Few football teams can boast an original song as their anthem; fewer still can boast a song originally recorded by the team’s players; and I’m pretty sure only one team can boast an anthem written by the guy who wrote “It’s Not Unusual” for Tom Jones. That team is Leeds.

Marching on Together was released to commemorate Leeds’s 1972 FA Cup Final win over Arsenal. It was on the b-side of the album, accompanied on the a-side by a song simply called Leeds United. The latter is great fun, but it’s too specific to the 1970s squad to be popular nowadays (for lyrics, click here). Marching on Together is a different beast entirely. Fans usually only sing the chorus during a game, as the rest of the song is less widely known (and thus harder to get 20,000 people singing at once!). The original recording was performed by the actual players from the 1972 FA Cup Final, but sounds remarkably good considering none of them were singers.

The first video below is from the celebrations in Leeds after the team won the league title in 1992. There are better quality clips of Marching on Together out there, but none with such passion – there’s a man at 01:22 who looks on the verge of tears. The chorus, at 00:22, always brings back memories. God I miss going to Elland Road – I’ll probably end up blowing all my disposable income on match tickets when I move back to Yorkshire later this year, which can’t be good.

I thought I’d post this next one too, despite the bizarre picture slideshow, since it’s the original recording, as sung by the Leeds squad from the 1972 FA Cup Final. It doesn’t have the same goosebump-inducing quality as the other, but it’s the original and it’s great.

And now the lyrics, in full:

Here we go with Leeds United
We’re gonna give the boys a hand
Stand up and sing for Leeds United
They are the greatest in the land

Every day, we’re all gonna say
We love you Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!
Everywhere, we’re gonna be there
We love you Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!

Marching on together
We’re gonna see you win (na na na na na na)
We are so proud
We shout it out loud
We love you Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!

We’ve been through it all together
And we’ve had our ups and downs (ups and downs!)
We’re gonna stay with you forever
At least until the world stops going ’round

Every day, we’re all gonna say
We love you Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!
Everywhere, we’re gonna be there
We love you Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!

Marching on together
We’re gonna see you win (na na na na na na)
We are so proud
We shout it out loud
We love you Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!

I can’t believe I missed this when it was published, but the Times has an article entitled “The Soul of Leeds United in 50 Moments” that is just brilliant. The highlights:

#43: Billy Bremner punching Kevin Keegan. Let’s be honest: who wouldn’t want to?

#38: The Smiley Badge of the 1970s (on the left). Probably the best team logo, ever.

#33: Playing with detachable commemorative sock tags in the 1970s, which has to be one of most deranged ideas in football history.

#26: The best goal in the history of football, as scored by Eddie Gray in 1970. I’ll post a video when I finish writing my “team history tuesday” piece on him – and it is, believe me, the best goal ever. Or at least of the 1970s.

#18: Marching on Together. How many teams have an anthem written by the guy who wrote “It’s not Unusual” for Tom Jones?

The whole list is great, and well worth a read.

Sheffield United are apparently strongly opposed to Gary Speed’s rumoured move to Leeds. McAllister seems to want him as his assistant manager, despite Speed having no managerial experience. The 39-year-old is about to start a player-coach contract at Sheffield, but is best known for playing alongside McAllister in the midfield of the title-winning 1991 team. I was already worried that McAllister doesn’t really know what he’s doing; now he’s planning to appoint an assistant who certainly doesn’t know what he’s doing. Count me officially concerned. Still, I had a poster of Gary McAllister on my wall when I was seven, so I can’t be too skeptical about him.

And those are your lunchtime links. I’ll be back later with a match report from last night’s defeat at Southend United.

Updates as they happen.

It’s hard to know how to react to this news. Dennis Wise was never popular with the hardcore of Leeds fans, thanks to his time spent as a player at Chelsea. Chelsea, of course, is one of the thirty-seven (and counting) teams that the hardcore Leeds fan thinks the team has a rivalry with, and as such, they saw Wise’s appointment as a slap in the face. This attitude is idiotic, not least because Leeds has so many “rivalries” that any appointment who hadn’t spent the previous 20 years playing for Leeds is usually open to criticism and cries of “how could you?”

That said, Wise has done an excellent job this season. Leeds’s form at the start of the season was nothing short of spectacular, and despite Wise’s inability to keep Leeds in the Championship last season, he deserves a great deal of credit for rebuilding the team and restoring their shattered confidence.

It’s possible to criticise him. Leeds’s form since Wise lost his trusted assistant manager Gustavo Poyet to Tottenham Hotspur before Christmas has been quite poor, and I do get the feeling that Wise isn’t the same man without Poyet at his side. I don’t personally rate his new Assistant Manager, Dave Bassett, at all. Still, on balance, Wise has done a good job.

But now, moving on. Who will be replacing him?

According to the BBC this evening, the three bookies’ favourites are (in order):

1. Gary McAllister
2. Sam Allardyce
3. Steve McClaren

The first, Gary McAllister, won’t be familiar to many readers. He’s a legendary former Leeds midfielder, playing alongside Gordon Strachan, David Batty, and Gary Speed in the league title-winning campaign of the 1991/92 season. He managed to extend his career to the age of 35, when he signed for Liverpool and was key to Liverpool’s cup campaigns in the 2000/01 season. After his retirement, he worked as a pundit and later as manager of Championship club Coventry City. He resigned after a year to care for his wife, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She died 18 months ago, and McAllister is (reportedly) considering returning to work.

Sam Allardyce is a more familiar figure, and (in my view) unfairly maligned. It’s not clear, however, how Leeds would be able to afford to hire him, and I think he’s a bit of a long shot.

Steve McClaren … well, we all know who he is. Hopefully, his name will have vanished by tomorrow.

Gary McAllister would be a popular appointment with the hardcore fanbase. I’d personally prefer someone more experienced, but I do think that McAllister would be a competent and inspirational manager.

Updates as they happen.

It speaks volumes of the talent in Leeds’s backroom staff that both Dennis Wise and former Assistant Gus Poyet (who became Juande Ramos’s assistant manager at Tottenham earlier this season) are being headhunted by top Premier League clubs, but where does that leave Leeds? The team is just a few points away from an automatic promotion slot with eighteen games to go in the current season, and considering the 15 point penalty the team began the season with, every game is crucial to Leeds’s push to the Championship. Losing Wise now could destroy a talented and successful team and leave Leeds in a similar position to Nottingham Forest – strong, overachieving, but stuck in a division far lower than the team’s reputation and history deserve.

Dennis obviously has to make a decision in his own best interests (although, personally, I wouldn’t go within seventy miles of the pending-death-sentence that is a job at Newcastle, where fans consider anything less than a 5-4 Champions League final win – every season – an abject failure. Unless you’re Kevin Keegan.) and I can’t begrudge his taking the opportunity to work in the Premier League. Still, it’d be a shame for Wise to exchange an opportunity to make history as a Leeds manager by overcoming a 15 point deficit to win automatic promotion, for a forgettable job as Director of Football at a mediocre Premier League club with about as much chance of breaking into the Big Four as I do of growing wings.

Go to Newcastle and be derided by a needy and petulant fan base, or stay at Leeds and be a hero at a team commanding the thirteenth largest average attendance in England despite being in the third-tier of English football? I know which I’d choose. Let’s see what Wise does.

Updates as the happen.

“The lads started giving my friend a lot of stick for his country’s loss, especially our head coach. My friend was taking it quite gracefully but, as a proud Ghanaian, I could sense his patience was wearing thin. Nevertheless, the drinks kept flowing and so did the jokes.”

Soon, everyone began to head to bed. In a playful mood, some of the Zimbabwean players decided to get their own back on their manager, who had woken them up early in the morning for training sessions. They persuaded hotel reception to give them keys to his room, stormed up the stairs at 4am, and burst in … on said Ghanaian and former-Leeds player, in bed with the manager’s wife. The players fled, found the manager passed out in a hotel toilet, and tried to keep a lid on things. The next morning, one of the Zimbabweans asked the Ghanaian why he had slept with the manager’s wife. He told his friend:

“When a man insults my country I insult him, by taking his woman.”

There’s a lesson in this for all of us, it seems: don’t screw with Ghana if you want to keep your wife.

[via Kickette]

The details themselves aren’t that interesting to non-Leeds fans: Leeds allege that they were compelled to enter a CVA that knew would invoke a legal challenge from HM Customs and Revenue, in order to retain their “Golden Share” in the Football League. Doing so, however, created a situation in which the League was able to deduct 15 points from the team, despite Leeds having no alternative path available.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens here – it could lead to the 15 point penalty being rescinded, in which case Leeds would be top of the league.

Leeds played Crystal Palace on February 10th, 2007 – a game which went down in history as the beginning of MOLEGATE. A Leeds player leaked a copy of the Leeds teamsheet to Crystal Palace the day before the game. Leeds manager Dennis “The Menace” Wise – who is really, really, really not someone you want to piss off, and was described by Alex Ferguson as “capable of starting a fight in an empty house” – spluttered furiously after the match that whoever was responsible “will not be playing for this club again.”

Which is where Shaun Derry comes into it. He didn’t play in the match against Crystal Palace, and never played for Leeds again after the scandal erupted. He was injured for most of that time, and Wise hasn’t used him once in the month of games played since his return to fitness. All of this points to Wise considering him guilty of collaborating with Crystal Palace during Molegate. The argument is bolstered by Derry’s links to Crystal Palace before the scandal: his Best Man, Danny Butterfield, played for Crystal Palace at the time.

I say “bolstered”; what I actually mean is that there was enough random, circumstantial evidence for the media, and the excitable lunatic fringe of Leeds fans, to declare Shaun Derry the reincarnation of Judas Iscariot and call for his public lynching. The fact that there was no evidence against him was irrelevant to many, including, apparently, Dennis Wise.

Derry told the Post this week that he wasn’t the mole. Assuming he’s telling the truth – and, to be honest, I’ve never believed he was the Mole anyway – who else could it be? I can’t think of any suspects, although I’m sure Dennis Wise is formulating a list. We’ll probably know when we spot a team member watching Leeds play from the stands with a heavily bandaged face.

So on to my all-time favourite Leeds player: Tony Yeboah. Ghanian Premier League top scorer two seasons in a row? Check. German Bundesliga top scorer two years in a row? Check. The only player to ever win the BBC’s Goal of the Month award twice in two consecutive months? Check. This is the man who gave me some of the best footballing memories of my life – I still remember being in the stands at Elland Road with my Dad, repeatedly chanting “To-o-ny Yeboah” until I lost my voice. He may have only played regularly for Leeds for one season, but good God, what a season.

Yeboah was born in Ghana and encouraged to play football by his Dad, a former professional player in that country. His performances in Ghana earned him a ticket to Germany in 1988, where he became only the second black person to play professional football there. He joined Frankfurt in 1990 and quickly became their best striker, ranking as the top scorer in German football in both 1993 and 1994 and striking fear into the hearts of every defence he encountered. Luckily for Leeds, Frankfurt’s newly-appointed manager foolishly fell out with Yeboah and two other high-profile players in 1995, and soon forced them out of the squad. Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson swooped in with a then-club-record offer of £3.4 million (roughly $7 million), having been impressed with the striker’s form after seeing him on a TV highlights show. Yeboah is still a legend and fan favourite at Frankfurt, with fans (according to Wikipedia) regularly wearing t-shirts emblazoned with “Zeugen Yeboahs” – meaning, “Yeboah’s Witnesses.” And with good reason: 6 months after Yeboah’s departure, the formerly Champions League-challenging Frankfurt were relegated. Despite efforts to bring Yeboah back to Frankfurt, the club couldn’t afford the star’s new transfer fee.

Yeboah played well in the last few months of the 1994-1995 Premiership season, but it was in the 1995-1996 season that he cemented his cult status amongst Leeds fans, winning the BBC’s Goal of the Month competition in both August and September of 1995, and later winning Goal of the Season for the second of them, his incredible strike against Wimbledon.

The August 1995 goal of the month, against Liverpool:

And the September Premiership Goal of the Month and 1995-1996 Premiership Goal of the Season, against Wimbledon:

Yeboah spent the rest of the season as Leeds’s talisman, leading the squad and earning the love of the fans, who voted him as the first-ever non-British Leeds Fans’ Player of the Year. It’s just a shame that the rest of the squad wasn’t quite good enough for Leeds to make the best of his talents.

Which brings us to Yeboah’s swansong – Monaco. Ah, Monaco. With an in-form Monaco considered one of the tougher teams in the 1995 UEFA Cup, Leeds travelled to Monaco nervously anticipating a difficult game. What they probably didn’t expect was one of the greatest hat tricks in UEFA Cup history, as Yeboah ripped the Monaco defence to shreds and gifted Leeds a 3-0 away win. The hat trick:

Sadly, that season was to be Yeboah’s last real chance at Leeds. A series of devastating injuries suffered while representing Ghana internationally kept Yeboah off the pitch for much of the next season, and after a series of disagreements with new Leeds manager George Graham, the best Leeds striker of the Premiership era left for Hamburg, back in the Bundesliga, on a £1million transfer. He played well there for a few seasons, before his play was seriously affected by allegations of tax evasion, resolving which drained him. In 2001, he left Hamburg for the football leagues of Qatar, where he spent a few (presumably relaxing) years.

Today, Yeboah lives in Ghana, where he runs a hotel called “Yegoala” in the capital city of Accra. When asked by The Times why he is no longer heavily involved in football, he said “I was thinking about the future of the Ghanaian people — people who have no work, people who supported me throughout my football career. So I wanted to do something to employ the people and in Accra I now have some 50 employees.” Since 2006, he has helped organise, and played in, an annual charity football match, the “Anthony Baffoe XI vs Anthony Yeboah XI,” and tutors a number of young Ghanian strikers.

Yeboah at a Glance:

Name: Anthony “Tony” Yeboah
Birthday: June 6th, 1966
Birthplace: Kumasi, Ghana
Nationality: Ghanian
Height: 5′10″
Position: Striker
Time at Leeds: 18 months (Jan 1995 to July 1997)
Appearances: 62 (45 league appearances)
Goals: 33 (25 league goals)
Why’s he great, in a nutshell? Did you watch the Wimbledon and Liverpool videos? Beyond his skill as a footballer, though, he seems like a genuinely good man who is trying to help young people in his own country. I really hope one day I can stay in his hotel and thank him for the memories he gave to me and so many people in Leeds.