Limited Time Discount! Shop NOW!
Leeds United are back in the Premier League and if there’s one thing we can bring then it’s pure unadulterated spite.
And if Fulham think they can escape our ire by being quite possibly the most inoffensive team in the division, they can think again.
Fulham are far too meek a club to have any sense of rivalry with, but there have still been some significant games between the two sides. After David O’Leary’s Leeds collapsed from top of the league on New Year’s Day all the way down to 6th over the second half of 2001/02, they travelled to Craven Cottage in April desperately hanging on to their hopes of finishing in the top four and qualifying for the Champions League.
In their first season in the Premier League, Fulham were on a run of nine games without a win and nervously looking over their shoulder at the relegation zone. Yet Leeds were insipid, and while Fulham weren’t much better, they scored the game’s only goal from one of their three shots across the entire ninety minutes. A Newcastle win later that day confirmed Leeds weren’t going to make the Champions League, and O’Leary accepted he was going to have to sell some of his star names for United to avoid financial meltdown:
“I’m an employee of this club and I’m sure over the next few weeks I’ll be told what I have to do. I’ll be given my instructions and I will carry them out, because that is what I’m employed to do.”
He wasn’t employed for much longer, and Leeds didn’t avoid financial meltdown.
In happier times, Fulham were one of Leeds’ main competitors for promotion from the Championship in 2019/20. A 2-1 defeat at Craven Cottage added to Marcelo Bielsa’s list of losses in the capital. In an ill-tempered game, Pablo Hernandez was injured after forty seconds and needed to be replaced and Fulham scored the opener after being awarded a spectacularly weak penalty.
The bad blood between the two teams continued into the return fixture at Elland Road, played in an empty stadium during the pandemic, as Aleksandr Mitrovic got away with elbowing Ben White in the head in the opening ten minutes. Leeds responded by embarrassing Fulham with their superior football, wiping the floor with their opponents in a 3-0 win inspired by Pablo Hernandez’s magic and a black labrador in the Kop.
2️⃣ years ago today, we beat Fulham 3-0, with Jack Harrison finishing off this move 👏pic.twitter.com/Ga8lBwPTDz
— LUFCMOT (@LUFCMOTcom) June 27, 2022
Tom Cairney is still knocking around and still terrifying us with his penchant for scoring against the side that released him from their academy at 16 years old. But he’s 34 now, not playing too much these days, and always just seemed like a decent midfielder.
So the answer is Harry Wilson, who hasn’t even played for Scum, yet has still managed to develop into an awful Scumface, cheating, binocular bastard.
I was quite up for us signing him on deadline day. (And have already accepted that him and Rodrigo Muniz will score against us on Saturday.)
Yes, it really is somehow still Marco Silva. He only lasted a year in his five previous jobs but is now into his fifth season with Fulham, the longest spell he has been in charge of any club.
There’s not a great deal to dislike about Silva, is there? He looks a bit like a rubbish Madame Tussaud’s waxwork of Colin Farrell and feels a bit like a coach from a save of Football Manager that’s been running too long. In that sense, he’s probably perfect for Fulham.
Fulham developed a habit of nabbing some of our better strikers during the wilderness years — David Healy, Ross McCormack, Matt Smith — but none of those are on the same stratosphere at either club as Allan Clarke.
Fulham gave Clarke his break in the First Division, signing him from Walsall when he was still a teenager. In a struggling side that was ultimately relegated, Sniffer still produced two 20+ goal seasons at Fulham, averaging better than a goal every other game before leaving for a season at Leicester then onto icon status at Leeds. Those fortunate to have seen him play at Craven Cottage still describe him as the best striker to have turned out for the club.
Michael Brown can fuck right off though.
As usual, they’ve just been incredibly Fulham. They finished 10th as Leeds were relegated in 2022/23, then 13th and 11th. They’re very much the mid-table fodder that the 49ers Enterprises dream of Leeds becoming.
Last season, they recorded their highest ever points tally for a Premier League season. 54 points. We got 59 in our first season back under Bielsa. Pathetic.
Original price was: £22.00.£15.00Current price is: £15.00.
£3.00
£15.00
