During Shameless’ opening titles, the fictional character Frank Gallagher questions the absence of an uprising against ‘Con-Dem-nation‘, which, for those of you outside the UK, is the United Kingdom’s leading coalition government of centre-right Conservatives and the centre-left Liberal Democrats.

“Have we had a national [...] stroke?” Frank asks, “Is ‘revolution’ a word? Or was it never?”

It’s not that British people don’t complain and make their voices heard, the brilliance of the rant is that it’s heavy with irony and plays on a stereotype – this country is full of people like Frank who have taken exception to some authority or another, who moan about it incessantly and do absolutely nothing to challenge it.

In many ways, The Scratching Shed stands testament to that. None of us like Ken Bates and we try to counteract his propaganda, but we continue to sustain and recognise his power as individual fans by funding him. His power is contained within that funding.

Protests do work. They raise the issue, get the necessary media attention needed and in some instances, the response people are hoping for will occur without need for further action. The controlling powers won’t risk their authority by calling the protesters bluff. They will instead meet their demands before things escalate.

Generally speaking however, these are protests against a democratic organisation or government. By protesting, people are – perhaps without even realising it – threatening removal of power through democratic means (ie. an election or vote of no confidence). This means the majority can always force the issue. If Frank’s opinion that the UK Government is failing is shared by the majority, and said majority are willing to take a stand instead of passively allowing it to continue, change can be achieved.

However, protests against a dictatorship are an entirely different thing. The threat of democratically removing power isn’t there, so unless you can find an alternative threat, no one is forced to react – and it has to be a threat you’re willing to follow through on.

There may be other options, but to really challenge Ken Bates’ power and force his hand, threatening to remove funding is the only route to success I can see working at Elland Road.

The problem is, removing that funding won’t be an option for many. Fans will – quite understandably – argue that they’re Leeds United supporters first, anti-Ken Bates second. If removing the funding inextricably tied to Ken’s power means supporters have to stop attending games, the response is all too easily predicted – it simply won’t happen.

It’s for this reason that I’m left to question whether revolution has a place in 21st century Britain? Unless we make some kind of threat to Ken Bates’ power, then how are the protests anything more than symbolic?

And this isn’t a criticism of Leeds United Supporters Trust and Saturday’s march - the Trust simply act based on what their members ask of them – my criticism is of the wider fan base, myself included. We want change, but we live in a society where we (usually) don’t have to sacrifice anything to achieve it.

We live in a country and an age where the only revolution we experience is beamed through satellites from third world countries thousands of miles away to the comfort of our living rooms.. We’re incredibly lucky that the government and almost every organisation and business allow us to moan about the most trivial nonsense and because they need our votes and/or money, they’ll respond to try and keep us happy – no matter how ridiculous our complaints are.

If the outcome of that isn’t satisfactory, we’ll seek like-minded individuals and moan collectively, maybe even start an online petition. If they won’t listen to the complaints of one person, a collective approach usually yields some kind of result. And in the rare instance that fails, we’ll march on their headquarters and cause enough of a fuss to get the press involved – no one wants bad press, they’ll respond. They always respond.

But what happens when they don’t? What happens when you’re an irrationally loyal group of customers squaring off against an old-fashioned businessman who has squashed more uprisings than most of us will ever see? Because that’s where we are at this moment in time – we’re attempting to stage a revolution without making any kind of threat because we refuse to sacrifice anything. We’re going to war with a few chants, some pretty signage and no weapons.

We need to step things up a gear and consider how much we’re willing to sacrifice.

“Every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation.” Simone de Beauvoir

There have been no club shirts available in the high street sports shops (or shop, singular, as the case more or less is) for years now, so the kids snap up the upper-end ‘EPL’ glory fare with abandon, indirectly funding Newcastle United as if they didn’t know there’s a team in their city.

They probably don’t, come to think of it. Is it a lost generation if the fact they’re being lost doesn’t particularly register with them as they’re disappearing from something?

But Leeds United: the business is OK – it has its unfeasibly loyal core target audience to fall back on time and time again with a well-executed annual begging letter, of course. Oops.

So, it transpires that it can’t even market itself effectively to them, as the much-discussed season ticket renewal letter of doom and the illiterate drivel that constitutes Official Site ‘stories’ attests. Josef Goebbels would roll in his grave.

All this considered the key question remains: who can we get to fill our new top of the range corporate and hospitality facilities? Don’t worry, I’ve thought about this one so the club doesn’t have to. They’re very good at not doing stuff, as we know.

The new target markets for LUFC are as follows:

Tax-evaders

These are Ken’s people; folk who know where he’s coming from – all that common sense self-before-side stuff. They wouldn’t have to admire the pretty football, because there isn’t any – they could simply gaze out of their box at an asset-strip well done. This is their kingdom to share and enjoy. The shirt sponsor’s even Gibraltar-based, to remind them of their tax-efficient superiority with every turn.

People with mental health conditions

From Barry George to Ed Miliband, the evidence is compelling that this oft-ignored social strata could be tapped by the club. A direct mail out to psychiatric intensive care units is strongly recommended. A sub-target audience within this target audience is people with acute memory loss – of the last decade, to be even more specific. Recent events suggest that those suffering with depression should, however, be avoided as potential allies of the club.

People with beards

Some would argue that taking your brand to a group based solely upon their physical appearance is a risky business – but we live in a face-value world, and those with hair sprouting from their faces are particularly likely to find kinship with their own. The appeal of a brand inexorably attached to a man that has not let changes in fashion dampen his commitment to beard-wearing would be potent. This leads nicely on to…

East London ‘creatives’

Given his other love of large, silly spectacles plus the afore-mentioned facial hair, it’s clear that the true crowd to appreciate Ken’s machinations, perhaps even see him as a father figure, is one that he’d presumably having nothing but contempt for:  types who like nu-folk and dubstep and were made virally famous in that Being a D***head’s Cool video.

Elland Road can even be marketed as a slightly down-at-heel ‘retro’ venue, which it is of course, but a fact until right now largely under-exploited in targeting new support bases.

Chest makers

On to the business-to-business marketing.

With so much unused war stocked up, we’re going to need a bigger chest to store it – and interested bidders will surely be prepared to prostrate themselves at the feet of LUFC, claiming lifelong interest in pursuit of such a lucrative contract.

After the chest has been constructed, the appeal to the chest industry would unlikely be over. It’s inevitable that chest enthusiasts will also use LUFC’s revamped East Stand facilities in order to catch a glimpse of the mighty war chest, and this surely brings continued incentive among designers and manufacturers: further business lead-generation potential while not watching the game.

Fire makers

With so many irons…well, see above.

PR/ HR professionals

“Oh yeah I’m a big fan of Leeds – anyone in this industry should be. Fascinating stuff to observe – so many fantastic real life car-crash case studies. With this sort of collateral it’s simple to panic, and ultimately win over new consultancy clients.”

Repressive regimes

This is potentially the biggie – hence being saved until last in time-honoured tradition. Attracting and keeping new audiences is all about finding the right moral and ethical fit, and the elites and subjects of the likes of North Korea, Zimbabwe and Syria are perfect.

Depending on the level of regime stricture on outside media consumption, we can even try telling our new followers that this is of the highest quality football entertainment England has to offer; perhaps play them a video of the Champions’ League campaign.

No huge marketing outlay should be needed: an invite to a soiree at his Monaco residence should easily seal the deal – and they’ll be buying their own drinks, of course. Yes, a long-lasting bond can be established at executive level between those who tell lies, stash cash and ignore the needs of their people, while the riff-raff, after years of being bombarded with smoke and mirrors, may well be charmed by Ken’s spin on the old despotic regime game.

Let us toast to future friends!

Written by Gary Hartley

This article is a guest contribution written by Dje. If you’d like to have an article considered for publication here on The Scratching Shed, please use the online form. 

Prior to our welcome, albeit fortuitous, win at home to Ipswich, Simon Grayson made a promise to Leeds United fans: that there’ll be no more key player sales following Jonny Howson’s imminent sale to Norwich City.

Unfortunately such matters are almost entirely beyond Grayson’s call on three accounts.

First of all: disharmony amongst the players. An unhappy player is not one easy to keep at a club, regardless of how much you might not want them to leave. Even during Saturday’s game, The National, an albeit unlikely revelatory source, being a United Arab Emirates-based newsfeed, revealed that Robert Snodgrass has now ended any contract discussions to further his stay at Elland Road. The reasons given were one of Grayson’s making, the other of a policy led by Shaun Harvey & Ken Bates.

Apparently Snodgrass is not chuffed that he wasn’t made team captain, an honour given to – and fluffed today – by keeper Andy Lonergen.

I think many others will also be surprised that Snodgrass wasn’t made team captain. OK, he does not always have the greatest of impact, being marked out of the game on occasions, but there is no doubting his commitment to the club. That and the fact that he is the one remaining outstanding talents that we hold, why Grayson would want to unsettle the last jewel by selecting Lonergen as captain is beyond me.

The second alleged reason why Snodgrass has ended contract negotiations is in sympathy with most Leeds fans after Howson’s sale to Norwich was revealed earlier this week: a sense of betrayal by the club that we have underinvested and failed to bring in the quality of players expected and promised. This leads to the second factor why the fate of the squad is predominantly beyond Grayson’s making: the financial directive at Elland Road which is led by that irascible pair, Ken Bates and Shaun Harvey.

For many months The Scratching Shed has led the line to point out how dominant these two figures are in leading our transfer activity (or a lack of one). Bates has his own building project at Elland Road to keep his hands, and our invested cash, busy. Harvey has been left with the internal financial governorship of LUFC transfers. This is the guy who has so single-handedly failed to secure our best players – Johnson, Kilkenny, and more recently Howson and White – on contract durations that keep them at the club as key players, or assets for eventual sale. Running down their contracts, allowing them to leave on a free or nominal amounts (£750,000 in the case of Howson according to The National’s article) seems to be Harvey’s cream.

Make no mistake, if Snodgrass has declared his unwillingness to discuss his contract being extended that can only be read as a desire to be elsewhere, and presumably at a Premiership club or a Championship one with real ambitions of going up. This is not to question Snodgrass’s desire to keep playing for Leeds. He won’t do an O’Brien on us. Once more he was on hand and willing, to get our underperforming team out of gaol and back on track this afternoon. But his alleged move to end contract talks will work perfectly with Harvey and Bates’ rubric to cash-in on him either during the remaining days of this transfer window or, and more likely, in the summer.

The combined force of Harvey and Bates as the ringmasters of the size and lightly paid composition of our squad was shown in the Ipswich programme notes. The delightful Ken revealed to the non-‘moron’ Leeds fans, those who he feels marginally accountable too, that we are currently over-spending on wages to the tune of 23%. Our player budget was £9.5m for the year, but is currently running at £11,722,000 per annum.

Bates failed to suggest if this imbalance was down to the falling attendance levels at Elland Road (just shy of 23,000 today), possibly as this would offer an empowerment and encouragement to ‘the vociferous few’ who are refusing to attend (especially our home matches) and/or renew their season tickets. Alternatively Bates was simply leading up to a future denouement of dissenting Leeds fans as the culprits for a financial imbalance and justification for future player sales. How dare we not pay Premiership prices for League One-standard football! How dare we not attend!

You see, Bates’ desire to flash the figures to the fans can be read in two disparate ways.

First let’s revel in the spin. Bates added in his programme notes that the imbalance of the two quoted amounts (‘a bad business practice’ as he called it) acts as ‘a demonstration of how far we have backed the manager’. How sweet that Bates is risking losing money to finance Grayson’s squad. But then that is the second way it can be read from Bates: THIS is Grayson’s squad, not only too expensive, but underperforming expensive players ~ blame him not me!

This is a classic move to distance himself from any personal responsibility for turning the club into a ‘selling club’, and under-performing on the field. It is the third reason why Grayson is not in the position to dictate the fate of the Leeds squad ~ because he is being set-up by Bates as the scapegoat if the fans so desire one. One who Bates and the omnipresent Shaun Harvey will claim has been over-resourced financially (despite it being Harvey who does the negotiations), who has brought in inadequate players (despite it is Harvey who does the negotiations) and under-performed in the league (despite having a squad of players unsettled by the Bates-Harvey financial directive of if-in-doubt-sell-and-find-spurious-reasoning-for-it).

With his hands bound, it is a pointless exercise to believe a word Grayson says regarding transfers. It is not that he is being deliberately deceitful; merely that he has almost no control over the destiny of what he is saying.

Good luck Simon.

Guest contribution written by Dje 

By the fans, for the fans. The ultimate dream, right? Right?

With the fans at the helm, there could be no danger of the hidden agendas, the ignoring of the need for a competent playing staff, or the breakdown of democratic debate at the club that have seemingly been the norm in recent memory.

Ah yes, the idea sits well. Theoretically.

It’s worked for some, and will probably work for more as greater numbers of clubs disband, reform or else simply seek more radical business models when the football world order morphs increasingly towards Sheikh/ Oligarch, debt/ fingers crossed, or every man for himself.

AFC Wimbledon, Exeter, FC United et al have succeeded in pulling off fan ownership – but they’re AFC Wimbledon, Exeter and FC United. No club of our much-vaunted ‘massive fanbase’ has succeeded in bringing about this governance model in the UK – though there are hopeful examples abroad, often aided and abetted by rules encouraging at least part-member ownership as essential rather than somewhat freakish.

But let’s get the basics out of the way first: making LUFC into a fan-run concern would be a logistical hell-hole of epic proportion.

Discounting what kind of decision-making model would have to be concocted to avoid a club of our size slowing down to a stop, the aftermath of administrators, mega-debt, lost assets and bits and pieces stored in offshore havens ain’t gonna be a tidy linear narrative to straighten out.

And of course there could absolutely no danger that us in charge could end up being worse than what we had before, no danger at all…

Hang on. When a group of people collectively run a business, they theoretically take on the liabilities of the citizen. It should therefore follow that the group should have a suitable psychological profile for the job.

For all our positive qualities – gallows humour, loyalty, single-minded belligerence to name but a few – the logical conclusion after weighing things up objectively against the bad stuff that we embody would be that we’re probably, overall, a bit of a collective basket case.

The Overwhelming pessimism, tendency to knock our own, urge to compare everything to an age of milk and honey around 40 years or so ago and lack of self-awareness for starters. And that’s without touching on the rabid persecution complex.

If we’re truly honest, would we, as a group, pass the fit and proper person test? I’m not even sure we could be classed as responsible adults anymore. We’ve been infantilised by years of torment.

It’s very possible that we enjoy having pantomime villains to blame too much. The Ridsdale, Krasner and Bates eras have moulded us into righteous finger-pointers. Living and dying by the sword sounds like a beautiful world of accountability never seen before in South Leeds, but on our own collective sword? That could prick a few egos rather horrifically.

After years of witnessing what we perceive as the mis-running of our club, I can’t help feeling there’s been monsters made of us all – a mass of megalomaniacs knowing exactly what they’d be doing better, and not willing to compromise when they realise that better isn’t the same better that everyone else envisaged. What’s more, I’m not sure any of us even know what kind of Kafka-esque nightmare we’d be letting ourselves in for once the doors were flung asunder.

Hexes, voodoo traditions, creative accounting, alleged player nervous breakdowns and real-life managerial bonkbusters – there’s forever a sense of ‘not quite right’ at Leeds. It’s fair to surmise that having full behind the scenes access could scar us; recoiling horrified by what we’d inherited with all our good intentions.

The simple retort to all this rampant hypothesising is that it isn’t at all in line with what the majority of Leeds fans want. Probably right. Most probably aren’t seeking the grind of taking a stake, attending meetings, casting votes, putting more than the cost of a season ticket into the club. They just want to watch a decent outfit do the colours proud – something to hope for every weekend, at least.

So what do most folk want in terms of ownership? At an educated guess, probably a rich, but not super-rich, long-term fan of the club who can do fan-to-fan empathy, someone who is willing to put their hand in their pocket when they can patently see that improvements are needed on the pitch. Of course we’ve had plenty characters promise these qualities – the same characters oft winding up in grave corporate litigation years later.

Maybe the only hope we’d ever have had for a successful fan-run outfit representing the city would’ve been at the absolute bottom of the pile, if LUFC as we know it had ceased to exist. But he saved us, don’t we all know, so now we’re all left a bit unsure of what a successful or even feasible model to run the club would look like from this stable but somewhat vague viewpoint.

Since there’s no sign of any Bates buy-out collection tins being passed round, or barricades being erected in the West Stand car park for an armed coup attempt, anyone know what Mr Sainsbury of Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Mubarak Al-Khalifaup to these days?

…and what have we done?

Well, evidently not so much, if the sort of league position you tend to hover around is the meter of doing summat.

A decidedly non-Leeds mate of mine can’t mention our club without dropping the word ‘seventh’ into the mix with as much sadistic pleasure as possible. ‘Falling ever so slightly short – derivative of seasons past: three stars’ would be the thrust of our arts critic’s review.

Another year over…and a new one just begun

They’re all more or less the same though really, aren’t they? We now even get exactly the same FA Cup tie every year.

The life of the modern Leeds fan essentially involves oversized expectations against our better judgement, oversized pricing structures, oversized corporate facilities, what’s tragically starting to look a bit like an oversized stadium, and undersized investment in playing staff.

This year has seen us officially become over-achievers. Will this be the New Year the wallet opens? Would this only serve to make us underachievers again? All bets are off.

And so this is Christmas…I hope you have fun

Will we though? Do we ever? We all know it’s not about such facile concepts in the LUFC family.

Looking at the four festive fixtures, you could hope wildly for seven points at least – but we are Leeds, and more specifically, we are Leeds in a league where inconsistency is the norm: we’re positively being egged on to confound our fans week-on-week. Expect to be drunk on rage and exultation in roughly equal measure, with a little confusion as a mixer.

Even if we somehow scrap and batter our way to promotion against all the stifling aspects working against us, it won’t be a fun kind of promotion; that much you can be sure of. Above all, it’s not the Yorkshire way. Fun is for the soft-headed Southerners.

The near and the dear ones

Speedo gone without getting halfway through his fifth decade; Ken steaming into his ninth decade in fine fettle. Yes, Christmas’s suggested philosophy of justice, health and good will for all really sits better this year than ever before…

We get dearly attached to the idea of glorious returns to the club of former doyens. With much certainty, there will be heavy sighing, slagging, and romantic odes over names such as Delph, Smith, and Keogh in January.

The old

Which would lead on nicely to our glued-on octogenarian Santa lookalike – but then you realise absolutely everything’s been said, and we’re losing the stomach for the in-fighting.

Erm, what else? Dead wood is old. We like to venerate the old and offer it long-term contracts, but this method of showing respect may need to be abandoned – the absence or presence in February of our cherished wood may determine whether the good ship United keeps vaguely successfully bobbing or not.

..and the young

A break from relentless doom is needed. Here, we have it. Lees, White, Taylor, and yet more promising noises of progress under the eye of Neil Redfearn from below. The ‘conveyor belt’ may have slowed, but decent products are still dropping off, at least more than they have been of late.

But when the spectre of relegation-threatened and desperate Premier League sides looking to add to their feeble squads (that’s at least 13 of them) constantly looms and the Daily Mirror still exists, perhaps ‘product’ is not a useful term, even in this month of rampant consumerism.

And what of our next generation of fans? We may be reaching the tipping point when it becomes tragically commonplace that proud Whites stalwarts catch their sons pestering mothers for Man City shirts. Ok, this has definitely returned to doom. Sorry about that.

War is over

Ha f***ing ha. Leeds v The World, Leeds v Leeds, Leeds v Bates, Leeds v Common Sense: there are far too many wars on too many fronts to make such rash promises just now. Hell, we’ve even got a chest prepared to fund the fight on all fronts – if only someone finds the damn key.

Let’s face it, we’ve chosen a disagreeable weapon to fight the battles required in the life of a football fan; one with a tendency to combust and recoil with disastrous effect at any time. But it remains a fairly spontaneous way to waste our time, at least.

Rest well, brethren – it’s gonna be an inevitably rocky five months. Have codeine and a defibrillator close to hand at all times.

Bear with me on the metaphor.

The ugly wife in question is the crap footballer on your team’s books. You’d quite like them to stray to be honest, but if never is a little strong, they’re pretty unlikely to. In the main they’d rather sit around on the sofa eating you out of house and home.

We haven’t got too upset about Billy finally deciding enough is enough and taking it upon himself to play away in beachfront hotels on the south coast, for example – in fact, we’ve seen it as something of a relief. If only Bruce and O’Brien would take the increasingly unsubtle hints.

The beautiful wife, on the other hand, is the class player your club’s produced: youthful, talented, lights up the dullest event of a match. And highly coveted, you fear.

I find myself unable to enjoy the blossoming of an LUFC beauty these days without breaking out into acute paranoia about them leaving for one of those clubs with a shiny sports car and aviator shades on all the time.

Take Tom Lees. Against Cardiff, I think most of us saw it. He’s one of the stand-outs now, and has become so in seemingly record time, if you conveniently forget about the two years of increasingly successful loans.

But I imagine for many of us the welling of pride in another cracking academy product coming to the fore also became immediately tinged with fear of loss, then resignation that without measurable improvement on last season’s nearly show, Tom and us might not be together very long.

I’m not sure I’m necessarily having a ‘Bates bash’ here either, as fun as it always is. More or less no-one outside the Premier League can hold onto star youngsters anymore without getting forced into a corner by someone waving wads of cash and the offer of regular bench time.

We’re all even vulnerable to West Broms, Wolverhamptons and the like, as depressing as that thought is. “It’s always been my dream to play at the top level,” they’ll incredulously tell you with a slight tinge of moisture welling in the corner of their dollar-signed eye as they sign on the dotted line at the DW Stadium.

As perverse as it sounds, from the club’s point of view, not involving your natural beauties in the first team for a while and offloading them on loan to somewhere extremely unfashionable (like Accrington) is the only way of keeping the slick sleazebags of ‘Premier League Football’ off the scent for a reasonable amount of time these days. Kind of like only letting that beautiful wife visit convents when she’s not heavily chaperoned by you.

But obviously this kind of jealous social control proves counterproductive when you realise that means you’re not actually seeing any direct benefit at all from discovering and coaching the footballing beauty into existence. So then comes the grudging realisation that there’s a point where you have to put them on show i.e. actually play them, in your slightly less unfashionable team and so allow the fear to start incrementally creeping.

Once the full-scale paranoia kicks in it’s very hard to shake. Time for thoughts about what desperate shows of affection could be done, what overtures could be made to make them stay. New long-term deal! Buy them a gift! Something outlandish like a decent partner at centre half, you think that might seal it. No, wait, it’s only us the fans that realise the latter might be a reasonable investment; or at least make it publicly known.

This is not a call for an entire harem of ugly footballing spouses – that would be a sure-fire way of guaranteeing attendance drops of greater leaps than the 15 percent we’ve already got.

We all want talent in our ranks, but with seemingly little chance of keeping it anymore, we have to learn to capture the beautiful moments of the marriage while it lasts, while hoping that maybe in some rare (say one in five), probably Leeds-born cases, there’s an odd adherence to that old ‘loyalty’ thing – well, at least enough to get an extra season in the second tier out of them, should it be required.

About six weeks or so ago I considered writing a piece about whether we should assume a point has passed where we’re never going to be back in the ‘big time’ again, and just accept some sort of joyous mediocrity – something like yo-yo club at best.

I even took the pains of contacting fans of our beloved Sheffield neighbours on the same subject, but as it turns out they hadn’t abandoned dreams of the top at all. All in all, it seemed like I was ploughing a silly little lone furrow of resigned negativity. Coincidentally, we were doing much worse then.

But recent events mean I’m coming back round again – I’m starting to think that maybe we should amicably give up on a return to the ‘EPL’, as it’s known to its prime marketing audiences.

Now, this is not because we’re not capable of making it there, oh no (the generally tosh nature of Championship opposition and the actually-not-that-badness of LUFC has been covered in Mangles previous), but because I’m coming round to the opinion that, much like guy who dumps his better-looking girlfriend just as she’s starting to feel she could do better, the Football League should turn the super league debate on its head by announcing its disaffiliation from the top tier.

I find agreeing with Shaun Harvey’s views and then taking them even further a hard thing to stomach or even compute, but it’s way past the point of fair comment to suggest that the Premier League are perhaps a bunch of overinflated despots plundering the greater mass of teams for the continued rude health of their own profit margins and egos. And yes, I’m more than prepared for the ‘bitter Leeds fan’ barrage from opposition trolls.

That no relegation thing was bad enough – but as totally believable as it was, it lacked Venky’s, I mean ‘foreign team owners’, actually coming out and nailing their w*nky colours to the mast.

It was the flagrant blackmail that led to the abolishment of the youth tribunal system last week that marked the point of no return. It’s as if the Premier League only just realised there was one quite fair rule still left in the statute book and felt impelled to clamp down on such unbridled freedoms.

The Championship is the fourth most-watched league in Europe. Secession by the Football League, whilst they have the likes of LUFC, the Sheffields, Forest, Leicester, Birmingham, West Ham et al on their books, and the Premier League has, well, a load of poorly-supported and/ or goal music-playing drudge-meisters on theirs, could be a cunning move.

Of course some of the above, perhaps even us, could be back in the ‘promised land’ by the time any such move could legally and structurally take effect – but there’d be plenty of sizeable sides still around. From a purely cynical ‘brand strength’ point of view they’d have a strong hand. F*** it, they should invite Celtic, Rangers, and a couple from Ireland along for the ride too.

But assuming we’d be part of the rebellion, what about the points deductions that our potential allies in rebellion gleefully dished out to us? No way we’re putting it all behind us, naturally. But what good league system doesn’t feature elements of rumbling bitterness?

Sky Sports would have you believe there were no good old-fashioned bad blood outside the opinion pool of Gary Neville – but there’s plenty of the soap opera angst everywhere. Sure, far more Football League outfits hate us than we ourselves can be bothered to hate, but that’s just life as we know it.

All we need to be united with the rest on is the view that with the Premier League sitting in the executioner’s position, sustaining a relationship with the hangman is just not healthy.

Yep, that’s right; a piece not so much about LUFC directly but the state of football in general – just putting it out there. You can begin vitriolic critique after just one more paragraph.

I would also concede that it’s almost certainly not actually going to happen. The desperate suckling of the League onto the ever-drying Premier League teat of prawn-scented sustenance will likely continue until it falls off, but I can’t help feeling we could be key players in a beautiful breakaway, if the men in charge would only show a little imagination.

Damn – why’d we have to go and look like a vaguely convincing defensive unit? Clean sheet? Pah. Don’t they know it’s only going to strengthen ‘Mr Chairman’s position? Tw*ts, the lot of ‘em. Absolute bloody sell-outs.

There’s a tiny, raspy voice inside me that I’m doing my very best to beat down. It rants and raves and postures – but only when LUFC do something competent. It doesn’t want to celebrate improvement, three points, in fact any of the incentives offered to a rational supporter.

I’m just about winning in my fight against this irrational little nark within – but I can’t help wondering if, at a time when many of us are disgruntled with the overarching regime at Elland Road, others are also finding any signs of progress made on the pitch a little emotionally confusing?

No? Well, I’m going to continue anyway.

This sort of internal cheering against my club has happened on a lesser scale before. The national media’s not very well masked distaste for the club and their related love of a good transfer link of our players to A.N. Other Premier League poacher has meant I’ve occasionally had vague hopes for our latest ‘starlet’ to throw a few diabolical performances into the mix to get them off the scent, while outwardly screaming “go on Fabian, skin the f***er.”

But what’s going on now is a more long-term, slow-burning affair, given the old crone staunchly refuses to sell up/ give up/ kick the bucket (delete to taste) and appears to go to more and more elaborate lengths to alienate as time crawls on.

It’s now very hard, at least personally, not to see us succeed, have a brief period of elation, then have joy replaced by the image of a smug bearded tax-evader on a yacht pointing at himself in one of the cabin’s 360-degree mirrored surfaces, going “no you’re the bestest ever Chairman in the universe ever – oh stop it, you great cad – no you are, Kenneth, you really really are – well, I suppose, now you put it like that…”

I know that comes across like it was a dialogue with between Ken’s ego and super-ego, but it’s supposed to represent Ben Fry on speakerphone.

Anyway, this season is probably not going to be one of unmitigated doom. It’s quite likely to be not one covered in glory either, but I strongly suspect it’s going to be a hell of a lot closer to the latter. We may not have strengthened massively, but as goal-crazy and entertaining as it definitely is, the Championship’s general standard is at best inconsistent, at worst, a bit crap – meaning we can still do damage on more days than not.

With this in mind, there’s going to be many more of those thoughts of Ken preening as Ross slams in another to be gritted through this season. Presumably only some targeted brain surgery to remove all the residual memory and recognition of Bates will allow a goal celebration to be entirely pure again – at least until he’s replaced by someone better at the helm. Since Satan’s sons tend to live long, prosperous and healthy lives, there may be some wait for this, like.

Given the investment in the club we make in various ways, it’s highly unlikely that we could ever get to such a point of Bates distaste that we’re proactively wishing disaster to befall the lads. It’s thankfully more likely to appear as a saboteur afterthought.

Whatever machinations are going on in the background, wanting your team to be hopeless to prove a point against an enemy within is, well, a hopeless place to be – and such an absurdist position would be a perversion of your moronic mind that Ken would very likely enjoy, or at very least take sole credit for. And as many would testify, credit’s not something you’d want him anywhere near.

We’re going to get relegated. We’ll be up there come May.

Grayson: one the finest young managers in England. Grayson: out.

White’s the latest in a long line of starlets going to the top. White’s Bambi on Ice – get rid.

Game to game, day to day even, we seem to be confused as to the destiny of LUFC and all the players and staff therein.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of inconsistency. It would be remiss, for example, to not mention the wild amplified jerking between ‘buy in some big names!’ and ‘play the youth!’ – concepts not entirely compatible, as the Arab Emirates’ Manchester colony will attest.

We’re knee-jerking so much our joints are creaking like stage five arthritis, and given this backdrop, you do wonder whether there’s a connection to the good ship United also shuddering somewhat unpredictably from pillar to post when the lads actually do that marginally important act of getting on the field. There’s no way this expectation of instant gratification doesn’t transmit.

To visit some of the Leeds message boards we’re all tragically over-familiar with is to witness that extreme knee-jerk logic is definitely not the exception – it’s endemic. Anything other than instantaneous militancy as a reaction to defeat or glory is largely frowned upon.

It’s entirely possible that we as Leeds fans are some of the worst offenders in the culture of knee-jerk football analysis due to our current paradox of huge expectation and underwhelming resource, but it’s safe to say we’re not alone, and it’s not our fault – in the main.

We’ve had a sort of ‘extremist football’ shoved down our throats for over a decade now by the mass media, where every defeat is perceived as a disaster, a ‘boss under pressure’ and, more recently, a possible player revolt engineered via Nietzsche quotes retweeted or suchlike.  The next week’s victory means ‘back on track’, chasing down glory and votive offerings to gaffer-gods.

At the same time we’re bombarded with invitations to instantly and publically ‘have our say’ via social networks, phone-in radio shows, forums and that abominable thing where they read out the blandest-possible emails on The Football League Show.

We might not have a fully-defined viewpoint on what we’ve just witnessed just yet, and maybe by nature we’d rather be quietly philosophical, but we feel we’re obliged to spit a half-formed reaction out anyway.

It doesn’t take Pulitzer-worthy investigation to realise that it’s not just us trapped in waves of hypocrisy as we deride villains, hail the villains as heroes and back round again. Pretty much everyone’s doing it, irrespective of fanbase and expectation.

There was probably an age when the lag between final whistle and sociable evening activities could be used to come to terms with what went on, perhaps even come to a rounded conclusion not attached to the poles of glory or doom – but that age has so quickly dissolved under new mediums of instantaneous moaning, baiting and bragging as to be considered incredulous to us now.

Left with few alternatives, we all largely buy into this culture of reactionary extremes, forgetting there were days when a quality opposition goal could be applauded without feelings of oncoming embolism and it was ever possible to face a weekend rationally without the words ‘make or break’ rattling round your skull.

It would be too much to expect utter consistency on either the side of glory or despair from our team, a side whose legendary recent unpredictability so perfectly lends itself to epic knee-jerkage.

But without inviting the gypsy curse to dance all over this column, we do appear to be finding a touch of consistency (“consistent red cards you mean – sack off the undisciplined wasters!” I hear someone yell…) and perhaps by the end of the month or so we should have a more reasonable eye on where we should pin realistic expectations.

But hang on – realistic? Pah! We just want the crash-bang drama coming at us thick and fast. Or so they tell us.

Is it not possible that living out a lurching ride of emotions on the back of some lads you don’t know might be a bit, well, unhealthy? At the risk of coming across a bit Hare Krishna (again), maybe we need to try some basic behavioural therapy: start by accepting that we may have a bit of a tendency to overreact when it comes to LUFC, then try not to instantly deride those who use phrases like ‘on the other hand’, ‘hopefully’, and ‘willing to give them time’ as heretics and Bates Lovers.

Yes, the Talksport and smart phone-created monster in the machine just may well be you – but the chance to save yourself and MOT with just a little rationality providing the rhythm is still very much in your own hands.

A new feature for the 2011/12 season here on The Scratching Shed which gives fans the chance to vote for their goal of the month.

Whilst the results haven’t quite gone as hoped, the quality of goals we’ve seen throughout August has been of the highest standard. The nominees for August’s goal of the month can be seen in the video below, which is followed by a poll for you to select your favourite.

1. Ramon Nunez vs Bradford City (10-08-2011) League Cup R1
2. Ross McCormack vs Bradford City (10-08-2011) League Cup R1
3. Tom Lees vs Hull City (16-08-2011) Championship
4. Robert Snodgrass vs Hull City (16-08-2011) Championship
5. Ramon Nunez vs Doncaster Rovers (23-08-2011) League Cup R2
6. Ramon Nunez vs Doncaster Rovers (23-08-2011) League Cup R2
7. Ross McCormack vs West Ham United (21-08-2011) Championship
8. Adam Clayton vs West Ham United (21-08-2011) Championship

Alternative link to video here

The poll will remain open until the 7th of September and the winning goal will go on to feature in our goal of the season poll.