Tag Archives: GFH Capital

Leeds Fans: Are We Better Off “In The Know”? Or In The Dark??

Posted on 02/07/2013 | Leave a comment

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We’ve all heard statements from our beloved Leeds United along the lines of “The Club will not comment on transfer deals until they are done.”  And yet, year after year, rumours abound, information (sometimes accurate) leaks out, and speculation rages.  It goes with the territory – Leeds United are massively well-supported and all those people want to know what’s going on.  And a lot of those people want to feel that they’re in a position to SAY what’s going on.  It’s called being ITK – In The Know.

As far as I can tell from my widespread reading of many internet boards and groups dedicated to Leeds United AFC – there ARE certain individuals who seem to have an inside track to knowledge not available to the mainstream.  These are the guys and gals with “good contacts down at Thorp Arch”, or maybe people with the ear and mobile number of Thom Kirwin, the Voice of Yorkshire Radio.  There’s usually at least one person on any given internet board who, when they speak, the rest of us listen.  But it’s also true to say that for every legitimate “source” with privileged knowledge, there’s probably at least ten people who just want to sound as if they know what they’re on about, but whose actual awareness of what’s going on amounts to zip.

The mood swing among the masses this last day or so sums up this dilemma.  Before the weekend, with the news that Steve Morison (in effect our transfer fee for Becchio) was being loaned out to Millwall, the hue and cry on the Leeds United virtual streets was that this meant we truly hadn’t a potty to pee in, that GFH-C were conning shysters and that the End of The World was pretty much nigh.  Then: sensation!  Bates completed his transition to the seat of no power upstairs, there was a new chairman, Harvey was relegated from CEO to be replaced by Smiler Haigh, Salem Patel emerged from the wilderness with a knowing wink for the LUFC twitterati, and – wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles – we had a million pound signing that other clubs actually wanted and who is a promising player under 30.  How much can things change in such a short space of time?

It makes me wonder whether it’s actually worth the bother of staying up to date and getting to know what’s happening behind the scenes.  Is being ITK worth it?  The club seems determined to go about its business on a hush-hush basis – give or take the Noel Hunt deal, which we all seem to have known about since Jimmy Armfield was manager – and maybe this silent but deadly approach is best?  Matt Smith came right out of left field, and the Luke Murphy deal was done and dusted before the speculation wheels had really begun to grind.  If these results are gained by the club keeping its cards close to its chest – then isn’t that really for the best?  For Leeds United itself, AND for the fans??

I think I might just relax, sit back and let it happen from here on in this summer.  It strikes me that, as a body of fans, we don’t really have the first clue as to what’s going off at Thorp Arch, or what the true state of the finances are – especially given David Haigh’s tweet about “working on some exciting news”.  Maybe we should just let them get on with it – it’s not as if we have any real influence anyway.  And I don’t mean we should stop caring – it’s just that I was in a pessimistic tizz as well when Morison departed.  Not because I thought he was vital to our future, but for what it seemed to say about the state of the club.  That seems to have been a false signal, so perhaps we should simply let it all wash over us, and see what happens.  The proof of the pudding, after all, will not be tasted until the 3rd of August when crisis club Brighton limp into LS11.

Let’s see how we’re looking then.  In Brian We Trust.

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LUFC: Day One Post-Bates and Optimism Surges Through Club

Posted on 01/07/2013 | Leave a comment
Luke Murphy - In For A Million?

Luke Murphy – In For A Million?

It’s been a whirlwind twenty-four hours for Leeds fans.  A body of support which had grown moribund on a relentless diet of pessimism and discouragement has suddenly had the equivalent of a million volts pumped through it.  The twin news stories of boardroom changes (the good sort) AND a possible seven-figure signing, the first since 2005, have acted like the proverbial bolt of electricity on Frankenstein’s monster, or a major injection of caffeine to revive a comatose model of apathy.  Good news?  At Leeds United??  You’re kidding me.  Hmmmm, where’s the catch?

There may yet be a catch, of course.  Things rarely turn about so positively, so fast or so completely down at LS11.  The last time we signed a player for over a million ponds, it was Richard Cresswell in 2005. We weren’t that long out of the Premier League, and the memory of being big fish in the transfer pond was vivid to us then.  Now though, it seems like another lifetime, with a succession of loans and freebies making up the bulk of the playing staff over the last eight years.  And yet the news today – Day One of the post-Bates era – is that Luke Murphy, a highly-coveted, richly-promising young midfielder from that cradle of emerging talent Crewe Alexandra, may be signing for Leeds United for a fee in excess of one million pounds.  So what next?  More signings in the same vein, as Brian McDermott builds a squad to his own liking?  Or will it be a case of “after the feast comes the reckoning”?

The cynics – and I’m normally of that brotherhood – will immediately raise the spectre of outgoings to “free up money” for this apparent incoming.  Sam Byram‘s name will be on many lips – surely a done deal for the sale of our boy wonder is what’s behind this sudden flash of transfer market confidence?  There’s been a whisper also of a bid around a million being accepted for Ross McCormack, the deal failing to materialise only because the player himself didn’t fancy the move.

Whatever the case, Bates being gone and the strong hint of a richly-talented passing midfielder coming in for actual money – that’s heady stuff for long-suffering Leeds fans.  We’ll have to see whether the summer carries on in this new and unfamiliar, upbeat direction – or whether we’re all about to be brought back down to earth again with an almighty bump, as normally happens.  Meanwhile, it’s good to see virtual smiles on virtual faces in the Leeds United web-world; long may it continue.  If the new regime at Elland Road wanted to start the Bates-less epoch at Leeds United by hitting the ground running, they’ve certainly managed it – just by the increased quality of the rumours.

If this trend continues, then the next couple of weeks might just be very interesting indeed.

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New Owner for Leeds United?

Posted on 18/06/2013 | 1 comment
Dr. Marwan Koukash

Dr. Marwan Koukash

The BBC are reporting that the wealthy owner of Super League side Salford Reds, Dr Marwan Koukash, is looking to take over a football club.  Dr Koukash refuses to be drawn on the identity of the club he’s looking at, but describes it as “a huge club previously” which “just needs that little bit of extra investment to take it to the next level.”  Dr Koukash goes on to say “By bringing in the personnel that were previously associated with the club at its heyday and bringing people in who are genuine club supporters it will excite the fans.  Once I get the football club I will definitely have my own TV channel which will cover my three sports; racing, rugby and football.”

There is plenty there to encourage speculation, and in the knowledge that the current owners of Leeds United seem not averse to selling a controlling interest in the club, many Leeds fans will sit up and take notice when a wealthy Kuwaiti speaks of acquiring “a huge club previously”.  More intriguing still is the mention of personnel previously associated with the club “at its heyday”.  Leeds United supporters might ask “which heyday” as the nineties were an era of comparative success and prosperity, though not to be compared to the truly great era of the sixties and seventies when Don Revie created a global force in the hitherto humble location of Elland Road.  Some “previous personnel” might be welcomed back with open arms; others decidedly not.

It would appear that Marwan Koukash is looking at Championship level for his entry into the world of football; he admits that he almost bought a second tier club before he became involved in racing.  This begs the question of which other Championship club might fit the Koukash blueprint.  There are a number of sleeping giants in this league, as well as a few who are perhaps just big lads having a snooze.  Most neutral onlookers though would concede that Leeds United is by far the biggest name outside the Premier League, and it is this fact that makes Leeds at least as likely as any other club in the Championship to be scrutinised by a man who is willing and able to make the kind of investment which could elevate the club back to its accustomed spot in the top flight.

The time scale mentioned by Dr Koukash is “within the next month or so”.  If true, then some club is going to see big changes before Christmas, and whether this will prove a galvanising force to the new season, or more of a disruptive factor that could explode carefully-laid plans is a matter of some uncertainty.  Takeovers can be very, very good for a club, and they can be just the opposite.  Watch this space.

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Leeds United: Will “Fame” Attract Quality Signings Over Money?

Posted on 14/06/2013 | Leave a comment

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The most worrying sound bite I’ve heard out of Elland Road this summer – and I won’t name names here – is the following little gem: “If a player has the chance to play for Leeds United, but turns it down for the sake of a few extra bob elsewhere, then we’re not interested in that player anyway.”  Or words to that effect.  Now that really worries me – and whether it’s arrogance we’re seeing here, or just naivety – I think it should worry all of us who have the club’s best interests at heart.

In case I need to remind anyone – professional football is about money, first and foremost.  Really, let’s not kid ourselves otherwise.  There’s a clue right there in the name: Professional Football.  The players are professionals – so are the coaching staff.  Even the directors are these days, though you might beg leave to differ on that one.  But no-one’s in it for the pure and simple love of the game; they’re all there to earn a crust or, in the current lollied-up climate, more likely a whole bakery full of bread.  This is not small boys and jumpers for goalposts.  This is the hard-nosed, mercenary world of professional sport.

So when a senior representative of Leeds United Football Club says – in all seriousness one presumes – that if a player declines the honour of wearing the famous white shirt with the fat blue stripe for more money elsewhere, then he can basically sling his hook; how should we feel?  Honoured, maybe, to support a club with such a clear appreciation of its own innate desirability?  Pride, at the sound of our club stating its values in the face of a money-grabbing world?  Or despair at the sheer, fatuous stupidity and hollow arrogance of imagining that any player worth his salt is going to put “prestige” ahead of the bottom line?  Make no mistake – this is arrogance.  It’s an unattractive characteristic we can ill-afford in our current, humble circumstances, and it’s one of those unwelcome features that gives our club, and indeed us fans, a bad name.

Prestige is all well and good.  It’s fine and dandy to be a world famous football club, albeit fallen on hard times, yet with a history containing a certain amount of glory (together with a whole lot of bad luck and “we wuz robbed” stories).  All of that is very nice, and we’re all suitably proud – let’s face it, it’s better than being Barnsley.  But prestige butters no parsnips, not on its own.  It doesn’t pay the rent, nor does it foot the bill for that penthouse apartment and flash car; the hallmarks of even Mr Joe Average Footballer in these Sky-funded times.  Sadly, in today’s Real World, you need lots of cold, hard cash for that sort of thing, and if Joe Average isn’t going to get it at Leeds, then he’s going to say “thanks, but no thanks” and head for somewhere more financially enlightened.  And where does that leave Leeds?  Still holding forth about what a great club we are, and what an honour it is to play for us?  Or might we perhaps, hurt and wounded by such rejection, sadder and wiser as to the ways of the world, give our head a shake and reflect that if you pay peanuts, you’ll attract only monkeys?  (This is all imagery and metaphor, Mr Brown, and no reflection upon any of the current playing staff, so chill.)

If Leeds start the new season having missed out on a succession of Joe Averages, and therefore with a team populated instead by too many Michael Mediocres, and all for the lack of that extra few bob, then the notoriously easy to disgruntle body of support will have good reason to be less than happy. What, they might ask, are we trying to achieve?  Can we not look to the negative example of the current government, who are achieving outstanding levels of apathy, feeble performance and general lassitude and failure to compete by the simple expedient of austerity as an alternative to investment?  Isn’t investment, indeed, what it’s all about?  The shimmering yet distant prospect of the Premier League with its promise of more millions than you could shake a stick at – surely that’s a prize worth investing in a chance to compete for?  Well, you’d think so.

Last season, around January transfer window time, there was talk of signing Birmingham City’sChris Burke, the kind of winger that might, just possibly, have solved our goal-scoring problems by increasing the quality of supply to our starving strikers.  For the want of £300,000, we now hear, that deal died a death.  And yet at that point in time, the play-offs were a realistic prospect, and that small shove in the right direction might have seen us over the line, and lo! The Promised Land might have beckoned.  Instead, we finished in a desperately disappointing lower mid-table position, reduced to the ranks of party-poopers for Watford on the season’s final day.  300 grand could have made such a difference, and reaped such rewards, but no-one was willing to be so visionary and to dare speculate with a view to accumulating a promotion.  How depressingly short-sighted is that?

Wind forward twelve months from now and – judging by the pearls of wisdom falling from the various media outlets of Leeds United so far this summer – we might easily be looking back on another drab and disappointing season.  And all because we’ve persisted with this policy of trying to make ten bob do the work of a quid.  If the people in charge of Leeds genuinely believe that the kind of players we now need to get us up where we still think we belong – the equivalents of Strachan, Sterland, Jones, Hendrie and Fairclough – are actually going to sign on the dotted line because “it’s an honour to play for the club” – then they’re sadly mistaken and bigger fools than I thought.  Investment is needed, if not in transfer fees – I’ve nothing against free transfers as such, there are diamonds out there in these Bosman days – then certainly in wages to make us competitive with the others who will be vying for the riches of the top flight.  Surely, after too many seasons of hollow promises and under-funding, someone at Leeds must see this?

Fingers crossed.

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Byram: City in Pole Position?

Posted on 27/05/2013 | Leave a comment
Super Sam

Super Sam

It’s a slightly worrying time for Leeds fans – otherwise known as “summertime” – the months when the “For Sale” signs start appearing above the heads of our latest prized asset.  The boy wonder in question this time is Sam Byram, and the usual loud denials and pledges of allegiance are to be heard already. Brian McDermott is “almost certain” that Byram will be at Elland Road next season.  The player himself has hinted he’d like to stay.  An ominous silence is noticeable from the direction of the owners.

I’ve written elsewhere  that it might not be the end of the world if Byram did end up following the footsteps of Delph and other richly-promising youngsters, away from LS11 to fulfill their undeniable potential elsewhere.  Historical precedent appears to favour the likelihood of this happening: we don’t have to go much further back to the loss of Aaron Lennon for a paltry million – what might he have added to the game plan of successive United bosses in the years since?

Reece Wabara

Reece Wabara

Now we hear that Reece Wabara, an extremely promising Man City starlet capable of operating in a variety of roles, is tipped for a loan move to Leeds this summer.  Quite apart from that little frisson of pleasure that goes with any link to players from such an elevated environment, this rumour should be seen in the context of Byram’s future, both over the short-term and perhaps slightly further ahead.  Are City throwing us a crumb from their bountiful table in order to pave the way for them to pick our ripest and juiciest plum?  Or are we far-sighted enough to want to add a player of Wabara’s potential and quality, in order to free up the even more sumptuous skills of Byram to operate further forward, possibly as a wide midfielder?

Whatever happens this summer, and fairly or unfairly, the ability or otherwise of United to hang on to Byram will be seen as the acid test of the still-quite-new owners’ ability to run the club along ambitious lines.  The retention of star players has never been a strong point; even during our last period of relative success in the nineties, when we had a team to compete with the very best – we couldn’t hang on to an unhappy Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.  So if Leeds DO manage to keep young Sam on the payroll, then we could perhaps say that sends out the right kind of optimistic message to pave the way for a real challenge for promotion next season.

It may be of course that City are playing a long game of their own.  A club with their virtually unlimited resources can buy just about anyone they like, Financial Fair Play rules permitting, naturally.  But maybe the advent of those rules are persuading the Premier League high-rollers to look at more creative ways of ensuring a flow of incoming talent.  The loan of a top-class youngster, and maybe a few million chucked our way and a loan-back option to sweeten the unpalatable pill – and City could well have secured themselves an option on a player who is likely (really highly likely) to be a major performer at the highest level and quite soon at that.

If Wabara does end up at Elland Road for next season, I’ll applaud United’s ambition, as far as it goes.  And if Byram is either sold or mortgaged, I won’t be screaming abuse from the rooftops – as long as the deal is done with the best interests of the club at heart, and especially if – in his own heart of hearts – Sam wants to ply his trade further up the food chain.  It’s going to be an interesting summer, and maybe a pivotal one in the history of our great club.  Whatever juggling act goes on, let’s hope that we don’t drop too many clangers this time.

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Leeds United For Sale Again – But What Happens In The Short Term?

Posted on 20/03/2013 | Leave a comment
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Leeds United’s Elland Road Stadium

Leeds United are officially up for sale again, just three months after GFH Capital completed their “bargain purchase” of the Club from cuddly Uncle Ken Bates on 21 December last year. This news might be received with joy, despair or indifference, depending on your current attitude to the low-budget kitchen-sink drama that is LUFC these days.

The joyous ones are the optimists, dreaming that – at last – a rich billionaire (as opposed to the sort of impoverished billionaires normally linked to the Club) will come steaming in on his souped-up camel, and purchase for us long-suffering fans the baubles we have craved ever since winning the Last Proper League Championship.

The pessimists meanwhile are withdrawing their heads back under the carapace of their impenetrable gloom, pausing only to remind the rest of us that they knew all this takeover talk was bollocks right from the start last May, that no-one with any dosh would come within a mile of Leeds United, and that we’ll now probably be sold back to Ken Bates for ten bob after a second administration, so that he can fulfill his stated aim of reducing us to the Ryman League, Division Three.

Personally, I’m languishing among the indifferent tendency, somewhere between these first two groups. I’ve quite frankly had enough of Leeds United this last year or so, especially after the battering all our psyches took with the roller-coaster TOMA* saga of last summer, and being roundly laughed at and suffering from chronic urine-extraction by dopey fans of daft little cobble-stone clubs (you know who you are.) It’s just not good for morale, and mine is shot through, thanks very much.

The thing is though, the Club has somehow to carry on its business of playing games of football with some appearance of trying to win them, and maybe in the process attracting what they are nowadays pleased to call “customers” through the computerised turnstiles. And this undertaking is not helped at all, not in the least, by any measure of uncertainty among the fanbase. Last summer was awful, and now – with GFH Capital apparently anticipating completion of a sale withing a window of between six and twelve months – we have more of the same in the offing. So another transfer window will pass without the urgent surgery needed to transform the current squad into a lean, mean winning machine. Another six months to a year during which the creeping disease of apathy will spread further throughout the body of support, once so vibrant and fanatically motivated. The manager is off, the latest boy wonder Super Sam is being tipped for a move to a proper football club and the fans are in the dark – as usual – regarding any long-term vision for our once-great Club.

Surely (you’d have thought) there must be some plan, some concrete strategy, for getting back to the Premier League, which is the only environment where a club like Leeds United – with its history, tradition, remaining infrastructure and global fanbase – can hope to survive and prosper. This has to be the minimum aim, and nobody with any ambitions of running the club should be under any illusions – once the Promised Land is reached, the support will not be content, like any old Wigan or Norwich, with mere survival. The Leeds fans will want to swagger in like they own the place, have a brief look around, and then win it. That’s what we did last time, 21 years ago, and the fact that it’s a totally different world nowadays will not stop that urgent demand for success, that imperious need to take on the game’s elite, and make them eat crow.

This demand, this greed and yearning for past glories to be repeated, can serve either as an inspiration for ambitious and visionary owners, or as a millstone around the neck of people who might want to come in, seek to have the club tick over in the lower reaches of the Premier League, and depart with some sort of profit. Obviously it’s to be hoped we might attract the former type, but they’ve not emerged as yet despite months of speculation about the shape of things to come post-Bates. The time is fast approaching when decisions need to be made for the good of Leeds United, about its strategy for success in the 21st Century, its model for progress in the new high-finance structure at the top end of the game and the picture it can justifiably paint for the fans of the type of club they’re going to have to support going forward. GFH Capital told us that they were here for the long haul, but now they’re jumping ship faster than the scarediest rat, making some of us wonder just how quickly that ship is sinking. What leadership can we expect from them now, what confidence can we have in them when they’re already yesterday’s men? Meanwhile we all remain firmly, blindly in the dark, where we’ve spent the bulk of the last decade, wondering what’s to become of our beloved Leeds.

Now that’s far, far too long a period of unhappiness and uncertainty for a group of people who have – mostly – continued to shell out their hard-earned, buy the tacky merchandise and roar their support from over-priced seats during a period of sustained failure and mostly crap football. The fact is that the Club is bang to rights on accusations of gross complacency and mistreatment of its prime asset – the highly vocal, passionate and still predominantly dedicated support, both immediate and match-going, and more generally in all parts of the globe. Fans want to know what’s going on at their club; quite understandably they want to be involved, they want to feel part of what’s going on. The Club have callously disregarded all of this for ages now, recent cosmetic gestures towards “fan engagement” notwithstanding, and despite welcome moves towards a more realistic pricing structure. There just hasn’t been enough transparency, and now we’re going to enter another disturbing period of uncertainty, to emerge eventually – well who knows in what shape we’ll emerge? Treat any group of “customers” (if we really must so term fans) with such blatant disregard and such arrogant refusal to consult them and address their concerns, and eventually – even with fanatics and people who live their lives through their obsession – you’ll lose them. I’ve been a fanatic, for 38 years, at some cost to my financial and social well-being, and yet they’ve damn nearly lost me. I’m starting to prefer my football wrapped in a film of nostalgia – it’s less painful than the current reality. But whatever defiant noises I might make, and however much I might warn of erosive apathy – I still care. Too deeply for my own good. And there remain thousands like me.

But we can’t carry on like this. It’s got way beyond a joke, and the jibes from opposing fans – all too well aware of our history, and nursing the standard anti-Leeds chip on their shoulders – are far less worrying than the grumbles of discontent from the ranks of the still-faithful. Get your act together, Leeds United, and do it soon, or preferably do it NOW. We’re still with you. But for how much longer?

*TOMA – For the uninitiated, this is an acronym referring to the perceived unlikelihood of Leeds United benefiting from a buyout to its advantage. Take Over My Arse.

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Another Day in the Death of Leeds United

Posted on 12/02/2013 | Leave a comment

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It’s not safe to identify any one day, defeat or disappointment as the nadir of Leeds United’s fortunes just now. At the moment, takeover and “fresh start” notwithstanding, we appear to be plummeting downhill faster than a greased pig. The loss of top scorer Luciano Becchio – to bloody Norwich City AGAIN – was another notable low point; but Leeds United has long had this unfortunate habit of losing top players in January transfer windows. Worse still, the results since Christmas have been appalling, in the league anyway. Beaten at home by Cardiff, as usual – chucking away a 2-1 lead at Wolves in injury time, and a poor performance to lose away at Middlesboro to a side which had lost several on the spin. In this last game, the Leeds fans were exhorting Neil Warnock, an increasingly isolated figure, to make a change and pep the team up, and he actually applauded them sarcastically, an absolutely fatal thing to do for a manager who was never the most popular. Bad, bad times. And yet, you somehow have that uncomfortable, chill feeling – even as a committed Whites fanatic – that, however bad things may seem, there’s plenty of scope for them to get worse.

Indeed, it’s arguable that things HAVE been worse – much worse – in the fairly recent past, than they are today. The run-up to the 2007/08 season, the club’s first in the third tier of English football, was catastrophic. Administration had brought about the unprecedented penalty of a 15 point deduction, leaving the beleaguered giants 5 wins short of zero points as the season started. But that season turned into a triumph of sorts – promotion was narrowly missed, and the whole points-deduction saga seemed to galvanise the support. On the pitch, the team delivered, particularly in the early part of the season, and a seemingly irresistible momentum was built up. Leeds really were United at this lowest ebb in their history.

At present, in some superficial measures, things are better – but in the most fundamental ways, they appear significantly worse. Obviously, the club now enjoys a higher status within the game – the dark days of League One football are receding into the past, at least for the time being. There have been high spots too, famous Cup victories, including the recent defeat of Spurs, and the odd satisfying away performance. At Elland Road, once a fortress notorious for intimidating opponents, form has been patchy. And yet other Premier League teams have been put to the sword, and generally speaking the team will give anyone a game on their own patch – apart from Cardiff, apparently. The underlying problem now though is more insidious than the acute emergencies immediately post-administration. It is the creeping cancer of apathy that pervades the club now.

It’s not difficult to see the signs of this. Read any of the fans’ forums, and a pattern swiftly emerges. The supporters, by and large, are sick of the way the club has been run over the past few years. Sick of paying top dollar for a distinctly second-rate product. Sick of the club’s habitual prevarications over transfer policy, of seeing our best players form a procession out of the exit door, sick to death of seeing lesser clubs easily out-match us for wages and transfer fees, despite the fact that our turnover and potential remain at the top end.

Leeds United, a great name in English football, by any measure, appears to have been run on the cheap for a long time now. Investment is minimal, the ability to retain promising players practically non-existent. The supporters’ expectations, born of great days in the past, remain high – and why shouldn’t they be? But those expectations show no sign of being met, or even approached. Last summer’s long drawn-out agony of a takeover saga descended too often to the depths of farce, as rumour countered rumour, and we all rode an internet-driven roller-coaster of optimism and despair, over and over again. But once concluded, that saga has not spawned a legacy of more investment and better club/fan relations. We appear to be stuck with more of the same; the changes appear to have been purely cosmetic.

On Saturday 12th January, Leeds United played Barnsley away, a fixture that had produced humiliating three-goal thrashings in the previous two seasons. This time around, it was only a two goal thrashing, but the manner of defeat – the abject failure to muster any real threat up front, and the spectacle of midfield players gazing skywards as the ball whistled to and fro far above them – was too much for the long-suffering band of away fans in Leeds United colours. They complained, loudly. They advised the manager to be on his way. They questioned the fitness of the players to wear the famous shirt. The FA Cup win over Spurs offered some brief respite, but now an almost identical scenario has been played out at Boro’s Riverside Stadium, a ground where we’d previously had a good record. After the match, Warnock spoke learnedly, but with that annoying chuckle in his voice, of the “need to win games” and of how he was baffled at how chances were being missed. We’ve heard a lot of this, all season. The supporters feel they are being taken for mugs, and they have had enough.

All this has been true for a while – but for much of the past year, change has been in the air, and it has seemed reasonable to expect that things might be about to get better. Some of us dared to dream. But after the final whistle at Middlesbrough, it was all of a sudden quite clear that the options for change have been exhausted, and that the future remains as bleak as it has been at any time since top-flight status was relinquished nine long years ago.

Some of the fans – not all, but some – feel that there is now no way back for Leeds – not to anywhere approaching the pre-eminence they once enjoyed in the game. If that’s the case, then the question arises: what is a reasonable aim? To gain promotion to the Premier League, and strive to survive? To become a yo-yo club, with promotion and relegation in successive years, never becoming established in the top-flight? That might be enough for many clubs, but at Leeds the memories of glory are that bit too vivid for the fans to settle for any such precarious existence, scratching around in the hinterland of old rivals’ success.

It may well be that, on a cold night on Teesside, realisation dawned that the club Leeds United once were is now dead and gone. What is left behind may well still be worth supporting, but it is likely to be a pale shadow of what we once knew. Recently, during the transfer window, there were rumours of high profile signings – and you knew, you just KNEW, that we were being softened up for more bad news. Then Becchio was off, swapped for a striker in Morison that Norwich didn’t want, and we heard reports that recent loanees didn’t want to stay “because of the money situation up there”. It all stinks of a club rotten to the core, and dead at the top.

Leeds United – one of the truly great names in English football. RIP.

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