In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks ahead as the Whites prepare for the Premier League.

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.



“Get promoted and everything changes”; except everything stays the same. We’ve spent so long waiting for this sea change in status, and yet when it happens so much of what we have become accustomed to remains in place. That is partly due to circumstance, and partly due to how this version of Leeds United is hell bent on continuity, that precious commodity we have been searching for, in truth, a little longer than the 16 years we have been outside the Premier League.

Leeds United are running to stand still, and maybe that’s okay? It is natural to expect these legendary ‘vast riches’ to trigger lavish signings and the instant gentrification of Elland Road, but football in 2020 doesn’t work like that, and most significantly, neither does Marcelo Bielsa. Now more than ever, Leeds fans need patience and an ability to see the bigger picture. Having finally got over the first hurdle in the renaissance of this great football club, it would be remiss to get the next step wrong.

On the surface, it may appear to any Leeds fan keen to see a very lean first team squad bolstered, that not much is happening at Elland Road. But there will be some furious underwater paddling going on, not least to get the stadium itself ready to stage Premier League football. I wouldn’t expect carpeted concourses and padded seats with waiter service for when fans are eventually allowed back into stadiums to watch games, because Leeds have it all on to comply with the various Premier League rules which combine to stage a regulation football match like a multi-million pound Hollywood production.

Leeds need to update the floodlights for TV coverage, they need to build a new media suite in the West Stand and they need to build new dugouts. And that’s just the features that I know about off the top of my head. For some reason the Premier League requires the bountiful comfort of ‘car seat’ dugouts which are fit for a king, and I’d be okay with such OTT opulence if Bielsa even used the dugouts. I’ve often felt those seats might as well recline with a footrest and serve grapes and champagne from a flap in the armrest, such is their unnecessary flamboyance, and yet here we are; this is what we’ve chased all these years and this is unfortunately what comes with it.

A media suite is required to accommodate the vast national and international interest that the Premier League attracts. So the carcass of the West Stand and the existing LUTV studios will be gutted and re-shaped once again, as they have been many times, and it is quite possible that there will be no upright structure remaining from the original 1957-build. Which is perhaps just as well. Of course, the one possible benefit of losing in the Play-Offs last season is that all this work was quoted-for and prepared-for then, so we at least have a head start, and it’s to be hoped that Leeds have stored up enough goodwill for the quotes to be valid for 12 months…

The important thing to remember, is that there is nothing conventional about this period of time in football, or in life in general. Convention will certainly go out of the window in the Premier League, as we can kiss goodbye to regular 3pm kick-offs on a Saturday afternoon, and our mental state will be dictated largely by anonymous officials watching a sea of TV screens in Stockley Park. The ref picking the ball up from an official ‘Premier League podium’ as he exits the tunnel pre-match won’t soon be the most pompous thing you’ve ever seen, and will appear completely normal.

But then convention has long since exited stage left. We have just enjoyed 5pm kick-offs in July, for example, as if Leeds were taking part in their own World Cup and we became accustomed to rushing home from work to watch Stoke v Charlton with our tea on our laps, like it was Egypt v Costa Rica in a Group G dead rubber. And now we are faced with a truncated pre-season, which Leeds’ championship-winning exploits have maximised in terms of time, whilst other Premier League clubs complete their domestic and European campaigns and start, perhaps crucially, a week or so behind us.

Alas, all this work in and around the Elland Road stadium is necessary, but it doesn’t satiate the appetite of a Leeds fan now expecting the sun to appear from behind the clouds. There is vast work to undertake, but nothing that fans will see or experience. And that might even extend to the playing squad.

If we assume, for now, that Marcelo Bielsa will stay at the helm to take charge in the 2020/21 season, we at least know that he has acknowledged much work is needed to bolster the squad for the Premier League. We looked on nervously at our squad at the beginning of last season and put our faith in Bielsa, which was repaid several times over. Now it seems even Marcelo’s fondness for a seat-of-the-pants style of squad building has bowed to common sense and the demands of the top division.

Leeds have already secured the services of Helder Costa, Illan Meslier and Jack Harrison for next season, and perhaps our main transfer target will also be very familiar to Leeds fans already. That doesn’t suggest we will see wholesale change between now and September 12th, and truthfully, even if we signed five new players this week, who really expects Bielsa to field anything but a well-established one to eleven in that first game?

Quite apart from the fearsome fitness and tactical initiation any new signing will need to undertake in pre-season, Bielsa is working with a tight-knit and hugely successful squad, and one which will head into the new season on the very welcome impetus that six wins and winning the league by ten points provides.

Leeds might currently lack the numbers and the star quality that the Premier League demands, but they have something that many of those top division teams would kill for; momentum and a very recent taste of success. The short pre-season can work in our favour in that sense, whilst other Premier League teams recover from a poor season, are not in a good place mentally and need to re-build without the time or circumstances in which to do it.

For Leeds, and for every club, the transfer window is open until mid-October, and whilst transfer business is needed, and quickly, we shouldn’t be too afraid if nothing much has changed on the surface when Leeds United finally line-up for a Premier League fixture next month. This is just the beginning of the journey, and change will come, but for now Leeds United are running to stand still, and they have never been in better shape.