In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe previews Saturday's clash with Liverpool.

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.



I was sat musing over the lack of a decent collective noun for two title winners coming together to face each other. A ‘pair’ of Champions doesn’t quite cut it. A herald of Champions? A triumph of Champions? A riot of Champions? Nevertheless, my mind wandered to April 28^th 1969, and the evening when Leeds United were crowned League Champions after a goalless draw at Anfield, and Don Revie ordered his jubilant team to approach Liverpool’s Kop post-match and soak in whatever came their way.

As it happens, reverence came their way as the Kop sang ‘Champions’ to the team who would eventually finish six points ahead of them in second place, and observers took note of the most magnanimous show of respect they had ever seen. Such mutual admiration was borne from the friendship between Revie and Liverpool manager Bill Shankly, and you suspect there is a similar professional esteem shared between Jürgen Klopp and Marcelo Bielsa, albeit the cordiality is doubtless more distant and impersonal than it was in the late 1960s.

And the rivalry is very different now too, mainly because the status of the clubs is also. A more recent comparison to Saturday’s opening game of the Premier League season came on New Years’ Day 1991, when newly-promoted Leeds faced the reigning Champions at Anfield on a run of 11 unbeaten games. Howard Wilkinson’s men were tearing up the division on their return to the top flight, and while they were clearly a club on the rise, they were abruptly cut down to size via a comprehensive 3-0 home win.

It was a sobering defeat, and Liverpool’s epic 5-4 victory at Elland Road later that season felt like it was going the same way when Liverpool led 4-0 at half-time. The Whites’ second half comeback fell short, but it sowed the seed for a changing of the guard at the top order of English football, even if Leeds’s ascendency to greatness was lamentably brief.

Only a very brave and overly-confident Leeds fan would predict a similar reversal of fortunes over 2020/21, and certainly Leeds are going to Anfield with as big an ‘underdogs’ status as they perhaps ever have in a league fixture. The time for celebrations and revelling in July’s promotion triumph is over, and unfortunately, Liverpool will probably have the same mind-set on Saturday. Their first league title in 30 years has been similarly hijacked by COVID-19, and largely celebrated distantly, but now it’s back down to business.

There will be no mutual guard of honour on Saturday. Perhaps James Milner will present Bielsa post-match with one of the cherished Leeds United mugs from the collection he surely still has in his kitchen cupboards, but it will be understated and away from the cameras, because for both clubs this is not just a colossal fixture but the start of a new era with much at stake.

A number of inter-twining narratives will combine at 5.30pm on Saturday, and a number of worlds will collide in what is by far the most intriguing fixture of the opening day. Can Liverpool continue their rampant elevation up the football ladder now they have achieved literally everything? Can Leeds make a trademark non-conformist imprint and cope with the transition from being outside the Premier League to being outsiders in it? Who will prevail in the tactical sparring between Klopp and Bielsa? Does the disorientating factor of COVID and behind-closed-doors games give Leeds a leg-up? And for football romantics, simply pairing Liverpool and Leeds United together is enough to specifically ensure they have control of the remote on Saturday teatime.

If the formbook means anything in this brave new world Leeds United are entering, then there are some tentative shoots of optimism to be grasped. While Leeds steamrollered to promotion on the back of 12 wins from 14 games, including the recent Community Shield defeat on penalties to Arsenal, Liverpool have only won six over the same span of competitive games. Indeed they have lost four of those and you have to go back to February to find the last evidence of the imperious form which landed them the title by an eventual 18 points. February seems very distant and very different, this was a pre-COVID nirvana when even Hull City still retained Premier League ambitions.

I’m clutching desperately at straws of course, because form means very little in the first game of the season, and any momentum Leeds can claim is merely a leveller rather than offering us any psychological advantage.

We can claim some relatively ‘recent’ success at Anfield though. We never managed to win at Old Trafford in the league during our last top flight sojourn, but we did win at Liverpool three times. In 1994/95 Brian Deane’s rapid finish at the Kop end after Gary Speed’s shot had hit the post was the only goal of the game. In November 1998 Alan Smith’s famous debut strike and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s blistering double signalled a 3-1 win for David O’Leary’s blossoming side, and in April 2001 goals from Rio Ferdinand and Lee Bowyer delivered a 2-1 victory and the last time Leeds truly held superiority in this long-established rivalry.

For Leeds in 2020/21, they approach the new season in great spirits but amidst much uncertainty. A combination of the transfer market, the frenziedly truncated transition from one season to another and the recent bout of international fixtures has meant that Bielsa’s preparations for the new season are far from perfect. He will by my reckoning enjoy just two days of training with his full squad prior to Saturday, but then we only have to point to that resounding 3-1 victory against Stoke in August 2018 to reassure ourselves that Bielsa can silence any doubts over his experience, and will be fully prepared for Liverpool at Anfield.

So now we just have to sit back and enjoy it, if ‘enjoy’ is the right word. An opening fixture away at Liverpool is something of a free hit, and in many respects, the real season starts the week after. But why can’t Leeds spring a surprise?

It is hard to know what our goals are now that promotion has been achieved, but first and foremost I guess we need to prove that we are where we deserve to be. We’ll do that by making a noise, upsetting a few people and winning games.

This is the start of something, and win, lose or draw, nothing will be decided at Anfield. We are about to embark on a new chapter, and just imagine what new stories and new heroes we will find along the way? We don’t yet know the new Bowyer, or Hasselbaink, or Viduka or Yeboah. So legends in the making….. your time has come.