Ridsdale and I

It was a pretty action packed summer back in 1991. Elland Road hosted a gig by Manchester Indie sensations "The Happy Mondays" on June 1st- according to those who were there, Shaun Ryder opened the set by asking "Are you Man U?" as obviously much of the crowd had travelled from the west of the Pennines. Apparently one enthusiastic fan clambered up one of the 250ft high floodlight pylons. According to the poster, "The Mondays" were supported by The High, The Stereo MC's, Northside, the LA's and the Farm. DJ's Paul Oakenfold and Mike Pickering were also on hand to keep the crowd entertained in between sets. If the "Madchester Rave On" scene didn't float your boat, then you'd have to wait 6 weeks or so for Leeds to start their pre-season preparations at Harrogate Town winning 8-0 before heading to Ireland to face Shelbourne (1-1) and Cork City (W3-0)- then on August 5th Leeds made a near 12000 mile round trip to play Brazilian...

  Once again, Leeds were active in the transfer market come the summer of 1991 and paying, back then, some hefty fees to bolster the side that had outperformed arguably in its first season back in the top-flight by finishing a credible fourth behind Crystal Palace, Liverpool and Arsenal  Tony Dorigo was first in, the Australian born England left-back cost £1.3m having fallen out with Ken Bates. Dorigo's arrival was considered a necessary piece of business given our instability at left-back. Two former occupants of the no3 shirt in Peter Haddock and Jim Beglin announced their retirement that summer, the curse extended to Glynn Snodin and Chris Kamara who'd both sustained injury whilst deputising there. Howard Wilkinson raided his old club Sheffield Wednesday in a double swoop for two of their young players, Jon Newsome and David Wetherall, both centre backs in their early 20's. Arguably Newsome was the more squad-ready of the two, having played seven-times for the Owls. Weth...

  For the life of me I cannot remember why I ended up watching our win at Derby from the Normanton End of the Baseball Ground amongst their fans. I'd guess that this was a rearranged game thanks to the weather and the fixture pile-up brought on by our three cup runs and replays. I'll lay the blame at Derek's Door, my newish found friend from Swadlincote had the knack of persuading me to do things against my better judgement and going down to the Derby ticket office one frosty morning to buy tickets for their end was one of them. I'd later find out, as I long suspected, that Derek liked to wind people up! The problem was he wasn't exactly a big guy and was a few years older than me so might not have been that quick to make a run for if if we bit off more than we could chew. Obviously I knew the old Baseball Ground quite well and it was on its last legs. The state of the roof above us was probably more of a threat to our safety than the irate Derby fan who sat several...

We followed up our fine win at Chelsea with a 1-0 win at Wimbledon on April 6th. It would be our last ever visit to Plough Lane (possibly) as The Don's were in process of making a hugely unpopular move across London to Crystal Palace's Selhurst Park. Palace had a vacancy for a tenant now that Charlton, who'd lodged there for six years were going home to the Valley. Before completing the double over the Don's, we'd thrashed hapless Sunderland at Elland Road on Tuesday April 2nd. It was probably our most complete team performance of the season, Chapman and Speed two a piece and one for Carl Shutt, his sixth of the season. We'd well and truly got our missing out on Wembley/third spot disappointed out of our system. I loved beating Sunderland. Although I was a baby when they spawned the luckiest freak result in the history of world football eg the '73 FA Cup Final, I could not stand their Chairman Bob Murray. Thanks to The Square Ball fanzine who'd often reg...

  It's funny how things come around again. I write this blog in 2021 about events which happened in 1991, back then as per this year we saw a newly promoted Leeds team surprise many and make an impact on the top half of the Division. At the time of writing, we've just moved up to eighth which is remarkable having won at Southampton 2-0 (Bamford and Roberts), we started March 1991 with a 2-0 loss at Southampton, Paul Rideout and Glenn Cockerell scoring for the Saints with Rod Wallace providing the assist- a certain Alan Shearer missed a penalty! No doubt if I could be bothered to look, there would be suggestions from the so-called experts that Leeds were burning-out as the final part of the 1990/91 season drew to a close and let's face it, unlike the rubbish the hacks write about Leeds and "Bielsa burnout" these days they might have had a point back then! Leeds were still fourth despite the Strachan-less reversal on the South Coast. They had 1-2 games in hand down ...

  The Manchester music scene was all the rage back in the early 1990's, or Madchester as it was known. Some of it I did like such as The Happy Mondays, who would come to Elland Road to do a massive gig in the summer, I don't think they were big footie fans though. The Stone Roses were, but their allegiance sadly was with the red half of the city, which was a shame as I liked their music and alas the same applied with New Order. Predating them all The Smiths were a band split 50/50 Morrissey and Rourke favouring Man U and Marr and Joyce favouring City.  Still at least one of Old Trafford' s most famous sons was Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, despite all their success I'm not quite sure how they've lived with that burden for all these years. As I mentioned in chapter 20, our first home opponents of the 1990/91 season were Manchester United - the occasion passed without a whimper, it was a 0-0 bore draw, Elland Road wasn't even full to capacity and I never saw a cros...