Patrick Bamford: Fans turned up at Leeds forward's home after penalty miss — BBC 8/2/24
Leeds striker Patrick Bamford has revealed fans turned up outside his home after he missed a penalty during a draw against Newcastle last season.
Bamford said he had previously received "a lot of
flak" from supporters as Leeds struggled in the Premier League.
That included online abuse targeting his family which led
him to delete his account on X, formerly Twitter.
It culminated in the fans' behaviour after the Newcastle
match, which left his partner Michaela feeling unsafe.
Bamford, 30, was speaking to Joe Wilkinson on the My Mate's
a Footballer podcast about the abuse players receive and says he deleted his X
account in March after online attacks "got so bad".
The striker, who has one England cap, scored two goals in 28
top-flight matches last season and says he took a lot of criticism for the
team's performances. Leeds were relegated on the final day of the season, two
weeks after their draw with the Magpies.
"The situation Leeds were in was a pretty diabolical
one - we were looking like we were going to go down, which we eventually
did," he said. "I always had Twitter, until about mid-March. The
abuse got so bad - threatening my family and even my little girl."
In the Newcastle match in May, Nick Pope saved Bamford's
28th-minute penalty which would have put Leeds 2-0 up in a match they ended up
drawing 2-2.
The forward, who told the podcast he had "ironically...
played well" during the game, said he received a call from his partner on
his way home from Elland Road telling him some people had turned up outside
their house.
"As I turn up the drive to get in I can't even cross
the gate, there's two cars [blocking it]," Bamford says. "I went to
put my window down. As I did, they put their windows up and just stared at me.
Then the gate opened because my dad had opened it and they drove off. I think
it was a culmination of the last few weeks. I took a lot of flak for it. The
way they expressed it was crazy.
"It goes from conversations with David [Bamford's
sports psychologist] about sorting out how I'm feeling to then I've got to deal
with [the fact] Michaela doesn't feel safe in her own home. I rang him
literally straight after that happened. He was like 'how do you feel?'
"I said 'I'm not upset about the abuse, I'm angry that
someone's come up to the house'. The club ended up putting security on the
house for the night."
