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.