Five flashpoints sum up why Leeds United and their fans deserve Premier League joy

Leeds United’s long-awaited return to the Premier League has sparked wild scenes of celebration around the city.

It’s been a long and at times arduous wait for the good times to come back to Elland Road, while the Marcelo Bielsa ought to offer a sense of perspective of quite how bad things had gotten before his appointment.

Here are five of the club’s worst moments in their 16-year stint outside the top flight.

Luton 5-1 Leeds – October 2006

Not the first and certainly not the last heavy and humbling defeat suffered by Leeds in the wilderness years, but certainly one of the grimmest.

It only took a few weeks at the start of 2006/07 season for the reality to hit that Kevin Blackwell’s Leeds side would not be improving upon the previous campaign’s play-off final heartbreak.

Leeds arguably reached an all-time new low in the final match of John Carver’s hapless stint as caretaker manager, with his month in the dugout featuring four consecutive defeats that included a 4-0 home defeat to Stoke City.

A 5-1 home defeat to Luton Town at Kenilworth Road was Leeds’ ninth defeat of the first 13 matches that season as it increasingly became clear the club was relegation fodder. Sure enough that season the club fell to the third tier for the first time in its history.

“Managers generally say they like their players to do the talking for them, on the pitch,” concluded Guardian reporter Jeremy Alexander that night.

“Carver’s were incoherent, blurting with random anxiety. The defence especially found no common language.”

Histon 1-0 Leeds – November 2008

If reaching the Champions League semi-final in 2001 became the go-to shorthand for the high point of United’s riches-to-rags tale, an FA Cup second-round defeat to non-league Histon seven years later is the obvious reference point for the depths plumbed.

The village team beat United 1-0 thanks to a header from part-time footballer, full-time Royal Mail postman Matthew Langston.

A humiliation.

Leeds United 1-1 Millwall – May 2009

Leeds had an up-and-down 2008/09 campaign, which saw club legend Gary McAllister replaced by Simon Grayson after a poor start.

But they went into the play-offs with momentum behind them, winning 11 of their last 15 going into the semi-final against Millwall.

But a Neil Harris strike separated the two sides at The Den, giving Leeds plenty of work to do as they returned to Elland Road for the second leg.

A Luciano Becchio goal produced one of the loudest roars the stadium has ever heard to level things up on aggregate, and Leeds looked to be on the ascendancy when Millwall’s Djimi Abdou scored the tie’s match-winner 20 minutes later.

A stunned silence greeted the final whistle as Leeds were condemned to an unthinkable third season down in League One.

Leeds 1-2 Derby – April 2013

This wasn’t quite the low-point of Neil Warnock’s time in charge at Elland Road – that accolade goes to a 6-1 defeat at home to Watford – but it laid the final nail in his coffin after a stint everyone would rather forget.

Leeds have seen the veteran coach lead Queens Park Rangers and Cardiff to promotion during their ten-year continuous stint in the Championship, but he failed to bring any of that success to Elland Road.

His time in the dugout saw the heroes of the League One promotion leave one by one, with Robert Snodgrass and Luciano Becchio the last out of the door as Warnock built an unlovable squad of veteran journeymen that was patently unfit to challenge for the top end of the table.

The only glittering talent in that side, Ross McCormack, had been left on the bench but came on to equalise against Nigel Clough’s Rams before aiming an easily lip-readable “f**k off” in the direction of his own manager.

Leeds went on to lose 2-1 in the end, a fourth consecutive defeat and seventh winless game that saw Warnock depart his post.

He left Leeds just five points clear of the relegation zone and looking in genuine danger of being dragged into the mire.

Sheffield Wednesday 6-0 Leeds – January 2014

Ken Bates’ reign had finally ended at Leeds but successors Gulf Finance House failed to usher in better times on the pitch.

Few performances or results typify the deep-seated malaise and long-running mediocrity of United’s midtable Championship years than an abject 6-0 defeat to Sheffield Wednesday midway through the 2014/15 season.

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Matt Smith was dismissed within just two minutes of his half-time introduction off the bench as a backline featuring the likes of Lee Peltier and Marius Žaliūkas looked all at sea at Hillsborough.

Whites manager Brian McDermott summed up the mood in his post-match interview.

“It’s public humiliation as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “It’s a terrible time for Leeds United, the supporters and us.”