League One Leeds

Rocco Dean

Description

League One Leeds is the story of Leeds United's three seasons spent in the third tier of English football. An illustrious club who had never fallen so low, their journey through League One would become the most chaotic period in Leeds's history and the drama started before a ball was kicked. An unprecedented 15-point deduction that plunged the Whites from promotion favourites to relegation fodder set the tone, as the club's fortunes undulated wildly over the course of three bizarre seasons. Record-breaking winning runs, long barren spells, FA Cup defeats at Histon and Hereford, victory at Old Trafford - this is a football story that twists and turns all the way through to a hair-raising finale. The book is written through the eyes of the author and features exclusive insight from Simon Grayson, Jermaine Beckford, Jonny Howson, Bradley Johnson, David Prutton, Casper Ankergren and Luciano Becchio, whose first-hand experiences are interwoven with his own. The result: a riveting account of a fascinating period in Leeds United's history.

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 08 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801504027
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Rocco Dean, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801503990
eBook ISBN 9781801504027
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CONTENTS
Foreword
Prologue: Hero to Zero
Part One: 2007/08: Us Against The World
Part Two: 2008/09: Second Season Syndrome
Part Three: 2009/10: To Hell And Back
Epilogue: The Class of 2010
Roll Call
Afterword
With Thanks
Photos
FOREWORD
by Simon Grayson
League One Leeds is a detailed and passionate account of three seasons watching Leeds United in the third tier of English football. It was the lowest period in the club s history, but the author promotes the idea that football is about emotions, stories and experiences, and any Leeds fan who watched the club through this period will know that these three seasons provided all the thrills and spills that makes football what it is, even if it was at a level nobody associated with the club would want or expect to compete in.
After supporting and playing for Leeds United (only a few games, but I was there from the age of 14 through to 22) I was given the opportunity to manage this great club. It was something that I never thought I would achieve but something I dreamt about, and that dream came true just before Christmas 2008. After a whirlwind few days I was leading my Leeds United team out in front of nearly 35,000 at Elland Road, and against Leicester City, who I had joined from Leeds as a player. This was the start of an incredible part of my life where this book goes into great detail.
League One Leeds is an informative and entertaining read for all Leeds supporters. It is well researched and the author s passion and knowledge shines through, bringing the feelings back to life all these years later. Yes, we hope the club never returns to League One, but the story of our time in the division will always remain a significant part of Leeds United s history.
PROLOGUE
Hero to Zero
Once upon a time I truly believed my presence at matches helped Leeds United win. When I started supporting Leeds they had seemingly blown their chance to become the last champions of the old First Division, but my three appearances between February and the end of the 1991/92 season yielded ten goals and nine valuable points for Howard Wilkinson s team as they stormed to an unlikely title. I d done my bit; the players did the rest.
In the following season I had my first season ticket, on the front row of the West Stand directly behind the Leeds dugout, bang on the halfway line; the best seats in the house , as my dad would say on repeat. By December I still had a near-perfect record at Elland Road: eight wins, 30 goals scored, and three draws courtesy of late Leeds equalisers, making them even more exhilarating than the victories. A 4-1 defeat to Brian Clough s Nottingham Forest - on Old Big Ead s last visit to Elland Road - was a shock to the system, but it was my only taste of defeat all season despite the reigning champions finishing 17th in the inaugural Premier League.
Gradually, my invincibility started to slip. There were two home defeats the following season and three the next; even so, with only six defeats from my first 66 trips to Elland Road I still felt like a good luck charm - only perennial champions Manchester United had a better home record than bang-average Leeds. By the time season 2007/08 rolled around I felt like a curse. Whenever it really mattered, Leeds lost. Whenever they reached the threshold of glory, Leeds fell apart. The 21st century, in particular, had been an unmitigated disaster. Defeat in the Champions League semi-final, financial ruin, relegation from the Premier League, defeat in the playoff final, more financial ruin and another relegation, all in the space of six years.
The timing of the demise couldn t have been worse either. The Premier League was the place to be when Leeds were relegated from it, with sky-rocketing TV revenue making it the richest and most popular league in the world. It was fast becoming the strongest too, with Chelsea shooting to power thanks to the vast wealth of their new Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, who had just bought the debt-ridden club for 80m from Ken Bates. Abramovich wasn t the first foreign owner of a Premier League football club, but he was one of the first, and certainly the first who had enough money to blow the competition out of the water. The Russian oligarch laid the first stone of a very ugly road. Football clubs were clubs before the Premier League began; by the turn of the century they had become businesses, and through the 2000s they would become rich men s playthings, with Manchester City about to raise the bar again by introducing geopolitics into the mix with their Abu Dhabi takeover. Meanwhile, one of England s biggest clubs had shot their bolt a couple of years early and, crippled by debts of 100m with no oligarch waiting in the wings to save them, Leeds United fell into the abyss.
A part of me was excited when Leeds lost their Premier League status in 2004. Life in the newly branded Coca-Cola Championship would offer the chance to visit some new grounds and renew some old rivalries, and I fully expected Leeds to blow the opposition away. What goes down must come up, right? Not quite. Relegation wasn t all it was cracked up to be, and the Championship collectively laughed as they waved us on our merry way, down to League One.
Leeds United would now embark upon a journey which would take them to places they had never imagined and last longer than they ever feared. League One was a whole new ball game, but League One Leeds followed everything we had come to expect from a soap opera of a football club: heartbreak, humiliation and a host of off-field dramas just to make sure football was never the only thing Leeds fans had to worry about.
PART ONE: 2007/08 US AGAINST THE WORLD
INTRODUCTION
By Jermaine Beckford
Summer 2007 was a bizarre time in my career. Leeds United had just been relegated from the Championship to League One, but I was getting promoted from League One to the Championship while on loan at Scunthorpe United. Dennis Wise was the gaffer at Leeds, with Gus Poyet his number two, and earlier in the season they sat me down in their office and told me they wanted to build the following season s team around me and my strengths, but in the meantime would be sending me out on loan to get more experience, and to get me away from all the carnage that was about to ensue. There were a lot of players the club needed to get off the books so they could start the re-building process at Elland Road, and they knew it wasn t going to be pretty. The atmosphere would turn quite toxic but they were thinking of the bigger picture.
Amid the excitement of working our way to automatic promotion at Scunthorpe, I was watching Leeds every single week hoping everything would be fine. It was the complete contrast and ended in relegation and administration. Although the situation was far from ideal, relegation and financial instability was never going to stop me going back to Leeds, I was going back there no matter what. If Leeds United had ended up playing non-league football I d have still gone back, because it s a ridiculous, amazing football club.
Returning to training at Thorp Arch, I was completely confident that we had more than enough to deal with the coming season. Scunthorpe had great ethos, great ethics, and a team full of confidence, but, no disrespect to them, they didn t have the same quality individuals that we had at Leeds, so I knew for a fact we would have a successful season. As players, we knew what we were capable of and set our own targets. We planned to win a certain amount of games that would leave us on X amount of points, which would either get us promotion or into the play-offs, not a problem. What we didn t foresee was the 15-point deduction, but that just galvanised the squad that little bit more. It gave us the siege mentality, that us against the world mindset.
Union Berlin 2 Leeds United 0
Pre-season friendly
Alte Forsterei (7,602)
The players really wanted to play for Leeds United. It wasn t about the money because the money wasn t great, they just wanted to play for Leeds. - Casper Ankergren
Leeds United entered the third tier of English football with Ken Bates as owner, Dennis Wise as manager and Shaun Harvey as CEO. If that s not rock bottom just shoot me now! I never thought I d live to see my beloved club relegated from the Championship, but the pain of relegation was overshadowed by a much darker reality, the uncertainty surrounding the club s very existence. With unserviceable debts totalling 35m, Bates had put United into administration and the whole summer was dominated by legal wrangling.
The potential saving grace of Leeds s on-field humiliation was the opportunity to start afresh, with no debt and an owner who had the club s best interests at heart. There were five consortiums competing to take control - one of which was led by Duncan Revie, the son of the great Don Revie, who had put Leeds United on t