Optimists anonymous - The Square Ball 23/3/22
PULLED BACK IN
Written by: David Guile
I’m conscious the tone of my posts has shifted considerably
since I began in August with a light-hearted piece about fantasy football. It’s
got steadily darker and grittier, like a succession of Batman reboots,
culminating in my last offering, a Bielsa tribute as cheerful as a night
trapped in a lift with Kasper Schmeichel. That’s the Leeds United effect, I
suppose.
This doesn’t sit comfortably with me, because at my core I’m
an optimist. Contrary to popular wisdom, I think all Leeds fans are optimists
on some level, even you. In fact, especially you. What rational reason was
there for sticking around through all those years of decline and humiliation
unless you believed, deep down, things were one day going to be better?
Things did get better, thanks to Marcelo Bielsa. And then,
in time-honoured fashion, they started going wrong again. Nothing opens up
divisions within a fanbase like six straight defeats and the sacking of a
popular manager. At times like this, Leeds Twitter polarises into two distinct
tribes — optimists, known to their enemies as ‘happy clappers’, and pessimists,
otherwise known as ‘doom-mongers’. Social media quickly becomes a battlefield
between two factions while Leeds United toil away in the background, making
both sides miserable, until an upturn in the team’s fortunes brings about an
uneasy peace.
While I’m essentially an optimist, my own approach is ‘live
and let live’. We all process disappointment differently, and while I’m not one
for venting my anger online after a bad result, it clearly helps some fans to
externalise their frustration. So long as it doesn’t veer into outright abuse
or tagging players into conversations, I don’t think there’s anything wrong
with having a moan, but reading pages and pages of tweets about Tyler Roberts,
cows’ arses and banjos grates after a while. So I tend to just take myself out
of the conversation entirely, logging out of Twitter and distracting myself
with other stuff, which is why my house becomes forensically clean whenever
Leeds go on a bad run. Post-Villa it looked like I was trying to cover up a
murder scene.
My response to six straight defeats was to cut myself off
entirely from the football discussions that break up the monotony of my week.
It didn’t take long to miss it and start feeling low. Occasionally I’d log in
to Twitter, survey the carnage for a second or two and log straight out again
before the temptation to get sucked into a silly dispute could take hold. Talking
helps me feel better nine times out of ten. Arguing never does.
It can be lonely being an optimistic Leeds fan at times like
this. Twitter isn’t a safe space for us. Every time we seek each other out
online someone inevitably dives in howling ‘DOOM DOOM DOOM’, causing the
conversation to descend into acrimony. Sometimes I start wondering whether it
might be easier to switch sides and abandon all hope, breaking down the giant
monolith of relegation misery into an easy instalment plan spread across the
remaining weeks of the season. But something always stops me. Most recently
that thing was Joe Gelhardt.
It was the timing as much as anything. The late, undeserved
Norwich equaliser opened the trapdoor, revealing the horrors lying beneath:
Reading’s soulless bowl of a stadium, rainy Tuesday night treks to Swansea, and
of course Chris Bloody Martin itching to score two of his three goals a season
against us. I was probably a minute or two from accepting all of this as a fair
price to pay for actually witnessing Leeds win more than five games a year.
Then, just as those last embers of hope were cooling, and my feelings of
nihilism were reaching their peak, Raphinha broke free and rounded Tim Krul,
taking the ball agonisingly wide, and Gelhardt was there to deliver a moment I
was almost too scared to hope for.
I don’t need to describe what happened next, because you’ll
have had your own experience of it. Suffice to say the end result was a visit
to hospital and a stern lecture from a junior doctor about the dangers of
punching a concrete floor. It was worth it.
As if that wasn’t enough, Leeds somehow won the next game as
well, from about as hopeless a position as I can remember. We were two goals
behind a miserly Wolves team, after losing four players to injury during the
match and Raphinha to a positive Covid test before it, with Sam Greenwood,
Charlie Cresswell and Kristoffer Klaesson doing their best to plug the gaping
holes left by the absences. We had no right to even hope for a result. Somehow
we got one. I still can’t quite fathom exactly how we did it.
Of course Luke Ayling was the one to finish it off. Who else
but the man who dragged us through the stickiest patch of the promotion season,
the man who hauled us to a 5-4 victory at Birmingham, the man whose positivity
and humour have brought joy to a club whose default settings were fear and
despondency. His importance to this club goes far, far beyond what he does on
the pitch. No player embodies the spirit of optimism quite like Luke Ayling.
Now I’m looking at the table with renewed hope, which, as
all Leeds fans know, is dangerous. Hope is worse than any drug, and it’s a
habit I’m never going to be able to kick, even if I wanted to. It’s
intoxicating, and I’m aware that one day it’s probably going to destroy me. But
I’m too far gone to ever change.
For now, after the crushing numbness of recent weeks, it’s
enough just to feel alive again, and to hope that this gruelling season may yet
have a happy end. Thank you, Leeds United. You just keep me hanging on.