For me, Leeds United’s last promotion from the Championship began with Pablo Hernandez’s pass to Stuart Dallas at Stoke and ended with his goal at Swansea. Few moments felt more gratifying than his threaded through ball finding Dallas to put Leeds ahead after 42 frustrating minutes in the Potteries. It was early in the season but it said a lot about that team and settled a very insignificant, very petty score that had been nagging me for months.

Three days after Marcelo Bielsa’s 66 minute seminar on opposition analysis in the wake of Spygate, I travelled to Stoke on a sub-zero January afternoon. The away end had an air of defiance about it. ‘We’re Leeds United, we’ll spy where we want’ was bellowed, before being drowned out by Tom Jones’ Delilah, a tune about stabbing one’s cheating girlfriend to death. Leeds turned the home side’s homicidal tendencies into a cry of, ‘Spy, spy, spy Bielsa,’ and the game kicked off.

What ensued was one of those cookie-cutter away Champo defeats that we sometimes found unavoidable under Bielsa. Leeds dominated but failed to truly threaten before conceding a soft goal, and then another, topping it all off with some dodgy refereeing decisions that added a sense of injustice and a late United goal to provide false hope. Et voila: the perfect Leeds away day.

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