Hell is other clubs
The question for Leeds United is, how to exist in hell? To sign the players we want, win the games we want, sing the songs we want? It's what Marching on Together means — a turn inward to ourselves. We can't escape hell, but we can turn our backs on it.
In the story 'No Exit', three people trapped together realise that hell does not mean multitudes; it's not fiery pits and pitchfork pokes. Hell is being confined with two others, unable to escape their judgements, exposed forever to knowing what they see when they see you — and they always see you. In other, famous words: 'Hell is other people.'
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that story about a person and two others, but the diabolical structure of the Football League Championship has imprisoned Leeds, for what seems like eternity, with 23 other football clubs. Hell extends up and down the divisions, or circles, to 91 other clubs, or 90, or however many Shaun Harvey has left intact.
There's no better example of Leeds United's hell than Millwall's abominable crawl into the lower depths of the play-off places. The promise of our eventual ascent to the Premier League has always been an escape from Millwall, for one, but not if they sneak up behind us before the trapdoor is closed.
Millwall are typical of Sartre's idea, architects of Leeds United's hell. A couple of years ago I was asked to appear in a video about the rivalry between the two clubs, and did, so that I could point out that there isn't one. Leeds rarely played Millwall until the last ten years or so; the teams didn't compete for honours until the honour was promotion from League One. Our other foes then were Swindon, Charlton, Scunthorpe, Southend, with whom no hate-hate hype ever grew.
Leeds and Millwall is different because Millwall made it different. We see ourselves as a club so many ranks above Millwall that for most of our history they were irrelevant — we're Champions of Europe, or would be, if it were not for the imaginary claim of another club. But Millwall see us as a club in their orbit they can bring down and overtake, and they've been convincing enough about it that it's how people see Leeds United now: locked in a mutual rivalry with Millwall. That is the hell we find in other people — their judgements about us.