Leeds United fans, do you believe in miracles? — The Athletic 1/5/24

By Nancy Froston

Mateusz Klich knew the vibe.

“All Coventry, aren’t we?” he asked, while some 3,500 miles away from the Midlands club’s CBS Arena. The answer to anyone of a Leeds United persuasion, anywhere in the world, was a simple, emphatic yes.

This is what it has come down to.

In a Championship promotion race that will live long in the memory, only one of Leeds and Ipswich Town can guarantee themselves a spot in the 2024-25 Premier League alongside title winners Leicester City.

Ipswich knew what they needed coming into their final two games against Coventry City and Huddersfield Town — four points for glory. It is what sparked Klich, a Premier League promotion-winning midfielder with Leeds under Marcelo Bielsa in 2020, to root for Mark Robins’ home side while living halfway across the world in Washington, D.C. where he now plays in MLS for DC United.

The Polish midfielder knows what it is to exist on the knife-edge between glory and disaster.

Leeds and Ipswich both sit balanced on it now, waiting on a gust from the winds of fate to decide whether they fall one way or the other. It is agony and it is all-consuming.

The tweets started early and they summed it up well.

Daniel Winter (@Dan_LUFC_Winter) captured the sentiment by invoking the names of now former players who had represented both Coventry and Leeds: “For Strachan, McAllister, Keane and Huckerby… Coventry you know what to do.”

At every turn, there are sides to pick in this fight. Nearly everyone in football, unless you are Leeds or Norwich City, their arch-rivals, would be happy to see Ipswich go up. They have been the story of the season, the underdogs fighting and winning against the ex-Premier League parachute payment-bloated trio of Leicester, Leeds and Southampton in pursuit of successive promotions.

So, on the night they headed to Coventry to try to give themselves the best possible advantage for the final day of the regular season at the weekend by winning their game in hand, the dividing lines of support were clear.

Being chronically online, or avoiding the live TV coverage of a game your club aren’t even playing in, is hard on days like this.

They say a problem shared is a problem halved, but when that problem is relying on another team to get a result — in Leeds’ case, that even means praying for relegation-threatened West Yorkshire rivals Huddersfield to get something from the game at Portman Road on Saturday — it becomes a problem carried like a millstone around the neck. Communal suffering seems the only way to get by.

The pain starts early from a Leeds perspective — with just eight minutes on the clock, Ipswich are ahead through Kieffer Moore; a tidy cutback from the dangerous Wes Burns makes for an easy finish and so the crushing feeling of the inevitable hits home. Leeds Raccoon (@The Leeds Raccoon) serves up one of the few responses safe for print: “Thanks for nothing Coventry, couldn’t even last 10 mins.”

But every minute is an eternity in this race and Coventry have their moments. A couple of wasted shots by Ellis Simms — 15 goals in 16 games before last night — and an agonising double chance for Kasey Palmer and Haji Wright are just enough to reignite the flicker of hope inside.

Or, if you are Paul Webster (@warsawwhite), dark humour is the only way to respond to a team who put three goals past Manchester United nine days earlier in the FA Cup semi-finals and were a toenail from a winning fourth, missing such golden chances. “Thanks, Nancy. Off to drink bleach,” the troubling, if apt, response to my post reporting that Coventry have spurned another.

Robins’ side are not the one that came within a penalty shootout of winning the Championship play-off final last season, as shown by their league position of ninth, but they are still a handy outfit. When USMNT international Wright drills a shot under Vaclav Hladky to make it 1-1 just past the hour, maybe, just maybe, Coventry look capable of doing Leeds a favour.

“Hope is the killer,” says Yvonne Greenwood (@YvonneGreenwo20) and she is not wrong. Hope springs eternal until the spring runs dry.

After just four minutes of optimistic Leeds bliss, Ipswich do what they have done all season.

A baffling scramble of defensive errors and the ball falls to Cameron Burgess, who chops it across and finishes well amid a tangle of legs. Through 11 arduous added minutes, Ipswich hold on and are efficient in running down the clock. Nobody does it better than Leif Davis — a twist of the knife given the left-back was a Leeds player two years ago. It turns out he really is “very good, Davis” after two stellar seasons at Ipswich to which he has contributed five goals and 35 assists.

And as full time arrives, there is as close to social-media silence as is possible amid the real-world noise at the CBS Arena.

Leeds fans know what this means. It is time to turn to the footballing gods, to the good-energy crystals, to the voodoo men and lucky pants and every other superstition that has worked before.

It comes down to Huddersfield going to Ipswich on Saturday and being better than they have been all season. It comes down to Leeds finding something at Elland Road against Southampton and hoping for something remarkable in the face of the facts.

Do you believe in miracles?