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Jon Howe: Wanting change and never changing

Weekly column.

Willy Gnonto Web 3.jpg

In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks ahead to Sunday's big clash with Manchester United at Elland Road.

Howe is the author of two books on the club, ‘The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road’ - which has been updated as a new version for 2021 - and ‘All White: Leeds United’s 100 Greatest Players’ in 2012.



Writing about Leeds United is similar in many ways to supporting them; plenty of ups and downs and the mental challenge of a landscape constantly changing. At a time when players and managers are coming and going and you are trying to analyse why, articles have the shelf life of a flake of snow on a hot tin roof. And so it’s much easier to concentrate on the things that never change, and just like fans will never lose their obsessive dedication to their team, nor will a fixture between Leeds United and Manchester United lose its fascination, allure and magnitude.

A fixture like Leeds United v Manchester United pretty much takes care of itself. As the likes of Howard Wilkinson, David O’Leary and even Terry Venables- the last Leeds manager to savour a Premier League victory over our red rose rivals- can attest, managing this fixture is a bit like trying to fly a kite in a storm. You can make a futile attempt to control things, but the occasion takes over and all you can do is watch it violently rush around itself in a maelstrom of fury and commotion.

Which is why it feels a little bit like the pressure is off this week, even if the prospect of two back-to-back fixtures against Manchester United is a daunting one. Co-caretaker Michael Skubala confessed to having just a 20-minute session on team shape and structure in preparation for the Old Trafford fixture on Wednesday, and whatever he did certainly worked, but it does also add weight to the argument that these kind of games owe more to the raw and rudimentary instincts a footballer possesses, rather than the drilled-down detail of a coaching PowerPoint presentation.

Leeds United’s performance in the 2-2 draw, their first game since the departure of manager Jesse Marsch, showed a perceptible sense of freedom and conviction, with the kind of cohesion and understanding that has somehow been missing in recent weeks, as Leeds toiled to a litany of frustrating draws and bewildering defeats. It was perhaps a message to any incoming manager that the quality was there all along, it just needs pointing in the right direction.

Playing with a sense of the shackles being released also embraced the feeling that there was nothing to lose at Old Trafford. Whether you think parting with a manager is a good thing or not in any particular circumstance, it always leaves you feeling remote, vulnerable and somewhat rudderless, but it also immediately changes your expectations. You always felt there would be a reaction of some sort on Wednesday night, and regardless of Jesse Marsch leaving, it was more fundamentally a fact that nothing as tepid as the 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest would be acceptable, and evidently the players understood that. But then you remembered that Leeds had lost 6-2 and then 5-1 in their last two visits to ‘that’ side of Manchester, and hence it became a notion that anything less than a hammering would be acceptable. So what we ended up with was a statement of sorts.

There’s something uniquely unpredictable and intriguingly playful about a football team taking on a fixture without a proper manager, like allowing a dog off a lead and watching it frolic in circles and bound joyfully and uninhibited into the distance. This is no slight on the excellent stewardship of Skubala of course, and it’s obviously not something I would advocate we do for any longer than is absolutely necessary, but there is a recklessness, and an almost child-like abandon about a team taking the field and more or less thinking “I’m going to do what I want today”. That can go one of two ways, of course, but we’ve seen enough of the individuals in this team to know that acting on their own compulsions, they can produce wonderful things, and the spirit in which they built up a two-goal lead, and how they protected a point in the final minutes, perhaps told us more about their character than any other match has all season.

Which brings us to 2pm on Sunday at Elland Road, and in the calm before the storm we can assess a game against Manchester United in which Leeds can legitimately feel more confident of a result than at any point since our return to the Premier League. Which makes lots of sense, and then makes no sense at all. We have enjoyed some magical moments in the last two and a half seasons, including against some of the top six sides, but Arsenal remains an itch we have yet to scratch, and so too does Manchester United. But given the fast turnaround, the relatively unchanged personnel, and the huge serving of belief Leeds took from Wednesday night, there can be no better opportunity for this team to showcase Leeds United at its absolute best, and to whoever is watching.

While this is the fixture where Leeds fans undoubtedly bring their ‘A’ game, so too do the players have to. Some will have experience of the tumult and mayhem that Sunday will bring, but many of them won’t. What an introduction to Elland Road for Weston McKennie and Georginio Rutter, and what a way for Tyler Adams, Max Wöber and Willy Gnonto to cement a place in our hearts. It’s all there for them if they want it, and Wednesday night showed that they want it.

However long Michael Skubala and his team are at the helm, our performance in the 2-2 draw showed that they can make a tangible difference, and at the very least are a steady hand to lead us through choppy waters. What awaits Leeds United on the other side of the storm is as yet an unknown, but it’s unlikely that the waters and the immediate panorama will be any less hazardous.

Most Leeds fans had written-off the two fixtures against Manchester United, given the circumstances, but Leeds United are never more dangerous than when they are pinned against the ropes ducking and weaving, and desperate to clear their heads. In such situations the natural instinct is to lash out and fight back; primal impulses and visceral reflexes are born into the tenderest of souls and are easily enflamed, and they will all line up for Leeds United on Sunday afternoon.

Everything changes and then nothing changes. We’ll all be there because we always will be, and the ride of a lifetime is a high octane 90 minutes with enough energy to pin you to your seat and leave you breathless and helpless; and just as quickly consumed by exhaustion. It’s Leeds United v Manchester United and a story about surviving and persistence. On Wednesday night Leeds showed that they are very much still alive, on Sunday they can show that – throughout whatever change time will bring – they are capable of much more than that.

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