For The Love Of Leeds

Article by Paul Docherty

Follow e-Football on Twitter - Click Here!

I grew up and Leeds fan from around the 1990/91 season, with my dad supporting them from the late 60's. Between the two of us we have seen players come and go but the transfer that really hurt me (and all Leeds fans!!!) was the sale of Alan Smith to them lot across the Pennines.

When i first starting watching Leeds we had a great team with the likes of Strachan, Batty, McAllister and my hero Gary Speed. All of these players showed tremendous loyalty, commitment and passion for our great club and all left with best wishes from the fans. The same can't be said about Alan Smith, who's transfer divided the Leeds support.

He was obviously Leeds through and through but when he signed for Manchester United the backlash from the fans was evident. I personally felt a bit sorry for the lad, because looking at the bigger picture he was moving to one of the most successful clubs in the world and we had just been relegated to the 2nd tier of English football. In most cases this type of move would be a no-brainer but it's not that simple when you're leaving Leeds to go to them lot! He wanted to win trophies and was an ambitious man, there's nothing wrong with that, but at a time when we were losing all of our best players I think he could have stayed another year and helped us in the fight to get back to the Premier League.

People will say that the club had to sell him and we needed the money, which is true, but there were other players at the time that could have been sold and we should have brought through some younger players and built a team round Smith.

You only have to look at the players that came through not long after Smith's departure, the likes of Milner, Delph and Lennon to realise that we could have been a force.

**Calling all Leeds United Fans - We are looking for LUFC fans as regular writers. Interested? Contact us here!**

Although I'll never quite forgive Smith for his transfer to them I do have sympathy for the way his career turned out and would never wish an injury like that on anyone.The one thing that i took away from the whole saga was that it confirmed to me that loyalty in football was pretty much dead, and that's from players, managers and the clubs themselves.