Mighty Leeds Weblog

GOOD TIMES! Written by: Rob Conlon As a boyhood supporter who had a season ticket at Elland Road for nearly ten years and came through the club’s academy, returning to Leeds United as an Accrington Stanley player was one of the proudest moments of Will Hatfield’s career. Hatfield was a midfielder who played in Leeds’ academy with the likes of Tom Lees, Lewis Cook, and Kalvin Phillips. An appearance on the bench in Leeds’ FA Cup replay with Tottenham under Simon Grayson was the closest he got to a senior debut before he permanently left the club in 2012. Two years later, he finally got to fulfil his dream of playing at Elland Road when Accrington were drawn at Leeds in the second round of the League Cup. “When I found out it was Leeds I was buzzing, especially at Elland Road as well,” Hatfield says. “All my family were there. My dad’s a massive Leeds fan who took me to Elland Road until I started playing on Saturdays. I had a season ticket with my dad for just under ten years. Goi...

Gaetano Berardi has opened up on the difficulty of letting go of Leeds United after seven seasons at Elland Road. By Flora Snelson One of the club’s most loyal servants of recent times, Berardi made more than 150 appearances for the Whites and captured the hearts of the Elland Road faithful by playing with a ferocity otherwise confined to a bygone era. The club repaid Berardi’s service by handing him a one-year contract extension after the full-back tore his ACL during the penultimate game of the Whites’ Championship-winning campaign, even though the injury was set to sideline him for most of the following season. The decision to go was all his, but it wasn’t an easy one to make. “It was hard,” Berardi said, in an interview with The Square Ball.“It was hard for me, for my family because we spent a lot of time, a lot of years in Leeds, with the people, with the club. “I was thinking about it in the months before the end of last season, so I took it in a good way. I spoke als...

Gaetano Berardi salutes Marcelo Bielsa for answering his Leeds United questions and hails improvement of former Championship players Gaetano Berardi has opened up on Marcelo Bielsa's demands as Whites head coach and hailed the improvement of Leeds United's former Championship players. By Lee Sobot Berardi had already spent four years at Leeds when former Argentina boss Bielsa was appointed Whites head coach in June 2018. Leeds had spent the past 14 years outside of the Premier League - including three seasons in League One - and Bielsa inherited a side that had finished the 2017-18 Championship campaign in 13th place. Bielsa became the highest-paid manager in the club's history and three years later Leeds are approaching their second term back in the Premier League on the back of last season's superb ninth-placed finish upon the previous season's top-flight return. Tough-tackling defender Berardi has ended seven years at Leeds by departing the club this ...

Yorkshire Evening Post 8/3/15 Phil Hay The irony of Alex Mowatt’s season is that he spent the first month of it kicking his heels. Leeds United were lost in his absence back then and the club would be nowhere without him now; nowhere except the same hole as Wigan Athletic. This will not be remembered as Mowatt’s year – not in the single-handed way that last season belonged to Ross McCormack – but his goals are driving Leeds towards the end of it. Again on Saturday, the 20-year-old’s knack of knowing when to shoot and where the net is got the better of Wigan and their pitiful pitch. Either side of his 51st-minute goal the chewed-up surface at the DW Stadium got the game it deserved. Wigan are tying their own noose with turf so bad and they are on their way out of the Championship after defeat to Leeds coincided with a precious win for Rotherham United at Huddersfield Town. “The pitch is shocking,” said Neil Redfearn, United’s head coach, after his side’s 1-0 win. “It’s a poor sur...