Aaron Lennon ⭑ From A-Z since '92

This is part of my (oh lord, eight year long) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme. Or you can carry straight on, with me and Aaron Lennon.

There is a moment in November 2003 that still looks like the future. It's in the 63rd minute of a game between Leeds United and Arsenal at Elland Road, when seventeen-year-old James Milner pushes forward through midfield, sending defenders scurrying, and passes wide left to sixteen-year-old Aaron Lennon. The winger takes a touch to put the ball on his right foot and his inswinging cross dips where Alan Smith wants it and where the goalie can't get it. There are cheers; 'Marching on Together' rings out from the stands. Soon, every Leeds pass is getting an 'Olé!' Leeds are losing 1-4. They're going to get relegated.

Not much more than a year later Aaron Lennon was reflecting on how, "It is quite strange to be one of the longest serving players at just seventeen." He was also reflecting on how Alan Smith's claim to have got a toe on that cross denied Lennon the distinction of taking the youngest Premiership goalscorer record away from Milner, to go with the record for youngest top-flight player since 1992 that he'd taken from Gary McSheffrey. "I thought I had scored, but Smudger said he got a touch so I couldn't argue with him." Lennon's first goal eventually came on Boxing Day 2004, but by that time Premiership records were out of the question. The win over Sunderland was to help Leeds move up from 20th in the Championship.

Smith, Milner, Lennon. Twenty-three, seventeen, sixteen. Rothwell, Horsforth, Chapeltown. 2004 wasn't only a battle against relegation, and liquidation, but to save the future that the club's youth prospects still teased was possible. The Thorp Arch Academy was also pretty much the only part of the club producing anything close to arms for the fight. Even if they couldn't help on the pitch, those players were still doing good things on the transfer market, although even then the club was firing blanks, as we'll come to.

If the club had stayed in the Premiership in 2004, the influx of milk and honey from Barclaycard and Sky could have lessened the need for dramatic sales. Instead, that summer turned the idea of being Mr Leeds United into a joke. It had been Alan Smith, until he was sold across the Pennines to Old Trafford. So instead it was James Milner being draped in the new Diadora kits and photographed, pictures that were current for about a week before he was sold to Newcastle. Who was left? He was local, he was brilliant, he was 5ft 5in and he was barely out of school: it had to be Aaron Lennon.