Leeds United an unexpected popularity among London taxi drivers who would wax lyrical about Harry Kewell, Alan Smith and Co.
Ten years earlier, in 1992, when we’d won the last First Division title, we’d introduced Eric Cantona to English football, only to inexplicably sell him to Manchester United, for whom he would go on to enjoy a decade of dominance. usher in. Even when we were at the top, we could whiz down quickly.
Peter Ridsdale’s questionable financial misadventures saw us sink to the bottom of the old third division, League One, to start the 2007-08 season at Tranmere with minus 15 points with grumpy former Chelsea owner, Ken Bates, who left the club led. It sounds like a nightmare, but I saw us win in the last minute and after five wins we quickly reached zero points. The number of games we won over the next three years made League One a lot of fun for the most part.
Even when we were down, we were up. The trips to Plymouth, Yeovil and Hereford gave an insight into the wider world of football, where fans would bite your hand at a full international and old ladies served tea and cake in the guest lounges.
Following Leeds is all-consuming. When we were promoted from League One, I pitched my eldest son, Marlais, so high to the press box that his flight got a mention in match reports.
His little brother, Billy, and I were in Brentford for the final game of last season, hosting Bees captain and former Leeds legend Pontus Jansson, when Jack Harrison scored in the dying minutes to secure another season in the Premier League. set. Jackie will probably stay in the top division, albeit in another team’s colors.
Peter Ridsdale’s questionable financial misadventures saw Leeds sink to the bottom of the old third division
The current board made mistakes, but brought the club to a better place (above: Andrea Radrizzani)
Whatever division Leeds are in, fans will continue to love the players and the club
Unless something highly unlikely happens on Sunday and Leeds beat Spurs while Everton and Leicester both lose, I’ll feel terrible, but I’ve been preparing for it off and on for months.
The board made so many mistakes now it’s easy to see how they did for us, but I supported them for so long because they gave us Bielsa, Raphinha, Kalvin Phillips and promotion. Their avalanche of mistakes is enough to make fair weather fans run away, but the truth is the club is in a better position than when they found us. lunches.
Me? I’m already thinking about the first day of training in July, when I start looking at photos of new and returning players, to get a sense of the fate of the upcoming season from the way they jog.
Whatever division we’re in, I’ll still be in love with the white shirts at Elland Road and proudly sing ‘We are Leeds United and we reign supreme.’ Even if reality suggests otherwise.
James Brown’s memoir Animal House (Quercus) appears in paperback on Friday. Visit https://geni.us/AnimalHouse.