By the time he got into the Championship with Leeds United, Bradley Johnson had learned how to win an argument — and win over the doubters. Ken Bates was making a mistake by trying to turn the fans against someone who would just turn them right back again.
Sometimes Billy Sharp looks like he has solved goalscoring, with the power to make himself inevitable in the right places at the right times. Although being in a Sheffield United shirt usually helped too.
It took 243 days from signing for Billy Paynter to get his first goal. "Hopefully my luck has turned," he said. 403 days later...
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.
From when Parker first took the ball knowing there would be a gap to run into, to the spot-on cross to meet the timing of Becchio's run, the goal was orchestrated by the left-back whose body, at the time, was ticking like a time bomb.
"There are players miles better than me who’ve never won anything," Barry Douglas once said. But that he won so much was down to resilience forged in his youth and an open mind to his career and his life.
With his experience and reputation, Bannan was in some ways the perfect player to step in if the midfield needed refreshing during the season's final weeks. But maybe the new Xavi was not what was needed.
Peacock-Farrell carried himself through his chaotic baptism with such calm self-assurance that he was convincing others as well as himself the Leeds United no.1 shirt was his for years to come.
Not everyone can get a 2,500 word entry in this project — not everyone is Armando Sá.
He only played twelve times for Leeds, and while we were getting relegated we had no time to learn Armando Sá's story. It's worth knowing.