I’ve just returned from a round trip to Cheshire, picking up my mother from her Christmas hiatus at my sisters home. Bringing back the matriarch home to West Yorkshire, ending my few angst-free days of solitude.
Mater (Maggie) was in fine spirits on the journey home, her yuletide spent in the company of my youngest sibling, her husband Steve and their two young children allowing some respite from the more frequent company of her less tolerant eldest offspring.
Maggie’s contentment levels also heightened with spending rare quality time in the presence of her two youngest grandchildren; Megan aged nine and two year old Alice. Despite her dotage impeding the tasks she can undertake in support of Helen and Steve with the kids, she’s capable of carrying out more pedestrian tasks like bedtime reading duties…… Who’d have guessed the Daily Express editorial would be embraced with untapped elation by a two year old!
As I commence this paragraph, my blood pressure is further elevated by watching Leeds United football club (LUFC) throwing away yet another lead. While I write there’s half an hour of the game remaining and I’ve just witnessed them spurn a 2-0 lead at Birmingham. Inept defensive play allowing the Brummies to level the score at 2-2.
Prior to the Christmas period LUFC’s defending was Scrooge-like; only conceded 10 goals in the first 21 fixtures of this season. However, in recent matches this collective avariciousness has diminished to such an extent that (as I write with 30 minutes left) they’ve concede 8 goals in the last 4 games.
Whether this was a result of Casilla, Ayling, Cooper, White and Alioski being persuaded to relinquish their habitual defensive frugality by visitations from festive Championship spectres we’ll never know. What I do know, though, is that my cardio vascular system has a short, well-meaning message for the quintet of footballers, “Ok lads, enough already!!”
Commencing this paragraph the LUFC match has just concluded. In what was their final football game of the decade it finished with a Leeds (The Whites) victory over Birmingham City by 5-4. A crazy game which toed and froed, which eventually saw my team prevail in the final minute of the conquest of fluctuating fortunes.
I watched the game on the Sky Sport interactive button; ninety six minutes of changing emotions and despair at Casilla, Ayling, Cooper, White and Alioski. Not to mention along with wondering why goalkeeper Casilla, which translates from Spanish to box in English, being seemingly incapable of commanding his!
This result seeing Leeds United leading the table as dusk falls on a moribund 2019. It means nothing at this juncture, after all their are another twenty one fixtures to fulfil; not forgetting my team has previous when it comes to capitulating from promising promotion positions. After all, LUFC have given their long-suffering fans more false dawn’s than a convention from the Insincere Girls Named Dawn Society.
At the contests conclusion LUFC’s Argentinian born coach Marcello Bielsa informed a packed post match press conference, with interpreter translating his Spanish tongue into English. that one should always endeavour to bring oneself out of your comfort zone.
Well Marcello, as magnificent as your boys were today, they certainly took many thousands of your supporters out of nuestras zonas de confort!……. Altogether now:-
“Bielsa he comes from Argentina,
He came to manage super Leeds.
They call him El Loco cos he’s crazy,
He knows exactly what we need,
Kiko at the back, Bamford in attack,
Leeds are going to the Premier League… “ Hopefully!!!
