Ben White ⭑ From A-Z since '92
A minimum 7/10 player who is outrageously capable at the top levels, finds most of football apart from the playing to be a waste of time and has no problem pissing people off to go his own way. Ben White should still be playing for Leeds.
This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.
Football moves on quickly but I'm still surprised by the haste with which Ben White has, quietly, been dropped from the folk memories of 2020. He is harmed, in part, by Brighton's refusal to sell him north after his season on loan, and by continuing to play in our sight while other, higher heroes — Hernandez, Alioski, Dallas, Klich — give us no trouble. As a Premier League defender with Arsenal now and, for a while, an England international, his rising profile has made his character available for examination in ways it never was at Leeds, and his tans and tattoos have been antithetical to many old school supporters who celebrated the old school commitment of Marcelo Bielsa's team. But that, in the end, is part of my interest in him, as a player who in different circumstances could have been taken to our hearts forever.
If that's a bold idea now, it was wild when White arrived. We'd encountered him twice while he was on loan at Newport, when Thomas Christiansen's team beat them 5-1 in the League Cup then lost to them, more famously, 2-1 in the FA Cup: Berardi's goal, Saiz's phlegm, all that. These were among the games Bielsa watched before taking over and no doubt he remembered White when, at the end of his first season, he decided to go ahead in his second without Pontus Jansson. Now, here was a club legend, Pontus, everything Leeds United was about; or, here had been a club legend. He was never a comfortable fit with Bielsa's Leeds United, on the pitch, off the pitch, or when ordered to let Aston Villa equalise. Ben White, however, a year further in his development after playing on loan at Peterborough in League One, was Bielsa's ideal. Reliable, available, polite, a nice quiet young man. And an absolutely brilliant footballer.
Ben White was so good at centre-back alongside Liam Cooper it was absurd. In the history of Leeds United's central defenders he looked a peer to Rio Ferdinand, who had been the same age, 22, when Peter Ridsdale paid a record £18m for him; or Chris Fairclough, another top flight player brought to Leeds in the second tier. In the first half of 2019/20 I had a habit of checking the opposing team's meagre number of touches in Leeds United's penalty area, and Ben White was a big factor in keeping those numbers so remarkably low. His anticipation was extraordinary: there was no need for last ditch tackles or thumping headers, because White was putting a stop to attacks long before they were problems. At times his positioning could look bizarre, until the other team counter-attacked right into him and proved him right all along. It wasn't only his opponents he was thinking ahead of; playing with Cooper, Dallas or Berardi, he solved their mistakes before they made them, and he had an unerring talent for turning defence into attack with clever, precise, technical and graceful passing.
Leeds United's Championship winning season, game by game, as written at Leedsista.com.
This 300 page Royal format softback book compiles every match report and essay about the title-winning 2024/25 season so you can relive the anxiety, and the glory, game by game.
This is a pre-order, and I really appreciate anyone buying now so I can get the initial print numbers just right. The book will be published, printed and delivered in June 2025. Thanks!
The wish of keeping White for Premier League football was obvious. But Brighton had sequentially loaned him through the tiers for their own Premier League team, sending him for a season in the fourth, the third and the second, and their data-obsessed owner Tony Bloom's algorithms set an asking price too rich for United's transfer budget. For a while it looked like Leeds had the better of the deal, getting a two-for-one by buying Robin Koch and Diego Llorente instead. Oh well. Eventually White went to Arsenal for £50m. That fee still seems a bargain for the player we saw at Elland Road.
Whether it's a bargain for the player Ben White is now, in 2025, is another question, but that's Arsenal for you. Mikel Arteta has turned him into a right-back, and White has turned himself from being Kalvin Phillips' quiet best mate into a lookalike of the new archetype modern footballer, superficially, anyway. The truth of him is something more complicated, odder, and closer to something Leeds fans might actually like.