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?
Tag
2024-25
A collection of 69 posts
Watford 0-4 Leeds United: The right place
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.
Leeds United 0-2 Millwall: Your own heroics
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.
Coventry City 0-2 Leeds United: Here's your chance(s)
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.
Leeds United 7-0 Cardiff City: Just like seven
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.
The Premier League, managers, and minding the gap
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.
Burnley 0-0 Leeds United: Scared of sexy
If Expected Sexy was a metric the Championship would not score highly and Burnley's pride in all their clean sheets would hit different.
Leeds United 2-0 Norwich City: Good taste in winning
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.
Leeds United 3-0 Sheffield Wednesday: Grinding down a groove
All this hard work and nothing more than a single point of comfort at the top of the table: that's football at its reassuring, familiar, painful best.
Even heroes need something to do
The declines of Gelhardt and Meslier are regarded as mysteries but their underperformance might be quite simple: neither of them, in different ways, has had enough to do.