The Agony And The Ecstasy: 100 Years Of Leeds United By Daniel Chapman

As a lifelong follower of the football club located fifteen miles south west of Leeds, I suppose I should be grateful that the proposed merger between Leeds City and Huddersfield Town in 1919 fell through owing to the not unreasonable outrage of the then dwindling numbers of Town fans. That the absorbing of one into the other didn’t materialise became, instead, the ironic catalyst for a period of unprecedented success for the Leeds Road club, who wore the same colours as their rivals, and later signed their former manager, one Herbert Chapman.

The episode is one of many detailed by Daniel Chapman in his incredibly well-researched new history of Leeds United which will appeal to all genuine football fans, of whatever stripe or denomination. The key to Chapman’s success lies in his compendious knowledge of the club’s past and present, of the ups, downs and middlings which are characteristic of most professional teams, but are somehow more meaningful to the legions of Leeds supporters who have endured decades of financial mismanagement and crushing lows alongside the massive highs of the Revie, Wilkinson and O’Leary periods.

Narrative detachment does not do for football writers, of course, and it is fitting that Leeds-born Chapman is a committed fan, whose several United-related posts include the curation of supporter fanzines, and a (very) lively social media presence. His easy style of presentation bespeaks a genuine affection for his subject; he wears his affiliation on his sleeve and his writing brings an according infectiousness to his story. But neither is it an emotional landslide; his engagement is never overwhelmed by sentiment but instead pays appropriate homage to finely-observed detail, wherein the truth of popular misconception may properly be addressed.

Running the gamut of the club’s phenomenally complex history, from the first tentative steps of football in a rugby-dominated universe, where crowds, if interest could be mustered at all, were minimal, Chapman pays due homage to the movers, shakers, local dignitaries and money men who determinedly underwrote the formulation of Leeds City at the very end of the nineteenth century.

But 1919 was the year of Leeds United’s foundation, rendering Chapman’s fine volume the celebration of a centenary. And it is fitting that his book should examine, at length, the contribution of the leading lights of the Elland Road pantheon towards United’s greater glory. The first of those names is the now legendary John Charles, the Swansea-born ‘adonis’ who led the line as a prodigious goal scoring centre half and centre forward under the stewardship of manager Major Frank Buckley. Chapman’s captivating account of Charles’ inestimable contribution to United’s fortunes in the late forties and early fifties is best summed in the words of Buckley, who called his Welsh protégé, with some justification, ‘the best player in the world’.

And although he signed for Juventus in 1957 after 297 appearances, he wouldn’t be the last of United’s greats. Amongst the financial tribulations and bizarrely unpredictable attendances which continued to define the club right up until the later phenomenal successes, a player who knew the club intuitively became the new manager in 1961. Don Revie began to re-shape the team in his own image, putting to one side the fractiousness of young players like Jack Charlton who needed professional nurturing and direction. Referring, especially, to the raw, but brilliant eighteen-year-old, Billy Bremner, Chapman encapsulates Revie’s modus in one telling aside:

Revie’s mission at Leeds was to make the players care about the club, and he knew that first the club would have to care about them.

And the superstitious manager achieved miracles whilst spending minimally. Building a team of jobbing footballers, many of whom subsequently became greats, around a fiercely defensive ethos and a spirit of togetherness, Revie was accused of a cynical, frequently dirty style of football which aspired to an almost machine-like approach to organisation. It was immensely effective and brought Leeds several first division championships and cup final appearances over the thirteen years of Revie’s tenure.

One of those who endorsed the ‘machine’ accusation was Brian Clough, upon whose fleeting association with Leeds Daniel Chapman is fascinating. With about as much chance of putting his own stamp on Revie’s close-knit squad as any replacement for Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, the maverick, loose-tongued and outspoken Clough looks, admittedly with hindsight, to have been the precise opposite of a sensible selection. He lasted 44 days, and the denouement was made public in the now seminal Calendar two-handed interview with Don Revie which served to underline the impossibility of any kind of rapprochement.

Chapman’s acuity is corroborated by an entirely pragmatic and even-handed approach. He engages with the spectre of hooliganism head-on and is right to concede the terrible reputation of some small numbers of Leeds ‘fans’ in amongst the wider culture of violence which beset English football throughout the dark days of the seventies. But he is wise, also, to point up the brutal presence of institutional expectation: the several European campaigns of the period were bedevilled by police anticipation, manifested in pre-emptive measures whose extremity acted to encourage worse excesses in fans.

The lengthy nadir which followed Revie’s reign must have seemed interminable to genuine fans, and it is a testament to Chapman’s skill that he is able to capture the sense of general unease by a detailed and forensic examination of the causes and consequences of the club’s dealings, associations and disbursements throughout the period. The tide turned, of course, with the hiring of the measured, softly spoken and incredibly effective Howard Wilkinson, and the successes he precipitated with shrewd recruitment and equally serendipitous player management. And Chapman uncovers a rich vein of eloquence in these and subsequent chapters. If it is possible to detect a lifting of mood in prose, it begins here, and continues through the O’Leary European near-misses, to the hegemonic control of the English market by gifted foreign players, to the financial irregularities of the Ridsdale tenure, and finally to the revivified hope of the present regime under a manager who is seen as the saviour by many, Marcelo Bielsa.

In the end, hope is the key in this handsomely-appointed and illustrated book. It is somehow fitting that in his final chapter Daniel Chapman pays tribute to the self-effacing modesty of one of those Leeds luminaries of the Revie era for whom loyalty to club was paramount, and for whom the wearing of a United shirt was its own reward:

In July 2018 Paul Madeley died, the most complete of Leeds footballers; born and raised in Beeston, he only ever played for Leeds United, and did so 725 times, playing in whatever position Don Revie wanted him to. After Revie left, Madeley signed a blank contract so Jimmy Armfield could pay him whatever he felt right, for as long as he wanted him to stay. ‘I’ll leave it to you,’ he said. ‘I just want to play for Leeds’.

Hope resides to no small degree in Paul Madeley’s sense of commitment, and it is fitting, as Leeds United finally rise to the apex of English football after an absence of sixteen uncertain years, to recall his words.


100 Years of Leeds United is published by Icon Books