Wanted: Cup Kings (Short Term Contract)

As with many things that took place in the era before the mobile phone camera, there’s a certain element of mythos around Leeds United in the 1980s. I should know, I’ve created at least a small fraction of it.

Maybe this is because it’s harder to eulogise about half empty stadiums and for the most part dreary, lump it and run football. Was there also overt racism? Well, yes, some. And terrace violence? Not as much as you’d think.

For the most part the decade was more about growing up with a once mighty club who’d felt gravity harder than any other, in the wake of Don Revie’s exit and the wrecking ball of Brian Clough. But the procession of bitter disappointments meant that when football’s stars very occasionally aligned, the outcomes were written into folklore. One of those times was in the winter of 1987.

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