Before the Luton match Daniel Chapman (AKA Moscowhite) wrote a really necessary piece on just how good Leeds currently are compared to many years and decades gone by. He also gives his thoughts on the strange culture of catastrophising that has become so prevalent in fan culture. I thought it was one of the best football pieces I have read all year. You do need to sign up/subscribe to read his writing in full but it is well worth it. I provide a summary excerpt below.  

‘At some point we have to factor in that Farke's two seasons, dissatisfying as they might feel now or ultimately become, have been once-every-twenty-season experiences, twice. Seasons like these are very, very rare, and we've had two back to back. Some fans want to pull the wings off this butterfly, especially now the accounts show how much it cost, but that's football: all the clubs pay players too much money, but the players don't always deliver this much because the game remains the game. Ask a professional footballer how they'd feel if, by April, their team had only lost four games 1-0, and they'd probably dismiss the notion as ridiculous. United's style of play is a question of taste but it's also a question where the numbers have to be involved: how can Farke take the attacking shackles off a team that has outscored, per game, 89 other teams? It's getting deep into the tactical weeds to suggest what looks like caution actually builds the platform for some of the best attacking output our club has known since the 1960s, but that thought is there if you want it.

‘Different people want different things from football and it's fair enough for anyone to think historical amounts of wins and goals are worthless without promotion, to want Daniel Farke sacked right now simply because there's a risk promotion might not happen. I'm wary of telling anyone who isn't enjoying something that they're wrong. But even if I didn't like how the games have looked, in terms of simply seeing my favourite team score lots of goals and win lots of games, it feels to me like hard work to hate what's been happening for the last two seasons. And it feels like putting all those goals and wins on the line as secondary to promotion is mean-spirited, because the games themselves have to mean something, otherwise we'd just run computer simulations to pick promoted teams and accept football is only about what broadcasting payments you get next season. And promotion-or-nothing is also a false economy, because promotion to the Premier League will effectively guarantee that Leeds won't be winning this many games or scoring this many goals for the next however many seasons they stay up. It'd be like complaining that all the games were boring, then bailing out just when the season gains its capacity to thrill.’

Reasons to be cheerful