The Premier League needs brilliant Bielsa to take Leeds home

You are as likely to find a four-leaf clover glued to a Penny Black as you are to meet an optimistic Leeds supporter. Years of woe have stripped them of the last drops of hope.

That is why their first post-lockdown outing, which ended with a 2-0 defeat at Cardiff, will have been met with a resigned howl by most fans of a club who have spent far too long out of the big time.

I am desperate to see them return to the Premier League next season. For my generation Leeds remain giants and it will be superb for English football if they can rise to the top division for the first time since 2004.

It was on November 18, 1972, when I was five, that I first watched professional football. My dad borrowed a pair of season tickets from a mate and we sat in the Arthur Wait stand to watch Palace take on the might of Leeds, a side packed with star names. It was magical.

The game ended 2-2 and so my lifelong love of Palace and admiration of Leeds was born.

It has been largely grim for Leeds for much of the 48 years that followed, save for a glorious revival that, hard though it is to believe now, took them to the Champions League semi-finals in 2001 when a team that included Nigel Martyn, Rio Ferdinand, David Batty and Harry Kewell were knocked out by Valencia.

Since then it has been back to gloom and despair with managers and owners coming and going despite the fan base staying commendably loyal.

But then three years ago Italian businessman Andrea Radrizzani bought the club, since when they have flickered back to prosperity, especially after the stunning appointment of Marcelo Bielsa as manager.

One of my favourite lockdown diversions was Take Us Home, a series documenting Leeds’ agonising failure to secure promotion last season when it had looked almost certain they would ascend to the Premier League, and few who watched it will take any pleasure from them blowing it a second time.

Any neutral analysing their position - seven points clear at the top of the Sky Bet Championship along with West Brom with eight matches to go - will assume they will get the job done this time, but supporters will be taking nothing for granted after their comeback performance in Wales.

Bielsa is a genuine legend and if Leeds do get back to the big time it will be the most eagerly-awaited top-flight return since Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle in 1993 and will provide a fascinating element to the new campaign.

The Argentinian has more charisma than even Jose Mourinho before the Portuguese became such a grumpy old bore, and his team play with a verve that will ensure Leeds are so much more than a standard promoted side who set out merely to avoid going straight back down.

And the fans will travel in large numbers with passion and fire as well as generating a superb atmosphere at Elland Road.

Most of what I want to happen in the remaining weeks of this peculiar season centre on ante-post bets.

But while I am cheering on Leicester and booing Bournemouth for purely financial reasons, I am rooting for Leeds because they belong at the top table.

Owners have the right to choose

It can be assumed that various outrage addicts gleefully jumped on the opportunity to express their fury that Frankie Detroit rather than Tom Marquand will ride English King in the Investec Derby on Saturday week.

I say assumed because I lack the desire to go near Twitter, the epicentre of global outrage, these days except for essential reference and it is perfectly safe to take it as certain that the decision by the colt’s owner Bjorn Nielsen and trainer Ed Walker is getting lambasted on that intolerably toxic site.

It is bizarre that the desire to use the best possible option is so frowned upon in racing. Owners who have the temerity to decide they want to send their horse - key word: their - to another trainer are routinely abused, and when connections choose a different jockey to the one who used to ride their horse it is received similarly badly.

It is fine to express sympathy when someone suffers the disappointment of seeing a stable star move to another yard or loses the ride on a decent performer, but in the case of owners who move their horses it is impossible to have a view unless you know what has caused the decision.

While there are some owners for whom nothing is ever good enough, plenty more simply do not receive a service that comes up to scratch and they are perfectly at liberty to try somewhere else in the same way people routinely switch barbers and kebab shops.

In the case of English King’s Derby rider, it is undoubtedly bad luck for Tom Marquand, a fine young jockey who is destined for the top, that at a time when John Gosden has such powerful resources, he happens not to have anything suitable for Epsom, thus freeing up Dettori.

Given Frankie partners Nielsen’s superstar Stradivarius, allied to the fact he is still riding like a god, it should surprise nobody that the owner and trainer have decided the Italian is the right person to maximise English King’s chances of victory next week.

And it has been pleasing to see the mature way everyone involved has dealt with it, not least Marquand himself, who gave a classy interview on Monday expressing his disappointment, entirely without bitterness, and his hope that one day he will get the chance to ride a Derby winner.

I’m sure he will and when that time comes the whole sport will react with extreme delight.

Marcus Rashford has set the bar for players' responses

Are you a fake crowd noise kind of person or do you favour the sound of silence punctuated by players and coaching staff yelling every few seconds?

Like the person who neither hates nor loves Marmite, I have no great preference and have been switching between the two while all the time wishing broadcasters would offer two other options: silence and no commentary or false cheering and no commentary.

Football without crowds is like a pint in an empty pub. You are essentially there for the pint but it is not the same experience without the usual extras that the inn provides.

But it is still good to have it back and there have been some excellent matches, not least Tottenham’s draw with Manchester United, while it was good to know some things never change, such as Burnley’s respectable league position bearing no relation to their abysmal performances whenever I watch them.

The biggest annoyance since the resumption has been the refusal of a small number of players to represent their team because their contracts are about to expire and they do not want to jeopardise lucrative moves by getting injured.

I’m sorry but that's just pathetic and an insult to the supporters. I am less sympathetic to the affected clubs because there have been numerous instances down the years of players being dropped to prevent bonus clauses being activated, but fans of struggling sides deserve better than to see the players whose wages they contribute to so significantly down tools.

All deals that are due to end next Tuesday should be rolled over until the end of the season. A failure to do this is the same as simply refusing to play the final few games of a normal season, which would rightly be seen as reprehensible.

Times are going to be brutally tough in the coming years and many people will be unable to spend as much money watching football, either in person or on TV, than before, and those few footballers who are giving their profession a bad name by refusing to take to the field will be giving viewers a good reason to ask why they should bother devoting precious disposable income towards football.

Thankfully, the likes of Marcus Rashford and many others have shown that overall footballers have acted impeccably and admirably while Covid-19 has caused such havoc to our lives.

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