Post by Tony Yeboah's Lunchbox on Apr 22, 2007 17:48:19 GMT -1
Beat The Drop, Leeds, For Me
Posted 20/04/07
I'll be honest. I hate Leeds. Let's face it, we all do. It's universal.
There aren't many clubs you can say that about, but it's true. Whenever there's a discussion of which clubs you really, truly hate, Leeds' name comes up. It doesn't matter whether the people having the conversation support Manchester United or Macclesfield - it's the same.
We've all enjoyed their travails of recent years. But it's starting to remind me of bullying my little brother when we were kids. Yeah, it's funny at first. Yeah, you want to see how far you can push it. But, ultimately, you get the feeling it's all going to end in tears. Possibly in Casualty.
We all enjoyed watching Leeds plummet from being a side lording it over most of the Premiership as they blazed their way to a Champions League semi-final to one at the dung-end of the table. We all enjoyed a tearful Alan Smith looking like his heart had been ripped out. We all enjoyed him giving the Elland Road faithful another taste of that feeling when he bobbed off over the Pennines. We all enjoyed - and at this point, I'm perilously close to laughing out loud - the pictures of that fat kid crying in the stand at Elland Road.
We all enjoyed them getting to the play-offs last year and buggering it up (think how badly they might have done if they'd come up - this is a side that Watford thrashed). We all enjoyed their comical start to this season, the comical middle of this season, the comical...well, the comical season.
But why did we all enjoy it? Why does everyone hate Leeds? Dirty Leeds. Scum. Where does that all come from? I'm not asking because I don't understand your feelings - I'm asking because I don't entirely understand mine. 'The fans' is the usual answer we give, to both ourselves and each other, and there are an awful lot of scummy fans. But then, there are an awful lot of scummy fans of any club, and they don't generate the same consistent hate.
And, if we're honest, there are a fair few nice ones as well. Normal people like you and me. A few of them work in (the Leeds-based, for the next time anyone complains about our southern bias) F365 Towers. I've drunk with Leeds fans, played football with Leeds fans, even lived with Leeds fans (wonderfully, during and after relegation from the top flight; I still remember the joy of turning on a new copy of Pro Evo and saying, "You be Leeds and I'll...oh").
When you think about it, 'the fans' doesn't seem to be enough reason to hate them. Nor does the place - this is a lovely city, if a bit melancholy at 5pm every Saturday.
The management, perhaps? They haven't been run by the nicest people over the last few years, after all. The Ridsdale/O'Leary days are over, replaced by the era of the (if it were possible) even less loveable Bates/Wise regime. But then, isn't that more of a reason to feel sorry for Leeds United - the fans, the 'club', the actual soul of whatever it is that is Leeds United, rather than the figures on Ken Bates' balance sheets - than it is to despise them?
Fans shouldn't have to put up with their chairman charging them Premiership prices to watch Championship football; certainly not the standard of Championship football on show in LS11. They shouldn't have to put up with a shaved monkey like Dennis Wise running their club. They shouldn't have to put up with the pantomime of the chairman telling fans outside the ground: "What can we do? Look at the sh*t we're stuck with until the summer."
But Leeds have become a pantomime. There's no other word for it. You couldn't script it; if it happened on Dream Team or Footballer's Wives no-one would believe it. You couldn't script Dennis Wise's rant about a player who would "never play for the club again" after leaking his team sheet to Crystal Palace. You couldn't script the embarrassing climbdown two days later when the club admitted they didn't know who it was.
You couldn't script the club captain telling the manager the day before a major relegation scrap that he wanted a move to Luton. You couldn't script Bates' slagging matches with ex-directors in the match programme. You couldn't script what the fans have been through. Haven't they suffered enough?
Leeds can't even get sponsorship right. They were the first club to sell their arses - or, more accurately, the advertising space on the back of their shorts (and when your club employs, at the time, Sean Gregan and Paul Butler, that's a lot of advertising space). The fans had to put up with having a stand sponsored by Lurpak, of all people; indeed, The Lurpak Stand was the first thing you saw of Elland Road as you came up the motorway. It's sponsored by a skip company now. If the cap fits...
I read an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post the other week in which a prominent local journalist offered the opinion that relegation to League One would be beneficial to the club. It would offer a chance to clean out the dead wood, he opined, to start afresh. It made me laugh; I'm sure I'd read the same article by the same journalist a couple of years before, only one league higher.
Make no mistake, relegation for Leeds would be a disaster. It wouldn't be any easier to come back up from League One than it was to get back into the Premiership. And it's always a shame when a proud old club goes that far. Certainly in Yorkshire - a huge swathe of the country represented by one (not very good) Premiership club - where football has gone to the dogs in the last 15 years.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see them back on their pedestal. But they should at least be allowed to sit on the edge of the plinth while we tease them.
Come on Leeds. For your fans, for your city, for football and even - may God forgive me - for me. Pull it together. Avoid the drop.
Just don't get good again, alright?
Adam Fraser
Posted 20/04/07
I'll be honest. I hate Leeds. Let's face it, we all do. It's universal.
There aren't many clubs you can say that about, but it's true. Whenever there's a discussion of which clubs you really, truly hate, Leeds' name comes up. It doesn't matter whether the people having the conversation support Manchester United or Macclesfield - it's the same.
We've all enjoyed their travails of recent years. But it's starting to remind me of bullying my little brother when we were kids. Yeah, it's funny at first. Yeah, you want to see how far you can push it. But, ultimately, you get the feeling it's all going to end in tears. Possibly in Casualty.
We all enjoyed watching Leeds plummet from being a side lording it over most of the Premiership as they blazed their way to a Champions League semi-final to one at the dung-end of the table. We all enjoyed a tearful Alan Smith looking like his heart had been ripped out. We all enjoyed him giving the Elland Road faithful another taste of that feeling when he bobbed off over the Pennines. We all enjoyed - and at this point, I'm perilously close to laughing out loud - the pictures of that fat kid crying in the stand at Elland Road.
We all enjoyed them getting to the play-offs last year and buggering it up (think how badly they might have done if they'd come up - this is a side that Watford thrashed). We all enjoyed their comical start to this season, the comical middle of this season, the comical...well, the comical season.
But why did we all enjoy it? Why does everyone hate Leeds? Dirty Leeds. Scum. Where does that all come from? I'm not asking because I don't understand your feelings - I'm asking because I don't entirely understand mine. 'The fans' is the usual answer we give, to both ourselves and each other, and there are an awful lot of scummy fans. But then, there are an awful lot of scummy fans of any club, and they don't generate the same consistent hate.
And, if we're honest, there are a fair few nice ones as well. Normal people like you and me. A few of them work in (the Leeds-based, for the next time anyone complains about our southern bias) F365 Towers. I've drunk with Leeds fans, played football with Leeds fans, even lived with Leeds fans (wonderfully, during and after relegation from the top flight; I still remember the joy of turning on a new copy of Pro Evo and saying, "You be Leeds and I'll...oh").
When you think about it, 'the fans' doesn't seem to be enough reason to hate them. Nor does the place - this is a lovely city, if a bit melancholy at 5pm every Saturday.
The management, perhaps? They haven't been run by the nicest people over the last few years, after all. The Ridsdale/O'Leary days are over, replaced by the era of the (if it were possible) even less loveable Bates/Wise regime. But then, isn't that more of a reason to feel sorry for Leeds United - the fans, the 'club', the actual soul of whatever it is that is Leeds United, rather than the figures on Ken Bates' balance sheets - than it is to despise them?
Fans shouldn't have to put up with their chairman charging them Premiership prices to watch Championship football; certainly not the standard of Championship football on show in LS11. They shouldn't have to put up with a shaved monkey like Dennis Wise running their club. They shouldn't have to put up with the pantomime of the chairman telling fans outside the ground: "What can we do? Look at the sh*t we're stuck with until the summer."
But Leeds have become a pantomime. There's no other word for it. You couldn't script it; if it happened on Dream Team or Footballer's Wives no-one would believe it. You couldn't script Dennis Wise's rant about a player who would "never play for the club again" after leaking his team sheet to Crystal Palace. You couldn't script the embarrassing climbdown two days later when the club admitted they didn't know who it was.
You couldn't script the club captain telling the manager the day before a major relegation scrap that he wanted a move to Luton. You couldn't script Bates' slagging matches with ex-directors in the match programme. You couldn't script what the fans have been through. Haven't they suffered enough?
Leeds can't even get sponsorship right. They were the first club to sell their arses - or, more accurately, the advertising space on the back of their shorts (and when your club employs, at the time, Sean Gregan and Paul Butler, that's a lot of advertising space). The fans had to put up with having a stand sponsored by Lurpak, of all people; indeed, The Lurpak Stand was the first thing you saw of Elland Road as you came up the motorway. It's sponsored by a skip company now. If the cap fits...
I read an article in the Yorkshire Evening Post the other week in which a prominent local journalist offered the opinion that relegation to League One would be beneficial to the club. It would offer a chance to clean out the dead wood, he opined, to start afresh. It made me laugh; I'm sure I'd read the same article by the same journalist a couple of years before, only one league higher.
Make no mistake, relegation for Leeds would be a disaster. It wouldn't be any easier to come back up from League One than it was to get back into the Premiership. And it's always a shame when a proud old club goes that far. Certainly in Yorkshire - a huge swathe of the country represented by one (not very good) Premiership club - where football has gone to the dogs in the last 15 years.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see them back on their pedestal. But they should at least be allowed to sit on the edge of the plinth while we tease them.
Come on Leeds. For your fans, for your city, for football and even - may God forgive me - for me. Pull it together. Avoid the drop.
Just don't get good again, alright?
Adam Fraser
Come on everyone....all together now.....
"Maaaaaaaaaarching Oooonnnnn Together!"