In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks reflects on last week at Cardiff and ahead to Fulham on Saturday.

Howe is the author of two books on the club, 2015 hit ‘The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road’ and ‘All White: Leeds United’s 100 Greatest Players’ in 2012.



It’s not as if we were all really enjoying lockdown until Leeds United lost to Cardiff City, right? There’s nothing like a global pandemic to put things in perspective, and the general mood of ‘okay, well we haven’t lost any ground, we’ll just start again next week’ after Sunday’s defeat in the Valleys is maybe born from the fact that we’ve all been through a tough time recently and developed a more steely resolve. I’d like to think so, and while we all might have a mild sense of panic buried deep down below, the last few months of navigating unparalleled challenges has enabled us to keep a clear view of the bigger picture.

After all, lockdown has been far more manageable for most of us with Leeds United sitting pretty on the back of a perfect record in the five games leading up to it. This idyllic snapshot in time was all we had to stare at for three and a half months. We’ll never be able to prove that the serenity of Leeds United’s form leading up to COVID’s brutal assault on everything we thought we knew, was what helped us get through it, but it certainly didn’t do any harm.

And the other thing is, we were due to play Cardiff City, and even as the rapture died down from seeing Luke Ayling unfurl his majestic mane before a giddy and blushing West Stand, we were having nervous thoughts about the trip to South Wales. Anxious flashbacks to games against Cardiff are frequent and raw, so much so that I wondered whether Sky Sports might produce a red button option for viewers to have Sam Hammam parading around the pitch ‘doing the Ayatollah’ after Cardiff went 1-0-up, and I half expected to see Neil Warnock barely able to contain his glee at full-time.

Our recent record against Neil Harris hardly inspires confidence either, so it was no surprise that we struggled out of the blocks last Sunday, despite controlling the game for most parts, winning every statistic going except the one that mattered and with both goals coming from uncharacteristic mistakes. There were positives in that we had unmistakably found our groove in the lead-up to conceding the first goal, and were unfortunate not to equalise. And the second half introduction of the lesser-spotted Ian Poveda – AKA ‘little Ian’ – showed promise and the kind of attacking guile that will definitely come in useful during the run-in.

A run-in that is now one game shorter, and with Leeds United still enjoying the same lockdown-friendly seven-point gap. With Brentford and West Brom due to play each other this weekend, the pressure on our hold on the automatic places will be lessened in one or both directions, regardless of how we get on in the crunch game against Fulham. But of course, Marcelo Bielsa and his men will only be thinking about Fulham.

If we consider that circumstances meant the Cardiff game was something of a free-hit, undoubtedly Saturday’s much-anticipated showdown with Scott Parker’s Fulham is where this mini-season really starts; or where the re-started season really re-starts, depending on how you want to look at it. Before lockdown, we obviously had to get the thorny issue of a trip to Cardiff out of the way before Fulham came into focus, but now it’s here its enormity is not unexpected.

The occasion will be as far removed from what was supposed to be a typical, crisp mid-week night under the Elland Road lights as it is possible to be. There will be no supercharged atmosphere, no plundering, cavernous glow illuminating the night sky as we approach in anticipation, no stage to perform on encircled by the prowling menace of 35,000 Leeds United fans.

But then Marcelo Bielsa has these players so well-drilled, fine-tuned and almost robotically programmed, that they know no other way to play. There’s no place like home, and even in these circumstances Leeds can dominate and wear down the opposition as if those 35,000 were in their faces screaming them on. There is no in between.

My hope is that Marcelo has seen fit to stage a state of the nation address this week, akin to whatever turned around our form between the Nottingham Forest and Brentford games in early February. It is that kind of situation we face now, where Leeds still hold the cards and need to remind themselves that they’ve been a top team in the division for two whole seasons - and more – and just need to carry on as before. Avoid defeat and Fulham have even less room for error, and their desperation increases.

The fixture needs no building-up, and the desire of other people to see us fail is all the energy the Leeds players should require. In replicating genuine crowd noise, I feel Sky Sports missed a trick in not piping in ‘Leeds are falling apart again’ during the Cardiff game, so ubiquitous is it in grounds around the country, even when Leeds aren’t playing. The unfailing predictability of a routine outing meant its absence on Sunday added to the abnormality of proceedings. I’m no fan of the piped-in crowd noise on TV, because there’s no point pretending things are normal. And to be honest, there’s quite a lot about ‘normal’ that I’d rather prefer to forget.

‘Normal’ has seen us outside the Premier League for 16 years, so if Leeds United are going to stride in like Superman and proudly declare “welcome to the ‘new’ normal”, then I’m all for it. But we’ve a long way to go with that yet. Maybe we had too long to think about Cardiff and it was bound to be an anti-climax? Now we’re in the thick of it; Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday-Tuesday. Just how we like it.

But hang on, the new routine is also Saturday-Thursday tea-time. Because nothing is normal anymore, and we need to embrace it, for Norman and Trevor in particular, and for the rest of us who are now moving on with a new tolerance and understanding; a slower pace of life with a new hierarchy of needs and priorities, and with new goals. We’re still normal people, but we’re ‘new’ normal people. Our love affair with Leeds United has been complex and convoluted, but it’s strong and durable. And whilst we might be about to face our ultimate challenge, we’re now heading into the unknown with a smile, with confidence and with a spirit that can’t be broken.