Football's Wars of the Roses

End of season sub-plots

As a proud, pleased and relieved Liverpool fan, the past week has approached dream-like levels of footballing pleasure, with even the disappointment of that freakish result against Manchester City being offset by news of the imminent arrival of Thiago Alcantara. 

And now that Liverpool are safely home and hosed as champions, the Premier League, with its COVID-19 related empty stadia and a mid-summer fixture list, is starting to feel like a series of pre-season friendlies. However, there are several key battles still being fought out in terms of final placings, European qualification and, most crucially of all, promotion and relegation. I will be keeping an eye on a few of these sub-plots, for different reasons.

The Premier League/Championship interface is always a good source of end of season sub-plots and, looking at the current tables this morning, I said to myself - wouldn’t it be great to have Leeds United back in the Premier League next season? Ireland is full of men in their late 50s who first started following Leeds during their heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a time when Ireland’s greatest midfielder, John Giles, was earning a living with them. Too young to remember that heyday (although of course I remember well their second and third comings in the early 90s and in the early 2000s), I have two specific reasons for hoping to see them promoted.

Football’s Wars of the Roses

Firstly, I’ve always been both impressed and at times amused by how Leeds United seem to regard Manchester United as their arch rivals. And if your enemy's enemy is your friend, then it follows that Leeds United is a friend of Liverpool. Whether the perceived rivalry has its origins in geography (their relative proximity as northern neighbours), in history (that whole white versus red Wars of the Roses saga) or in football terms, Leeds United have to be commended on keeping it up. During the darkest days of the Fergusonian Era, when Manchester United won their most recent Champions League in 2008, Leeds United were in financial and footballing free-fall, dropping to the third tier of English football, the dreaded League One. But they kept the rivalry alive. Perhaps their fans took some solace from the fact that, even if they weren’t very good anymore, at least their main rivals were the European champions.

The Battle of Bosworth Field (1485), by Philip James de  Loutherbourg (1740-1812), depicting the key battle in the Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses - a very long, bloody and complicated saga that raged from 1455 to 1487, with some of the main protagonists included above

The Tudors ultimately won out in the Wars of the Roses and, in an act of symbolic floral diplomacy, created the 'Tudor Rose' as an amalgam of the Roses of Lancaster and York

The crest of Leeds United - still clinging on to the white rose of Yorkshire, just as Leeds United cling on to their rivalry with another, slightly more successful, United

The Damned United

The second reason for wanting to see Leeds United back in the Premier League is as thanks for the club’s central role in and inspiration for one of the greatest ever footballing films, The Damned United. Directed by Tom Hooper and based on the novel by David Peace (who also wrote ‘Red or Dead’, one of the strangest books I’ve ever attempted to read), in this film Martin Sheen managed the impossible by capturing quite alot of the crazy genius of Brian Clough. And Colm Meaney also nailed his role as Don Revie. 

Leeds United versus Manchester United (note the Yorkist white versus Lancastrian red) in a grim 1970s reenactment of the Battle of Bosworth Field - the gifted Irishman John Giles is number 10

Brian Clough faces off against Don Revie in 1974 - an enthralling study in obsessional levels of rivalry and thinly veiled animosity 

And here's a link to the full interview:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTiIdbDBmZc

Martin Sheen as Clough and Colm Meaney as Revie relive that interview in The Damned United (2009)

The film tells the story of the infamous 44 day period when Brian Clough controversially took over as Leeds United manager from Don Revie, who had been appointed to manage England (the aforementioned John Giles was assumed to be the heir apparent to Revie at Leeds). The grim 1970s backdrop pervades the film, with lots of mud, manly tackling and no messing with the niceties of the celebrity culture of the modern game. Most enthralling of all is the intense relationship and rivalry between Clough and Revie. Although they were both white-rose Yorkshire men from Middlesbrough, their rivalry felt as intense and longstanding as the Wars of the Roses. 

The other key relationship depicted in the film is the one between Clough and his long-term assistant and adviser, Phil Taylor. They soldiered together at a number of clubs, with Taylor as the Art Garfunkel to Clough’s Paul Simon, yet their relationship sadly ended quite bitterly.

The other key relationship in The Damned United - Brian Clough and Phil Taylor, pictured here during their Derby County days

So what are the league tables saying?

Leeds United currently lead the Championship on 78 points, 4 points ahead of West Brom who are in the second automatic promotion spot and have a game in hand. Leeds have just five games left in the season and, following yesterday's results, are now guaranteed at least a promotion play-off place. After West Brom come Brentford, Fulham, Nottingham Forest and Cardiff City. Based on maths alone, Brentford and Fulham are the only ones from that chasing quartet who look like they have a chance of getting into an automatic promotion spot. 

So Leeds United look like making the big comeback to the Premier League, for the first time since 2004, during which time they have also had the ignominy of spending three seasons in the depths of League One, third tier football.

If Leeds United do make it back up, it’s unlikely that they will be anywhere as impressive as teams from their previous heydays, but it will be good to see them, especially when they line up in 21st Century versions of Bosworth battles against their (and Liverpool's) oldest enemy, the Lancastrian United.

And now a bit on relegation battles...

In order to have promotions to the Premier League, of course, there have to be relegations, and there is plenty of drama playing out among the bottom half dozen clubs right now. 

I have learned that Alan Partridge is excitedly waiting for his hometown club Norwich City to be relegated so that he can start work on his 'gritty and grimy soccer spectacular' documentary with 'strong Partridgean overtones', as featured in an earlier blog:

https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/alan-partridge-sporting-legend-of-sorts.html

'Every cloud has a, well, golden opportunity for making a Partridge-centric television documentary series', says Alan Partridge, who is already looking forward to making a 'savagely sad soccer story' about his hometown team Norwich City, who are on the verge of relegation. 

And finally, carrying on the theme of football mixed with warfare, Napoleon is sometimes (apparently mis-) quoted as having asked not for good or skillful generals but for lucky ones. So during these tense, relegation-threatened times for them, our thoughts are with yet another United and our friends over at www.verywestham.com, who are not helped by being led by that unluckiest of generals, David 'The Grim Reaper' Moyes. 

COYI!

West Ham United manager, David Moyes