Leeds Back In English Premier League After 16 Years
Leeds United have been promoted to the Premier League after 16 years away.
Their place in the top flight for next season was confirmed by West Brom’s 2-1 defeat at Huddersfield Town on Friday.
Leeds will now be crowned champions if Brentford do not beat Stoke on Saturday or the Whites then take a point from Sunday’s visit to Derby County.
Argentine Marcelo Bielsa has led the Yorkshire side to promotion in his second season in charge after finishing third in the Championship in 2018-19.
Even allowing for the enforced break because of the coronavirus pandemic, it has been a campaign where Leeds have never really looked like repeating mistakes of previous seasons and they have not been outside the top two since November.
They had seemed set to win promotion last season only for back-to-back defeats by Wigan and Brentford to leave them third behind Yorkshire rivals Sheffield United, before a dramatic 4-3 play-off semi-final defeat by Derby.
After that setback, fans could have been forgiven for fearing the worst about the future of Bielsa and the talented group of players he had assembled.
But he opted to remain with the club and together they have reaped the rewards.
It has been a long and often painful journey back to the Premier League for Leeds and their fans, who had seen their team reach the semi-final of the Champions League in 2001.
The club was in a dreadful financial position when they were relegated to the Championship in 2004 and though Kevin Blackwell – the first of 15 managers employed by Leeds since they were last in the top flight – steadied the ship initially and nearly took them back up in 2005-06, they were placed into administration in 2007 and went down to League One.
Worse was to come in the form of a 15-point deduction to start the following campaign and it took them three seasons to eventually win promotion back to the second tier under the management of Simon Grayson.
Comments are closed.