In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe speaks about the recent matches for the Whites, whilst then looking ahead to the trip to face Brentford on Saturday.

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.



Beating Chelsea 3-0 a fortnight ago was a wonderful thing. This was primarily because it was Chelsea. But also because we absolutely deserved to win, and also because winning games in the Premier League is something you would be seriously advised to do, as often as possible. And also because nobody expected us to win. Football is a long way from being an exact science, but quite often games go the way you expect them to and you base that expectation on nothing more scientific than ‘bad vibes’ or ‘good vibes’. Which brings us to two games against Brighton and Everton; games which I had very solid expectations of.

When we talk about expectations of a game of football, it is very important to draw a distinction between the expectations of the players and management of Leeds United, and the expectations of ourselves as fans. If the players don’t expect to win every single game then they are probably in the wrong profession. After all, they have the powers to actually dictate how these games go and if they don’t have the belief that they might win a particular game – regardless of what us fans think about our prospects – then I don’t particularly want them playing for my club, and it would also suggest something fairly toxic exists in the dressing room too.

However, as fans we have stored up years of petty hang-ups, paranoias and distrusts, and that is absolutely our right. These all combine to strike fear into the fanbase as certain games approach and we survey our prospects with a knowing certainty. While in contrast we can also approach some games with solid confidence, and others with foolhardy optimism and a positivity that is without any semblance of foundation, and indeed can often be based merely on how much we have drunk pre-match rather than anything we have studied in a form table.  

Brighton away certainly follows the former thought process, except that our collective portent of doom was very much based on knowledge and fact and nothing to do with baseless neurosis. As it happens, Leeds actually performed much better than on most of our other recent visits to the Amex Stadium last Saturday. We really should have scored for the first time in seven visits and could argue that a point wouldn’t have been wholly unjustified. In the event, we lost 1-0 and the fact that most of us expected to does make it considerably easier to deal with, even if we should really have had loftier expectations following the epic mauling of Chelsea.

Moving on to Everton at home on Tuesday night and a game most Leeds fans expected us to win. We drew last season’s Elland Road fixture 2-2 and put up a pretty meek facade in capitulating to a 3-0 defeat at Goodison in the return fixture. So our optimism wasn’t based on any sort of precedent, merely the fact that Everton have struggled to hit any kind of form under Frank Lampard, and also the fact that we really wanted to beat Frank Lampard. So you can already see that we were on stony ground and loitering in the dangerous hinterland between ‘expecting’ to win and ‘wanting’ to win. This clouds the issue somewhat and, hence, the resulting 1-1 draw is met with a sort of bemused shrug as nobody knows quite what to think about it; it’s annoying, but not a disaster.        

Certainly this was a game which could have gone either way in the last few minutes, and while a draw was probably a fair result, there is an element of regret and frustration at the fact that, on paper, and when the fixture lists came out, this was a game we expected to win and perhaps needed to win. But then the final few minutes introduced another anxiety which our renewed Premier League status has beset upon us; the creeping fear as the clock ticks down that, if we’re not going to win it, “at least don’t lose it Leeds”.

I can’t remember thinking like that too often in the Championship, although there must have been times when I did. While we battled against the magnetic force field that kept us entrapped in the Championship for years, like Sky Bet slaves, we just needed to win games and draws were never enough. Single points were largely worthless if you wanted to get promoted and draws routinely felt like defeats. In the Premier League every single point is precious and hard-earned, like a nugget of purest gold – and almost literally in a financial sense – so although not winning against Everton was below expectations, and was quite frustrating on the balance of play, we can afford to be sanguine and relaxed about another point on the board.

Part of this relative buoyancy comes from the seven other points we have already accumulated of course – it took us ten games to go above seven points last season – and although a draw was below expectation, we can be more at ease to some extent because we have already won a game we didn’t expect to, against Chelsea. And that is the crux of how you survive in the Premier League. You pinpoint the games you should win, need to win and expect to win, and if you don’t win them, ultimately you need to break the mould and win when every ounce of football logic suggests you won’t; you need to win some games you don’t expect to win.

Alas, breaking the mould in the Premier League is arguably the hardest thing in football. In our first season we were able to beat Spurs and Manchester City and earned credible home draws against City again, Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool at various points. In contrast, last season we lost every game heavily against the ‘top six’ clubs and also lost plenty against teams in and around us. Our only wins were against teams below us, plus Crystal Palace (inserts Alan Partridge ‘shrug’ GIF) and we broke the mould only once in beating West Ham 3-2 away.

If you are looking for signs of progress then we can already say we have broken the mould this season in demolishing Chelsea, and while draws against the likes of Everton will grate for a while, we can take comfort from the knowledge that we are capable of picking up surprise results, when that hasn’t recently been the case.

Now we face Brentford away and the devil on my shoulder is whispering in my ear that “no way can we repeat last season’s final day heroics” and “Brentford beat Man Utd 4-0 the other week”. But then why can’t we go to Brentford and win, when we’ve just beaten Chelsea? In some respects we broke the mould back in May in recording our first win at Brentford since 1950, so there is little foundation to my anxiety, just ‘bad vibes’, and in truth, this is one game where I don’t know what I expect. All I know is, Jesse Marsch has built something which has the capacity to surprise and the ability to beat the best. So I should really learn to take that expectation into every game.