Waiting for the ball to cross the line was agony, waiting for Christiansen to turn results around was agony, trudging to a half-empty football ground season after season has been agony. Ecstasy was always there somewhere, though.
Neglecting our past for so long means there is a lot of catching up to do, and that conversations about the merits of one player or another quickly veer into disbelief that Bobby Collins or Jack Charlton or numerous others aren't publicly acknowledged somewhere at Elland Road already.
All the complaints — the coach should be sacked, the Director of Football should be thrown down a well, all the new players should be returned with our statutory rights unaffected, Radrizzani should shove his PR stunts until he's bought proper players — faded away.
'Lee Chapman Niort' has been a regular search term over the years.
Midweek on the playing fields, The Championship thwacks you on the knees, it knees you in the groin, it elbows in the face, leaves bruises bigger than dinner plates.
Everything is coming together nicely for Lasogga to be derided as the German Billy Paynter before he and his mum even have the chance to be chased out of the Millennium Square Christkindlmarkt for lewd behaviour.
Instead of foundations, Christiansen has made platforms from high-diving boards way up in the sky, and even if we topple off them now, we’ll do some lovely acrobatics on the way down. The feeling is, though, that Leeds United can go much higher still before anybody needs to think about falling.
The net had evaporated. Fires were burning behind the goalmouth. The ref gave the goal; he hadn't seen the ball once it left Berardi's boot but there was no other explanation. As hail began to fall, television technicians tried to rewind the tape. There was nothing there: all the tapes were blank.
"It's like going to see Gerry & The Pacemakers, or Marty Wilde at The Grand. How can you ever bear to see these people you used to adore in your youth? And it's the same with photography. This stuff is just shite. But that's the risk you're taking here. You don't want to be associated with me."
Andrew is the rare interviewee who will ask to go off the record so that he can say some people are "the nicest people in the entire world, they give me faith."