I saw him rain directly in the construction post of Barnfield in Burnley, where the fans of the Leeds were standing on Monday night, as if that point of chill on the peninos were determined to make his most cursed. They were delayed there, soaked, to deliver a last ovation to a team that wandered at the end and that looked for everyone as if they returned again as champions.
I saw those fans of the Leeds addressing the night, fortified and sustained by Jayden Bogle, the summer firm from Sheffield United, imposing on the right, is calculated around their calves. For the Japanese Aoka, a robbery of £ 3 million Dusseldorf fortune, it has been affirmed, affirming in a challenging battle in the midfield. If they had lost, Leeds would have seen Burnley draw the level with them at the top of the championship. The goalless draw kept them clear.
But this was a first -class game. First V third. An occasion that took you to Turf Moor to take a look at what, within eight months, could well be two teams promoted at the top of the world of football, full of beliefs that they can reduce the trend of clubs in promoted championship. I return directly down.
And seen through that lens, Monday was not such an encouraging view. Arriving from Leeds is the young star of Archie Gray and Crysencio Summerville, sold when the shot of the immediate return to the Premier League ended in the sixth play-off campaign of the club of six last summer. There was solidity, nous and teamwork of the best team in the championship, which have sufficiently comfortable for automatic promotion. But that delicacy, vision and physicality required to survive in the Premier League? No. Leeds looked very far.
For now, they only need the promotion that the means to spend more. The fact that they head the championship, despite being limited by the profits and sustainability rules (PSR), is a testimony of executives Adam Underwood and Alex Davies and consultant Nick Hammond, a respected unit, which leads the work of Recruitment of club players.
They want a striker, on Monday night, reveal why, and also look for a left back, the central back, the central midfielder and the end. If they had to put everything in one, it would be a striker, but PSR means that they could not end with any. Emi Buendia de Aston Villa didn't want to go to Leeds, preferring Bayer Leverkusen. Julio Enciso de Brighton preferred a loan movement to Ipswich. Jack Harrison, shot with confidence after a torrid period borrowed in Everton, can be the one heading to Leeds.
Ao Tanaka (right) was a brilliant spark for Leeds on a rainy night in Turf Moor, but the Yorkshire Club will need more in your team if you want a long -term Premier League future
Youth talents such as Archie Gray (left) and Crysencio Summerville (center) have long been
Although Daniel Farke (center) is the appropriate manager to take them back to the upper division, he has a boom and bust sequence to break, after being promoted and then relegated several times
But it is the vision of a team beyond this season that will dictate if the club can become the force again in British football that its fans base tells us that they should be.
The San Francisco 49ers, their owners, have ambition, with the plans of the architects of reviewing she, increasing the capacity of 37,890 to 55,000, and the Australian multimillionaire coinversor Peter Lowy advocates by a rail link to that stadium. All of that depends on a return to the upper flight.
Farke is an extremely good horse for such a course. His last three championship campaigns have thrown 94, 97 and 90 points and their current progress rate, LEEDs will get 95. But the German has a boom and bust sequence to break. He took Norwich as champions twice, relegated on the first occasion and fired in early November in the second.
Premier Leaguers candidates competition is also intensifying for the year. Leicester and Ipswich can bring four or five players before the transfer window is close next week, while looking for survival. The American leaders of the League one of Birmingham League, Tom Wagner, says he wants the club to return to the Premier League for a “long period of time.” All of which tells Leeds owners that they must prepare to dig very deeply so that a team survives if, as it seems likely, they get there.
Special things happen after LEEDS earns promotions to the first. Two of the three who have experienced were under managers, in Don Revie and Howard Wilkinson, who would make them champions. The other was under the iconoclast, completely unforgettable Marcelo Bielsa. Something modest and lasting this time would be appreciated no less.
'Premier League class!' A Leeds fan at a service station on the margin of the Pennine Mours said about Bogle, when midnight approached Monday. The club will need much more where it came from.
COOTE's interview highlights the homophobia 'Hell on Earth'
There were better ways for referee David Cooote to reveal to the world that his outburst against Jurgen Klopp came in the context of a cocaine habit, which was his way of dealing with the fight to publicly make him known that he is gay.
Cooote has further irritated Liverpool fans by relating this in an interview with The Sun and the moment has given rise to delusional claims of a PGMol diversion strategy, designed to deviate from the abuse storm that is addressed to Michael Oliver . The sun had gone hard after Cooote. Why make such sensitive revelations? It is not clear.
David Cooote's interview with SUN shone in light on openly gay challenges and officiating in the highest category, given homophobia, it sounds like hell on earth
But being an openly gay British soccer referee sounds like hell on earth, given homophobia, lack, graphic, implacable, which was soakeing Twitter/X in the early hours of yesterday after Cooote's interview was published.
These 'fans' abused him with impunity because the referees are considered pantomime hate figures, beyond the normal parameters of humanity and civil society.
When I met the arbiter of the rugby union, Nigel Owens, eight years ago, he related to me what, in many ways, was a story similar to the coope that he tells now. Drug taking to block things, extending to a failed attempt to take their lives.
The fight to maintain professional standards for two games in 2005 that saw him fall. And finally, his dissemination, in an interview with the Wales newspaper on Sunday, of the secret he had housed for so long. Owens does not need to have feared what the world of rugby would think of him. The sport hugged him.
The search for new forms of personal abuse in football tells us that it would be an open season in a referee in that sport that made such 'admission'.
Amal Fashanu, justin's Regarding officials, hate is at another level.
A hard lesson learned from the place
An impressive 5-5 draw for the team of my grandson of 9 years on Saturday morning was followed by a penalty shooting: the team gathered in the midline, the shoulders of the other as their heroes do.
A scene to melt your heart. Our son, who still dominates the art of kicking the ball well, lost his penalty. “I was trying” Ivan Toney, “he told me. It didn't seem to say 'just set foot through him'.
Last week's column caught attention to the careful nature of the World Cup statue near the Old Baleyn Park site, and fortunately those wonderful heroes have been restored to the old glories.
The World Cup statue shines once again
My thanks to the Newham Council of London whose team jumped into action after the column last week highlighted the state of the famous World Cup statue near the old Baleyn Park of West Ham.
Those wonderful heroes are restored to the old glories.