The Wheatsheaf, February 24, 1991, close to Elland Road.
The pub is packed with Leeds United fans before the League Cup semi-final second leg against Manchester United, just their second visit to the stadium since 1982. The previous August, Manchester United fans had attacked the Wheatsheaf en masse.
I am lucky enough to have bagged an official ticket in an allocation limited to 2,600 because of fears of trouble. The first leg at Old Trafford had ended 2-1 and demand for tickets was high, so Mancunian ticket touts pour over the Pennines that divide Lancashire (Manchester United territory) and Yorkshire, whose biggest football club is Leeds United.
It only takes 45 minutes to drive between these two big northern English cities, but there is a considerable cultural divide between Lancastrians and Yorkies, who spent 30 years at war in the 15th century in a tussle for the English crown.
Aged just 17, I am nervous stepping off the coach from Manchester. Police tell us that we’ll be escorted under the M621 motorway towards the away turnstiles. Hardly reassuring — 12 police for hundreds of travelling fans. Leeds fans suddenly pop up walking alongside us. As we pass under the motorway, chants go up with the sound amplified by the low roof.
“YRA, we’re the Yorkshire Republican Army!” they holler with menace.
“We are Leeds!”
I hear the word ‘Munich’ — in relation to the 1958 Manchester United air crash — more times than a Bavarian newsreader. It’s hostile, frightening and yet exhilarating. Leeds fans are shouting “F***ing come on!” and trying to fight, but I’m not with the hooligans as we shuffle past the decrepit Lowfields Road stand.
The situation quickly worsens as more realise which United we represent. The enemy is here! They’ve been waiting years to get at us (if not quite since 1485 when the Lancastrians won the War of the Roses and the Yorkist King Richard III — whose body was recently found under a car park — was killed) and now we’re right next to them.
The enmity is mutual. They called us “scum”, while T-shirts bearing the words ‘We all Hate Leeds’ — taken from a popular chant — are bestsellers in Manchester, where fanzines are full of jokes portraying Yorkshiremen as parochial farmers. Another song goes:
Now, Leeds as a city’s a mighty fine place,
But the fans and the team are a f***ing disgrace…
In my opinion, the Leeds scum should be,
Shovelling s*** on the Isle of Capri.
The away turnstiles are now in sight and, emboldened by the prospect of safety, one idiot shouts “MAN-CHEST-ER!”
Except only the first syllable gets out when I’m pushed to the ground by a large man. Dazed, I get up but get pushed or punched three different times. It doesn’t hurt. They’re on my back, not clean, connected punches. I can’t see their faces, it’s all muffled and police quickly intervene. I knew about the dangers, but this hadn’t happened to me at a game of football before.
There’s relief clicking through the turnstile into the relative safety of the stadium, except it’s not so safe as missiles come flying over the wall from outside the ground. The away fans with seat tickets must walk further, past the Peacock pub, a Leeds hotbed. There are no police to protect them and more trouble.
The game starts and I’m so dazed by what had happened outside that I don’t realise which way my team are attacking for 20 minutes. The terrace is cold, shallow, uncovered and fenced in. The contorted faces of Leeds fans to our right hurl abuse. Coins are thrown.
The swaying fans on Leeds’ vocal Kop heartland sing:
Marching on together! We’re gonna see you win. We are so proud,
We shout it out loud, We love you, Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!
They punch the air on “Leeds!”
Neil Webb takes a shot for Manchester United at Leeds in 1991 (Steve Etherington – PA Images via Getty Images)
But, as in 1485, they do not win. A trip to a cup final is Manchester United’s reward thanks to a 1-0 victory secured by Lee Sharpe’s late goal, but all anyone is thinking about is getting home safely. There’s no question of us being let out with the rest of the 32,000 crowd since Leeds fans are livid. Instead, we’re kept behind for 55 minutes, while angry locals lay siege to the exit gates.
They’re pushed back by police on horseback, right up a hill towards the terraced houses of Holbeck. It’s frightening knowing people are desperate to attack you, but the area is eventually cleared and no punches are thrown on the walk back to the coaches.
Times have changed — thankfully — but Elland Road remains scruffy, northern, visceral and loud, the atmosphere one of the best in football, as it will be for Manchester United’s latest visit on Sunday.
These fixtures have always been sporadic. Leeds United didn’t play Premier League football between 2004 and 2020, and therefore an entire generation saw little of one of football’s bitterest rivalries.
There were cup ties, the most famous 15 years ago today in 2010 when champions Manchester United hosted third-tier Leeds and the underdogs won. The game’s only goalscorer, Jermaine Beckford, has a habit of tweeting “Happy January 3rd” with a winking emoji on the anniversary.
A chant about that day is still sung, which goes:
Jan the 3rd, remember the date,
We beat the team that we f***ing’ hate,
We knocked the scum out the FA Cup,
We’re super Leeds and we’re going up.
Jermaine Beckford scores that famous winner against Manchester United in 2010 (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
They took their time, but Leeds finally did come up to the Premier League under Marcelo Bielsa in the summer of 2020, but they lost 2-6 at Old Trafford on their first meeting with Manchester United back in the top division. “That was Man United, we had to dig in and yet win against a very motivated Marcelo Biesla team,” then manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer told The Athletic. Leeds were relegated again at the end of the 2022-23 season, before making their way back for this season.
The old rivalry, however, was dormant for so long that Leeds have been eclipsed by newer foes in the eyes of United supporters. At the start of the 1990s, Manchester United fans would list Liverpool, Leeds and Manchester City as their most despised clubs, often in that order. But Leeds’ absence from the top flight saw them slip from consciousness. They didn’t matter anymore.
In 2019, I was invited to spend New Year in Leeds with my family by Diego Flores, Leeds’ Argentinian assistant coach. He was Bielsa’s man and so preoccupied with the micro details of what was demanded by his compatriot that he didn’t have time to study Leeds’ historical rivalries.
A major police presence is typical for Leeds-Manchester United games (Mark Leech/Offside via Getty Images)
We had a good time and Diego was a successful servant with happy memories of his time in Yorkshire, but he was incredulous when hearing my stories about what had gone on in the past. About that first visit in 1991 and then a trilogy of games across 1991 and 1992 when the sides faced each other three times at Elland Road in the space of two and a half weeks, in three different competitions (league, League Cup and FA Cup).
The excitement, and the teams, were immense. Both were fighting for a first top-flight title in decades and there was the bonus of a larger-than-normal ticket allocation for the Manchester United fans for the FA Cup match (7,000).
Manchester United won two and drew one of that trilogy, but it was in vain as Leeds went on to win the league. It still stings Manchester United fans that they ‘lost’ the title to Leeds.
The rivalry remained acute in the following years, stoked by Eric Cantona, the charismatic star Leeds striker, moving to Old Trafford in November 1992 and duly inspiring his new club to win the title that season. Leeds fans continued to taunt Manchester United fans with Munich chants; equally grim was Manchester United fans raising a flag saying “Istanbul Reds” after two Leeds fans were murdered in Turkey in April 2000 before a UEFA Cup game against Galatasaray.
Manchester United fans hold up an Istanbul banner at Elland Road (Michael Steele/Allsport)
The bad feeling is real, but it is not a new phenomenon. The two Uniteds had met in the 1965 FA Cup semi-finals and, in front of 65,000 at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough, a 0-0 draw boiled over.
“Don Revie’s side had come up from the Second Division and were really starting to make a name for themselves,” recalled United midfielder Pat Crerand. “Jack Charlton and Denis Law wrestled like two schoolboys in a playground as players swapped punches and did neither side credit. I was in the middle as usual, scrapping with Billy Bremner or any other Leeds player who wanted a fight.
“Bremner was a great player and I got on well with him off the field. He was a fanatical Celtic supporter which people didn’t know, but we often lost our heads with each other on the pitch.
“I always felt that there was jealousy from Leeds players towards Manchester United. They had a fine side that often beat us so there was no need to be jealous, but I believe they felt that they were playing for the inferior club. Leeds were a dirty, cheating side when they didn’t need to be because they had the talent to win trophies without stooping to rolling about all over the pitch.”
Billy Bremner (centre) relished battles with Manchester United (PA Images via Getty Images)
The replay was in Nottingham and there were fists raised on the pitch again. Rival fans followed suit, with one running on the field and knocking the referee to the ground. Police later confirmed that fans were thrown into the River Trent. Leeds won the tie 1-0 with a last-minute goal, a header from Bremner which was set up by Johnny Giles. United got their revenge in the league, though, pipping Leeds to the title on goal average.
And then there were the encounters between the two clubs in the 1970 FA Cup semi-finals which have passed into football legend.
Crerand reveals that Leeds had a strategy. “The Leeds winger Eddie Gray, who was from Glasgow’s Gorbals (one of the city’s toughest areas) like me, later told me a story that their manager Revie used to tell the Leeds players before they played us, ‘If you kick Crerand and Law, they’ll lose it’.
“They always did set out to kick us deliberately and invariably we took the bait and hit back. We rarely beat Leeds.”
The first two semi-finals were drawn, with Leeds triumphing 1-0 in the second replay, all played out before a combined total of 173,500 people at Hillsborough, Aston Villa’s Villa Park and Burnden Park in Bolton.
Leeds plan to increase Elland Road’s capacity from its current 37,645 to 53,000, but it’s largely unchanged since the 1990s. Manchester United fans will receive 2,960 tickets to see a team that won at Leeds in their most recent game in February 2023, with Harry Maguire, a proud Yorkshireman, captaining them to victory that day.
The rivalry isn’t quite as vicious as it used to be, but it’s a huge game on Sunday, and the atmosphere will be the most intimidating United have faced all season. Leeds, who have lost four and had two draws in six games against their red rivals since that 2020 promotion, need every point in their bid to stay up.
At Elland Road, Daniel Farke’s side defeated Crystal Palace comfortably last month, held Liverpool to a draw and beat Chelsea. They’re the real deal. As is their rivalry with Manchester United.
