Where does Leeds United’s excitement come from now they’re out of the FA Cup? - The Athletic 1/3/23
By Phil Hay
A random conversation with a Leeds United supporter a few
weeks ago turned to 1987, the last time the FA Cup was really aware of the
club’s presence.
Leeds had everything in front of them that year, a season
when it almost came together under Billy Bremner. They were Division Two
play-off finalists and semi-finalists in the FA Cup, a club on a roll. The
1980s were hard, though, and it showed in some of the attendances: 12,000
turning up for Reading at home not long after the season got going.
Round five of the FA Cup brought Queens Park Rangers to
Elland Road, a Saturday tie in February. As groups of fans filled up pubs in
town, word went round that the ground was filling up fast. “We all thought ‘Is
it heck’,” said this supporter. “We weren’t selling out any games that season.
Then we got to Elland Road and it was mobbed.”
It was worth the money and worth the rush to avoid being
locked out. The interest was such that the Yorkshire Evening Post captured
photographs of people with no tickets sitting on the roof of a nearby building.
QPR caved in and Brendon Ormsby did for them with a header which was half
towering, half thundering and almost tore the net. He was on the fence, Elland
Road was electric, Leeds were in the quarter-finals and a cup run took hold
without anyone truly seeing it coming.
Perhaps it was like that for Javi Gracia and Watford in
2019, low-key beginnings creating something bigger. For Gracia, reaching the FA
Cup final began with a win at Woking and him trading a bottle of Sangria for a
bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale with Woking’s manager, Alan Dowson. Round by
round, his team bested Newcastle United, QPR, Crystal Palace and Wolves, a
gradual burn that left them 11 minutes from defeat in the last four. Gracia
made personnel changes galore as he went. Watford’s odds fell quietly. “I have
only one experience (of the FA Cup),” he said on Monday, “but it was amazing
and I would like to live it again.”
Football seasons are strange beasts. League schedules and
the weight placed on them obscure almost everything these days, yet, with rare
exceptions for most clubs, many of them blend into one. Some are underwhelming,
many are broadly forgettable and, as Leeds are witnessing again, some make
crowds question their life choices. Nothing seems to matter more than bread and
butter and there is no avoiding that attitude at Elland Road presently — but
trophies are permanent and trophies last. Even going close to them generates
durable memories of where you were, how it felt, the bruises suffered when a
header like Ormsby’s sparked pandemonium.
Leeds, in short, have had too little of that. They are a
club who, for well over a decade, pursued the Premier League only to get there
and have no concept of what they were supposed to pursue next. They are not
indeterminately rich and they are not likely to be any time soon, wedging them
below a top-flight ceiling. But the FA Cup is where the playing field levels,
at least for a while. You get Cardiff, you get Accrington Stanley and then,
last night, you have Fulham away for a place in the quarter-finals. It is not a
doddle but it is not asking the earth either. It might have been that finishing
11th with Watford in 2019 mattered more to Gracia but the FA Cup, as he said,
is where everyone can live a little.
The circumstances for him at Leeds, evidently, are not as
they had been for him at Vicarage Road. Watford were into Gracia’s rhythm by
the time the FA Cup engaged them. He has barely had time to work out the floor
plan to Leeds’ training ground yet and he was not brought in as head coach last
week to specifically clear a path to Wembley but the club have given the
impression this season that from their point of view, Wembley would be nice.
It was still in view at Craven Cottage, only for the balloon
to deflate in a 2-0 defeat. Fulham came up with Hollywood finishes from Joao
Palhinha and Manor Solomon and very little else, Palhinha’s a superb hit after
he read Tyler Adams’ pass and hustled Marc Roca. Leeds were compact and
dangerous until they needed to plunge the knife in, at which point they could
not finish their dinner.
Georginio Rutter’s early tap-in fell foul of a very soft
push from Weston McKennie in Harry Wilson’s back. Wilson’s double tuck made
sure of that decision. A beautiful hanging header from Rutter took longer to
drop than a Stone Roses album and came back off a post. By the time McKennie’s
shot was blocked by Patrick Bamford in the closing minutes, the rebound flying
wide off the American’s shin from a distance of a few yards, it was evident
Leeds’ luck was out and, evidently, it was not their night.
Common sense will say this is not their fight either, that
somewhere along the survival trail they could be grateful the FA Cup is not diverting
them. Modern football decrees that the league is king but there is something a
little sad about that, and something uniquely tingling about a cup run coming
over the horizon. That was the story of ’87: steady progress, winnable ties
materialising in each round, low expectations leading to a semi-final against
Coventry City which, even now, men like Ormsby feel they should have won. The
supporter who remembered it thought history was repeating. He had Leeds to lift
the FA Cup at 40/1. Nice thought.