Mighty Leeds Weblog

Leeds United will discover their opening-day opponents next week as part of Thursday’s new Premier League season fixture’s release. By Lee Sobot Based on the betting markets, the Whites are expected to finish 15th in their third season back in the top flight. Twenty one years ago, David O’Leary’s side were predicted to end the 2001-02 campaign in fourth having filled the same position the previous season – in addition to reaching the Champion League semi-finals. After watching Leeds beat opening-day opponents Southampton in August 2001, Terry Venables felt United might finish even higher than fourth – yet O’Leary’s side dropped to fifth as the first signs of the slide appeared. Venables, who would end up being a Leeds manager the following year, cast his view as part ITV’s coverage of the opening day of the season. United’s first test came against a Saints side who had finished the previous term in 10th place under boss Stuart Gray, Glenn Hoddle having left for the Tottenha...

NIGEL, GIVE US A GOAL Written by: Rob Conlon Leeds United is a club of what ifs. What if the West Stand didn’t burn down and we didn’t need to sell John Charles? What if Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer decided to have a night in? What if we didn’t always get shit refs? We’ll never know the answer to those, but we do have an answer to the question, what if we kept Nigel Martyn instead of giving him to Everton in 2003/04? Maybe the better question is, what if Terry Venables wasn’t such a monumental tit? When Martyn was returning from the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, Venables was still filming ‘Wish You Were Here?’ while he was meant to be taking over from David O’Leary as Leeds manager. Martyn was still worn out from the previous season’s exertions when he asked Venables if he could stay in Leeds, training at Thorp Arch, rather than joining the squad on a pre-season tour of Asia, where he had just been with England twelve days earlier. Venables took umbrage, even if he...

Marcelo Bielsa will prove a hard act to follow when the time comes for the Argentine to leave Leeds United. By Flora Snelson Bielsa has set a very high standard for Whites bosses to come, both on and off the pitch, delivering Leeds’ long-awaited promotion to the Premier League and earning the respect of the city and the global fanbase. But Elland Road has not always been blessed with such talent and dignity. We’ve worked out the club’s best and worst managers over the last 30 years, ranking them in order of win percentage. Included are every manager who’s taken charge of the Whites on a matchday since 1991, caretakers and all. 1 - Marcelo Bielsa - 51.7% 77 wins in 149 games officially makes Marcelo Bielsa the best Leeds United manager of the past thirty years. To the majority of Whites fans, Bielsa was something of a non-entity when he arrived at the club in the summer of 2018. He soon found his way into the hearts of the Elland Road faithful for his humble ways and enterta...

A manager with no money, a chairman with no buyer – the agonies go on for a club with the potential to be one of the biggest Steve Tongue Ten years ago this weekend, there were the first signs that life at Leeds United was beginning to fall apart. Having started 2002 as Premier League leaders, then missed out on the Champions' League football that a £60 million debt necessitated, the side managed by Terry Venables suffered a 4-2 home defeat on 17 November by the bottom club, Bolton, in front of a crowd that for once that season had dropped below 40,000. But the most pessimistic of fans could still not have imagined that the subsequent collapse would involve administration, 25 points deducted, three seasons in League One and nine managers in almost as many years – let alone Ken Bates. Ten years on, after a decade of trauma, the team sit in the bottom eight of the Championship hoping to beg or borrow a player or two, and with the last home attendance of 19,104 having witnessed a 6...

James Lawton Chief Sports Writer Ken Bates last night spelled out his improbable dream for Leeds United. "It's quite simple really," the 73-year-old maverick of English football said, "I'm going to do for Leeds United what I did for Chelsea. "You know what that was," Bates said. "I bought them for £1 and left them with the best ground in the country and £150m worth of players. Obviously, it's not going to happen overnight but I know what I can do - and I know what I've done before. I'll sell Leeds off when I'm 94 and then sit back and enjoy the rest of my life." Bates said it was time for Leeds to turn their back on the recent past, when the former chairman Peter Ridsdale tried to buy his way into the élite of European football, then watched the financial foundations of the club break apart. Details revealed yesterday showed the extent of past misadventures, with still unresolved debts to players like Danny Mills (approaching £...

Reid and O'Leary offer to help out The Leeds players may have turned their noses up at the club in their hour of need - but former managers Peter Reid and David O'Leary are willing to help by deferring payments on their compensation payments. With the Leeds players announcing they will take a wage deferral only as a last resort, acting-chairman Trevor Birch has spent the last few days exploring all avenues in a bid to raise the cash needed to see the club through to the end of the season. Birch has made it clear no player is to leave before the transfer window closes next Saturday, which would undermine the battle for survival for the Barclaycard Premiership's bottom club. Leeds need between £3.5m and £5m in order to trade over the next four months, yet despite the constant speculation surrounding Alan Smith, Mark Viduka, Paul Robinson and James Milner, they all now seem set to remain at Elland Road. In order to generate the cash required, Birch is considering turning to th...