Footballers get recognised a lot. It seems like a right pain in the arse. Even before he’d established himself in Leeds’ first team, Cree Summerville couldn’t have a quiet meal in the city without someone interrupting. It’s one reason why, on the rare occasion I might spot a Leeds player out of context going about their everyday life, I’ll usually leave them alone. Also I worry that if I ever got the chance to meet, say, Luciano Becchio, it wouldn’t take long before I tried to lick his face and ask him to whisper “fucking unbelievable” into my ear.

There are exceptions, however, and they mostly involve booze. That might explain why Georgi Rutter walking past me in town a few hours after Leeds gave Ipswich a pasting at Elland Road just before Christmas made me feel like Santa had fallen down my chimney while I was watching TV.

It was already a contender for the status of a Golden Day. Leeds were piss-takingly good. Leif Davis got a standing ovation. Neck Oil was on draught in the North-East corner. The joy of the post-match pints, catching up with friends one last time before Christmas, shifted the remaining fog of a hangover.

I try not to let Leeds losing affect my mood too much, but I can’t deny that when Leeds are bloody good then life feels bloody good. Step forward Georgi Rutter, casually strolling through town on his own, as relaxed as a 4-0 win. He was walking towards John Lewis, I guess for some final bits of Christmas shopping. As he passed me, I blurted out his name without really thinking. He looked at me, so not knowing what to say I gave him a Leeds salute. Georgi grinned, wished me a merry Christmas, and walked off laughing while I stood there, mouth ajar, stuck on a loop of Leeds salutes. He might as well have unzipped his jacket and revealed he had a Superman ‘S’ on his chest. It felt like a poster from the wall of my childhood bedroom had come to life, looked me in the eye, and said, “Alright.” It was quite possibly the most giddily gleeful moment of my life.

Naturally I considered following him. I was wearing a pin badge of a rabbit poking its head out of a top hat with the words ‘Leeds Are Magic’ and regretted not giving it to him. Georgi already knows that Leeds are magic, though. Even in back-to-back defeats against Preston and West Brom, he was the most fun thing about Christmas. If Leeds were going to get anything from those games, their best chance was to give Rutter the ball and let him dribble from one penalty box to the other. By the time Leeds rediscovered their mojo against Birmingham, Daniel Farke was warning Georgi not to embarrass his opponents with too many tricks, although I suspect Farke was just annoyed that shortly after he got a round of applause for his own first touch in the dugout, Rutter did this:

???? That. Is. Filth. @georgi_hrt pic.twitter.com/jNEwYLlfjS

— Leeds United (@LUFC) January 2, 2024

The sheer joy of players like Rutter is why I found it difficult to get too invested in the criticism of Farke’s Leeds after the loss at West Brom. This season is far too much fun not to enjoy.

Leeds’ big crime at the Hawthorns was that they failed to score past the second-best defence in the division. Yeah, it’s frustrating, but stuff like that happens now and again. The only teams above us in the league are Southampton, on an eighteen-match unbeaten run (mainly against bottom-half clubs), and Ipswich and Leicester sides that have been setting record pace as the top two. Maybe Leeds haven’t been good enough, but when ‘not good enough’ is not going eighteen games unbeaten or not winning points at a rate this league has literally never seen before, then getting upset takes more effort than it’s worth. It’s easy to forget our expectations before the start of the season. In the first issue of the season 54% of TSB+ members predicted play-off hell. As many people thought we’d finish outside the play-offs as thought we’d finish top of the league. It’s in our DNA. Even when Leeds won the Championship by ten points, it still took Marcelo Bielsa two years, a play-off defeat, a £200,000 fine, and a big post-Christmas wobble that blew an eleven-point lead. It’s weird that some people think we should be making this look easy.

If those three sides win promotion ahead of Leeds come the end of the season, I like to think I’ll be mature enough to say, ‘Well done. I hope you get relegated next year.’ Football makes villains of everyone. But we’ve got Georgi Rutter, and he’s definitely one of the heroes. ⬢