[Albion] Deluded Leeds (an EFL club) fans

[Not Andy Naylor]

Football is suffering. To properly follow anyone is to suffer, no? Even the biggest most successful clubs, can't and don't win all the time, let alone almost every club, where nothing is EVER won except perhaps promotion every now and again.

But even by those standards, we have suffered, I put it to you. Because having once been great, and then fallen to the depths is worse, psychologically then never having been, and never expecting to. To being resigned to at the best mediocrity, and at worst... This is a nice point, I know, and I am not seeking to diss the suffering of being an Albion fan. I get it, in a way a Man U fan never can, or could because they haven't lived it and never will.

How can I explain? You could argue that two waiters, living in penury in Paris in the twenties are objectively equally miserable. But wouldn't it feel worse if one of them was a rich Russian exiled and stripped of everything by the Revolution? (And I am not saying that Leeds are in any way Tsarist aristocrats, obviously, perish the thought, just using the example to try and give colour to my argument)...

Or all those aged ladies in nineteenth century novels, who have gone down in the world and have to scratch a living working as governesses in a parvenu family that despises them and is openly contemptuous? Perhaps someone more literate than I can point them out, their names escape me.

The fans at Tranmere and Southend are hardly nouveau riche parvenus, but they were certainly openly contemptuous. "We all hate Leeds" they would chant, "You're Not Famous any More!" That we had gone down in the world was sadly obvious. Nor were we filling the back pages, or on the TV, no-one outside the division thought of us at all. But didn't the fact that they felt this need to aggrandise themselves in this way prove that actually we WERE still famous compared to them? And call me entitled if you like, maybe this demonstrates I am, but although on the day we played them on equal terms, and indeed many times they beat us, I don't believe that in wider football terms we were or are their equal. And I don't think you, if you were fair minded would disagree.

Being in the lower divisions can be a very pleasurable experience at times, don't get me wrong. This season is one of the best I have experienced in more than fifty years of following the club.
At times our football has been sublime. And there is an honesty about it that they tell me (I wouldn't know of course, as many on this thread have told me) is not present in the Premier League. I am not looking forward to all the bo11ocks in the over hyped media, there are advantages to relative obscurity. But of course it feels better to beat Barcelona in a European Cup semi final than to lose to Bristol Rovers in the rain. And the latter "suffers" by comparison to the former. And to watch your club sell its players, and ground, and training academy, to go bankrupt, and then have useless manager after useless manager playing the most dreadful football year after is to suffer. The fact that many, most, other lower league clubs have that experience as a fact of life does't make it any less painful when you are going through it.

You make interesting points but I take issue with one of the key ones, and I speak as someone from a Leeds family on my mother's side. Not necessarily a Leeds United family as, like many others, they were more fans of the RL club. But she grew up in Gelderd Road and the first league game I attended was at Elland Road when my cousin took me to see Revie's team beat Spurs 3-1 in Allan Clarke's Leeds debut.

Leeds United were not the rich Russian exile in your comparison who is naturally from the upper classes but temporarily down on their luck. It would be just as relevant to describe the Revie-era side as the parvenu family.

Before Revie, what had Leeds ever done? They had regular visits to the second tier, with 5th in 1930 their best finish. No trophies until 1968. In fact, they were in the second division when Revie became manager. Eight more seasons in the second division during the 1980s was less a fall from grace than a return to Leeds United's natural situation, looked at over its 99 years rather than the decades since Revie took over.

Most football clubs have ups and downs. We have, you have. Get used to it. The bad times make the good times better, a fact that all but a few very lucky clubs' fans understand and relish.

 

[Killer Whale]

But this comparison bears no resemblance to the likely upcoming reality, so isn't really relevant IMO.

A more apt comparison would be - "playing great football in the Champ, winning every week" to "being dry humped every other week by ludicrously rich clubs". Which of those "feels better"?

Not having a dig by the way, you're a very eloquent & articulate poster and I hope you continue posting here through the season.

Well Arsenal aren't the richest, but they aren't poor, and although we lost one nil we played them off the park in the first half of a full Emirates stadium in the Cup this season.

I am not saying we won't get dry humped quite a few times, when we lose we often lose big because we are so attacking. But I think you will be surprised.

If Bielsa stays we won't get relegated, I would offer you that bet, here and now. For as much as you want to wager...

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

Football is suffering. To properly follow anyone is to suffer, no? Even the biggest most successful clubs, can't and don't win all the time, let alone almost every club, where nothing is EVER won except perhaps promotion every now and again.

But even by those standards, we have suffered, I put it to you. Because having once been great, and then fallen to the depths is worse, psychologically then never having been, and never expecting to. To being resigned to at the best mediocrity, and at worst... This is a nice point, I know, and I am not seeking to diss the suffering of being an Albion fan. I get it, in a way a Man U fan never can, or could because they haven't lived it and never will.

How can I explain? You could argue that two waiters, living in penury in Paris in the twenties are objectively equally miserable. But wouldn't it feel worse if one of them was a rich Russian exiled and stripped of everything by the Revolution? (And I am not saying that Leeds are in any way Tsarist aristocrats, obviously, perish the thought, just using the example to try and give colour to my argument)...

Or all those aged ladies in nineteenth century novels, who have gone down in the world and have to scratch a living working as governesses in a parvenu family that despises them and is openly contemptuous? Perhaps someone more literate than I can point them out, their names escape me.

The fans at Tranmere and Southend are hardly nouveau riche parvenus, but they were certainly openly contemptuous. "We all hate Leeds" they would chant, "You're Not Famous any More!" That we had gone down in the world was sadly obvious. Nor were we filling the back pages, or on the TV, no-one outside the division thought of us at all. But didn't the fact that they felt this need to aggrandise themselves in this way prove that actually we WERE still famous compared to them? And call me entitled if you like, maybe this demonstrates I am, but although on the day we played them on equal terms, and indeed many times they beat us, I don't believe that in wider football terms we were or are their equal. And I don't think you, if you were fair minded would disagree.

Being in the lower divisions can be a very pleasurable experience at times, don't get me wrong. This season is one of the best I have experienced in more than fifty years of following the club.
At times our football has been sublime. And there is an honesty about it that they tell me (I wouldn't know of course, as many on this thread have told me) is not present in the Premier League. I am not looking forward to all the bo11ocks in the over hyped media, there are advantages to relative obscurity. But of course it feels better to beat Barcelona in a European Cup semi final than to lose to Bristol Rovers in the rain. And the latter "suffers" by comparison to the former. And to watch your club sell its players, and ground, and training academy, to go bankrupt, and then have useless manager after useless manager playing the most dreadful football year after is to suffer. The fact that many, most, other lower league clubs have that experience as a fact of life does't make it any less painful when you are going through it.

Thanks for the considered reply but in the main is there has to be perspective to wants and needs of supporters. If a supporter of a regular lower league club is to realise a dream it is likely a good run in the cup perhaps a flirting with the top of their league and to see their club survive. Their passion is no less than that of a top side or a one fallen from a heady position. A scalp against one of the "fallen giants" is one celebrated with the same gusto as another honour won by a top side and indeed likely to be more heartfelt. It is the nature of the small club supporter to jest and ridicule those of larger clubs. To learn to fail makes the wins all the better, something the likes of the top 6 clubs miss the point.

We mock the fallen as to many it gives them the same taste of medicine that the majority are resigned to on a yearly basis. The media feed this frenzy to celebrate the achievements of some clubs without scant regard to the rest. One could argue Bournemouth, given their facilities, have surpassed all expectations year on year. Celebrated by few (their fans) but widely praised by the media as "Plucky Bournemouth". Yes they have done well but to remember their flouting of the rules, their budget is to realise that they in their own existence is no different to the excesses spent at Man City and the expectation of success. Indeed Newcastle fans and Leeds are hoping for cash injections not from fans of football but from dirty money, many of the fans hoping to enjoy instant successes. What hollow successes they'll be.

Here at Brighton, we enjoy and embrace the fact a wealthy (thanks Tony) fan is the owner and will always act in the interests of the club. This is more important to the average Brighton fan than instant success on the field of play. To lose to us, is to lose our club, the abyss, so nearly happened everyone who has joined the club since is expected to understand our history, our owner insists on no less. Therefore to invite an entity into your lives to invest their money without any passion but to extract success is dangerous. Here today broken tomorrow. Not everyone can win and now there's a few super rich or should it be superficially rich clubs that once the bubble has popped will be left ruined. Be careful, as supporters what you wish for.

And this brings me on to the entitled and the responses towards us. In the main we have laughed at the posts, the tweets and the reports. For we are in a better place and even if your investment is forthcoming your success will not hard fought but achieved by cash and cash alone. It caused your club to fail before, spend spend spend, where did it get you?

 

[Mellotron]

Well Arsenal aren't the richest, but they aren't poor, and although we lost one nil we played them off the park in the first half of a full Emirates stadium in the Cup this season.

I am not saying we won't get dry humped quite a few times, when we lose we often lose big because we are so attacking. But I think you will be surprised.

If Bielsa stays we won't get relegated, I would offer you that bet, here and now. For as much as you want to wager...

Well we got 6 points off Arsenal this season so sounds like you've got a way to go to be at our level

Nah, I'm not saying I think you'll go down - I have no idea to be honest, anywhere between 12th and 18th would be my guess for you guys.

But what I think is likely is that Bielsa will need flexibility and pragmatism in the way he chooses to approach games. Teams who have been arrogant in their belief that they can continue their Championship-steamrollering in the Prem have almost all come a cropper, as per my previous post.

I completely get that Leeds fans are full of confidence right now, given it seems you have been superb this season just gone. However Norwich did exactly the same the season prior, and they've just been absolutely demolished by the Premier League.

 

[blue-shifted]

One thing I do believe is that we'll find out whether Bielsa has the tactical ability to match his reputation, or whether it's all media bluster.

I say that because, I'm looking at the Leeds starting XI and thinking it looks like PL relegation fodder.

Maybe, he is a managerial genius, (who's never won anything), maybe momentum will carry them to enough points, maybe they'll buy big and buy well.

The gambler in me is thinking I'm going to wait for Sporting Index to publish their prediction of points totals for the coming season and if I can get a hype induced sell price as high as 42 to 45 points I'm going to short them with everything I've got.

 

[ozzygull]

Here at Brighton, we enjoy and embrace the fact a wealthy (thanks Tony) fan is the owner and will always act in the interests of the club. This is more important to the average Brighton fan than instant success on the field of play.

Exactly! If we sold our sole for success like Man City (Abu Dhabi FC) or the way Newcastle fans seem to be very happy to become Saudi FC, Then that is when I would stop being a Brighton fan. I don’t want success at any cost. I genuinely love the fact we are fan owned and seem to do things the correct way.

 

[Killer Whale]

Thanks for the considered reply but in the main is there has to be perspective to wants and needs of supporters. If a supporter of a regular lower league club is to realise a dream it is likely a good run in the cup perhaps a flirting with the top of their league and to see their club survive. Their passion is no less than that of a top side or a one fallen from a heady position. A scalp against one of the "fallen giants" is one celebrated with the same gusto as another honour won by a top side and indeed likely to be more heartfelt. It is the nature of the small club supporter to jest and ridicule those of larger clubs. To learn to fail makes the wins all the better, something the likes of the top 6 clubs miss the point.

We mock the fallen as to many it gives them the same taste of medicine that the majority are resigned to on a yearly basis. The media feed this frenzy to celebrate the achievements of some clubs without scant regard to the rest. One could argue Bournemouth, given their facilities, have surpassed all expectations year on year. Celebrated by few (their fans) but widely praised by the media as "Plucky Bournemouth". Yes they have done well but to remember their flouting of the rules, their budget is to realise that they in their own existence is no different to the excesses spent at Man City and the expectation of success. Indeed Newcastle fans and Leeds are hoping for cash injections not from fans of football but from dirty money, many of the fans hoping to enjoy instant successes. What hollow successes they'll be.

Here at Brighton, we enjoy and embrace the fact a wealthy (thanks Tony) fan is the owner and will always act in the interests of the club. This is more important to the average Brighton fan than instant success on the field of play. To lose to us, is to lose our club, the abyss, so nearly happened everyone who has joined the club since is expected to understand our history, our owner insists on no less. Therefore to invite an entity into your lives to invest their money without any passion but to extract success is dangerous. Here today broken tomorrow. Not everyone can win and now there's a few super rich or should it be superficially rich clubs that once the bubble has popped will be left ruined. Be careful, as supporters what you wish for.

And this brings me on to the entitled and the responses towards us. In the main we have laughed at the posts, the tweets and the reports. For we are in a better place and even if your investment is forthcoming your success will not hard fought but achieved by cash and cash alone. It caused your club to fail before, spend spend spend, where did it get you?

I agree with most of that.

At the moment we are, as I said, a proper football club. No-one one here seems to have disagreed. We don't have much money, in fact even now we hardly have a pot to pi$$ in, our players are journeymen, we have a cr@p stadium which is falling down, we have been the butt of jokes for the best part of two decades. But despite all that, maybe because of it, we still have our soul. And a fierce pride, which is clearly highly irritating to others, as this thread amply demonstrates.

To be successful means to be taken over by a bunch of rich Arabs. Who if they take over the club will destroy all that. Make us lose our soul. But that is the choice. Be a yo yo club, or one who spends a season ot two at the top and still retain our (I would argue) unique character. or to become like everyone else in the upper reaches of the Premier League.

It is Hobson's Choice. Lose lose.

 

[One Love]

Well Arsenal aren't the richest, but they aren't poor, and although we lost one nil we played them off the park in the first half of a full Emirates stadium in the Cup this season.

You can completely ignore cup football. It bears no relevance to the comparative ability of the teams.

 

[Questions]

Well Arsenal aren't the richest, but they aren't poor, and although we lost one nil we played them off the park in the first half of a full Emirates stadium in the Cup this season.

I am not saying we won't get dry humped quite a few times, when we lose we often lose big because we are so attacking. But I think you will be surprised.

If Bielsa stays we won't get relegated, I would offer you that bet, here and now. For as much as you want to wager...

What odds are you giving ?

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

I agree with most of that.

At the moment we are, as I said, a proper football club. No-one one here seems to have disagreed. We don't have much money, in fact even now we hardly have a pot to pi$$ in, our players are journeymen, we have a cr@p stadium which is falling down, we have been the butt of jokes for the best part of two decades. But despite all that, maybe because of it, we still have our soul. And a fierce pride, which is clearly highly irritating to others, as this thread amply demonstrates.

To be successful means to be taken over by a bunch of rich Arabs. Who if they take over the club will destroy all that. Make us lose our soul. But that is the choice. Be a yo yo club, or one who spends a season ot two at the top and still retain our (I would argue) unique character. or to become like everyone else in the upper reaches of the Premier League.

It is Hobson's Choice. Lose lose.

Disagree with lose lose. You will generate far more than us in revenue as sponsors will jump over themselves to put money in the club, the TV companies will see you as the new glory boys so again more than us. Spend within your limits and build on it. Be satisfied to be where your club finances allow you to be. Your post suggests that will not be acceptable to you or your like. That's where we differ. Be a club to be proud of or be a money mans plaything to discard when the oil runs dry!

From your previous posts you come over as someone that can see sense yet it is obvious you see to be successful is to challenge at the top and not to consolidate your position in the best league in the World. That is arrogance I'm afraid. Your expectation doesn't match the position of your club.

I and most Brighton fans would want the identity of our club to remain over any overriding need to seen to be one of top teams, lacking any affinity to the area. Imagine becoming a top 10 side by bringing through a team from your academy, that's our dream.

I should add to have a fierce pride is fine to deride all others as tinpot is not.

 

[e77]

Leeds had one great era under Revie in a time when clubs were owned by local businessmen and you could put together a good team (as opposed to the squad you need nowadays) and challenge for honours. Clubs like Ipswich and Derby had a fair degree of success in that era as well. After a long spell out of the top flight Howard Wilkinson was one of the last managers to win the title with a non-fashionable club (Dalglish did it with Blackburn and although you could argue for Leicester it was very much the exception that proves the rule).

They won the Championship and deserve their shot at the Premier League but I do think like ay first season team they need to think anything above 17th is a bonus in the first season back.

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

Football is suffering. To properly follow anyone is to suffer, no? Even the biggest most successful clubs, can't and don't win all the time, let alone almost every club, where nothing is EVER won except perhaps promotion every now and again.

But even by those standards, we have suffered, I put it to you. Because having once been great, and then fallen to the depths is worse, psychologically then never having been, and never expecting to. To being resigned to at the best mediocrity, and at worst... This is a nice point, I know, and I am not seeking to diss the suffering of being an Albion fan. I get it, in a way a Man U fan never can, or could because they haven't lived it and never will.

How can I explain? You could argue that two waiters, living in penury in Paris in the twenties are objectively equally miserable. But wouldn't it feel worse if one of them was a rich Russian exiled and stripped of everything by the Revolution? (And I am not saying that Leeds are in any way Tsarist aristocrats, obviously, perish the thought, just using the example to try and give colour to my argument)...

Or all those aged ladies in nineteenth century novels, who have gone down in the world and have to scratch a living working as governesses in a parvenu family that despises them and is openly contemptuous? Perhaps someone more literate than I can point them out, their names escape me.

The fans at Tranmere and Southend are hardly nouveau riche parvenus, but they were certainly openly contemptuous. "We all hate Leeds" they would chant, "You're Not Famous any More!" That we had gone down in the world was sadly obvious. Nor were we filling the back pages, or on the TV, no-one outside the division thought of us at all. But didn't the fact that they felt this need to aggrandise themselves in this way prove that actually we WERE still famous compared to them? And call me entitled if you like, maybe this demonstrates I am, but although on the day we played them on equal terms, and indeed many times they beat us, I don't believe that in wider football terms we were or are their equal. And I don't think you, if you were fair minded would disagree.

Being in the lower divisions can be a very pleasurable experience at times, don't get me wrong. This season is one of the best I have experienced in more than fifty years of following the club.
At times our football has been sublime. And there is an honesty about it that they tell me (I wouldn't know of course, as many on this thread have told me) is not present in the Premier League. I am not looking forward to all the bo11ocks in the over hyped media, there are advantages to relative obscurity. But of course it feels better to beat Barcelona in a European Cup semi final than to lose to Bristol Rovers in the rain. And the latter "suffers" by comparison to the former. And to watch your club sell its players, and ground, and training academy, to go bankrupt, and then have useless manager after useless manager playing the most dreadful football year after is to suffer. The fact that many, most, other lower league clubs have that experience as a fact of life does't make it any less painful when you are going through it.

I like the phrase 'Football is Suffering', I think you're right that we should be looking at it through that prism. We Brighton fans have experienced a suffering far greater than a bad 3-0 home defeat, and in many ways it defines us, but at the same time we fought to save our club just so we could be normal football fans enjoying the highs and lows of following our football team. But as we're talking history, this is our history.

Leeds have been 16 years out of the top flight, correct? In December 1996 we were a little over 13 years on from playing in the highest league and appearing in the FA Cup Final, yet we found ourselves in 92nd place in the football pyramid, six points adrift at the foot of the league, a second successive relegation looming to send us out of the league. Our beloved century-old ground, allowed to fall into near-ruin, had been sold a year earlier and would be knocked down in the summer, with nowhere to go, no plans, no land, nothing remotely approaching a stadium design or planning permission, no money left after the debts were serviced, no owner who cared about the club, no club willing to let us groundshare.

That is suffering that most fans don't experience. But it is only part of the story, because in the 23 years since we have experienced so many occasions of joy and pleasure that definitely most fans don't experience. Those depths caused a fan unity that was amazing to be part of, replacing the despised owners with a local saviour, supporting a thrilling final run of home games culminating in lifting the team off the bottom in the last ever game at the Goldstone and securing survival a week later; the club coming back to Brighton after two years in exile, four promotions at Withdean, striving for the Amex, and then the wonderful development of every single facet of the club over the past decade leading to promotion to the premier league and returning to Wembley in the FA Cup last season. That is the Opposite of Suffering, and we are lucky to have experienced it.

So yes, football is suffering, but it is also elation. The highs are higher because of the lows. After the rain comes the sun. Imagine the sheer boredom of being an Everton fan. I well remember being at Doncaster for our 17th straight away game without victory, a 3-0 defeat of ineptitude and inevitability. You will remember similar games during Leeds recent demise that will be etched in your memory. Your experience of playing Tranmere or Southend mirrors mine of playing Macclesfield in that fateful 96-97 season - a club we had never come across in our history, just up from non-league, beating us 1-0 under the lights at Moss Rose. I felt truly dejected that night. It is the lot of football fans to support dreadful teams from time to time, but if there is any additional suffering from a sense of 'we shouldn't be here, we're Leeds' - well that is just self-inflicted. But just like us at Macclesfield, every club's fans suffer from that, doesn't matter how far down the pyramid you go, there are always teams lower than you to give you a bloody nose. You don't lose to Canvey Island and Kingstonian in the Cup without experiencing that sense of 'why us??'

.....

We know what the football world is like outside the top flight. I think it gives us (some of us!) a sense of perspective in which to place our current fortunes and face our disappointments. It means we can observe with incredulity Newcastle despairing at their owner 'destroying' their club after they finished 11th in the premier league last year (a final position we have yet to reach in 120 years), or chuckle at Arsenal fan's sense of humiliation after they have failed to beat 'Brighton - who are dey Bruv?' for the fifth premier league game in a row. I would hope that Leeds fans will appreciate the same. But now Leeds are back, some of your fans memories of the last 16 years seem to be vanishing as wisps in the wind, which is the prism through which we are viewing these comments on Ben White.

 

[Killer Whale]

One thing I do believe is that we'll find out whether Bielsa has the tactical ability to match his reputation, or whether it's all media bluster.

I say that because, I'm looking at the Leeds starting XI and thinking it looks like PL relegation fodder.

Maybe, he is a managerial genius, (who's never won anything), maybe momentum will carry them to enough points, maybe they'll buy big and buy well.

The gambler in me is thinking I'm going to wait for Sporting Index to publish their prediction of points totals for the coming season and if I can get a hype induced sell price as high as 42 to 45 points I'm going to short them with everything I've got.

Go for it. Sheffield United got 54 points, and we were much better than them in the season they went up. I haven't followed them closely, so don't know how different they are now, mind.

And Bielsa HAS won things. he made his old club, Newell's, small by Argentine standards, and overshadowed even in their own City, Rosario by Central, National Champions. But he never joined a mega club, where he certainly WOULD have run things. He turned down Boca Juniors, and (I think) will turn down Barca too, He is different. A football genius, who loves the game for itself, who doesn't judge success in terms of trophies.

Newell's fans still remember him, love him in fact, and many travelled over to England to join in the celebrations after we won the Championship. Leeds have become huge in Argentina, (a great football country by the way) with all their matches screened live on television there. Chile too.

When we won promotion there was a post on the Newell's English language twitter account asking "Do you get it yet?"

Yes we get it!! The man is a legend, and that is all there is to say. Yet that much debased term, says everything.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Go for it. Sheffield United got 54 points, and we were much better than them in the season they went up. I haven't followed them closely, so don't know how different they are now, mind.

And Bielsa HAS won things. he made his old club, Newell's, small by Argentine standards, and overshadowed even in their own City, Rosario by Central, National Champions. But he never joined a mega club, where he certainly WOULD have run things. He turned down Boca Juniors, and (I think) will turn down Barca too, He is different. A football genius, who loves the game for itself, who doesn't judge success in terms of trophies.

Newell's fans still remember him, love him in fact, and many travelled over to England to join in the celebrations after we won the Championship. Leeds have become huge in Argentina, (a great football country by the way) with all their matches screened live on television there. Chile too.

When we won promotion there was a post on the Newell's English language twitter account asking "Do you get it yet?"

Yes we get it!! The man is a legend, and that is all there is to say. Yet that much debased term, says everything.

Sounds more like a personality cult than a football club. You will have to hope that he is the messiah you all believe in and not just a naughty boy...

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

A football genius, who loves the game for itself, who doesn't judge success in terms of trophies.

Is that how Leeds perceive it? Your posts suggest not.

 

[papajaff]

Go for it. Sheffield United got 54 points, and we were much better than them in the season they went up. I haven't followed them closely, so don't know how different they are now, mind.

And Bielsa HAS won things. he made his old club, Newell's, small by Argentine standards, and overshadowed even in their own City, Rosario by Central, National Champions. But he never joined a mega club, where he certainly WOULD have run things. He turned down Boca Juniors, and (I think) will turn down Barca too, He is different. A football genius, who loves the game for itself, who doesn't judge success in terms of trophies.

Newell's fans still remember him, love him in fact, and many travelled over to England to join in the celebrations after we won the Championship. Leeds have become huge in Argentina, (a great football country by the way) with all their matches screened live on television there. Chile too.

When we won promotion there was a post on the Newell's English language twitter account asking "Do you get it yet?"

Yes we get it!! The man is a legend, and that is all there is to say. Yet that much debased term, says everything.

I was quite enjoying reading your posts. Up until this one.

So Leeds are huge in Argentina now. Where will the legend end? If only I could "get it".

 

[Thunder Bolt]

I was quite enjoying reading your posts. Up until this one.

So Leeds are huge in Argentina now. Where will the legend end? If only I could "get it".

Don't anyone tell him that the Argentinian number 10 was out on loan from Brighton, to Boca Juniors.
After all, Brighton don't know or care about their loan players!

 

[Grombleton]

I like the phrase 'Football is Suffering', I think you're right that we should be looking at it through that prism. We Brighton fans have experienced a suffering far greater than a bad 3-0 home defeat, and in many ways it defines us, but at the same time we fought to save our club just so we could be normal football fans enjoying the highs and lows of following our football team. But as we're talking history, this is our history.

Leeds have been 16 years out of the top flight, correct? In December 1996 we were a little over 13 years on from playing in the highest league and appearing in the FA Cup Final, yet we found ourselves in 92nd place in the football pyramid, six points adrift at the foot of the league, a second successive relegation looming to send us out of the league. Our beloved century-old ground, allowed to fall into near-ruin, had been sold a year earlier and would be knocked down in the summer, with nowhere to go, no plans, no land, nothing remotely approaching a stadium design or planning permission, no money left after the debts were serviced, no owner who cared about the club, no club willing to let us groundshare.

That is suffering that most fans don't experience. But it is only part of the story, because in the 23 years since we have experienced so many occasions of joy and pleasure that definitely most fans don't experience. Those depths caused a fan unity that was amazing to be part of, replacing the despised owners with a local saviour, supporting a thrilling final run of home games culminating in lifting the team off the bottom in the last ever game at the Goldstone and securing survival a week later; the club coming back to Brighton after two years in exile, four promotions at Withdean, striving for the Amex, and then the wonderful development of every single facet of the club over the past decade leading to promotion to the premier league and returning to Wembley in the FA Cup last season. That is the Opposite of Suffering, and we are lucky to have experienced it.

So yes, football is suffering, but it is also elation. The highs are higher because of the lows. After the rain comes the sun. Imagine the sheer boredom of being an Everton fan. I well remember being at Doncaster for our 17th straight away game without victory, a 3-0 defeat of ineptitude and inevitability. You will remember similar games during Leeds recent demise that will be etched in your memory. Your experience of playing Tranmere or Southend mirrors mine of playing Macclesfield in that fateful 96-97 season - a club we had never come across in our history, just up from non-league, beating us 1-0 under the lights at Moss Rose. I felt truly dejected that night. It is the lot of football fans to support dreadful teams from time to time, but if there is any additional suffering from a sense of 'we shouldn't be here, we're Leeds' - well that is just self-inflicted. But just like us at Macclesfield, every club's fans suffer from that, doesn't matter how far down the pyramid you go, there are always teams lower than you to give you a bloody nose. You don't lose to Canvey Island and Kingstonian in the Cup without experiencing that sense of 'why us??'

.....

We know what the football world is like outside the top flight. I think it gives us (some of us!) a sense of perspective in which to place our current fortunes and face our disappointments. It means we can observe with incredulity Newcastle despairing at their owner 'destroying' their club after they finished 11th in the premier league last year (a final position we have yet to reach in 120 years), or chuckle at Arsenal fan's sense of humiliation after they have failed to beat 'Brighton - who are dey Bruv?' for the fifth premier league game in a row. I would hope that Leeds fans will appreciate the same. But now Leeds are back, some of your fans memories of the last 16 years seem to be vanishing as wisps in the wind, which is the prism through which we are viewing these comments on Ben White.

Beautifully written.

 

[BeHereNow]

I like the phrase 'Football is Suffering', I think you're right that we should be looking at it through that prism. We Brighton fans have experienced a suffering far greater than a bad 3-0 home defeat, and in many ways it defines us, but at the same time we fought to save our club just so we could be normal football fans enjoying the highs and lows of following our football team. But as we're talking history, this is our history.

Leeds have been 16 years out of the top flight, correct? In December 1996 we were a little over 13 years on from playing in the highest league and appearing in the FA Cup Final, yet we found ourselves in 92nd place in the football pyramid, six points adrift at the foot of the league, a second successive relegation looming to send us out of the league. Our beloved century-old ground, allowed to fall into near-ruin, had been sold a year earlier and would be knocked down in the summer, with nowhere to go, no plans, no land, nothing remotely approaching a stadium design or planning permission, no money left after the debts were serviced, no owner who cared about the club, no club willing to let us groundshare.

That is suffering that most fans don't experience. But it is only part of the story, because in the 23 years since we have experienced so many occasions of joy and pleasure that definitely most fans don't experience. Those depths caused a fan unity that was amazing to be part of, replacing the despised owners with a local saviour, supporting a thrilling final run of home games culminating in lifting the team off the bottom in the last ever game at the Goldstone and securing survival a week later; the club coming back to Brighton after two years in exile, four promotions at Withdean, striving for the Amex, and then the wonderful development of every single facet of the club over the past decade leading to promotion to the premier league and returning to Wembley in the FA Cup last season. That is the Opposite of Suffering, and we are lucky to have experienced it.

So yes, football is suffering, but it is also elation. The highs are higher because of the lows. After the rain comes the sun. Imagine the sheer boredom of being an Everton fan. I well remember being at Doncaster for our 17th straight away game without victory, a 3-0 defeat of ineptitude and inevitability. You will remember similar games during Leeds recent demise that will be etched in your memory. Your experience of playing Tranmere or Southend mirrors mine of playing Macclesfield in that fateful 96-97 season - a club we had never come across in our history, just up from non-league, beating us 1-0 under the lights at Moss Rose. I felt truly dejected that night. It is the lot of football fans to support dreadful teams from time to time, but if there is any additional suffering from a sense of 'we shouldn't be here, we're Leeds' - well that is just self-inflicted. But just like us at Macclesfield, every club's fans suffer from that, doesn't matter how far down the pyramid you go, there are always teams lower than you to give you a bloody nose. You don't lose to Canvey Island and Kingstonian in the Cup without experiencing that sense of 'why us??'

.....

We know what the football world is like outside the top flight. I think it gives us (some of us!) a sense of perspective in which to place our current fortunes and face our disappointments. It means we can observe with incredulity Newcastle despairing at their owner 'destroying' their club after they finished 11th in the premier league last year (a final position we have yet to reach in 120 years), or chuckle at Arsenal fan's sense of humiliation after they have failed to beat 'Brighton - who are dey Bruv?' for the fifth premier league game in a row. I would hope that Leeds fans will appreciate the same. But now Leeds are back, some of your fans memories of the last 16 years seem to be vanishing as wisps in the wind, which is the prism through which we are viewing these comments on Ben White.

That should be in a book

 

[oneillco]

Football is suffering. To properly follow anyone is to suffer, no? Even the biggest most successful clubs, can't and don't win all the time, let alone almost every club, where nothing is EVER won except perhaps promotion every now and again.

But even by those standards, we have suffered, I put it to you. Because having once been great, and then fallen to the depths is worse, psychologically then never having been, and never expecting to. To being resigned to at the best mediocrity, and at worst... This is a nice point, I know, and I am not seeking to diss the suffering of being an Albion fan. I get it, in a way a Man U fan never can, or could because they haven't lived it and never will.

How can I explain? You could argue that two waiters, living in penury in Paris in the twenties are objectively equally miserable. But wouldn't it feel worse if one of them was a rich Russian exiled and stripped of everything by the Revolution? (And I am not saying that Leeds are in any way Tsarist aristocrats, obviously, perish the thought, just using the example to try and give colour to my argument)...

Or all those aged ladies in nineteenth century novels, who have gone down in the world and have to scratch a living working as governesses in a parvenu family that despises them and is openly contemptuous? Perhaps someone more literate than I can point them out, their names escape me.

The fans at Tranmere and Southend are hardly nouveau riche parvenus, but they were certainly openly contemptuous. "We all hate Leeds" they would chant, "You're Not Famous any More!" That we had gone down in the world was sadly obvious. Nor were we filling the back pages, or on the TV, no-one outside the division thought of us at all. But didn't the fact that they felt this need to aggrandise themselves in this way prove that actually we WERE still famous compared to them? And call me entitled if you like, maybe this demonstrates I am, but although on the day we played them on equal terms, and indeed many times they beat us, I don't believe that in wider football terms we were or are their equal. And I don't think you, if you were fair minded would disagree.

Being in the lower divisions can be a very pleasurable experience at times, don't get me wrong. This season is one of the best I have experienced in more than fifty years of following the club.
At times our football has been sublime. And there is an honesty about it that they tell me (I wouldn't know of course, as many on this thread have told me) is not present in the Premier League. I am not looking forward to all the bo11ocks in the over hyped media, there are advantages to relative obscurity. But of course it feels better to beat Barcelona in a European Cup semi final than to lose to Bristol Rovers in the rain. And the latter "suffers" by comparison to the former. And to watch your club sell its players, and ground, and training academy, to go bankrupt, and then have useless manager after useless manager playing the most dreadful football year after is to suffer. The fact that many, most, other lower league clubs have that experience as a fact of life does't make it any less painful when you are going through it.

I welcome having Leeds back in the top division because those of us pushing sixty remember just what a great team they were in the 1970s when we were first getting into football. Playing Leeds at The Amex will give that expectant buzz in a way that playing Bournemouth, Watford, and Burnley never will. Leeds fans are passionate and make a lot of noise, but every time I've seen them there has always been a significant number looking for aggro. They seem to share that Millwall "no one likes us, we don't care" mentality but with added arrogance.