Always worth a read. Not sure whether it's been posted here previously. Increadingly difficult to navigate the digest with the HTML that some people mail with :(.
James. ++ Blackwell works a little miracle at Leeds Tom Humphries (Irish Times) Locker Room: My name is Tom. I am a Leeds United fan. Don't judge me. Not until you've walked a mile in my trekkies. Most of you out there lead quiet, blameless lives wherein you preserve what little dignity is available to you in the modern world by cloaking yourself in respectability. You define yourself by your associations and identifications. You're a member of this, you drive that, you vote this way, you listen to that. I follow Leeds United. There are no fig leaves to spare the embarrassment. I walk among you with my leper's bell and forewarn you with my plangent cry. "Unclean. Unclean. Unclean". If I had a shred of character or decency, I would have recanted years ago, but it's not about character or decency; it's about the fact you can't walk away, you must suffer on. You watch a cup final when you are seven years old and pick a team as yours. You can lapse and convert in all things but that. (The other team in that cup final was Chelsea. I lived in London at the time. My friend Graham Stock's cousin was an apprentice at Chelsea. Why? Why? Why?) Anyway. You hope, despite the depressing stream of evidence which life at Elland Road throws up, that there is a God and that when he sees just how low a Leeds fan has to go in this life he will take into account time already served and open a fast-track to the floor of paradise with the views and the vestal virgins. I mean, you stick with Leeds through the industrial-strength ugliness of the football the club played in their gritty prime. In terms of the damage wrought by the flailing boots of Hunter and Cooper you become an official denier. When Leeds virtually introduce rioting to the Continent in Paris in 1975, you blame the referee for disallowing Lorimer's perfect goal. You stand by them after Revie's calamitous departure and Cloughie's little sojourn, and you're still there when, after a period of many managers and much yo-yoing up and down the leagues, Howard Wilkinson, the thinking man's crusty northerner, wins the championship with probably the worst team ever to do so. And doesn't crack a smile. And just at that moment you know it's all about to get worse. There'll be some backsliding into football mediocrity, and then the most ham-fisted, hare-brained spend, spend, spend scheme ever witnessed outside of the confines of my bank account. People of Asian persuasion are going to get beaten up outside cruddy nightclubs. Newspapers will compile amusing little tables detailing this month's arrests at Leeds United. Leeds will get to a Champions League semi-final and then crack open like Etna. The club will become a symbol of ugliness and silliness. Spoiled, overpaid players prancing about Yorkshire counting the thrillions they are being paid by a boardroom which has trouble with operating an abacus. A couple of years ago Leeds said goodbye to the Premiership with a game at Stamford Bridge. Leeds were shedding low-grade managers more quickly than they might were they running a weekly reality programme called I'm a C-Grade Celebrity Manager, Get Me Out of Here. When they lost at Chelsea, a gritty little unknown called Kevin Blackwell was in charge of the team on the way down. Claudio Ranieri was still looking after Chelsea, and with Leeds' fate having long since become too gruesome and tacky to comment on in polite newspapers, most of the reports the next day centred on whether Ranieri was the man to bring Chelsea to the places they wanted to go. Blackwell was caretaking a club in free-fall, and virtually nobody believed that anything would stop that fall apart from the concrete floor a couple of divisions down. Nobody much cared if Kevin Blackwell was the man to take Leeds to that concrete. Still, Blackwell was put through immense humiliation before he was actually made manager at Leeds and strapped on to the ticking bomb which was a once great football club. With the touch of class which has become the Elland Road hallmark, a press conference was called at which the jaded Fourth Estate was told Kevin Blackwell would be introduced as the new manager at Leeds. Had the press conference been postponed due to lack of interest it would have been understandable. Instead, the press conference was deferred as Leeds announced they would continue looking in the hope of finding somebody better. Blackwell was told to stand at the altar while his great, big, dowryless, pox-rotted slapper of a bride stood outside and took another good slow look through the personal ads. Given there were war criminals who felt managing Leeds would hurt their reputations, it was quite a slap in the face for Blackwell to be told by Leeds they were hoping for better. Eventually, when there wasn't a soul left on Planet Football who would accept the reverse charge calls from the Elland Road directors, Blackwell was grudgingly handed the job that no one wanted. That summer the big names were getting out of Elland Road quicker than the last Americans got out of Hanoi. Mr Viduka, your taxi to Middlesbrough is at the gate. Cab to Old Trafford for Mr Smith! The list of decent Leeds players bought or created in that crazy era and then sold when reality pounded on the door is incredible. Robinson, Milner, Lennon, Harte, McPhail, Mills, Matteo, Barmby, Kewell, Dacourt and on and on. Some of them were rubbish, some of them were geniuses, none of them recognised the faces coming in through the busy revolving door as they were leaving. There have been more than 100 transfer and loan deals done at Leeds since Blackwell got his feet under the desk. The club debt has come down by £100 million. Blackwell has operated with astonishing skill on and off the field. There shouldn't really be enough money at Leeds to keep the first team in jerseys and knicks. Blackwell has kept them in the Championship. Last season, when it became clear he had somehow prevented Leeds from sliding down another rung on the ladder, people starting ringing Elland Road to inquire about his job. There were persistent rumours that Leeds' classy new chairman, Ken Bates, was going to give the job to his brother in classiness, Mr Dennis Wise. Blackwell was moved to comment. "There weren't too many people in the queue when I took over and we were the worst club in football, with the worst debt. It was a poisoned chalice, and people said I was mad. Now we've turned it around and the chairman has admitted some people have approached him for my job. People should have some f***ing respect." They should, they should, but football is uglier and nastier than some of the tabloids which cover it. This season Blackwell has quite astonishingly got Leeds United to the promotion play-offs using just a patchwork quilt of a team made up of has-beens and never-will-bes, kids from the academy and players in on loan. There was a time a few weeks back when, if results had gone right, Leeds might have overhauled Sheffield United for the second automatic promotion spot. The Championship is a long season, though, and Leeds faltered a bit. Not enough to jeopardise the play-off place, but enough to let Sheffield United off the hook. In March, Leeds United, to the relief of all right-thinking fans, extended Blackwell's contract to 2009. This week he admitted he had thought about walking away because of the torrent of hate mail he and his family have received from Leeds fans since the team's form went a little off. Can you imagine how that feels? You cure somebody from terminal cancer and they turn around and bitch to you because you left a scar and the recuperation period means they'll miss some good telly. There's a part of me hopes that Leeds go up from the play-offs, and at the triumphant post-match press conference in Cardiff Kevin Blackwell just walks away with his middle finger in the air. Of course, there's another part of me that's still seven years old. _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist
