It weren't that long ago since I were a lad and things certainly aint wot they used to be!
Its gone 5pm and I ain't dressed yet! That is the sort of mood I am in today, so don't expect too much indepth research into today's offering!
I would imagine (without looking) that a finite proportion of the present Leeds squad were either not born or a babe in arms when Leeds were crowned English champions last on that glorious Sunday April 26th 1992. Me, I had just turned 20.
Post-1992, Sky revolutionised the game we used to know and love. Yes it would be forgivable to think that history never existed until Murdoch gave us his millions and launched Andy Gray the commentator upon us. Occasionally if I am desperately unlucky or unluckily desperate, I will catch one of those Sky TV retro shows picking back an historic year - usually from the 1990's and the timeline of things that make me go ummmm commences!
1- Squad numbers and names on shirts!
How did we or David Coleman manage with mere numbers on the back of the shirts?
Maybe because we knew our subject matter so well?
Add the complication of the quagmires what we used to play on (unlike the January Crown-Green surfaces of today- bloody boring!) we always had the luxury of the programme team-sheet to fall back upon. Back then, it was always correct - it never changed,
Nowadays life is too easy.
I must admit however it has been pretty useful to identify Davide Somma as his initial nerdy, gimpish, boy-next-door "head and shoulders shot" on the official website looks nothing like the straggling-haired, maurading menace presently occupying the er number 27 shirt and banging in seven goals to date!
2- Third Kits
Check out the brilliant www.historicalkits.co.uk website. A priceless resource when I am flogging old football shirts on ebay (particularly as 99.9% of them are none-Leeds). It is hard to believe that between 1964 and 1971, a whole SEVEN years, Leeds did not change their home-kit (in the sense of the design, they must have actually changed the shirts or they would have been a threadbare, whiffy lot and given the vile London/Manchester press another brickbat to lob at Uncle Don Revie).
By the time I was going to ER regularly, they were changing the shirts maybe every other season. Now we have at least two new designs thrust open us, for the good of the club coffers, every season and as a fan I take pride in what our lads wear and if it is a good design then why not keep it for two seasons?
Take this season's monstrosity. I rushed out and bought one for my holidays. Horrible bloody thing, saggy, dodgy crew neck, bland, dull, boring with some "technical" odd material inserts on the arms...designed no doubt to bolster the performance of an athlete and not a fat bastard guzzling copious amounts of San Miguel on the Costa Brava.
When I went to the Sheffield United game, my three mates were wearing last-season's effort and I felt very envious. It was a smart-shirt, nice collar with a nice blue stripe down the side. Much to my dismay, the club have since released a very nice blue change shirt which would look good drinking beer down the pub in! Given the choice, I know which one I would have gone for and it is not the one I have got!
Craftily Chancellor Bates has retained last-season's yellow-away as a third choice strip! No doubt the same will happen to this years little blue number and we will get a new yellow away? Confused? Indeed and it begs the question why do we need a third strip? Indeed in the last five years by my reckoning we have gone through FOURTEEN different kits!
3- Substitute Goalkeepers
Jason Browne of Blackburn Rovers was between the sticks for Saturday's impressive win at Boro. Messers Higgs and Schmichel are both injured. Simon Grayson last week added a second loanee in Ben Alnwick (Spurs) and there were reports that he had also brought Tony Warner back to the club as a free-agent. Added to this, Grayson still has the "perpetually promisingly young" Alan Martin who always seems to be loaned to some remote godforsaken Northern hell-hole like Accrington or Barrow.
Ive lost count. In the Don Revie era, just can just about name three keepers for his entire 13-year tenure notably Gary Sprake and the two David's Harvey and Stewart (no doubt some avid student spod of this era will slip in another name I've overlooked).
Nowadays, it seems that you cannot survive with at least six-different keepers on the books. Back in the day, either they did not get injured or did and simply got on with it.
Back in my day, I remember vividly the promotion season of 1989/90 (its on DVD kids and well worth a watch). In November Mervyn Day got injured and Howard Wilkinson brought in Chris Turner then of Man U to cover him for two-matches. Wilko's only other option was to have put an untried lad called Neil Parsley who had come from Non-League football between the sticks.
Even when Merv had a wobble (remember Barnsley at home on the last but one home game of that season?), we knew he would start against Leicester because there was no-one else breathing down his neck. A few years later, we did have a bit of a Beeney/Lukic interchange but that was about 12 months after Lukic was happily punching the ball into his own net at Ibrox safe in the knowledge he would be picked on Saturday.
Notwithstanding serious injury, I feel the game was also better when the regular keeper was either hurt or sent-off during the game. Purists will argue that old middle-class tosh about it spoiling the game as a spectacle, but it was far more exciting! Off the keeper would go and rather than bring in a fresh, immediate replacement a fight would break out amongst the out field players as to who would get the Green jersey (the loser got it). Then it would be pure slap-stick entertainment value as the novice goalie would flap and fumble at every cross!
Admittedly at Leeds, we did have a secret-weapon in the Chief! Lucas Radebe had started life as a goalie, so when Lukic and Beeney were otherwise disposed, Lucas would go in the nets. Bizarrely he would often outperform the gruesome twosome, do you remember his heroics at Old Trafford when he kept them at bay for 80 odd minutes? I seem to remember he also kept a clean-sheet against Boro (I think), their winner coming before he gamely stepped into the fray!
So there we have it. Yes with Sky, we have it covered on more angles than Linda Lovelace, we can analyse Carlos Tevez to death when even an idiot knows he is a fine player and if we can't remember his name, then we simply look on the back of his shirt, more than likely Man City's third-kit although we will never know what he is like in goal!