Leeds United: the great return The heroes and villains of their gruelling comeback reveal all
It’s taken 16 inglorious years, but Leeds can finally call themselves a top- flight team once more. FFT retraces an extraordinary journey of upsets, angst and unruly ownership with ex- bosses, players and a famously tearful fan
Leeds United fans stood disconsolately in the rain at the compact Glassworld Stadium, as a postman rose highest to meet a corner- kick and deliver the moment they had dreaded. Champions League semi- finalists just seven years earlier, now defender Matt Langston’s header had put them on course for defeat against a village team in the second round of the FA Cup. Being down in League One was bad enough, but this was even worse – Histon 1 Leeds 0. “In the dressing room after the game, I sat there thinking, ‘ What the hell happened out there?’” midfielder Jonathan Douglas recalls to Fourfourtwo, 12 years on. “You’re playing on live television, you’re representing Leeds United and you should be beating teams like that. But somehow we weren’t able to. I felt really embarrassed.”
Defeat at Histon proved the nadir, the low point of an extraordinary 20- year journey for Leeds. It was one that began in Barcelona and Milan at the turn of the millennium, then sent them crashing to the depths of despair – the worst moments in the club’s long and distinguished history.
But finally, that journey has ended with redemption. Finally, thanks to the genius of Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds are back in the Premier League after 16 long years away. This is the story of how it went so wrong, and how one of England’s biggest clubs finally rose again.
AN OIL T ANKER HEADING FOR THE ROCKS
Eddie Gray remembers the immense pride he felt when he watched the great Leeds team of 2000- 01. Assistant to David O’leary back then, the Whites legend had previously been youth team coach, helping to bring through an incredible crop of emerging talent.
“If we could have kept all of those players together, we’d have taken some beating,” he tells FFT now. “Jonathan Woodgate, Harry Kewell, Stephen Mcphail, Alan Smith – they played for the first team when they were 17 or 18. Then we had guys like Rio Ferdinand, Mark Viduka, Lee Bowyer, Olivier Dacourt – so many fantastic players. That team was as good as anybody.”
In Europe that season, they showed how good they were.
“I just remember the Champions League music and the excitement of those matches under the lights at Elland Road, particularly the Milan game when Bowyer came up with a last- minute winner,” smiles lifelong Leeds supporter Ricky Allman, thinking back to his youth. “Some of my first memories watching Leeds were the ultimate. We were watching Rivaldo and Real Madrid’s Galacticos. I felt it was never going to end.”
Only a last- gasp Rivaldo equaliser denied them victory over Barcelona at Elland Road. They beat Besiktas 6- 0 and drew 1- 1 in Milan, to progress at Barça’s expense. A 1- 0 victory at Lazio helped Leeds finish as runners- up to Real Madrid in the second group phase, then Deportivo La Coruna were dispatched 3- 0 in the quarter- final first leg. After advancing 3- 2 on aggregate, a fine Valencia side eventually halted their run.
But the 18- game European adventure took its toll – Leeds sat 13th in the Premiership on New Year’s Day ( albeit with games in hand), and mid- season signings were required to turn things around. They spent £ 18 million on West Ham’s Ferdinand, then a world record fee for a defender, while Robbie Keane was recruited on loan from Inter ahead of a £ 12m permanent deal. Leeds finished fourth, one point short of securing a second successive Champions League campaign, and the vital revenue that their chairman Peter Ridsdale had already budgeted for.
Leeds led the league table on New Year’s Day in 2002, but they had spent even more money: £ 9m on Seth Johnson and £ 11m on Robbie Fowler. After they fell to fifth place, O’leary was sacked at the end of the season, having annoyed Ridsdale with his book Leeds
United On Trial – detailing the events at the club during an infamous court case involving Bowyer and Woodgate, following an incident outside a nightclub. Bowyer was later cleared, but Woodgate was convicted of affray. When O’leary departed the Elland Road dugout, things went rapidly downhill.
“We had too many players to sustain the wage bill, so we had to let top- class players leave,” Gray remembers ruefully. Ferdinand, Keane, Woodgate and Fowler were all sold – and so eager were Leeds to let Fowler go, they continued paying a portion of his salary. Under new boss Terry Venables, the Whites slid to a relegation battle.
Peter Reid stepped in to keep the club up, but then Ridsdale resigned. Sizeable debts had sparked criticism from supporters, with expenditure infamously including goldfish for the chairman’s office. “When it came out that we were spending hundreds of pounds on goldfish, you wondered what was going through his mind,” says fan Allman.
New chairman John Mckenzie likened the club to “an oil tanker heading straight for the rocks”. “The trouble with oil tankers,” he said, “is they’re two miles long and they don’t turn around in two minutes.”
Kewell and Dacourt were flogged in the summer of 2003, and the squad was padded out with loan signings – among them Roque Junior, who struggled badly. After a 6- 1 loss at newly promoted Portsmouth – the club’s worst since 1959 – Leeds were bottom of the league and Reid was sacked. They turned to Gray, a two- time title winner in the Don Revie