Until the World Stops Going Round

My Life as a Leeds United Fan

The first Leeds United match I went to was against Chelsea at the start of the 1994/95 season. Leeds raced into a 2–0 lead through Phil Masinga and a spectacular bicycle kick from Noel Whelan. Sat with my mum and brother in the South Stand, I was having the time of my seven-year-old life.

Unfortunately, as would become something of a theme over the next 30+ years, the good times didn’t last long. Leeds imploded, and a John Spencer-inspired Chelsea fought back to win 3–2, leaving me close to tears as we trudged back to the car.

On the way home, my mum tried to console us but, seemingly thinking she was at the Slug and Lettuce with her friends rather than talking to her crestfallen primary school-aged sons, made several references to how handsome she thought John Spencer was. We were angered by such treachery, so she attempted to appease us by saying Gordon Strachan had also caught her eye. Her penchant for short Scottish men did not bode well for my dad, who is neither of those things.

While Leeds had a decent season in 1994/95, my own luck was wretched, and I pondered, quite seriously, whether I might be cursed. Indeed, we went to EIGHT winless matches before a last-gasp Carlton Palmer rocket against Aston Villa finally gave me my first winning feeling. Twenty years later, I would meet Carlton at a Legends tournament in Hong Kong (I was a spectator, not a legend). A few beers deep, I thought Carlton would be thrilled to hear how happy his goal had made me all those years ago, but he would’ve been hard pressed to have given less of a shit and swiftly slinked off to the bar where Chris Waddle was buying a pitcher of lager.

Perhaps as a result of my mother’s wandering eye, my dad had little interest in football and only ever took us to one match: the Youth Cup final in 1997, where a Leeds team including Jonathan Woodgate, Harry Kewell, and Alan Smith overcame Crystal Palace. My primary school had handed out free tickets, and my dad somehow (definitely not by choice) ended up as a parental supervisor.

You’d think this might be a straightforward gig, but at half-time he had to break up a fistfight between two of my classmates after one of them - allegedly deliberately - sprayed their Strawberry Jelly and Ice Cream Panda Pop on the other’s white Kappa tracksuit. Incidentally, the Panda Pop sprayer would go on to become a prolific burglar, a career which peaked, I kid you not, with a mugshot appearance on Crimewatch.

My favourite players of the era were Lucas Radebe, Gary Kelly, Gary Speed, and, of course, Tony Yeboah, whose goals my brother and I tried, with little success, to replicate in our back garden. I was thrilled when we signed Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and promptly headed to the club shop in town to get “Jimmy 9” on the back of my shirt. If memory serves me right, he wore this on his goal scoring debut against Arsenal, but shortly afterwards the killjoys at the FA vetoed it because it wasn’t his real name so my shirt was instantly out of date.

I was fuming, although not as much as my friend who, a couple of years later, got “Hasselbaink 9” printed on his shirt the day before he left for Atlético Madrid. In my mate’s defence, our best source of transfer gossip at the time was the TeamTalk hotline, which had a per-minute rate to rival Babestation.

The O’Leary era was magnificent, and I don’t think I realised just how lucky I was to be a Leeds fan at the time. His exciting young team were a joy to watch, and like many supporters of my vintage, the Champions League run provides some of my fondest football memories. Anyone with anything to do with Leeds United remembers exactly where they were and who they were with for Dida’s spill, Smith’s dink, and Matteo’s header, don’t they? (I was in my living room with my brother for the entire thing.)

I’ve never had much understanding of the financial side of things (my wife would attest to this), and other than Peter Ridsdale’s tropical fish and Seth Johnson’s wage negotiations, I had little grasp of why we suddenly had to sell our best players and replace them with Paul Okon, Cyril Chapuis, and Lamine Sakho. As an avid Championship Manager player - likely a factor in my near-permanent girlfriendless state throughout my teens - I’d hoped the signing of legend-of-the-game Roque Junior meant everything was going to be fine. Sadly, this one, like so many others, didn’t work out, and relegation in 2004 was devastating.

Leeds United’s downfall coincided with my late teens and early twenties, a time when I was prone to my own self-destruction. This was convenient, as being in various states of lucidity was the only thing that made watching us bearable much of the time. After so many matches - a 4–0 home loss against Sheffield United springs to mind - I’d get home and wonder whether this was really the best way to spend my free time and money. Was supporting Leeds making my life better in any way?

I was at Lancaster University by the time Ipswich relegated us to League One, and my new girlfriend Louise (I’d weaned myself off Championship Manager by this point) wiped away my drunken tears while probably questioning why she’d ever agreed to go out with me.

In the early days of our relationship, she feigned an interest in football, but appeared less than thrilled when I surprised her with a pair of tickets in the Kop for a Johnstone’s Paint Trophy clash against Hartlepool. Andy Robinson scored a last-minute winner, causing delirium in the stands. Louise, not sharing the general good mood, scowled and turned around to the guys behind us.

“Will you stop f*cking banging into me!”

Her accent simply could not be more Southern, and her tirade was met with exactly the level of shrift you would expect from a man with a face tattoo. I gave him an apologetic smile, which prompted Louise to reprimand me for not taking her side, and we sat in stony silence in the car on the way home.

She has not been back to Elland Road since.

The League One days had their moments. The Leeds-against-the-world mentality of the minus-15-points season, when we won seven on the bounce and everyone begrudgingly accepted that we didn’t actually mind Dennis Wise, saw the best atmosphere at Elland Road in years. I should add that I never felt the same about Ken Bates. Surely, the least he could’ve done was pay for a scoreboard?

Amongst the good times, however, were some desperate away days, including being in with the home fans at Victoria Park when Hartlepool scored a last-minute equaliser and, to avoid a punch, I had to reciprocate a hug from a man without a single tooth. Then there was a Sheffield Wednesday fixture when we inexplicably GOT LOST on the way from Leeds to Hillsborough and missed the match entirely. Still, those magical Jermaine Beckford goals against Manchester United (I had £2.50 on Beckford 1–0 as a cherry on top) and Bristol Rovers made it all just about worthwhile. I think.

For three Groundhog seasons in the Championship, Louise and I were living in Hong Kong. While my girlfriend was out drinking cocktails in swanky rooftop bars with friends from exotic countries, I spent my weekends watching Leeds games on a stalling internet stream in a British pub as middle-aged guys from Armley said things like:

“What the f*ck is Darren O’Dea PLAYING AT?!”

Despite the underwhelming football, being with fellow Leeds supporters far from home was comforting. I met some great people - some of whom went on to form an official branch of the Leeds United Supporters’ Club over there, which has since gone from strength to strength.

The Doghouse in Hong Kong at some ungodly hour.

When Marcelo Bielsa was appointed, I recognised the name but honestly didn’t know much about him. A mate, more knowledgeable than me, said:

“This will either be a complete disaster or the best thing that has ever happened to our club.”

I was underwhelmed when I saw the starting line-up for Bielsa’s first game against Stoke, as it was much the same as Paul Heckingbottom’s team. It sounds odd putting those names in the same sentence, doesn’t it?

From the second the match kicked off, though, it was clear something special was happening. The players were unrecognisable, and the intensity and tempo we were playing at - swarm after swarm of attack against a team fancied to bounce straight back up - was staggering. Cooper, Phillips, and Roofe looked like different players entirely, and I thought we’d sold Klich over the summer.

A big day: a 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough.

I was fortunate to get to plenty of games during the Bielsa era, and it was undoubtedly the most I’ve enjoyed being a Leeds fan. When we were on it - which was considerably more often than not - it barely mattered who we were playing; so many opposition teams just blurred into one.

Of course, the playoff defeat against Derby was unquantifiable agony. (I’m a probation officer, and my shift the next day - hungover and heartbroken while dealing with angry men, many of whom were also Leeds fans and extra angry - is a prime contender for my worst ever day at work.) But the guard of honour at Pride Park felt like poetic closure. Marcelo Bielsa is a genius, and our squad, who pushed themselves beyond their limits, deserved all the plaudits.

Obviously, coronavirus was really, really shit, but I’m so glad the season resumed, and we were given the opportunity to win the league, especially with the added poignancy of Hunter, Cherry, and Charlton’s deaths. Like many, I watched the matches at home, on my own. When Pablo Hernandez scored the winner against Swansea, it was pure (solo) euphoria.

I was 17 when we were relegated, and I spent so much time thinking about how I would celebrate when we finally got back up. Here’s how it went: I watched Huddersfield’s winner against West Brom on my phone, on silent, in a dark room while trying to rock our baby to sleep as he vomited on my shoulder. When I got downstairs, with our toddler charging around and shouting, I mooted the idea of “popping to Elland Road to see what was happening,” but Louise’s response was arguably cooler than Carlton Palmer’s in Hong Kong. I had to make do with following the celebrations in bed via Mateusz Klich’s Instagram feed.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it?

Our first season back in the Premier League - the “Covid season” - was surreal, given the lack of a pre-season, the empty stadiums, and the option to add fake crowd noise on Sky Sports. However, Bielsa’s gung-ho approach caught teams off guard. Our Championship squad - players like Ayling, Alioski, and Harrison - made the step up to the best league in the world look straightforward, and our 9th-place finish was, especially with the benefit of hindsight, astonishing.

Housebound with a boisterous toddler and a sleep-averse baby while trying to be of some use as a probation officer, watching Leeds games and contributing to a group chat with my old schoolmates (even the one who ruined countless goals due to an internet connection so fast he effectively lived in the future) offered two hours of respite - and hope - every few days.

Weird and wonderful things happened that season. The much-maligned Patrick Bamford scored 17 goals and won an England cap, we signed a little-known Brazilian winger who would go on to become arguably the best player in the world (Raphinha is currently among the favourites to win the Ballon d’Or), and we beat Man City 2–1 away with 10 men.

Louise has long described my raucous goal celebrations as “extremely unattractive,” but when I started punching a cushion after Stuart Dallas scored the winner, she ramped this up a notch:

“You’re scaring the baby, Andy. Please don’t scare the baby.”

How I longed to go back to Elland Road. Or even the pub. Just somewhere where passionate punching of inanimate objects wasn’t so much critiqued as actively encouraged.

I would get my wish in our second season in the top-flight. With fans allowed back into stadiums, a semblance of normality returned to the footballing world - epitomised when the old foe Man Utd thumped us 5–1 at Old Trafford on the opening day. Perhaps this season wasn’t going to be quite as much fun?

A good friend (not a fellow probation officer, you may be surprised to know) bought hospitality season tickets and kindly took me to Leeds vs. Liverpool as a birthday present, my first Premier League game in 17 years. Salah, Mané and co. tore us to shreds, but, on the plus side, I met Steve Hodge and can comprehensively say that I made the most of the free bar.

With Steve Hodge, the man with Maradona’s shirt.

When I awoke the following morning, I felt like I’d been repeatedly whacked around the head with a spatula, then had the gut-punch of remembering I’d been tasked with collecting a guinea pig hutch from a woman Louise had liaised with on Facebook. I was too frail to lift a large object into the boot on my own, so my dad was roped in to drive his nauseous adult son to Keighley in the rain. It took over an hour of winding country roads to get there, with few words uttered other than me requesting he pull over in a so I could be sick in a field.

Eventually, we arrived at the address to find the hutch on the drive. It was enormous.

“I don’t think it’s going to fit in the car, Andrew,” my dad said.

It didn’t.

We went home.

Bielsa’s glorious reign as my favourite Leeds manager came to an end in February 2022. The jobbing Championship squad he’d turned into world beaters finally ran out of steam, and following a succession of injuries and heavy defeats, he was sacked.

I was at Yorkshire Sculpture Park with our boys when the news filtered through, and the heartache was comparable to the teenage time(s) I saw the girl I liked kissing that lad-with-a-car-in-the-year-above in the dark corner of a nightclub.

On the way home, I received a call from Louise informing me she’d been stuck in a lay-by in Ripon because our Vauxhall Corsa had broken down.

“Sorry to hear that, but… how do you think I’m feeling? Bielsa’s gone!”

(I didn’t really say this.)

I was one of the few who thought Jesse Marsch was a logical appointment. While he did feel a bit like a too-young stepdad worming his way into the family home far too soon after a divorce, I was excited to see where his expansive football might take us.

The less said about that, the better, I suppose.

There were moments - the Norwich, Brentford, and Liverpool wins, for instance - but ultimately, he just wasn’t the right man for the job. Completely the wrong man, in fact. When he (and we) were put out of our misery, all kinds of rumours circulated about who would take over for the final 12 games. Leeds were linked with Andoni Iraola and Mauricio Pochettino, before an up-and-coming Dutch manager, Arne Slot, became huge odds-on favourite. I watched Feyenoord highlights on YouTube, studied long-form pieces on his tactical approach (“Can we play Lego, Daddy?” “Sorry, son, Daddy’s busy at the moment…”), and convinced myself the future was bright.

He decided against it.

We were relegated a few weeks later with Sam Allardyce in charge.

After my ill-fated endorsement of Jesse Marsch, I was more tight-lipped about Daniel Farke’s arrival, but it felt like a sensible call. He knew how to get out of the division, didn’t he?

After the misery of watching games where the only question was how many goals we’d ship, it was refreshing to start winning again. We made some solid signings, Summerville was on fire, and I loved watching Georginio Rutter (I’m a long-time sucker for a languid show pony). We seemed nailed on for an immediate return to the Premier League until an untimely international break triggered a barely believable slump, culminating in a 4–0 loss against QPR, consigning us, once again, to the playoffs - a word that, for Leeds fans, is a synonym for gut-wrenching failure.

I couldn’t go to the final against Southampton because we were at Disneyland Paris (I am aware this is not deserving of any sympathy.) The morning of the match, we took the train into Paris for what turned into a fairly disastrous day out. We paid a Ridsdale-esque overinflated sum for an open-top bus tour and sat in crawling traffic due to a 10k running event.

A few minutes after the bus finally got moving, and before we’d seen anything of much interest, our youngest son informed me he was “absolutely desperate” for the toilet, so we ran off the bus and into a swanky restaurant where we had to wait forever outside a cubicle before a woman eventually emerged having definitely, DEFINITELY, been doing cocaine.

Then, our boys refused to get back on the bus, so we trudged back to Charles de Gaulle station in blazing heat, nobody talking, while I considered how we’d spent approximately £200 for four miles on a bus. Incidentally, the exact opposite of a Leeds to London Megabus deal in 2005 (£4 for 200 miles).

After all the faffing around, I ended up rinsing my data by following the game on my phone on the train back to Disneyland. In the outer Parisian suburbs, Adam Armstrong scored on my grubby tiny screen and I - along with every Leeds fan in the world - just knew that the game would finish 1–0. We were back in our lodge for the second half, and I watched, dejected, as we failed to create any meaningful chances, other than Dan James smashing the crossbar.

“It’s fine,” I told myself, trying to be pragmatic. “I’m at Disneyland with my beautiful family on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday.”

For a little while, this positive self-talk worked.

That evening, however, I found myself telling a dustpan and brush to “f*ck off” within earshot of my children.

Following the playoff final, we sold our three best players, and I started fearing the worst and wondering whether I should get a new hobby - should I get really into triathlons, perhaps? Sadly, being a football fan is more than a hobby, and once you’re in, you’ve absolutely had it.

For the rest of your life.

On that note, this (incredibly long - sorry, I got carried away…) piece now ends on a positive note.

This season has been ace.

Absolutely ace.

We bought some quality players - Rodon, Tanaka and Solomon etc. - and enjoyed some wonderful matches (in a weird twist of fate/Sky Sports being bastards, all our biggest games fell on Mondays, meaning some truly un-wonderful Tuesdays at work.)

Being a Leeds fan has been brilliant, not just for staying connected with old mates, but also for making new ones, especially with within the school dad scene and I often find myself at kids’ soft play parties, standing on the sidelines, deep in conversation about whether Joël Piroe “has what it takes for the Premier League.” As a man pushing 40, my Ibiza these days is heading to the local pub, having exactly four pints of Guinness, and watching the football.

On Monday 21st April, we watched Leeds destroy Stoke 6–0 and sipped a bottle of fizz as Burnley defeated Sheffield United, confirming our promotion back to the Premier League.

“What are we doing now?” my pal asked.

“Well, obviously, we’re getting an Uber to Elland Road?”

Banishing the ghosts of 2020, we arrived at the ground with thousands of others, chanting, lighting flares, and climbing things (it’s not a promotion party if a shirtless man hasn’t shinned his way concerningly high up a lamppost.) I bumped into some of my oldest friends, we hugged, shouted nonsense at each other, and soaked up the atmosphere as we waited for the players to emerge and celebrate with the fans.

A man turned to me:

“You do know the players have already been out. They probably won’t be coming back.”

“Oh.”

It reminded me of going to Party in the Park in the 90s, and waiting to see the headliners 5ive for what felt like hours, only for them not to show up (I may have misremembered this as there is nothing online supporting my claim.)

“Shall we, um, go home then?”

“I suppose so.”

It was a terrific spectacle, though, and I got chance to see the players celebrating when my mate treated me to tickets for the Bristol City game which was, I think, my best ever night at Elland Road; a balmy evening, yellow flags waving after a thumping 4–0 win, arms around each other’s shoulders, singing “Leeds Are Going Up” to KC and The Sunshine Band’s classic with 36,000 others, and I thought:

Do you know what? Being a Leeds United fan is absolutely worth it. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Louise might say otherwise.

*

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Thank you for reading. If you’ve made it all this way, I truly salute you! We went on to WIN THE LEAGUE with an injury time goal, which was very, very exciting (although I missed this entirely due to playing in doubles tennis tournament with my son, losing out to a team featuring a slightly overcompetitive dad.)

For any new readers, Leeds fans or otherwise, if you enjoyed this, please take a second to subscribe to my blog below (it costs nothing). For regular readers, worry not! Leeds United winning things is an unusual occasion and writing dissertation-length pieces about football will not become a regular thing.

Feel free to add any comments about football (or anything you fancy) below and please do like/share etc., to boost my fragile ego.

MOT.

Andy

*Parts of this piece were published in my article for Late Tackle magazine in 2020.