daniel robert chapman wrote:I'm glad you don't buy into the 'best fans in the country' thing. The people who travel to Portsmouth and the like for a midweek game are as commited as it gets, obviously, but I'm sure most of the 50,000 at St James Park are as fickle as anyone else. Certainly as gullible. It looked for a while as though Newcastle were going to 'do a Leeds' but it looks like they've warded that off. Bastards.

I used to go every home game around the time we were last in the then Division One, just before Keegan. And the atmosphere was amazing, everyone singing and loving each other. Whenever i go these days, which isn't that often to be honest, the atmosphere is terrible. People leaving early, no one singing or anything. Bit sad really, i do believe that about five years ago we did have the best fans in the country. Suppose this is probably the case throughout English football, though.

chairman_hall wrote:Suppose this is probably the case throughout English football, though.

It sounds familiar. I've stopped going, although I'd like to see a game this season just for the heck of it, but it had long since lost it's charm. Somehow I'm not keen to spend £30 to sit in the cold with a lot of angry, bitter Yorkshire people that I wouldn't want anything to do with outside of a football ground, and who had begun spending as much time yelling at and about each others failings as fans as at the rubbish on the pitch.

I'm happier with the commentary on the radio and the goals (for the opposition, like) on YouTube, sad as that sounds.

chairman_hall wrote:

daniel robert chapman wrote:I'm glad you don't buy into the 'best fans in the country' thing. The people who travel to Portsmouth and the like for a midweek game are as commited as it gets, obviously, but I'm sure most of the 50,000 at St James Park are as fickle as anyone else. Certainly as gullible. It looked for a while as though Newcastle were going to 'do a Leeds' but it looks like they've warded that off. Bastards.

I used to go every home game around the time we were last in the then Division One, just before Keegan. And the atmosphere was amazing, everyone singing and loving each other. Whenever i go these days, which isn't that often to be honest, the atmosphere is terrible. People leaving early, no one singing or anything. Bit sad really, i do believe that about five years ago we did have the best fans in the country. Suppose this is probably the case throughout English football, though.

It's even a global phenomene.

Ringin' in the New Year - Leeds 2 Coventry 1. And the transfer window is open, so this month should tell us a lot about what Leeds are going to end up doing this season, and which division they play in next season.

Judging from the commentary, Coventry are lousy. Really, really lousy. Not as lousy as West Ham though - six-nil at Reading? Snigger.

went to see my first Sunderland game in two years on Saturday. Lost 1-0 to Preston. AWFUL. Preston were shit. They had one shot all game and scored from it. Sunderland weren't much better. Dwight Yorke, retire now.

If those performances really were fair reflections of the clubs' respective positions as promotion favourites / play-off hopefuls, then I dread to think what Leeds and Hull must be like.

It's all fucking go at Leeds United. The transfer window has been open a matter of days and they've signed Matt Heath, Robbie Elliot, Tresor Kandol (who we already had on loan, and who has 'impressed' enough to get a contract until 2010), Armando Miguel Correia De Sa ("International defender"), and Tore Andre Flo.



Mr Flo is taller than he appears in this photograph. And older. And more Chelsea. But he was good once, wasn't he? Kinda? With Gianfranco Zola setting them up for him? Oh well.

Judging by that photograph I'd say that Flo looks like a model pro.

Something here for m brother Tommydski - Gordan Strachan scoring against Leicester in Leeds' last great promotion season. With the classic John Helm commentary - "Have you ever seen a better goal? And have you ever seen one better timed?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AZfJB29Jjg

It's the FA Cup third round this weekend. The terrestrial TV games sound promising, I hope to see some of them.

Créteil 1 - 2 Nice (after extra time).
Nice qualified for the 16th of final of the French cup.

Congratulations to the supporters of Liverpool FC. Their FA Cup match against Arsenal is being shown live on the BBC, and they just mounted a protest against (I believe, because I'm short on the details) the Sun Newspaper's coverage of The Hillsborough Disaster. The Kop held up cards to spell out 'The Truth', and chanted 'Justice for the 96' loudly and continuously for six minutes, which I guess was the amount of time it took for those 96 people to die.

I always have mixed feeling about the scouse fans, they can grate like no others sometimes. But this was an excellent, well organised and well carried out protest, and they are in the right, too. It gives me a little bit of renewed hope about supporter power in the game.

Leeds United, needless to say, aren't in the FA Cup anymore. Sigh.

Edit - six minutes was how long the game lasted before the referee abandoned it. Makes more sense.