The Square Ball: Season 35, Issue 08

Written by: The Square Ball
Cover artwork by: Rob Palmer

This is the eighth issue of TSB’s 35th season and Leeds United’s 2024/25 title-winning campaign.

Well, we only went and bloody did it! And Rob Palmer’s excellent cover artwork of Ethan Ampadu sums up that feeling of relief pretty bloody well.

Inside the mag, you’ll find from your favourite regular contributors:

Rob Conlon on the day we got what we all wanted and a night we got to party
Chris O’Connor tells Chris McMenamy about his new play, Through It All Together, set against the backdrop of the “golden years” of Leeds’ last promotion under Marcelo Bielsa
Miles Reucroft on how he son’s first game at Elland Road has potentially set the standard for excitement a little too high
Our agony aunt — AKA Problem Chimp, AKA Michael Normanton — on how to get rid of stress piles and whether drinking your own bodyweight in beer is a good idea
Plus an evening with finding inner peace with Ao Tanaka, Jermaine Beckford’s blue tongue, late night texts from Georgi Rutter, an A-Z of Scum, and loads more
Subscribe to get this issue cheap with TSB+ — click here for info

Support The Square Ball

Subscribe to TSB+ Mag

⬢ Yearly TSB+ membership
⬢ Regular issues of the magazine for £1 each (+p&p)
⬢ Ad-free podcasts, extra episodes, The Match Ball Live video, daily emails and more
⬢ Click here for one month free trial

How do I subscribe? Or read online?

Click here for more info on subscribing, and choose either TSB+ Mag or TSB Magazine.

Getting the magazine delivered to your home is a very good idea, as it will arrive free of beer stains and torn corners, unless your postie is having a bad morning.

The best way to buy The Square Ball is to subscribe and get every regular issue delivered to your home for the next twelve months.

That way we know how many to print, and we have the money up front to pay the printer. We’ll post anywhere in the world and you won’t miss an issue.

You can get £10 off a subscription to the paper magazine if you buy an annual membership of TSB+. TSB+ gets you all our podcasts advert free, early access and live streaming video of The Match Ball podcast, a digital sub to the magazine, a daily email, discounts and more — and that tenner off getting the paper version delivered.

If you don’t want to subscribe — why not?! — you can buy this issue on its own by clicking here, and we’ll post it out as soon as it’s printed.

Can I buy the magazine at Elland Road?

As always since 1989, barring pandemics and badly timed World Cups, The Square Ball magazine will be on sale outside Elland Road, for the match against Bristol City on Monday 28th April 2025. Just look out for our windswept but friendly sellers by the Lowfields tunnel, Billy’s Statue, the Kop gates, and anywhere else someone is holding a fanzine in the air, until about fifteen minutes before kick-off.

I’m a TSB+ member, where is the online magazine?

TSB+ members can read the magazine online now, either of two ways:

Download the PDF here
Read the articles online here

What else is in this issue?

Our now twelve times-nominated and two-times FSF Award winning fanzine, plus one for the podcast and as of 2022 one for ‘Fan Media’, includes lots of pages of articles and artwork about what used to be the pain but now is the glory which still involves pain of being a Leeds United supporter, for more than 100 long, long years.

Can I read something now? For free? Ah go on?

Free to read from this issue is Rob Conlon’s extended piece on the day it all happened for Leeds United — click here to read that for free.

You can order paper copies of issue eight from our online shop now, and they’ll be sent out as soon as they’re printed. To read a digital version online, please become a TSB+ member, with a one month free trial, here.

As Howard Wilkinson always used to say, thank you for your magnificent support. ⬢