It's a tough job giving the ghost writer extraordinaire a break for a week - but this is a free hit for me, we get knocked out and we get to concentrate on the league, or we win with a B team and keep the home record intact and hopefully get some new heroes pushing for the starting jerseys.
Harrogate Town.
For those who don't have a Geography GCSE, Harrogate is a quiet spa town at the border of North and West Yorkshire.
My neighbour Colin is a Leeds fan, he cleans his car every weekend and mows his lawn at 14:00 every Sunday. He has 2.4 children and a good job in accounts. His dream is to move to Harrogate. That says it all.
The history - founded as Harrogate Hotspur in 1919 they are as old as us, but were renamed Harrogate Town after WWII, as a mark of respect for Douglas Bader - the great one testicled fighter ace who was born and raised in Killinghall, just down the road. They have never got further than the 3rd round of the FA Cup in their history. They have one trophy in the cabinet, the 2019 FA North Yorkshire Cup, where they beat Topcliffe in the final.
Harrogate is populated with Leeds fans, about 50% of the Harrogate Town players, board and fans are Leeds fans. This should be a great atmosphere on Saturday and I wonder if we'll get MOT sung from all 4 sides for once?
Anyway - on to us...
Expect a B team with "Ill with Measles" not in goal and a variety of U21 and squad players getting minutes. We should have a nice quiet home win in a freezing ER, bring your thickest jumpers folks.
Famous Harrogate Town Fans include:
Billy Bremner
Jonny Giles
Norman Hunter
Don Revie
(probably)
Leeds B 3 - 1 Harrogate
Weather: expect warm winds coming inland from Senegal and a bright 23 degree sunny afternoon.
A lot of things weren’t working right on Saturday. As pointed out by Daniel, our game was too narrow as the wide players forgot… to be wide players. And Guilavogui at CB was quite chaotic. Solomon by distance our best player, and, most important of all, Darlow got a chance, and he should keep his spot in the team for now.
Another observation: we missed Aaronson’s energy and enthusiasm. Is he really coming good? Maybe, and I, for one, really hope so, and just wish that he will score even more goals given the amount of chances he gets almost every game.
MOT