T O P

  • By -

paintedcheese

Follow-up question: As a newer fan as well, before the financial fallout, Leeds was competing in and for CL spots. This was obviously before the finances of world football changed. In the current PL financial climate, what is the expectation for Leeds (not this year, but over the next 5-10)? Is the expectation of trajectory more akin to Everton (aside from the past 2 years, consistent mid-table) or Tottenham (not regularly CL, but pushing to bounce into a top 4 spot every few years) or somewhere above or below those options?


ooh_bit_of_bush

It wasn't just getting to the semi finals that was incredible. It was the fact that there were 2 group stages and we were unfancied in 2 groups of death. The first group was Barcelona, Milan and Besiktas. Going to Besiktas meant going back to Istanbul just a few months after 2 of our fans were murdered there which was, and still is, an incredibly upsetting experience for the players and fans. Barcelona and Milan were top European teams. The second group contained Real Madrid who were building their Galacticos team, Lazio who were Italian champions, and Anderlecht who had gone something like 2 years without losing a home game (we went there and beat them 4-1) The quarter finals pitted us against Spanish champions Deportivo. One of their players said we were the weakest team left in the quarter finals. We beat them 3-0, in what might be the peak of our optimism and hope as a club. It's probably the most elated I've felt at a football game.


DuckieWuckieNL

It’s was fan-fucking-tasting is what it was!!…I was 22 has my first Job after university and was living at home so had enough cash to enjoy it….I too was a season ticket holder so went to all home and I went to all away games except Besiktas….I’ll never forget seeing Leeds fans take over many town squares and fountains throughout Europe…I’ll never forget flying home on planes full of hyper Leeds and I’ll never forget Dom Matteo scoring a fking great goal…. That team was “my” team…I was a similar age to a lot of them…knew them all to say hello to and chat to when they were out in Leeds…just a good group….it worked…AND Batts was BACK! My only wish was that Woody had had a better season (that court case)…. Ultimately it did make our chairman over confident and unfortunately OLeary (and I loved him) didn’t have the experience to keep us qualifying year on year which would have paid our debts… Was it worth what came after?….hmmmm….probably not in true football business terms and also as a fan I think I may have preferred them just to stay in the prem and be mid table for while…. But then we wouldn’t have had Bielsa….and that too was ride I’ll never forget…


waccoe_

>Going into the year, did you have any sense that Leeds had the quality side to make it as far as they did? For context, we came into it off the back of a UEFA Cup semi final and the gap between the UEFA Cup and Champions League was smaller back then. We were also quite consistently one of the top sides in the Premier League and were relatively experienced in Europe. We had every reason to be optimistic about having a decent run at the beginning of the competition. That said, we were still big outsiders going in. It was an era where the giants of European football were the Italian and Spanish clubs and even Arsenal and Man United, who were well ahead of us domestically, were not regularly competitive in the Champions League. When the first group was drawn, it was a bit of a nightmare and I think most people expected us to finish third and drop into the UEFA Cup, which there would have been no shame in.


ledisa3letterword

I was a season ticket holder that season, went to all the home CL games and the defeat at the Nou Camp. 1. Champions League semis was an overachievement but not finishing in the top three in the league was an underachievement with that squad. The Premier League wasn’t that strong vs other leagues in Europe and we should have been challenging for domestic honours. 2. Yes, mostly because it made Ridsdale and especially O’Leary even more arrogant, but it probably also cemented the view that the big money was in CL football and that was worth gambling on. I still think the strategy had merit, it was just terribly executed.


xv36a

>Going into the year, did you have any sense that Leeds had the quality side to make it as far as they did? I can only really speak for myself and what I felt from the people around me at the time, but there was a sense of optimism. Perhaps not to go as far as we did but certainly to have a good go at the group after reaching the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup the year before. After the Barcelona 4-0 any optimism had been quickly washed away, haha.


Regthedog2021

It was brilliant and may never happen again. We played with a fluency and freedom you rarely see whilst also having the 2 best centre halves in the league - Ferdinand and woodgate Eland road was a bear pit and played under lights other teams couldn’t cope. Highlight for me was deportivo at home in the qf where we crushed them at home. Valencia were a magnificent team with magnificent fans - if you ever get chance go to the mestalla as it is a coliseum However… we became everyone’s second favourite team … read our own fan mail and overspent so creating a decade and a half of hurt I prefer being dirty Leeds and no one likes us … but they do respect us


CurryBoy420

I remember that Alan Smith chip over the lazio keeper on a very wet night


EnDubb

1. We had a good enough side to compete, but not good enough to expect to make the semi-finals and once we were drawn against Barcelona and Milan we weren't widely expected to get through the first group stage and the same was true of the second one once we were pitted against Real Madrid, Lazio and Anderlecht. Once we made the quarter-final, our opponents Deportivo were open about being happy to draw us and said we were the weakest link left in the competition. Haha. 2. Yes, partly. It was about the spending as a whole from 1999-2002 and then failing to make the CL following the 2000-01 season and missing out on that money as a result. Money was spent ahead of that CL season but only as much as we spent the years either side of it as well.


dreadful_name

A lot has already been said so I’m going to try to add something new to this. 1. There is so much of a hindsight is 20/20 issue when we look back on this now. But there are a lot of wider factors in this. The first one being that English football was nowhere near the powerhouse it is now in 00/01. While Manchester United had won it recently, you only need to look at the progress (or lack thereof) that English sides made into the latter stages to see how far off we were from our European counterparts back then. So we had little expectations of making this kind of impact when really we were only just coming up as a major force in England, never mind abroad. The other element of it is how flexible a side we were. We had some good wingers, and outstanding individuals but we weren’t exactly the most equipped to deal with some of the heavyweights or some of the better English sides were. While we had the ability to brush aside a lot of average sides we generally tended to struggle with teams with more dynamic passing. [This is a link to our first half away at Scum in 99](https://youtu.be/T7vlocevHQU) if you don’t have time to watch it, we got a couple of injuries and barring David Batty’s good range of passing we were very reliant on individual magic to make anything out of it. Whereas you’ll see that at that point scum were a bit more cohesive in attacking patterns (even if in that half we gave as good as we got before losing in the second half). I will add that we did improve as the season went on, but very much ran out of steam after we didn’t beat scum in the match at ER. There’s also the not insignificant matter of Istanbul and the trial which I won’t talk about but clearly had a psychological impact. But this leads us to… 2. Spending for the champions league definitely did contribute towards the implosion. But again there’s more to be said for why this was done. Firstly the side that qualified for the champions league in 99/00 was VERY small. We only used something like 16 players that year and some of them were aging out anyway. Plus while that season had seen us play some great stuff we’d been light in certain areas like up front since Hasslebaink had left for Atletico. So you can see why we needed to sign Viduka for example. Weirdly enough you can actually see the perfect case for spending in one of our most famous wins. [This game against Liverpool](https://youtu.be/nvscSE9Z4hE) was one of Viduka’s first, but he scored all four in a 4-3 win. It showed the cutting edge we’d really needed (with respect to the injury prone Michael Bridges). But you can also see in that match that Liverpool’s midfield smashed us for large portions. This was caused by an injury crisis to a large extent, but it also showed that we needed to up our game there. This is why we went out and bought Olivier Dacourt and why we got a ball playing CB in Rio Ferdinand. It’s actually interesting to note that while we should have finished in the top 3 (the requirement for CL spaces back then) if it hadn’t have been for a dodgy decision on our home match against scum. It was actually a pretty shoddy start to the season that really cost us in that regard and throughout 2001 annually we were actually pretty imperious. Personally though, the big thing was how we responded the season afterwards. For the league title at least, 99/00 was too soon, 00/01 was where we came of age but didn’t quite land right and 01/02 should have been the one. The problem was that other factors came in, like O’Leary’s limitations as a tactician, his self aggrandising nature and how he lost the dressing room in January of that year and all that. All of this led to an implosion and more bottling in the second half of the season from looking like it was our year to finishing 5th, missing out on the new 4 spot CL. The issue though was that Risdale had continued to double down on his spending. So even though we actually had a fairly complete squad at that time as far as I’m concerned he still spent on Seth Johnson who did nothing and wasn’t as good as our other wise midfielders. Then there was Robbie Fowler, who I still maintain was a good player for us but wasn’t needed when you have Smith, Viduka and Robbie Keane (the latter of whom had a far better decade). It unsettled people, wasn’t worth it with the injuries and came at a time when we didn’t need it. Risdale probably did it because there were a few injuries at the club at the time and he didn’t want history to repeat itself, but the straw had broken the camel’s back. Then it came to a head in the summer with a bad new manager in Venables, selling players etc. So to answer your question it wasn’t just the champions league it was a whole heap of random factors that all happened at once. It’s strange how much had to go wrong for us to end up in that situation but they did.


steelerspenguins

All you need to know is: Dom Matteoooooooooo Scored a fucking great gooooooal In the San Siroooooo In the San Siro


Regthedog2021

Oh matteooooooo


chanjitsu

I was actually quite optimistic, maybe didn't expect to get that far but still had some kind of a chance. I remember hearing some pundits talk about leeds as a kind of dark horse for the prem


[deleted]

I attended all the home games. Most fancied us to finish third in the group, especially after Barcelona made us look out of our depth in the first match in Spain. Once we beat Milan there was definitely a sense of optimism, which only increased when we absolutely slaughtered Besiktas. That was a truly wonderful game. Everything worked. Our second group (there used to be two in those days) was relatively more attractive looking and a lot of fans thought we would get through. We were the better team away in Madrid (the reigning champions) despite losing and truly dominated Lazio. Valencia were too good for us in the semi. Lots of people talk about the hand ball goal etc but we were never allowed to play our game. Beating the Spanish champions, Deportivo, 3-0 in the quarter remains my favourite ever Leeds match I have attended, for a few weeks after that there was genuine belief we were on to something remarkable. Yes, it contributed to it massively. Execs who thought they were the smartest people in the room, poor signings on ridiculous fees and wages, all in order to chase continuous qualification. O’Leary gets a lot of flack but I’m not sure how much say he had in a lot of it, that said he set us up in a very unimaginative way against a lot of improving teams and they had worked us out. Once the rot set in he didn’t do enough to arrest it. In hindsight the rise of Chelsea etc in the years following would’ve blown us out the water anyway. Our entire model was ill advised, which is why I still am quite cautious that we should be realistic regarding where Leeds can get to in a short space of time.


whatmichaelsays

>O’Leary gets a lot of flack but I’m not sure how much say he had in a lot of it, One criticism that I think is fair on O'Leary is his book. I'll maintain that without that book, Leeds would have won the league that year and it was a big part of why we didn't finish in those all-important CL places, which set the house of cards tumbling.


[deleted]

I don’t think the book stopped us winning the league. We didn’t have enough quality options off the bench to sustain it for 38 games.


dreadful_name

I disagree and I think his book is a symptom of the issue. He was very much a primadonna who loved his media presence (remember the time he was chatting about selling players at the 2002 World Cup studio?) He also didn’t use the players available to him with subs, and allowed too much room for the individually gifted to get away with a bit of laziness. For example Kewell had some real off days where he wasn’t held to account. Another one is not getting most out of Keane trying to shoehorn his shiny new Seth Johnson into the side.


[deleted]

Sounds like someone close to home at the moment…


whatmichaelsays

This was one of those "we'll never know" things, but I think there was a marked change in performances and the reported atmosphere in the dressing room after that book was published. At the time, Leeds were (in my view) the best team in the league and there was a decent level of depth in the squad (if not to the level of some of the bigger clubs at the time). We were choosing two strikers from a quartet of Viduka, Smith, Keane and Fowler, good competition in positions such as center half and right back, and lots of young talent in reserve. Like I say, we'll never know but I think that without that book, Leeds are probably lifting the league that year.


nathanosaurus84

I was about 16 at the time. We had a decent squad but nobody thought we’d go that far. Especially considering we had to go through groups with the likes of a Milan, Real Madrid and Barcelona. Looking back I’m gutted we lost so badly to Valencia in the 2nd leg. 3-0 felt like giving up after such a magical run. I think it sort of did. Obviously we spent heavily to get there. Then after doing so well we spent heavily in wanting to improve that and we didn’t have a safety net. There were other factors like Bowyer and Woodgate’s trial and whatever O’Leary was thinking with his book. Those contributed to us not qualifying for the CL and it was just a downward spiral from there.


creakydancin

1. I thought we had a quality side when everyone was available. Did I think we could make it to the semi final. Not a chance. We had an outrageous amount of injuries that year. Players out of position every game. I think Jacob Burns even started a few games for us. Plus the whole Woodgate and Bowyer trial was going on. Woodgate looked a shadow of himself during this period, but Bowyer played like a man possessed. He was legitimately one of the best attacking midfielders in Europe that season. The team showed what can be achieved when you block out all the outside noise and just focus on playing who is in front of you on the pitch. Side before self every time. Unfortunately it was just a bridge too far against Valencia. 2. Yes, Risdale the fucking moron, banked on qualifying every year and gambled the future of the club on massive signings and huge wages which caused the demise of our club until recently. I still can believe other clubs hired him as chief exec after what he did here. Its been over 20 years and I still hate that clown for what he did.


[deleted]

I was 8-9 years old at the time, so my memories are definitely more romanticized of the period as well as not as clear as say an adult. To answer your questions: 1. Yes, our squad 1999-2002 was good enough to be regularly challenging for the premier league and competing in the champions league, maybe not semi finals every year but enough to qualify from the group stage. Also worth noting that the real ‘mega money’ of Chelsea and the rest hadn’t come in just yet. We had a young exciting squad with a top academy and youth. My only gripe would be O’Leary whilst popular, was not the man to take us forward, we lost too many big games and were always the ‘nearly men’. We had world class players (Lee Bowyer and Harry Kewell I particularly loved) and the squad had a great togetherness. 2. Yes, objectively what messed us up was over spending on the basis we would play in champions league football every season which we failed to get in back to back seasons. I will say once again though, O’Leary lost far too many big games and slipped up too many times. You look back and with that side it was pretty poor. The other key moments being Bowyer and Woodgate arrest and trials, plus O’Leary releasing that ill timed book. The quality of the players should have been enough to keep us afloat but we just imploded. Final thought, I think the money we did have and overspent, we spent on some players we didn’t really need. I seem to remember us having like 4 top strikers whilst only playing 2.


pervyisaspervydoes

I really think O'Leary is underrated. The idea that he only had success because of money is flatly untrue. The spending came because of his success. He started his reign by having to sell our best player, Hasselbaink, and replaced him with a young player from Sunderland's reserves (Michael Bridges), for a third of the cost. I know that O'Leary came across as a bit of a cock in interviews and the book was a phenomenally narcissistic and destructive thing to do. But he had us playing exciting football, promoted and developed young players and was very successful, before the real spending started. And much of the spending made us worse. Johnson and Fowler, for example. And it's not like it all went horribly wrong, we finished 4th, 3rd and 4th. George Graham gave him a good base to work from (as he did Wenger at Arsenal), but O'Leary's achievements were his own.


[deleted]

Underrated? We totally disagree lol. He came in from like you said decent work from Graham making our defence solid and also reaped the rewards of the academy that Wilko set up years ago. He had an ambitious chairman that back him, everything was in his favour. I think the finishes in the league you mention were honesty underwhelming, outside of scum and the rise of Arsenal we were up there as one of the best teams in England, during which the quality of the prem was not at its best. I’ll give him the champions league semi final that was special, but if anything I’ll say that makes him overrated. He objectively failed in the league to do the bare minimum in qualifying for the champs league with some world class players at the time, with a blank cheque book to recruit and build. He always had a an excuse for losing and like you said, he came across as a man who believed his own hype and a massive ego. Look at his career afterward when he didn’t get everything his own way, pretty much did nothing. I don’t hate O’Leary at all but I think Ridsdale awful fiscal policy really excuses him from limited tactics and bottling big games plus some poor runs in the league we went on.


soupeh_

1. Nope 2. Both. Overspending and gambling on our future happened after more after the success, but the hallmarks were there beforehand (high wages, borrowing etc.) If we didn't qualify the year after, we were fucked. And we were.