2025/26 reviewed: In the thick of things
Nobody could get through Leeds United's midfield last season, but we can go through them now, one by one in descending order of minutes, to remember how they get on.
New books!
I've got two new books available:
Season 2025/26 collects all my writing from last season into one large format softback book, with photos by the brilliant Lee Brown. This is available for pre-order, and buying it now helps me order the right amount from the printers, so please don't delay!
Europe, 2000/01 brings the articles I wrote this year on the 25th anniversary of every Champions League match together in a pocket paperback format, 164 pages of (mostly) great memories. This is available now!
If you order both, you'll automatically get a £2 discount at the checkout.
Leedsista is entirely written by me, a human person, and entirely funded by people like you, Leeds fans, who think decent non-AI, non-clickbait writing about their football team is worth £3 a month to read or £5 a month to listen to the podcast version.
If you enjoy reading what I write, I hope you'll consider becoming a paying member to help keep it getting written.
Find out what you can get with a 30 day free trial:
Ethan Ampadu
Maybe a sunny afternoon gargling Malibu through a traffic cone is the missing ingredient that makes a Premier League central midfielder. Before Ampadu's rabble-rousing parade, and before this season, I was quietly bothered that he might not be as good as we all wanted him to be. I wondered if, come this summer, he'd be one of the players most in need of a disheartening upgrade.
A few things were bothering me. One was how a lot of his football for Leeds had been happening in central defence, and he'd done very well there. 24 of his 54 games in 2023/24 were at centre-back, and thirteen of 32 in 2024/25. He suited his partnership with Joe Rodon in ways that were first of all cute, but worrying for a midfield anchor. We can throw together a crude win percentage for Ampadu's league games over those two seasons: he won 76 per cent of games at centre-back, but just 53 per cent in midfield.
He also missed seventeen of our title-winning matches with two knee injuries, and that stat led to my other concern: the way that, after taking the captaincy at the start of 2024/25, he interpreted the role as charging as hard as he could into anything that moved. In the opening matches I winced and winced and winced and was almost relieved when his eventual knee injury wasn't much worse. It was the sort of stuff that gets you plenty of baths in the Premier League.
What a season he's had, then, at Premier League level, soothing all my concerns and getting opposing midfields worried instead. Ampadu played almost every game, and played them as a defensive midfielder, wielding canny authority I didn't know he had. Only Pascal Struijk was on the ball more often, and they worked together to dictate United's tempo; only the goalies played more long passes to get Leeds going. That intertwined with his ability to disrupt any opponent's tempo with unerring interceptive magnetism and a total commitment to chasing and tackling.
To keep reading, please become a More to Read or More Listening member
Leedsista is supported by Leeds fans who think decent writing about their football team is worth £3 a month to read, or £5 a month for a podcast version.
Try free for 30 days.