In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks back at how the end of the current campaign is panning out, with four games remaining.

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.



Given our recent history, no one would excuse a Leeds United fan for hating every minute of this interminable torment right now. Amidst the resilient threat of the chasing pack in the promotion race, the relentless mantra is a simple one; just win. That’s all we have to do. But then there are many different ways to win. The majesty of Leeds United’s 5-0 dispatching of a bewildered Stoke City on Thursday evening is still only worth three points, but the devastating nature of it should go a long way to dispelling any lingering distress within the fanbase that this team have the qualities to see this through.

Nobody is lighting cigars or booking ‘recovery’ days off work thinking this is now a formality of course, but the psychological baggage that comes with any tilt at success on Planet Leeds United, feels lighter with every test that is passed in this deeply abnormal run-in.

Leeds did indeed ‘just win’ on Thursday, but they also picked a fine time to put in their most comprehensive display of the season, perhaps at the point where the pressure on them was at its peak. They ground Stoke down with relentless pressure until they broke, and they picked a fine time to then put into practice every movement drill, every overload and every passing pattern they have spent painfully monotonous hours perfecting at Thorp Arch. They picked a fine time for every single player to put in a ten out of ten performance.

Because that’s what it was. Rarely can a Leeds United team have played with such confidence and swagger in such a high stakes situation? This is demonstrated in the wealth of goalscoring options we have acquired since the re-start; 12 goals coming from nine different players, in just five games. Of the regular outfield protagonists, only Luke Ayling, Ben White and Tyler Roberts have failed to find the net, and that’s not because they don’t look likely to.

Naturally I’m going to stop short of saying this was a performance worthy of champions. I’m not even going to say it was the performance of a team deserving of promotion. A chasm of eternal emptiness may yet make an unwelcome entrance, and there will be plenty of time to reflect on this – and countless other performances from the last two years if we’re being honest – when we know it has led to something. But what we can say is it was a performance that a team going hell bent for promotion should be putting in. They should be confident, they should have swagger, they should be playing with a relegation-haunted team like a rag doll. We’re just not used to this being Leeds United.

But perhaps we should be? In the week that Leeds United’s Academy was awarded Category One status for the first time in its history, the news served as a timely reminder of the standards and culture change that Marcelo Bielsa has instilled in this football club. It’s not just about fitness, analysis and preparation, it’s about mental toughness; it’s about every person at every level of the football club knowing exactly what they need to do. It’s why we don’t drop points by playing badly, we drop points because we don’t execute the plan as well as we should. The players are so well drilled and conditioned in every element of the game that it is almost impossible to play badly.

To have that mentality running through the club from top to bottom is a rare and wonderful thing. Some people might call it a ‘winning mentality’, and in a profession so precariously balanced on results, that’s a great mentality to have. Leeds United have it, and God forbid, when Marcelo Bielsa is no longer our head coach, his teachings will still be enshrined in every de-brief room, in every physio room, on every grass pitch and in every distant corner of the Academy building. If you don’t quite understand the significance of the awarding of Category One status or even how precious this time with Marcelo Bielsa is, then just imagine Leeds United playing this way for years to come.

Now we can control our own destiny, because the standards have been set and the elite status of the Academy shows there is a mechanism to control it. We will only have ourselves to blame if the progression of this football club doesn’t now continue. This brush with greatness might be brief in the context of our 100 years of history, but it should be lasting.

And Thursday’s win over Stoke felt like the game we have been waiting for all our lives. Where a game and a situation and an opportunity and a moment in time, was taken by the scruff of the neck. This was for all the times we’ve been on the receiving end of those kind of beatings, when we’ve looked light years behind the opposition in every department, when we’ve been invited to someone else’s party; a club clearly going in the opposite direction to us, and it was painful just to watch on and be an ‘extra’.

In a game of such significance, it is rare that you can bathe in such numbers, where every matrix you care to analyse points to Leeds being so overwhelmingly on top. Where you don’t know which of the five goals was your favourite, and it changes every five minutes. These are exceptional times indeed, so just drink them in.

And that isn’t being brash, arrogant or over-confident. Because no Leeds United fan will dare to dally in ‘job done’ territory, when we know how football can rip your guts out and mercilessly stamp on them at any given moment. But it is a way we can enjoy the moment and use it as a coping strategy in these last four games.

Football history is littered with coaches who have been critically-lauded – and quite rightly so – for being successful by making the breakthrough in a tight game with a penalty just before half-time, and sitting on that lead for 45 minutes to earn a 1-0 win. I guess that is known as ‘just winning’. And it earns you three points all-the-same.    

To wrestle with your conscience and every morsel of common sense and play like Marcelo Bielsa does in the most anxiety-ridden and stressful of situations, takes courage and nerve and belief. And that’s something I’m taking into these last four games, and I suggest you do too. Leeds United just need to win, and how lucky we are that we are just winning the Marcelo Bielsa way.