As Leeds United gear up for their latest Premier League challenge, few people are better placed to delve into the club’s rich history and statistical quirks than Jonny Cooper. A lifelong fan, seasoned football writer, and statistician at Opta for over a decade, Jonny combines a deep love of the game with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Leeds United’s past and present. His new book, As Leeds Go Marching On: A History of Leeds United Through Stories, Stats and Trivia, celebrates the stories, numbers, and trivia that define one of England’s most historic clubs. Jonny shares with us some personal memories, fascinating facts and insight on Leeds prospects in the top flight.
I have always had a fascination with the stats, facts and figures behind Leeds United. For some, it is enough to go to games, watch the football, come home and three weeks later have forgotten what the score was. There’s nothing wrong with that – I have friends who do this. “What do you mean you can’t remember Edgar Cani?” I’ll say, when they fail to recall the Albanian’s not so glorious four-game spell in 2015.
But I’ve always been the opposite. I recently found a copy of the programme from my first game, a 2-1 defeat against Man City in September 2000, and on the back alongside the squad lists I’ve ticked each player who appeared, filled in the scorers, the result, the attendance and who I thought was our man of the match (Olivier Dacourt took the honour that night). Even at the age of six I had a keen interest in keeping track of the statistics behind the game.
After taking out Leeds United: A Complete Record from my local library shortly after my first game, that was it: I was hooked. A book that had all the statistics from every game (at least up until 1989 at that point), all the player appearance records, all the manager details and much more – this was quite something to six-year-old me. I spent hours poring over the pages of that book, memorising results and player facts, all the while being impressed by the moustaches of early Leeds City managers Gilbert Gillies and Frank Scott-Walford.
I maintained this obsessive love of Leeds United statistics throughout both primary and high school and in my final year of sixth form in 2012 I took on the role of researcher for the Leeds players on the game Football Manager, which I’d played religiously since 2005. Though it was an unpaid role, it gave me the chance to combine my interest in the stats with my knowledge of the club and the team at the time, who weren’t doing particularly well: in the three seasons I was the researcher, we finished 13th, 15th and 15th.
It was while working on the game that I first heard of a role at Opta Sports, thanks to the head researcher at Football Manager who sent a link to a job role advertised online. I was interviewed and though I didn’t get the job this time around, two years later I entered the stats world and ten years later I am still there as data insights team lead, a job I love.
Working alongside immensely talented statisticians, I learned how to build out my Leeds United database and during the 2016-17 season I completed a project to compile a file which had every player to play in every game in the club’s history – whether they scored, started the game, were substituted on or off, sent off and much more – which meant that answers to questions I had been thinking about could be answered: how many players have scored a hat-trick on their Leeds debut? Answer – four: Percy Whipp, Don Weston, Carl Shutt and Samuel Saiz.
It also meant I could dig a little deeper into the stats of the club’s greatest ever players. Let’s take the two greatest scorers in the club’s history, starting with John Charles. A glance at his biography in any Leeds record book will tell you that he scored the most goals in a season for the club (43 in 1953-54) and was the leading scorer in Division One in 1956-57 with 38 goals. But could you split his record in defence and up front? I worked out Charles played 163 games in attack for Leeds and scored 147 goals in those games. This worked out at a goals-per-game ratio of 0.90 and had all 327 of his games been up front, and assuming he’d scored at that rate consistently, he'd have scored 295 goals for the club (his actual total was 157). There were other quirky facts on Charles, like him scoring a hat-trick in all three appearances against Rotherham during the year 1953, and that when he returned for an underwhelming 11-game spell in 1962, two of his three goals were scored against – you guessed – Rotherham.
Then there’s the late, great Peter Lorimer. Again, most fans could tell you he is the club’s youngest ever player and holds the record for most goals scored with a seemingly unassailable 238. But what of the fact that he is the club’s youngest ever hat-trick scorer in Europe, the League Cup and FA Cup? The latter of which made him the club’s youngest ever hat-trick scorer when he bagged three against Bury in January 1966, aged 19 years and 39 days. This was one Lorimer record destined to be beaten, though – in January 1985, Tommy Wright scored three against Notts County a mere 30 days younger than Lorimer was in 1966. And playing alongside Wright that day? A certain Peter Lorimer, aged 38 and in his second spell at the club. Wright was twelve days old when Lorimer had scored his hat-trick in 1966. A statistician’s dream fact.
So, to the present day. Can Leeds buck the recent trend of promoted clubs going straight back down? In 2023-24 and 2024-25, every single promoted side has been immediately relegated back to the Championship – last season, Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton won a combined 59 points, the same points total as Leeds won the last time they were promoted in 2020-21 under Marcelo Bielsa.
There’s some more positive history where being newly promoted is concerned for Leeds. They’ve been promoted seven times previously into the English top-flight and have never been immediately relegated, finishing quite impressively 8th in 1956-57, 2nd in 1964-65 (losing the title on goal average to Man Utd) and 4th in 1990-91. This is the joint most occasions a team has been promoted into the top division without being relegated straight back down – let’s hope history repeats itself in 2025-26.
Tall, physical players have been brought in over the summer to bolster the title-winning squad of 2024-25. Central defender Jaka Bijol joins from Udinese, where he ranked fourth in Serie A for both aerial duels won and clearances in 2024-25, which should prove handy with Leeds doing more defending in the Premier League than they were in the Championship (they faced over 100 fewer shots than any other side in 2024-25). In midfield, Anton Stach is an exciting signing from Hoffenheim; Stach was top for interceptions across the previous two Bundesliga seasons and third for possession won. Signed from Newcastle United, Sean Longstaff provides Premier League experience – 171 games and counting – and bundles of energy, having covered the most distance in the Premier League last season per 90 minutes at just over 13 kilometres.
Illan Meslier finally looks to have been replaced as first choice goalkeeper after 215 appearances across five years, with Lyon goalkeeper Lucas Perri becoming the club’s fourth Brazilian player; the less said about the first two (Roque Junior and Adryan) perhaps the better, but the last one wasn’t bad: that was Raphinha. Perri had a 72.5% save ratio in Ligue 1 last season and this was even better when he was playing in the Brazilian top-flight in 2023 for Botafogo, saving a league best 78.4% of shots faced.
At the other end of the pitch, Leeds are still yet to replace Manor Solomon, who went back to Tottenham after spending 2024-25 on loan at the Whites where he scored 10 goals and assisted 13 more. Many names have been linked – most notably Feyenoord’s Igor Paixão, who joined Marseille – but the search goes on. Up front, Patrick Bamford has been deemed surplus to Premier League requirements and Mateo Joseph is set to depart, with the only new striking arrival coming in the form of Lukas Nmecha, who started just four games in his last two seasons at Wolfsburg, and his last 90-minute appearance dates so far back that Liz Truss was UK Prime Minister when it happened in September 2022. That leaves last season’s Championship top scorer, Joel Piroe, as the main man, though Piroe has never played in the Premier League before and 28 of his 29 top-flight appearances to date – all in the Eredivisie – came as a substitute between 2019 and 2021.
With the Monday night football game against Everton edging ever closer, supporters are hoping the club make the necessary signings – particularly in attack – to give Leeds the best chance of maintaining that proud record of having never been relegated in their first season after promotion. And we all love a good statistic, don’t we?
As Leeds Go Marching On: A History of Leeds United Through Stories, Stats and Trivia by Jonny Cooper is available now on Amazon. Join Jonny for The Ultimate Leeds United Quiz Night at Waterstones Leeds, hosted by Adam Pope, on 20th August at 7 pm. Teams of 4–5 welcome. Book your place here.