Leeds United 3-4 Millwall: Write Your Own Legend

"He'll be a legend here in a few years," Neil Warnock said of Steve Morison at Leeds United. "The fans will love him to bits."

There was always that chance. Football gives players a chance to define themselves, to write their own biographies, decide how they want to be remembered. Few would have predicted, when the name 'Luciano' appeared on Leeds United's teamsheet for a pre-season game in Ireland, that Becchio would force his way into Leeds United's all-time top ten league goalscorers, becoming as near to a legend as United's modern status will allow, earning the love of the fans, who loved him to bits. Earning being the important word, as is love.

Given the same chance at Elland Road, Steve Morison took a different route. "I was crap when I played here," Morison said after the game, and only he knows the reasons why that was the case, and only he knows why he now wears that crapness like a badge of honour.

Millwall put the ball in the net three times in the first half, although the first was ruled out because Morison was standing offside in front of Felix Wiedwald. Three times Morison split from his teammates to celebrate on his own in front of the Kop, screaming into the crowd, turning and pointing to his name on the back of his shirt, then touring the East and West Stands to give them the same. "I was getting plenty of stick and they never like it when it’s turned on its head, do they?" he said later, but this was a lie; Morison had barely registered in terms of crowd reaction before he began his antics.

This was what he came out to play for: to revel in being hated. Which would be fine; Leeds United are hated. But the hating of Leeds United has its roots in the club's brilliance in the sixties and seventies; we were among the greatest teams of the era, and that split opinions. Morison is hated because he has defined himself by being crap for Leeds. He uses his failure at Elland Road as something to go to war with, as if he'll show us — show us what, exactly? What is he trying to prove by revelling in his own failure?

If that's how he wants to be remembered, as a crap player that people hate, that's up to him. Morison is still crap now. He's scored two goals in 23 starts this season, and his team hadn't won a single away game before Saturday; the mighty Lions no better than timid kittens away from home. The two goal lead they took at Elland Road — and they could have led by five or six — wasn't a terrific Millwall performance to be celebrated. Leeds United were a shambles, Millwall took advantage, and Morison claimed the Ballon D'Or for dislike, the best he'll ever achieve. He had the chance of love when he joined Leeds, but took the easier route, defining himself by mutual hate.