Fear, fascination, and the 'swelling power' of fans uniting behind players
Football is a game about players watched by fans — monetised by clubs. What happens if fans start cutting clubs out?
Football is a game about players watched by fans — monetised by clubs. What happens if fans start cutting clubs out?
Confidence breeds confidence but this form must be inspiring a contagious 'oh no' in the rest of the Championship that gives Leeds an advantage before they have to do another thing.
Sometimes all the FA Cup becomes is a game against Millwall, again, too soon. But football matches still form their own entities and so the players picked to play could take to the pitch with heroics in mind.
Leeds United either did or didn't get what they wanted from the transfer window, and your perspective might have influenced how unhinged you felt as kick-off approached in Coventry. Personally I felt like I was going insane.
7-0 is an alluring scoreline. 6-0 is sexy but seven is heaven. So what about the Peacocks' seventh-heavenly vanquishing of Middlesbrough back in 1930? That must have been quite some Leeds team, right, one of the best of the pre-Revie era?
Seven. It wasn't an audacious backheel by Billy Bremner and as an aesthetic experience Firpo-to-forward on repeat can't quite compete with 1972. But on its own terms this was a perfect goal, it made a perfect seven, just give all the players a perfect ten and worry about the details in Coventry.
Here was a look behind the scenes of a Premier League club, a chance to taste the sauce they call their science, and it made me wonder if Don Goodman and Andy Hinchcliffe might qualify as deep footie thinkers after all.
If Expected Sexy was a metric the Championship would not score highly and Burnley's pride in all their clean sheets would hit different.
Things might have been different if Kevin Blackwell had trusted a younger Andy Keogh. But by the time he came back, Keogh wasn't the only big blonde striker in town.
At Elland Road, the Peacocks were giving the Canaries every chance to play fair. Well, apart from the scoring after thirty seconds thing, but in some ways that was a kindness.