In few places do the winds of change blow through more fiercely than Elland Road
There is no better press box in the country in which to be enveloped in the mood of a fanbase than at Elland Road.
Depending upon your position, you may have a home supporter literally next to and in front of you. You glance left and receive a look that says “I know what you’re about to write and I’ll judge you for it – see you on social media later, pal”.
It is Leeds United’s first night back as a Premier League club and the John Charles Stand is bouncing. They could sell this stadium out four times over and those inside demonstrate their gratitude by making enough noise for those not present.
Tackles are cheered, every refereeing decision against booed and Sky TV told by 35,000 people that they are “f***ing s**t”. When Everton’s Jake O’Brien steals three yards at a throw-in, a minor insurrection takes place in the stands.
Leeds beat an Everton team who are entirely devoid of early season excitement or panache, but that misses the point.
On the live television coverage, commentators react as if Everton have no choice but to submit to this white wave of righteous demand. On the BBC Sport website, the “X Factor” of the crowd is effectively awarded the Player of the Match award.
LEEDS, ENGLAND - AUGUST 18: Leeds United supporters show their support ahead of during the Premier League match between Leeds United and Everton at Elland Road on August 18, 2025 in Leeds, England. (Photo by James Gill - Danehouse/Getty Images)
Leeds United supporters show their support on their Premier League return (Photo: Getty)
I don’t usually buy into that bluster, but when you’re sat amongst it, it seeps into you. It’s not just that this place can be a cauldron – although it clearly can – but that there’s a demand for the home team to imprint themselves on the top flight that makes the players greater than the sum of their parts.
I’m here because I am fascinated by the psychological mindf**k of supporting Leeds United. I don’t know if that’s unique to them and I don’t know if I’m being hyperbolic, but I do believe that it has always been a thing.
“I think we are the fanbase with the biggest gap between where we perceive ourselves to sit in the pecking order, and reality,” as Alex, a supporter, says to me in the week before the season begins. That’s not a criticism, merely a description. And I think he’s right.
Leeds United aren’t very good by most reasonable measurements (metaphorical man next to press box glowers in my direction and frowns).
Over the last 21 years, they have been a top-flight club for three seasons (ninth, 17th, 19th) and a third-tier club for three.
A list of clubs who have finished in the Premier League’s top eight since Leeds last did: Manchester United, Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool, Newcastle, Chelsea, Tottenham. Aston Villa, Brighton, Forest, West Ham, Leicester, Wolves, Everton, Burnley, Southampton, Swansea, West Brom, Fulham, Blackburn, Portsmouth, Reading, Bolton, Middlesbrough, Charlton.
Leeds were very good in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were very good for a season in the early 1990s, a few in the early 2000s and for one in the early 2020s.
That speaks to some of the weirdness: fleeting sunshine that lasts just long enough for you to believe that you might never need a raincoat again. Look back at that long list of other clubs and then remember: since 1982, only the Big Six and Leeds have reached a European Cup semi-final.
What is most instructive about these periods of success is how each fell away to leave a lingering sense of injustice or lack of complete fulfilment and, as many supporters might say, because Leeds lost out rather than were bettered by other clubs.
The offside call in 1971. The suspicions of European finals in 1973 and 1975. Following a pre-Premier League title with 17th in 1992-93. Financial implosion before the thrill of David O’Leary’s team had subsided. Their best season in 25 years largely played out in front of empty stands. The good times were never as good as they should have been.
“That has been passed down through generations,” Rob Conlon, writer for fanzine The Square Ball tells me. “A fan who grew up supporting the Revie side could quite feasibly have had a grandparent telling them about how the football authorities kicked Leeds out of the league.
“Likewise I grew up with my dad telling me about following the Revie side, when Leeds spent a decade as one of the best teams in the world yet finished with more runners-up medals than trophies, quite often due to some fundamentally wrong — and occasionally suspicious — officiating or decisions from governing bodies.”
To that, we have to add the identity of the place: Leeds United is the biggest one-club city in in the largest historic county in the country.
When they won the Championship title last season, 150,000 people lined the streets for the open-top bus parade. Leeds has an edge, a deliberate chip on its shoulder that it wears as a badge of honour. Most here would define it with just three words: “We are Leeds.”
LEEDS, ENGLAND - MAY 05: Leeds United players celebrate on the bus with the fans during the Championship Celebration Parade on The Headrow on May 05, 2025 in Leeds, England. (Photo by Molly Darlington/Getty Images)
150,000 fans lined the streets after Leeds United won the Championship title (Photo: Getty)
“I’m not sure if all of this is a form of Leeds exceptionalism,” says Conlon. “I’m sure fans of every other club feel an element of the same. But I was travelling in the US last year and meeting lots of fan groups all over the country.
“Wherever people were from, and whatever background they had, they all said there was something about Leeds as a city and a football club that really resonated with them. It’s quite difficult for me to put my finger on when I’m living in it, but there must be an authenticity that attracts people from all over the world.”
When you combine a large mass of people, a lingering unease at missed opportunities and a vast expectation gap, you build a mania factory. Inevitably negativity bubbles to the surface and failure to make good on impatient ambition becomes mythologised into a curse.
That fatalism is a double-edged sword. Being convinced that the world is against you can too easily become its own prophecy, but on Monday I see its alluring benefit: a sense of defiance that produces a swagger. We have missed the Premier League; the Premier League has missed us.
The brutal truth is that Leeds United are roughly the same club that were relegated 21 years ago. Many others transformed: new stadia, new recruitment models, new ages. Here, not so much. It is as if the demand to get it done by being Leeds is as important as getting it done at all.
Which brings us back to Elland Road, that perfect literal and metaphorical monument to Leeds United. It is a fine football experience if you want throaty earthiness, a distilled form of Proper Football. It is raucous and rowdy and the players who learn to thrive in that environment become heroes.
It is also a sorry anachronism, tired and shabby and in need of care and ambition. Both of those things can be true at the same time and they reflect Leeds United’s own image back upon itself.
There have been more expansion proposals here than Alex, Rob and every other Leeds supporter cares to remember. Plans were unveiled in 1997, in 2001, in 2007, in 2009, in 2017 and in 2021. Either promises were not kept or emergencies demanded alternative priorities.
It is one of the more astonishing statistics in English football: over the last 30 years, a period of unprecedented expansionism and globalisation that invited each of its major clubs to pull up a chair and maximise their revenue, the capacity of Leeds United’s home stadium has actually decreased by 2,000. That’s how you allow a giant club to become smaller.
There is a new stadium project, of course. The local authority will rule on plans to increase Elland Road’s capacity to 53,000 and make it the seventh biggest football ground in England.
The work would likely be completed in 2027 at the earliest. Every single supporter I speak to is hopeful but not getting carried away. Once bitten, twice shy? If only it was just one bite.
The last time I was at Elland Road, a year ago almost to the day, Leeds lost 3-0 at home to Middlesbrough and the place was awash with mutiny towards the manager and mistrust about the direction of the club.
Now they’re crowing about overpowering an established Premier League they would once have considered their inferior. In few places do the winds of change blow through more fiercely.
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The ambition to break back into English football’s elite is not impossible, but it is certainly improbable. Leeds are far more likely to be relegated than finish in the top half this time. Burnley and Sunderland have so far both spent more on new players than Leeds.
If there is a strength drawn from the home form and the sheer chutzpah of the place, it is counteracted by the finances of the environment in which they have now rejoined.
Here again, the glorious irony of Leeds as English football’s great ouroboros: the PSR controls that will now act as a ceiling upon rapid expansion, frustrating those who seek to make up for lost time, were a direct result of Leeds’ own catastrophic economic mismanagement.
What could better sum up the absurdity of supporting this club?