To paraphrase a viral tweet, football fans can literally just sit around naming old players and have the best time. So welcome to the first instalment of a new series of blogs in which we try our best to remember obscure former Leeds United players and have the best time while doing so. First up: Amdy Faye.

Wait… who?

A friend of Willie McKay and an enemy of autocorrect, Amdy Faye was part of the Senegal squad that became everyone’s second favourite team at the 2002 World Cup. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of the good ones like Papa Bouba Diop, Henri Camara or, erm, El Hadji Diouf, but he did make two appearances in the tournament as Senegal reached the quarter-finals.

A year later he was moving to the Premier League, joining Portsmouth, before spells at Newcastle, Charlton, and Stoke. He was pretty unremarkable for all four clubs, and became best known for being arrested by the City of London police in 2007 alongside agent McKay, Harry Redknapp, Milan Mandaric, and Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie. The police were investigating Faye’s transfer from Portsmouth to Newcastle — and later his initial move to Portsmouth — amid allegations of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting. All parties were eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.

It wasn’t the first or last time Leeds became embroiled in the world of Willie McKay, however.

From the archive: When Leeds met Willie

When did he play for us?

Leeds were a month into their return to the Championship under Simon Grayson when Faye, aged 33, began training with the club on trial (not that kind) in September 2010. He’d played only once for Stoke the previous season and contemplated retiring from professional football due to back injuries. He’d been on trial (again, not that kind) with Premier League side West Ham in the summer, who told him, “You are good but not fit enough.”

Leeds couldn’t afford to be so picky. After winning promotion from League One with the on-loan Michael Doyle doing the dirty work in midfield, Grayson needed a replacement bastard to sit in front of the back four and, in the more innocent times of England’s second division, kick lumps out of opposition attackers. Deals for Sheffield United’s Nick Montgomery and Watford’s John Eustace failed to materialise, prompting Leeds to turn to the free agent market once the transfer window closed.

After proving his fitness in a reserve game against Grimsby, Faye earned a short-term deal at Elland Road around the same time as fellow trialist Ramon Nunez, and came with a ringing endorsement from his former Stoke teammate Dom Matteo:

“He’s the sort of player Leeds are missing. There aren’t many gaps in the squad but a holding midfielder is something I feel they need. I was at Stoke with Amdy a couple of years ago and I’m sure he’d fit the bill.

“He’s someone who puts his foot in, likes a tackle and likes to battle with whoever he’s up against. He’s a quiet lad off the pitch but he’s not shy on it. I’ve seen him do it for Stoke in the Premier League and I think he’d be well suited to the Championship.”

Or as Grayson more succinctly put it:

“We’re signing him because of his presence, size, quality and experience. He’s different to what we have at the club already.”

Did he do owt?

Yes and no.

After Leeds squandered a 4-1 lead to lose 6-4 at Elland Road to a Preston team inspired by John fucking Parkin, fans were imploring Grayson to find a way to make his side more solid. In stepped Faye for his debut at Ipswich, which Leeds also lost, 2-1, but his crowning glory came in the next game, when he anchored the midfield at Middlesbrough as Leeds won by the same scoreline. I say anchor, he was more of a midfield wardrobe, never straying too far beyond the centre circle, but nevertheless a handy obstacle that was difficult for opposition players to dribble around.

Faye’s performance was overshadowed by Davide Somma and Luciano Becchio’s volley-off at the Riverside — not to mention Becchio growling “fucking unbelievable” in his post-match interview on Sky — but our new midfield enforcer made enough of an impression to earn some backhanded praise on an early episode of the TSB podcast afterwards:

“He’s one of those players who you don’t realise what they’re doing.”

“The water carrier type?”

“As long as the water doesn’t need carrying too far.”

Faye himself described what he was hoping to bring to the team in an interview with The Yorkshire Post after the game:

“It was only my second game for Leeds and I see my role as trying to talk to the others and help them. We need to be more relaxed. We panic too much sometimes, like we did when they scored the goal. It was a very stupid goal to give away. We should not be conceding like that. They cannot score if we have the ball.

“It is not up to one player, it is up to all the players. But what I will say is that these players can play football. The thing is they are learning. So, I try to help. I like to speak, saying things like, ‘You don’t need to do that next time.’”

Wise words after some has dropped a bollock, indeed.

So then what happened?

By the next episode of the podcast, Faye was being described as “hopeless”: “He’s not the Mickey Doyle we need.”

After six-consecutive starts, he dropped out of the team, and only made two more appearances as a stoppage-time substitute. At the start of January, Grayson suggested he was open to extending Faye’s contract until the end of the season, only to release him on a free less than two weeks later, even though Neil Kilkenny was on international duty with Australia at the Asian Cup and Grayson was openly saying Leeds needed reinforcements in midfield and he expected some to arrive that month.

They didn’t, and Grayson had to wait until March before Barry Bannan and Jake Livermore arrived on loan, by which point Leeds’ promotion push was slipping away. That sort of thing used to happen quite a lot under Ken Bates, the horrible old ghoul. Still, at least Ramon Nunez’s contract got extended until the end of the season.

What should we remember him for?

Having been signed with Leeds hoping he’d solve the problem of our generic identikit League One midfield trio of Jonny Howson, Neil Kilkenny, and Bradley Johnson being bullied by Championship bruisers, Faye did actually help Grayson stumble upon the solution.

Unfortunately for Faye himself, the solution was to drop him from the midfield and play all three of them together. Toiling at Scunthorpe and with the score tied at 1-1, Faye was replaced by Johnson shortly after half-time, prompting Howson to score a fifteen-minute perfect hat-trick immediately afterwards as Leeds romped to victory at the start of a twelve-match unbeaten run.

Good work, Amdy! Now see yer later.

Did he do anything after?

No. Nothing. Faye never played for another club after leaving Leeds, because he was old and knackered. Which is the only reason he got a move to Leeds in the first place. ⬢