For Fun’s Sake

When the summer’s over and the squirrels start collecting berries, the Leeds United hive mind will have scribbled over this season and started drawing one unanimous conclusion: boring is better. Securing financial stability through continuous Premier League and broadcasting funding means that, after cycling through years of arduous player trading, a club may rest on a high enough cushion to access the risk required to challenge PSR regulations and improve their squad enough to aim for silverware. Truly, truly thrilling. Luckily enough, that’s not the case yet. Sometimes, a little bit of both is all we need, and that’s all Leeds United had.

The football season is a long one for those out there on the pitch, with at least 38 matchdays and the contractual obligation to talk to Michael Bridges once a year. But they’re millionaires, so we think it’s probably fair game to be a bit knackered.

And that’s the whole point. For nine months of the twelve, the footballing collective grumble away their nine to five to pay forty quid for ninety minutes every fourteen days. Now, I’m no good at numbers — but where’s the fun in that? Well, little one, allow me to tell you.

This season has been the perfect example of how football can be something to look forward to. For the weeks leading up to Wembley, I tossed and turned through sleepless hours under twitching eyelids replaying the possibility of a Calvert-Lewin bullet header. That same, wasp-in-a-bottle giddiness of the night before a school trip. I had my best clothes laid out alongside me on the bed, coach seating plans in place and my pack lunch swapped for a bag of cans. The FA Cup is the monkey bars of football; the corner of the playground where the big kids play, dangling flailing limbs and laughing graciously between themselves, while our boring old mam pushes us gently on the swings. This season, though, Leeds United grew up.

Within these nine months, it’s probably fair to say that we can’t expect to have them all be fun and games, and it’s probably fair to say that about half of them were shit. Farke’s footballing philosophies stood out in the university classrooms, but when Plato started asking him questions, we soon realised that maybe he wasn’t quite as forward thinking as we once thought.

So when Daniel’s boys went down to see the King Thinker himself, Mr Guardiola had planned for all likely outcomes. Leeds’ shaky mindset meant United started slow, but when Matheus Nunes dropped the ball off at Bernardo Silva’s feet, he wasn’t running very slowly at all. He’d burst off behind Jayden Bogle, begging for the return pass. He got it, lobbed it into Phil Foden’s feet and the little manc volleyed it off the crossbar. One minute, one nil. Farke’s job was all but over, and it was checkmate from Pep. The second goal was bundled in and Leeds looked to be all out of ideas. Luckily enough, Farke had one more plan up his puffer, and you can’t think your way out of a kick in the bollocks.

The big and beautiful bastard Dominic Calvert-Lewin came off the bench, and the Peacock’s tails were up. The team looked reborn, with a newfound brashness and no need for second guessing themselves. Nunes plays the ball to Foden once again, this time in the middle of the Man City half, but Gruev pounces onto it. He rolls it forward to Tanaka, where his left foot sets it for his right to swing. It skids through the gap between Sky Blue defenders and into DCL. The striker’s touch spins him back into the centre-backs, but with their testicles still twisted, Calvert-Lewin sneaks in to slip the ball past Gianluigi Donnarumma.

The game ended however it ended, but that was never important. Leeds had changed their minds, and we’d all followed. The same team had started the season poorly, lost any momentum from picking up 100 points and nearly resigned themselves back to David Prutton. A shift in playing style brought a shift in fortunes, in turn an uplift in attitude, and meant that now — when we all loved each other again — we still had something to play for. Two years of thrilling Championship football was great, but, aside from the last few weeks of the season, we generally had little to rearrange our jeans over. This season has brought Elland Road some gorgeously technical moments, while still giving us as much jeopardy as Challenge TV. It’d be very easy to rejoice in the glory times and ignore the darkness when it comes, but it’s that little bit of balance that makes it all so fun. We’ve been good enough to enjoy it, and bad enough to care.

Because if it wasn’t for the fact that Daniel Farke was reduced to a wankstain on Robbie Evans’ laptop screen, Bijol slinging a header in the near post against Chelsea wouldn’t have felt the same. If Noah Okafor hadn’t been riling us all up with stupid little flicks and tricks all season, it wouldn’t have been quite as much fun when he belted one in from 25 yards against Scum.

Next season, it may be true that boring is better. The Premier League is a perpetual culling, a constant plank walk of those too weak to fight back. It’s very easy, when you consider the Saudi journalists, financial doping and Super League conspirators to become distant from the emotion bedded into football. A philosophical outlook can leave you feeling peaceful, well-rested and into your car on seventy minutes. Nobody likes being sad, because it makes you sad.

For now, though, for the little while when we can, maybe you should choose to. There’ll be many seasons to come where stagnancy is the most suitable goal. Where safety is never a concern and the only aim for the club is to remain around the same place we’ve been standing for the last year. There’ll also be a time, hopefully, in a sense, that the club reaches the ceiling of its own capabilities, for a team not funded by fossil fuels. As we find ourselves still battling, still fighting for something worth caring about yet still having a team we can stand beside, it’s important to make the right decision. Choose to enjoy it, for fun’s sake. ⬢

This article is free to read from issue eight of The Square Ball magazine. Get your copy here.