Leeds United Special | Premier League World | The Wait Is Over

It's a loyal town, a one club town, it's been 16 years since we last played in the top

league

but that support has never wavered, the support has always been there even in the dark times, these fans are from a different breed from the most passionate, with the best fans in the

world

. The

world

, as far as I'm concerned, all the other cities are divided, they don't lead in Leeds, they all lead, lead, lead, it's like a single club, the club is an institution in the city, it's a religion, religion, religion, sleeping giant of English football, the history that we.

I've had a great club, I've supported United for over 50 years. I went to my first game when I was 12 years old. It's in your blood. Once you leave, you have to be there. I am privileged. having been there to see the great side of Don Revvy that instilled in us, you know, absolutely fantastic football at that time, it's thanks to that team that I'm still the least of a fan I am today, peter lorimer, eddie gray, joe jordan , my hero, billy bremner. I've got my Bremner stone right under his feet with Heidi Hague, follow me at Leeds United.

My family did that for Christmas for me and you know, I just cried because to me it was such a wonderful thing. I'm glad I had the chance to be there because it's things like that that keep you there all these years, it's the memories of the good times that were Christmas 1962. Don Revve met me at the station when I left and he says "you ". Today you are training with me, we are the first team, so I trained well with the first team and I fell in love with the place that appears in the book on a Saturday.

As soon as I arrived I started winning games in the old Second Division as it was and the crowd started piling on the ground and then you realized the passion within the city for the football club and everyone was right behind the team. Oh, nice footwork, I still do great. You realized you were watching something unique with a fantastic team fantastic football and I think that's where you started to get the feeling of wanting to go to more games it was brilliant I don't think we got the recognition we deserved don revis certainly didn't get the recognition it deserved dirty morning boss Didn't they know they had fun clues before the guys came in?

Know? When you came to a football club, you soon realized that there was a man in the football club who counted and ran the club and that was done. For seven or eight years I always thought that just sitting in a locker room and looking at the players I was playing with and thinking it was going to be hard to beat us, there's no way they can beat us today, it was quite a feeling. who toured the football club we saw fantastic football. You know, it was great to see Leeds win the

league

with a record number of points.

Plus, the guys were just great in town. You know, civic receptions in the city and thousands and thousands of fans. there and you know it's a big time in the city and the city seems to be taking off too, you know there's a big boom in the city and funnily enough I can feel the same thing happening now and we won the league again in '73. '74 you know, Looking back, I think Dawn felt it was time for her to leave because she had been with the player for so long and I think she realized they would have to break up and I don't think she wanted to do that. who was really devastated because it was a case where we knew the team was going to split up and forgetting someone to follow in his footsteps was always going to be difficult, but he put johnny giles ahead and I think if we had if we had promoted from within , we wouldn't have gone through the trauma we had after that, the club slowly but surely started to decline, you know, maybe finishing fourth in the league and finishing sixth and then eleventh, so the club basically started to have a slope. uh and eventually you know the club was relegated you know 1982 it was heartbreaking that it had come to that um and yeah it was a long time before we started to get back together that's when Howard Wilkinson came along and things started to go well. management, my grandfather used to talk to me about the players and they were kind of folklore, so we were always arguing about how passionate he was, how great it was that we were winning things and we went through the doldrums of, you know, the '80s era.

Difficult until Howard Wilkinson came along and then things started to change. He just galvanized the club. All the fans supported him when they went up in 89. I went to every game for two or three seasons. Getting to the big leagues is one thing and then adapting. and improve and recruit so that you are in a position to fight for the title, that takes time, e

special

ly if you are a promoter club. The plans that Howard Wilkinson certainly set in motion, yes, convinced me to sign a penny for your thoughts, Mr. Wilkinson. I thought he was great, he was honest, he had a plan, he was very, very deep in his analysis, we would work incredibly hard on the training pitch to make sure we were fully prepared, so his preparation was second to none.

He inspired us as a group and individually and I think we are better for it. We knew our role and responsibility and everyone was better playing alongside our teammate. We knew we were good at what we had to be good at. It was very clear what our role and responsibility was and then once you start winning, the confidence grows, the crowd at Ellen Road starts getting louder and louder, if that was possible, we just kept you informed, winning games, winning games and putting pressure on Manchester United. uh and they gave in and suddenly we were champions so uh it's a strange feeling because it doesn't sink in right away or it takes a little bit of time it was just chaos the city went crazy you know it went absolutely crazy um city square outside from the town hall was just incredible, you know, because we never experienced it, I had never seen anything like it.

I realized when we had the bus parade and then we went to city hall and city hall and got out of that. balcony and you looked down, it was just incredible they were so tight you only saw shoulders and heads as each player stepped forward, there's a huge tie, I mean I bet you could hear in York, looks like we're going to have to go and try to win it again, it's always difficult when suddenly, the success is no longer there, at that level that we want to try and you know, it will be a challenge, but the next season we found it difficult and Howard certainly found it, not so much. easy to re-produce that winning formula.

I have been excited. I don't think the last few years have been a failure. Those are your words. I have become excited for reasons that they see a sound that is their right. I remember at that time. His departure was a real blow because when you have a coach with the ingredients to win uni, where will the next great coach come from? The man chosen to replace him was George Graham. Graham's job was to revive the club which had been underperforming since then. winning the title in 1992. george graham I think the poorest football we played unfortunately was at that time before o'leary came in and then we had this sort of rejuvenation where o'leary came in and we were playing really exciting football again, kind of pulled from the top drawer of the Leeds left-back managed by Alan Smith, what a season the teenager is having.

Let's play a high-paced game. We are going to train hard for it. We are going to subdue the teams. pressure we're not going to be a team that sits back, we're going to be a team that takes people in and out and that's what I think people enjoyed watching us play we were playing brilliant football you know there were great players. In that field at that time we were rivals for anyone. You know, we could compete with anything. I think we showed that you are playing against the best teams in the world in Milan and Real Madrid and that we could match them.

European family cup you know what the place was, right? you think everything is going to be fine and of course it goes on and you know well it's pretty well documented what happened to

leeds

after that, the lack of champions league football on the cost of acquiring players and their salaries meant that we had to reduce our overheads the second season in a row of not being able to get into the champions league meant a lot of income of approximately £30 million over two seasons we have listened to offers that we believed were suitable for the long-term financial stability of the club soccer.

I'm here to make the right decisions, not necessarily popular decisions. If we had spent that much in the past, probably not, but we lived the dream. We enjoy the dream. Only by making the right decisions today can we revive it. the dream once again in the future the future is brighter for all League United fans today because we made difficult decisions, that's the end of my story, the worst thing was you saw great players paying a fraction of the price because all the teams they knew they could get them for a lot of money for people like Fowler Harry Kuhl at the time and people like that were leaving because Leeds were desperate for money and got everything they could and tried to take those salaries away.

Just remember that it started to fall apart and as a team it became really worrying. You were born a football fan with eternal optimism, e

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ly if you support something like leads and order it so, then think well, we will recover. It happens, we will be fine, you know, on this day, three years ago, Leech United drew Neil Nill with Valencia, this is 2004 and they are on the verge of relegation to the first division, the consequences of that, very, very serious, one of The famous names in English football could be on their way out of the top flight if they lose here.

I've never actually seen the highlights. I have been able to dare to see them. I went to the Shropshire White trainer like we normally do. It's probably going to be the day we're relegated, hopefully not because we're mathematically relegated, but before we went in, but then we were on the circuit, we thought, well, maybe the big breakaways we really were able to do it. Stadium. I marked one, two. three four is goodbye League United, you knew the inevitable was happening, they are leading United and they are exiting the Premier League and it hurts, it really hurts, here I am, on the screen and then they kept coming back to me too.

We all thought we were going down in a minute and I think it was like when I was 11 years old. I just couldn't, couldn't contain the emotion anymore. It's the end of the Premier League road for Leeds United. they're relegated from the top flight how times change eddie gray alan smith leads from start to finish but they didn't have enough on them they weren't good enough and they're falling into the worst game I've ever been in in my life yeah cuz You I realized what it meant for the club, the players, the fans of the city, you also know it personally and it is a day you never forget.

I mean, it's the lowest point. You know my football in my career. My mother called me because she actually didn't come. to the game with me so she called me and she was like she was crying she was like "you're right" I said yeah yeah she's like you've been on TV I was like what do you mean? She's like, yeah, they kept panning towards you. without your shirt crying crying at the TV and I was like oh I didn't realize and then mom and dad found me when I got up from the couch and apparently I told him more, my world is over, I don't know what to say.

I did it and they were kind of checking on me, I think it was a club again that got involved and somehow called, my mum and dad got it going so we met up at a service near Manchester halfway, like that that he came with his agent and I went. I was there and met him and signed pictures, t-shirts and different things like that. I remember saying I know you're going to leave because you're our best player, the most valuable player, but please don't go to Man United and he just said oh no, I wouldn't go there and a week later he did.

How did it go from being so good watching AC Milan Barcelona Real Madrid Ellen Road to the next minute you go to Swindon and lose three and get sick against them and the teams. It just happened very quickly and we had a couple of years in the Championship and then it was like he was just down and had about three years in Ligue 1. The more it happened, the more it worried me. I thought okay, we had to pay some debts, the right owners would come, put some money back into the club and then quickly get us back to where we needed to be, but it didn't happen that way, the number of owners who just stayed. get ahead thinking they were the next big thing and everyone had their own ideas, new coaches, the amount of coaches we've had in this period is ridiculous, like it's been a revolving door of coaches and players because everyone has their own ideas and philosophies and things like that we just haven't had stability at the club, I think that's what's really been missing and to be fair to rad Razari he has come in and stabilized the club more than anything and finally got the right manager and it's just proved it worked, they see it as god, they basically say the blc deals, bill says gun, that's whatThey say, many fans call him god, he has that local side, he is a little crazy or he can be a big surprise and when they mentioned Marcelo is going to be the next legislative manager.

I honestly thought this was going to go one of two ways because I certainly met him when he was managing Chile and the style that Chile played with those players, how he elevated them in world football was incredible. Certainly, Athletic Bilbao, we know from his time there, how he produced a wonderfully talented football team, but then you look at Lazio, where he lasted two days because his demands were not met personally. I did a lot of research on all the coaches. when they come in, but bielsa, I mean, he stood out, you know, he's got a chile argentina resume and he's managed some of the biggest European clubs you know, so you think this guy has a brilliant reputation too, the more I think about it.

I read about him the more I liked him and the more he reminded me of don revi uh don reviews to make files now marcelo is very, very good at getting all this uh the files and reports on previous teams and everything else that the fans love him about absolutely. you know him being in Costa Coffee, you know, going to the chippy just seeing all the clues he really buys into the city, buys into the culture of the city and what it's all about and I think he's the best and he's gotten us into a Premier League , so he chose something else.

Oh, he's an absolute hero at Leeds. I really think he will be seen as a hero for years and years because we are in the routine of being a mid-table championship team and not going anywhere. without doing anything and he came in and just transformed everything that you hear about things that you know he said um pep and you look at them as managers and you think, well, this guy must be fine because if people like that they think highly of him. So he must have something, I think that for world football with his ethics through his behavior through his special way of playing, he is a true coach for us, no other coach in the world can play the way he plays, do not imitate him, no one can imitate him, and that It makes him feel so special, he is very definitive in his style and ideas and whether you join or not and you go to play for another club, but the sacrifice he demands is also great, but that is what Leeds fans want that is what I did, that's what the great 60 70 teams sacrifice for your teammates and for that white jersey.

My dad and I went to that first home game and we looked at each other after 10 minutes and were like, what's going on? on stoke had just been relegated and we were playing it out of the park we beat them 3-1 as a

leeds

fan last season you watched certain games and realized maybe we weren't going to make it we played such good football and we just threw it away in the trash at the end of the season. Leeds United remain in the Championship for another year. It was one of the lowest points since relegation, but being so close to making a comeback was hard to take. and it will be year 16 without top division football for them after the player finally i think i have been accelerating four league runs we were so desperate for beyonce to sign another deal we were thinking if she does we will do it next year my condolences for leading together when I was writing my book for this year I put in September the leaders are going to emerge as champions in the centenary yes, well what happened the first time I really thought we were going to do it was when we forged that victory against Swansea when We scored in the second to last minute and you thought this is a team that last year would have tied for maybe two or three weeks.

I've been working on all sorts of mathematical solutions to how we're going to get married when the final whistle blew. I started to cry. They were just tears of relief. It hasn't settled yet. Still, I think that when we play the first game in the Premier League that will be when everything will settle in you. I almost have to pinch myself. I've dreamed about that moment with my two kids for so long and watching them see it happen and then of course it just got better and better because not only did we win it, but we went out and won it.

As champions, winning any league by 10 points is a difficult task and we never stop believing that it has been 16 years of pain and we have managed to recover it and people say that you go down in history, but I think it is one of them in which No I won't know until we probably retire what kind of footing we've achieved in the Premier League, we won't know what has affected it because we've played some fantastic football and it's good to see and it takes me back to the In recent years we got to the bottom and now we're on our way back up and I think just getting back to the major league will be the start of the start of school, the city is buzzing again, you know, everyone in the city is talking about it and I think it's going to do a lot for him. good to the club, you know, it's something that was long overdue and I and I'm very happy that we're back, as you can probably tell if you go out and make your best move for it. shirt and never give up, keep fighting, which is what Leeds United always used to do.

That for me will take us very far. You know it's going to be intense. It's going to be exciting. They will bring entertainment. However, that ends. I have no idea. but they will bring entertainment one way or another, I don't think we will, uh, it could be a tragedy and that would be comedy, but we will bring entertainment, we will definitely enjoy our YouTube channel. make sure to subscribe and download the optosport app