Leeds begin the season with a visit to the simple country bumkins of Bristol City, and we will finish with a home game against Charlton Athletic. To find out about the fun and games in store in the time in between, then read on.
Yes folks, the most eagerly anticipated day of the summer has finally arrived. The day that the fixtures for the forthcoming season are announced, so at last we can start to plan our lives for the period from August through to the beginning of May next year.
The fun begins at Ashton Gate 4.30pm on Sunday August 4th. Yes, you read that right, we have already had a fixture moved by our very good friends at Sky Sports. That’s good news for the many Leeds fans whose tickets in the home stands last season, the wake of a reduced allocation in the away section, and for the family who were deemed to be dangerous hooligans and thrown out of the family stand after the little boys were spotted wearing Leeds socks. At least they will be able to watch the game on TV without having to worry about the draconian stewards employed by Bristol City.
Those who pine for the delights of South-East London will be well catered for in early autumn, with a trip to Charlton on September 28th and a visit to Millwall seven days later. You would be forgiven for thinking that the latter trip would be the one likely to be fraught with danger, but I did know a Leeds fan who managed to suffer a broken nose on a visit to the Valley back in 1984.
And the first half of the season will also meet the needs of those who enjoy local derbies at the grounds of all the minor Yorkshire clubs who are jealous of our superior status. The first is at Barnsley on September 14th, and we go to Sheffield Wednesday on October 26th and the dog botherers of Huddersfield on December 7th.
Boxing Day sees us at home to Preston, and we bring in the new year at West Brom, with an away game at Birmingham on the Saturday in between, just to tempt anyone who could possibly bear to spend four days in the West Midlands between games to minimise the travelling. We wait to see what over-running engineering projects Network Rail can dream up over the holiday period to make our lives as difficult as they can.
I always look to see if the League have made any effort to minimise our travelling in midweek. This season our Tuesday and Wednesday away games are at Preston, Reading, Brentford and Middlesbrough. Preston and Boro aren’t too onerous, and our many fans in the south-east might be pleased that the Reading and Brentford games will be played at times when it’s harder to get there from Leeds, so they will stand a better chance of being able to get tickets.
We finish the season with a home game against Charlton, so we will be spared the desperate scramble for tickets that last season’s game at Ipswich so nearly was. Let’s hope that this time it will be a vital promotion-clinching game or a celebration, rather than the damp squib that our visit to Portman Road turned out to be. What a pity that Lee Bowyer won’t be returning to Leeds to enjoy it, having declined the offer to renew his contract as manager of Charlton.
For copyright reasons we’re not allowed to reproduce the fixture list in full but you can find it here on the Sky’s website, a handy link to keep you up to date with all the changes they will inevitably make to our schedule as the season unfolds.