Comme ci comme ça: Leeds United's summer of non-communication
The advantage fans have is that everything in football, whether it's comms or money or community, must ultimately be expressed with high visibility on grass.
The advantage fans have is that everything in football, whether it's comms or money or community, must ultimately be expressed with high visibility on grass.
Things may not actually be that bad. But they're bad enough to have me thinking about Peter Ridsdale, Professor McKenzie, Ken Bates and the parallels. So that is bad enough.
Leeds United have a lot of things to put right at the top level. Not just so that the club can have a successful future, but so it can make peace with its past.
Football clubs can write whatever they want into players' contracts, but they still end up dealing with a big group of twenty-something manifest destinies with Instagram accounts.
Gary McAllister is gliding. The tacklers are in his wake.
"The head coaches have power, the owners of the clubs have power, the media have power and the fans have power. But they don't use it."
The old guard are supposed to hand down to the people who came after them, but next season is a stage for younger lads with longer stories.
Marcelo Bielsa says football is getting worse because of the pressure and the scrutiny and the blame and the accusations. Or to put it another way, Lee Dixon's commentary.
As an image of pure optimism I don't think this can be bettered. It's a weird image. It's a great image. God, Ian Rush was rubbish though.
To look at Archie Gray playing for Leeds was to see a golden era come back, to forget all the market forces crushing modern football and feel the glorious 1960s and 70s again. A smiley badge on the away kit next season won’t do that the way Archie Gray could do that.