Not really ready for
summer
Hey! Summer’s here! It’s great; wall-to-wall sunshine,
Saturday afternoons in the beer garden, barbecues at home with friends and
family and endless late nights where it never seems to get dark. But…..hang on,
you’re still thinking about the nine months of biting wind and rain and the hard
slog that we call the football season aren’t you? And let’s not kid ourselves,
we don’t really care too much about summer right now because we are stuck in a
sense of interminable doom brought about by Leeds United’s late season slide
out of the play-off zone. Too soon to think about holidays and al fresco dining
on the decking of an evening? Yeah, probably. We’re still thinking about Burton
away and that injury time equaliser conceded at Fulham and how Reading have
managed to stay in the top six and well, um, erm…..yeah.
So it’s over for another season and Leeds United have done
yet another impossibly ‘Leeds United’ thing; raised hopes out of nothing,
delivered some scintillating afternoons and evenings and then let us down at
the end, like a jilted bride left high and dry at the altar.
At times like this, we could console ourselves with the fact
that there is a 75% chance this sense of crushing despair would hit us 100
times harder in a few weeks, as only one team out of four can prosper through
the play-offs system. There is a tendency to forget the odds are stacked
against you, and people call the play-offs a ‘lottery’ because that is pretty
close to what they are. Right now though, we would gladly sell a limb for the
opportunity to chuck our ticket into the pot and line-up in the tension-filled,
nerve-shredding vortex of potential calamity that makes up the play-offs, even
in the knowledge that anguish and pain is more likely than not to arrive on
your doorstep at some point, be it in the two-legged semi-final or at Wembley
Stadium in the final.
But let’s face it, we’d rather take the chance. We had all started
making plans of some sort and had dropped some pretty subtle hints to our other
halves that we would be disappearing for a long weekend at the end of May, and
we had started drip feeding funds into a large pot to cover the enormous cost
of a Play-Off Final weekend. But it’s not to be, that £500 can be put to better
use and those brownie points can be saved for something that does actually
happen. Leeds United’s season is over.
Of course, we should remind ourselves that this season has
been beyond all our expectations, looking at the squad and another new
management team walking into the unknown back in August. Few people predicted
anything other than another arduous nine month battle to stay anchored in
mid-table. That we have enjoyed countless exhilarating games at Elland Road and
on the road this season is testament to the amazing job manager Garry Monk and
his coaching staff have done, and while we can get frustrated that we perhaps
didn’t do enough in the January transfer window, and that with eight games to
go we were in a very strong position, a seventh-placed finish shows incredible
progress from last season, and notwithstanding the shattering late loss of
form, ‘progress’ is all we ever wanted to see this season.
At the Old Peacock we are used to the big crowds before
Kick-Off of course, but on many occasions the atmosphere has been just as
vibrant after the games too. We are conditioned to seeing fans flowing back in
with sullen faces and muttering obscenities about another Leeds defeat, but this
season there has been a natural buoyancy all day and all night, which we would
love to bottle and sell for you to take home. But I guess, it is unmistakably
the Old Peacock. We think back to home wins over Barnsley, Aston Villa and
Derby, and then Sheffield Wednesday, Brighton and Preston and these were
special occasions that we hadn’t seen in a long time. Happy faces, genuine
pride in the team and the club, and essentially, a belief that ‘something’ was
happening again at Elland Road. It is important that we remember those
occasions whilst we feast on the disappointment of missing out on the
play-offs, and if the club do the right thing over the summer, hopefully this
is just the start.
Naturally, with Leeds United, that is a big ‘if’. But the
overriding hope now is that the club is more settled, there are full takeover
plans in place and with a more stable ownership structure only good things can
happen; and that means keeping Garry Monk for next season and beyond and making
the most of the progress we have undoubtedly made this season.
As I write there is just one game left in the 2016/17
campaign, away at Wigan Athletic; a dead rubber of a game, with Leeds needing
to win 13-0 (and rely on Fulham losing) and Wigan already relegated. We should
be thankful that there has only been one meaningless game this season, when
usually that is the case from January onwards, but certainly Leeds fans have
had a taste of what actually competing for promotion feels like and we all want
more, so it is up to the club to manage the summer in the right way, and to
bring us back in August with a genuine feeling of optimism.
For our part, we would like to thank our loyal, dedicated
and extremely patient staff, who we think do an amazing job in very challenging
circumstances on matchdays. Each Elland Road game involves an enormous amount
of planning and we think we have got it just about right. We will make
improvements for next season, just like Garry Monk and the team will, and we
hope to see you again in August, if not during the close season when our
quality food menus continue and you can sample the unique Old Peacock
atmosphere seven days a week. But on that note we also want to thank you our
loyal customers for your unstinting thirst during this and many other seasons.
Chin up, we will all be back in August and we will start again afresh. Keep
marching on together and enjoy the close season, from everyone at the Old
Peacock.
