No longer invincible

Sometimes, the lock was picked – either by our own Gary Sprake, showing that he was human, after all - or by officials who were more open to corruption than Leeds winning. I thought of this sorry part of our history this week when ‘assistant referee’ Darren Williams yet again ruled out a perfectly good Leeds goal against Middlesbrough for offside. His colleague thought it would be good to level things up in the second half, so he ruled a Leeds goal out too. Generally, though, against odds seemingly stacked against us, we used to close games out and win.

We weren’t invincible, of course. Only two teams have managed unbeaten league seasons – Arsenal in 2003-04, and our opponents on Saturday: Preston North End. They managed it in the very first Football League season of 1888-89, also winning the FA Cup that year to become the first Double winners. It’s crazy to think back to the nineteenth century, isn’t it? Professionalism had only been officially accepted in 1885; handlebar moustaches were still de rigueur, and Neil Warnock started primary school…

We first played Preston in the league on 13 September 1924, winning 4.0 at Elland Road and then 4.1 in our first visit to Deepdale four months later. Preston were also our opponents in our first post-war league match on 31 August 1946. We lost that away match 3.2, notable also for the debut of young winger Tom Finney, surely one of Preston’s finest players.

Things didn’t improve that season as we came bottom of the First Division, relegated with just 18 points - a record which stood for nearly forty years until Stoke City ‘beat it’ in 1985 with 17.

Preston have never come close to being invincible again. They retained their league title the following season, but apart from another FA Cup win in 1938, there hasn’t been much for them to shout about in the lower leagues. Which is where Paul Heckingbottom comes in, I suppose: recognising his limitations and apparently more interested in his own image than that of his team.

Barnsley-born, his approach when replacing Thomas Christiansen as Leeds United manager was attritional and equally ineffective. Under his management, Leeds won only four more games that season, falling from 10^th place when he arrived, to another mid-table disappointment of 13^th. Heckingbottom was sacked on 1 June 2018 after just four months in charge of a big club.

If Heckingbottom subtly invites us to wipe that wry smile off his face, then one of his predecessors as Preston boss positively asked for his to be punched, hard. Preston North End were our opponents in the play-off semi-final first leg match at Elland Road on 5 May 2006. The match was an abrasive, bad-tempered affair. Preston scored first, only to have their goal cancelled out by an Eddie Lewis free kick. Preston’s then manager, the acerbic Scotsman, Billy Davies, declared smugly that: “It is tremendous to come here in front of their biggest crowd of the season and get what is a fantastic result. It is a case of job done.”

Except that it wasn’t. In the second leg at Deepdale, three days later on 8 May 2006, the tie was still all square with another very physical match being poised at 0.0 at half-time. After the second-half kick-off was delayed by 25 minutes due to a floodlight failure, Leeds scored two goals through Rob Hulse and defender Frazer Richardson. However, in a feisty, almost brutal finale, Leeds players Richard Cresswell and defender Stephen Crainey - who had been a stalwart of the Leeds defence - were sent off. 11 yellow cards were shown in total (one for Preston and 10 for Leeds). The nine men of Leeds held out though for a 2.0 win and went through to the final, 3.1 on aggregate. We obviously don’t talk about the final, Cardiff or the many hours stuck on the M4…

So, I’m expecting a nasty, niggly game on Saturday and a hostile atmosphere, with the Preston fans driving over the hills in their Mini and hoping that they, in tandem with the referee (who also thought it would be fun to play the beautiful game unfairly in this season’s away game) can breach the Elland Road fortress as their Lancashire neighbours did. Thankfully, Burnley are now more obsessed with not conceding goals than scoring them.

Whatever they can collectively throw at us, this season is far from ‘job done.’