Coins are thrown back and forth. Elland Road is scruffy, northern, visceral and loud. We are so proud, We shout it out loud we love you, Leeds! But they do not win. Unfashionable defender Mal Donaghy, too. John Sheridan, a United fan from Stretford, will score the winner for the Owls. But first, we have to get out of Elland Road safely. Are you fucking Man U? Elland Road was always rough, but it never got as bad as that again for me.
It did for others and there were pitched battles between rival hooligans in There were momentous visits, too. Leeds, of course, had pipped their greatest rivals to win the league in The Munich stuff was sad, pathetic and disrespectful to the families of those who lost their lives, but I used the other venom to motivate me.
The hatred was unbelievable and much worse than bigger rival clubs like Liverpool. In April , Cole scored a goal in front of the Elland Road Kop after chasing a ball from the halfway line and beating the brilliant Lucas Radebe for speed before flipping the ball over Nigel Martyn. The city is a lonely place when it comes to football, and the Whites must extend the boundaries of geography to discover hatred.
But the Manchester United feud is so much more than just geography. Why do we bring this up now? The rivalry was already renewed last season after Leeds ended their year exodus from the Premier League. Our job, here at talkSPORT towers, is to rubbish the second half of that statement and explain it perfectly. Here goes…. Manchester Bars. Manc Irish. We All Hate Leeds! United songs aimed at Leeds Leeds are probably the most ferocious of United's rivals.
Anti-Leeds songs sang by United fans S ometimes nicknamed the 'War of the Roses', the rivalry between Manchester United and Leeds partly originates from the strong enmity between Lancashire and Yorkshire, however is also exasterbated by the huge number of reds living in Leeds and it's surrounding towns. With the cities only lying 40 miles apart, the crowd violence that accompanies meetings between the two sides is possibly as bad as it gets in English football and can be traced back to the 's, when even the players exchanged punches in an FA Cup semi-final.
United got their revenge by pipping Leeds to the title. Both clubs enjoyed similar success and failure throughout the late 60's and into the 's with the intense rivalry ignited further in when United signed two of Leeds' favourite players, Joe Jordan and Gordon McQueen.
The players were booed on their return to Elland Road and fans threw objects at McQueen when he scored a header. Both sets of fans continued chanting abuse at each other, even during the 9 years Leeds spent in the lower divisions , both referring to each other as 'Scum' - something that always puzzled United fans as Leeds were the team with the reputation of racist hooligans, inflatable aeroplanes and sick songs about the Munich Air Crash and Bradford Fire Disaster, which claimed 60 lives.
On the same day, Leeds hooligans killed a Birmingham fan and they even went as far as setting a hot dog stall alight at Bradford's temporary home a year later. In an ironic twist, a plane carrying the Leeds United team caught fire in Everybody survived and the songs of Munich continued. Leeds beat United to the title in , a success largely credited to the goals from a certain Eric Cantona, who would later join United to the disdain of the Leeds faithful.
Interestingly, many other former Leeds players who moved to Old Trafford including Cantona, Rio Ferdinand and Alan Smith have received vicious verbal abuse and even death threats, whilst players who have gone the other way Johnny Giles, Brian Greenhoff, Gordon Strachan, Lee Sharpe and Brian Kidd have still been welcomed back to Old Trafford as red legends.
Leeds fans refused to honour a minute silence following the death of Sir Matt Busby in and continued to taunt United fans with songs about the Munich Air Crash. United fans replied with equally sick chants in , following the deaths of two Leeds fans, stabbed to death following fights with Galatasary hooligans in Istanbul. In , Leeds fans also jeered during a minute's applause for George Best. Whilst 'King Eric' and another former Leeds player, Denis Irwin, were key to United's dominance of English football in the 's, which has continued until today.
Leeds meanwhile have gone into freefall, suffering financial difficulty and being relegated in , eventually dropping as low as League One. The fierce hostility went up a notch when the Reds raided Elland Road for Joe Jordan and Gordon McQueen in , with the latter scoring in a triumph away to his old club in his first season after the transfer.
Andy Ritchie hit a hat-trick in the return fixture in Manchester, in a success, but Leeds then enjoyed a purple patch of form in matches between the clubs before sliding out of the top flight in Indeed, the Reds scored only once in the five early Eighties clashes, although that effort from Frank Stapleton was at least a winning goal.
In the preceding meeting at the Theatre of Dreams in , Leeds triumphed with Brian Flynn's solitary injury-time strike; that result would remain in the record books for 29 years as the Yorkshire club's last Old Trafford victory.
Two bruising league battles both ended in draws but Alex Ferguson's side came out on top in an entertaining League Cup two-legged semi-final, with Lee Sharpe starring for the Reds. In the following season, the two Uniteds went head-to-head for the last league title before England's highest tier became the Premier League. In a quirk of fate, the rivals were also drawn together in the League Cup and the FA Cup, and although Leeds hosted both ties, the visitors twice came out on top.
The other game in a famous trilogy - the sides met three times in West Yorkshire in 18 days - was in the league and when that ended in a draw, it halted the Reds' momentum. Ferguson's men faltered and, although the League Cup was eventually lifted at Wembley, the chance of being champions for the first time since slipped away as the Yorkshire club, inspired by ex-Reds midfielder Gordon Strachan and a certain Eric Cantona, were crowned as the last winners of the old First Division.
When a first Premier League meeting at Old Trafford in September ended in a home win, it suggested Leeds' spell as top dogs would be short lived. That feeling was only intensified by the Reds' shock signing of Cantona three months later, a move that amazed the football world and angered the Elland Road faithful.
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