Via Diez.hn, but also Google Translate:
On Saturday, the Honduran Ramon Nunez was in the bank and you are hours that takes to make his debut in MLS d fter eight months of being sidelined after suffering a severe cruciate ligament injury in the knee with Leeds United.
Nunez looked sharp in training on Tuesday morning the Dallas and prepare for your trip to Seattle. If Ferreira is unable to make the trip, “The Little Prince” could be set to make her debut in the season, even if Hyndman still taking things cautiously.
“I feel good and I feel that whenever I have the opportunity to come to the court and soon I’ll be ready,” said Nuñez. “I’m starting to do the same things I could do before the injury and I feel good about it, a yeah I’m looking forward to the time of my return,” confessed the Honduran.
This is still my favourite Ramon Nunez video. Oh well.
AIDAN WHITE
Ah yes, our famous right-winger. It’s odd to think back a year to when getting White to sign his contract seemed such a priority; Celtic were the most strongly linked, Arsenal the oddest and yet still plausible rumour, Borussia Dortmund the real wild card in the large group of teams who wanted a piece of Aidy. Dortmund are second in the Bundesliga now, and I suspect if you offered them the chance to renew their interest this summer, they’d probably start looking at the floor and making excuses. Aidy’s not had a good season. And that’s not just this season, I don’t think he’s had one ever. Which is a shame, because after the brightness of his debut at sixteen, nobody wants to see his talents and obvious strengths squandered; but Aidan White has so far become a conundrum rather than a great player. Part of the problem is that his debut was so long ago - it’s been five years now - so his development has been exposed in a way that Sam Byram’s wasn’t, and as fans we can’t help but feel it’s time he shaped up. He is still, though, only twenty-one, and he’s just had a season under a manager who clearly didn’t give two fucks about helping him develop. The risk of letting Aidy leave would be that a change of scene might bring the best out of him, and The New Bale would do his baling for some other team. Let’s hope that McDermott can make all the scene changes necessary right here, because god damn it, I just really want Aidy White to be good.
ANDY GRAY
Looking back, the signs that Warnock was on a fucking wind up were always there, weren’t they? At least he finally got his goal, and left without doing anything to damage his family’s excellent name.
JAMIE ASHDOWN
The substitute keeper is a relatively recent phenomenon in football; the days of just two subs, 12 and 14, are not so long gone; Bert Trautmann carrying on in goal for Man City despite his broken neck still within living memory. You suspect that had City had Jamie Ashdown on the bench that day, they wouldn’t have taken such chances with Bert’s body. But if their manager had been Neil Warnock, he probably wouldn’t have named a sub goalie anyway - a waste of a sub, he reckoned, even though he rarely used the ones he named - plus it would take more than a broken neck for Colin to take Paddy Kenny out of the goal. It takes, in fact, a cup match, but only an early round, I reckon; I can’t imagine Warnock being one of these managers who lets “the lad who got us there” play at Wembley. “Fuck that,” he’d say, “Where’s Paddy?” Words which, despite some decent performances and the feeling that he’s probably as good if not better than Kenny, sum up Ashdown’s Leeds career so far.
RODOLPH AUSTIN
You can look up a list of matches played by Rodolph Austin on the internet. On 27th November 2011, he played in Brann’s last match before the close of the Norwegian season, returning in the next campaign on 25th March 2012. In the fifty-seven weeks since, I reckon it that Rudy has played seventy-one games of football - more than a game a week for more than a year - and it would have been more if he hadn’t taken a couple of weeks off with what appeared to be a shattered leg. Throw in the fact that some of those games were for Jamaica on the other side of the world, that his game is about charging runs in the busiest part of midfield, and that he even found time to record a rap, and it’s no wonder The Beast is fucking knackered.
There has been a growing view that Rodolph might not be as good as we first thought. He looked like the answer to all our midfield problems at first; after Simon Grayson’s experiments with Amdy Faye and Michael Brown, Austin’s strength, power, aggression, and aura of being impossible to fuck dominated the ground while the ball flew back and forth over his head. The feeling when he was carried straight into an ambulance was that our season’s hopes were being carried with him, and in way they were, as even though he came back amazingly quickly we never saw that early Rodolph again. He has looked slow, lumbering rather than lungbursting, his shots veering whomping the advertising hoardings, his passes whomping Sam Byram’s face. He’s been rubbish, basically.
But good lord the man needs a holiday. Playing professional football constantly for fifty-seven weeks is bloody daft, and it’s no wonder he has begun to labour. It’s a shame the club wasted the ‘new start’ stuff on Warnock, because next season under McDermott already has a freshness about it, and a box-fresh Beast is something I’m really looking forward to seeing. Because I think he’s actually better than we’ve seen. He was already well into a season’s worth of matches by the time he arrived, and was put into a team that didn’t really know what its midfield was for; the chance to impress hasn’t really been there.
Part of that hope is just because I really like him. I love the head down bull-charges towards the corner flag. I love the hunched shoulders and long strides as he marches away from a mangled opponent. I love the fact that rather than petty trips, he deals in solid tackles, and that as a true hard man he wins the ball rather than just hurts the player. I love the Sterlandesque free-kicks from distance, no matter how rarely they go in, and the way that any time a free kick is awarded forward of the centre circle Rudy will stride over until McCormack tells him no.
A holiday, a pre-season, and a manager with an interest in midfield. The best of the Beast is yet to come.
From The Square Ball magazine 2012/13 issue ten.
From the joke of an interview with Bates in the Yorkshire Post today:
Bates added: “I didn’t like what he did to Tom Lees. To criticise Tom like that was terrible. After we heard what had been said post-match by Warnock, Suzannah and I rang Tom on the bus home.
“I told him, ‘Forget what has been said, it is a disgrace’. We then told Tom what a valuable member of the squad he was.”
…“Brian McDermott has made a big impression on everyone already,” he said. “Suzannah and I went for lunch with Brian (on Wednesday).”
A couple for the ‘GFH-C got rid of Ken Bates’ files, there.
From Leeds En France:
Ce n’est seulement que 2 minutes plus tard que McCormack centre la balle et Luke Varney apparait de nulle part comme Batman dans la nuit pour la reprendre de la tête. Le ballon s’écrase contre la barre avec de traverser la ligne. 1-1!
TUESDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
“Let’s just go in,” says Natasha. “It’s cold out here.” I yank the door open and it yelps, and Lee falls from behind it. “Nat!” he says, as he struggles to regain his balance. Nobody calls Natasha ‘Gnat’, except Lee. “Nat, did you get my text?”
“Which one?” she replies. “Has he been texting you again?” I say. “So glad you could make it!” he says, “Are you coming again on Saturday?”
“We haven’t even got in tonight yet, Lee,” I say. His hands scramble desperately for a hold - the door handle, the panelling on the wall, Natasha’s legs. “Do you need a hand getting up?” I ask.
“No, it’s fine,” says Lee, crashing backwards through the door into the bar. “Come and have a drink!”
///
I have pleaded with Natasha that our Tuesday night ‘tradition’ should cease. I don’t know what such mundane routines say about our marriage; or maybe I do, and I just don’t want to admit it. We’ve always lived round here since we came home from honeymoon. We’ve come together to the same pub every Tuesday since (barring summer holidays). We’ve seen landlords come and landlords go, we’ve see the regulars change. I’ve never seen it as bad as this.
“Not many in tonight,” I say to Natasha. “We’ll still have fun, though,” she says. Right.
///
“The lovely Natasha! And your husband. What’ll it be? The usual for you both?”
Before I can say anything Colin, the landlord, is pouring Stones into a pint glass for me from the kind of electrically operated drink dispenser I thought was banned since the eighties. I haven’t known anywhere with Stones on draught since about 1989 either, but Colin insists that I like it and that it’s my usual. The lovely Natasha gets a vodka tonic.
“I’ll tell you what,” says Colin, as if answering a question we hadn’t asked, “There’s not many in tonight, but you just wait until later on. The lads are coming down later, you know they’re a great bunch, really liven the place up, oh, they’re brilliant lads, they really are. When they’re down here later we’re really gonna have some fun, y’know, it’s always great.”
“Sounds like fun,” says Natasha.
“I was surprised to see you still here actually, Colin,” I say, earning a kick from Natasha.
“Well you know the new brewery have been smashing so far, they really have, they’ve run some super promotions since they’ve taken over, it’s really been fantastic. But they might have some ideas that I’m not so keen on, you know, we all agree on everything so far and it’s great but I might not be so keen on one or two things behind the scenes. And of course Sharon’s got our place picked out in Cornwall and it’s nearly barbecue season which is always fantastic.”
“So you’ll not be sticking around then?” Natasha kicks me again. Colin glares at me.
///
“You don’t mind me joining you, do you?” asks Lee, the moment we’ve sat down. “Not at all!” trills ‘Gnat.’ “Pull up a stool.”
Lee’s eyes fill with panic. “Er, Tom’s not here, and normally he would…”
I grab a stool and place it behind Lee, holding his arm as he lowers himself carefully on to it. “Ah, cheers,” he says. “I’m so glad to see you both here tonight.”
“We always come on a Tuesday night,” I tell him. “It’s our routine.”
“Yes, but Nat hasn’t been replying to my texts so I was worried you might have gone to a different pub. And listen, it’s really important that you come down here on Saturday. I know last Saturday wasn’t much fun - “
(Last Saturday had been fairly quiet, until Habib had turned up late covered in blood, mud and feathers, charging around blind drunk and causing uproar with the Vegetarian Society’s meeting in the function room.)
“ - and tonight might be kind of quiet so far - although I’ve been ringing round everybody to get them to come down! - but really, Saturday is going to be so important, and it would really mean a lot if you would be here, Nat. Oh, and your husband, of course. The more the merrier!”
“What actually is happening on Saturday that’s so important, Lee?” I ask.
“It’s Saturday night,” he says. “You know, Saturday. So, the pub. This pub. Whether it’s fun or not. We have to keep coming, don’t we? Always, every week. Putting the effort in. Otherwise there’s no chance of having any fun, is there? And what would Saturday night be without the chance of some fun in the pub?”
“The ‘chance’ of some fun?” I ask.
“I can’t guarantee it,” says Lee. “But like I said in one of the texts to Nat, if you’re not here and some fun happens, and you miss it, then - “
“Look Lee, about these texts you’re sending to Natasha - “
“Drinks.” Natasha takes my pointing finger out of Lee’s face, returns it to my lap, and pats it gently. “More drinks now, darling,” she says. I get the message. Calm down, go to the bar. “And get one for Lee.”
///
Colin looks flustered as he comes from the side door to serve me. “Bloody little Sam trying to get in again. I’m fed up of having to clear him and his mates out of here.”
“They’re old enough now, aren’t they?” Colin scowls at me.
“You must be joking,” he says. “Haven’t you seen the signs for the scheme? ‘Check 25’ it says, ‘Check 25.’ If they’re 25 I’d hate to see a 15 year old these days.”
“That’s just a guide though, isn’t it? If they look under 25, you make sure they’re over 18?”
“‘Check 25’ is what it says, and ‘Check 25’ is what it is,” says Colin. He pauses before putting the cherry into Lee’s Slippery Nipple and instead waves it at me. “Listen, I’m not having my respectable pub filling up with bloody kids. Sam, Chris, Dominic - they can bloody come back when they’re bloody 25. I mean it’s unbelievable, some people think just because they’re 18 they’re old enough to drink in my pub, well, they can bloody think again, if they can think at all that is. I won’t have children messing about in here.”
“What about Tom? He’s pretty grown up for his age.”
“Tom’s barred. Black-balled. ‘Check 25’? He could be 75 and he’s not getting in here. Not after what happened in Ipswich.” Colin slams my change on the counter. “Besides,” he says, “That face on him puts Sharon off her gin.”
///
Something has been going on while I was away. Natasha grabs her drink and gulps half of it down. An ice cube catapults out of the glass and on to the floor; I crush it under a Hush Puppy before Lee can slip on it.
“I’ve just seen Ross,” she says.
“Oh christ. Where is he?”
“Back room. On his own, as usual. Well, almost on his own. I spotted him when I went to the ladies and I thought I’d say hello. He was just sitting in there, surrounded by empty glasses, staring into space. God, I feel sorry for the bastard. All his mates have gone, and since Lucy left him, he just sits there drinking himself into oblivion. So I thought I’d say hi, but he just yelled something at me, with a lot of effs and blinds. I was about to give him a piece of my mind but then I spotted Rudy. And he’s just sat on the other side of the room, opposite Ross, just staring at him. No drink, no nothing, just staring at Ross. And he says to me, “You’d better go back in the saloon,” like that, ordering me about. So I tells him I want to speak to Ross. And he says to me that Ross doesn’t want to speak to me, and this is Ross’s room, and I’d better get out of Ross’s room. How do you like that!”
“Not much, but he has been having a tough time.”
“It’s like Rudy’s his minder now or something. He gets Ross’s drinks from the bar now because Colin won’t serve him, but won’t bar him either. Anyway, then Ross started shouting again and throwing beer mats at me, and Rudy pretty much shoved me out of the room and slammed the door behind me.”
“Do you think we should get in touch with Rob? He always used to look after him.”
“Only if Rob’s going to hose him down. That’s the other thing; he fucking stinks. It’s sad.”
We contemplated our drinks for a while. I was remembering them all: Jermaine, Andy, Bradley, Neil, Max, Jonny, Rob, Lucy. It had been a happy pub, this, when they were all here. I suspect Natasha was mostly just remembering Bradley. She sighed deeply, and swallowed another dose of her V&T.
“You’re still both coming on Saturday though, right?” said Lee.
///
“Get this fucking dog off me!” I yell.
“Ah, he’s only playing with you,” says Mikey, while Paddy and Luke fall about laughing. The lads. The lads have got here.
“I don’t care, get the thing off me!”
“Oh, all right then,” says Mikey. “Browny! Browny, come here boy!”
The dog - some sort of mongrel, I don’t know what - returns to its owner and his mates at the corner of the bar, where they’re lining up another round of Jagerbombs.
“Browny? You named it after yourself?”
“Fuck’s wrong with that then?” says Luke, spinning to face me. “Can call his dog what he likes. His dog. Mikey’s the funniest guy I know. You buying our drinks for us?”
“What? Why would I be buying your drinks?” Paddy appears on the other side of me, and pushes my pint on to the floor. “Well, you’re getting yourself another,” he says, “Might as well buy ours. Or do you want us to set Browny on you again?”
Mikey and Luke find this hilarious. I can see behind them that Paul and either David or Michael - I can’t tell them apart - have stopped playing pool to watch. “Yeah! Yeah! Hahaha!” they all shout, egging Paddy on. I mumble to Colin that I’m buying their drinks.
“Great stuff, great,” says Colin. “They’re a smashing bunch of lads aren’t they? Really liven the place up.”
///
Mikey’s prised the cashbox off the jukebox again, and is running the same 50p through it over and over. “Put Oasis on again!” yells Luke, from inside an inflated condom. There’s a crash at the bar. “Oops, butterfingers!” yells Paddy. He was drinking Malibu from a bottle, but now he’s smashed it on the floor. “Giz another here, Col, I ain’t had enough yet.” Browny - the dog - is barking and scratching at the door behind which Ross and Rudy are holed up.
“About this ‘fun’ we’re having, Nat,” I say.
“Don’t fucking call me ‘Nat’,” she says, wiping vodka and lipstick across her cheek. “You know I fucking hate it.”
“How come Lee can call you Nat, then?”
“Lee’s nice. Lee invites me to places.”
“And I bring you to them! And then they’re shit!”
“Yeah, you take me to shit places. But Lee makes them sound nice before we get here, so if they’re shit it must be your fault, not his. So he,” shaking her glass for emphasis, “Can call me what he fucking likes.”
At the bar, Luke is pulling notes out of the cash register. “Bit short tonight Colin,” he’s saying. “And Paddy’s having a party, and we need to get some - well, you know - “
“I’ve had enough fun for one night,” I say to Natasha. “Come on.”
“I haven’t and I’m having another drink,” she says, “Get me and Lee another - “
The back room door opens. Ross appears, swaying in the doorway. Rudy’s behind him, his hand under Ross’s armpit, holding him straight. Ross is surveying the scene. He sees Mikey using a hatstand as a guitar, playing along to Northern Uproar. He sees Paddy juggling bottles then smashing them on the ground. He sees Luke pointing and laughing, first at Mikey, then at Paddy, cheering them on. He sees Colin letting it all go on around him, flicking through holiday magazines at the end of the bar. And he sees the dog - little Browny - yapping at his heels.
Ross pulls back his foot, and Ross kicks the dog, square. The room falls silent.
“Okay,” says Natasha. “Take me home.”
///
The streets outside are quiet, apart from somewhere music is playing - Paddy’s house. They must have started the party before they came over to the pub, and left the stereo on. It’ll be a long night on their street, again.
“See what I mean?” I say to Natasha. “Don’t go on about it,” she says. “But it used to be such a lovely little pub, that,” I say. “I know, don’t go on about it.” “But it’s ruined now. Since Colin took it over, and he got that rabble in.” “I know. Don’t go on about it.” “But every Tuesday we go there - “
“I know,” says Natasha, “Don’t go on about it. Look. Colin won’t be there for ever. But while he is there, we have to make the best of it. Here. I had to wait until we’re round the corner, but look. I nicked this bottle of Smirnoff while Mikey was giving Colin a piggy-back around the bar. Little Sam texted me before to say him, Tom, Aidy and Dom are at the bus stop outside the Asda. Come on. Let’s live a little. Fuck Colin and fuck his pub.”
Resourcefulness and decisiveness. Two of Natasha’s great qualities. I pause and admire my life’s beloved as she strides off, silhoutted by streetlights, a round-bottomed bottle of vodka swinging by her side. I jog to catch her up, before I’m struck by a thought.
“Hang on a minute,” I ask her. “How come little Sam has got your number?”
From The Square Ball magazine 2012/13 issue nine.
LEEDS 1 - 2 DERBY
There haven’t been many goals to savour at Elland Road this season. Sam Byram got on the shortlist for Goal of the Season, but his effort against Oxford was in the early rounds of the League Cup so wasn’t seen by many. Aidy White had a bigger audience for his strike against Everton in the same competition, but beyond that, there’s not much.
Ross McCormack gave us a moment, though, against Derby on April Fools Day. Just on as substitute, unmarked at the edge of the box at a corner, he let the ball roll towards him and gently lifted it over the heads of most of both teams and into the top corner. It was at the Kop end, too. It was a lovely, loose kind of a goal; the ball looked relaxed, as if it was enjoying the flight.
McCormack was understandably pleased with his effort. Running towards the fans, he paused to turn towards the dugouts. “Fuck off!” he yelled, placing an uppercut from distance square on to his manager’s chin.
The fans were happy too. “Ross McCormack!” they sang, “Fuck off Warnock!”
The goal put Leeds in the lead in yet another awful match on the awful march to what we hope becomes no more awful than mediocrity, and the celebrations, if you can call them that, demonstrated more than any post-defeat boo just how poisonous Neil Warnock has made the air around Elland Road. Surely it’s rare for a manager to have assembled a such ‘good set of honest lads’ at a football club and have both them, and the fans who pay to watch them, hate him for it so much.
The trouble with Warnock’s emphasis on honesty, you see, was that after a while nobody believed him. The post-match chuckles, the excuses (British Summer Time bore part of the brunt for this defeat, if you can believe that), the claims that our team a year ago - McCormack, Becchio, Snodgrass, Clayton - weren’t a patch on what he puts out there now - Diouf, Morison, Varney, Brown; after a while, nobody believed a word of it. By the time he blamed Tom Lees for the defeat at Ipswich, Warnocchio’s nose - already plenty big enough - was dwarfed only by the ever-growing responsibility he refused to take.
Colin can quite justifiably look back on his time at Leeds and say that the fans here never chanted ‘Warnock Out.’ We were more subtle than that. When Jason Pearce fouled Chris Martin for Derby’s penalty, “It’s all Tom Lees’s fault,” was the cry; when the team switched off to allow yet another late goal to defeat them, “Can’t fault their effort, they’re a great bunch of lads,” was the song from the Kop.
With his giggles, and his twinkles, and his amazed that we haven’t had any luck out there at all and the referee I mean what can you say about it nobody’s feeling worse than I am, Warnock might have thought we were lapping up his super-smooth post-match efforts. Well, we were certainly taking notes. But ultimately, it wasn’t singing the manager’s words back to him that summed up the way we felt about him by the end; it was Ross McCormack’s phrase that said all that needed to be said. “Fuck off Warnock.” It summed it up nicely. Just, “Fuck off.” Well said Ross. Good goal.
From The Square Ball magazine 2012/13 issue nine.
From the Irish Independent:
MATTHEW Elderfield is a long-suffering Leeds United fan. A bit like the Irish economy – the soccer club has lived beyond its means, gambled money on players in the hope it would climb up the ranks. But this has all been to no avail: Leeds continues to record eye-watering losses and languishes in the bottom half of the English Championship.
When Elderfield took on the job of regulator and landed in Dame Street in 2009, he knew the task of dragging the Irish economy back to health was going to be every bit as herculean as trying to get Leeds to qualify for the Champions League.
But that didn’t deter the Cambridge-educated financier and he wasted little time in getting stuck into his new role. The appointment of a foreigner was a watershed moment here.
From the excellent Leeds En France:
Malheureusement le but de Varney n’inspire pas grand chose et Leeds ne saisit pas l’opportunité.
Avec la forme présente de l’équipe, je suppose qu’un nul aurait suffit. Dans le but de changer un peu le jeu, le rendre plus physique, Redders fait rentrer Michael “Browny” Brown qui immédiatement assassine un joueur et se prend un carton jaune. Merci Browny. Bel effort.
This quote feels relevant to the recent experiences of Leeds United Football Club:
Moreover, uncultivated and unenlightened minds, who know of nothing that deserves their respect except influence, power, and money, are far from even suspecting that some deference is due to talent, and that it is a disgraceful thing to insult it.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
