Jon Howe: Culture in the right hands | OneFootball

Weekly column.

In his latest column for leedsunited.com, lifelong supporter Jon Howe looks at Sunday's big match between Leeds United and Manchester United.

Howe is the author of two books on the club, ‘The Only Place For Us: An A-Z History of Elland Road’ - which has been updated as a new version for 2021 - and ‘All White: Leeds United’s 100 Greatest Players’ in 2012.



100 years ago a football club was a product of its people; those who ran it and those it served. If there was a culture within the club, it was a pretty functional and straightforward one; hard work, honesty and a survivalist spirit, and hence one club was not much different to another in terms of how it operated and what its objectives were.

In austere times between the wars, football clubs were a critical distraction and a source of pride and identity for the community, and they still are. But the humble origins of clubs like Leeds United and Manchester United and the Spartan commercial landscape they faced back then are now just a tiny, indistinguishable speck in the distance, and the culture of a football club is a whole different animal and very much of each club’s individual making.

An accurate summary of the team Marcelo Bielsa first created at Leeds United in the summer of 2018 could be that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Then, Bielsa somehow convinced a ragbag collection of players who had just finished mid-table (again) in the Championship that they could go as far in the game as they wanted to. That doesn’t happen by identifying ability alone, in fact probably a bigger percentage of what is needed is a mental and physical commitment; a buy-in to Bielsa’s ways that is absolute and unwavering. And an immersing in the right culture.

Perhaps Bielsa’s biggest achievement at Leeds United is that he was able to instil this attitude and belief immediately. There was no slow burn. From the 3-1 win over Stoke City in his first game as manager, it was obvious something was happening, and it was obvious the culture at Leeds United had changed.

And having the right culture at a football club is not the same as creating “a winning culture”. Bielsa wants to win, but in the right way, and while making everyone involved a better person and leaving them with precious memories, beliefs and attributes which will enrich their lives forever.

At Leeds United, Bielsa implemented standards of excellence and professionalism in coaching, fitness and conditioning, recruitment, analysis and the academy structure. From this comes more focus and more singular goals, unity, strong relational dynamics and mental wellbeing and a sense of belonging, and this more than likely will result in a winning culture. In fact it has.

Under Alex Ferguson, Manchester United built this same culture and it resulted in one of the most prolonged periods of comprehensive domination the domestic game has ever seen. But a culture can be gained and lost very quickly, as both Leeds United and Manchester United can attest. It could be argued that the culture at Manchester United was already changing before Ferguson had laid down his tools for good, but certainly the sparse trophy cabinet and the unrest within the fanbase at how the club is structured and motivated in 2022, plus the incoherent succession of permanent and semi-permanent managers, points to a culture that is an unrecognisably distant version of what had gone before.

The last Manchester United team to play a league game before a full and throbbing Elland Road in October 2003 was led by Roy Keane, who scored an 81st minute goal to win the game 1-0. Over the previous 13 years, Elland Road had hosted some fearsome, tinderbox encounters between the two clubs, games which the likes of Keane, Paul Scholes, Paul Ince, Steve Bruce, Gary Pallister and Mark Hughes absolutely relished. They were players made of different stuff, who wouldn’t flinch at the prospect of 40,000 Leeds fans suspended in a state of manic hatred, and they could probably write a book containing the various obscenities hurled their way well within earshot. And this was just getting off the coach before the game.

Encounters between Leeds and Manchester United at this time were routinely toxic affairs; laced with acidity and never deviated far from being poised on the precipice of exploding into bedlam. And for Manchester United players these games brought an intensity like staring into a hairdryer for 90 minutes, or rather 40,000 hairdryers. Given the culture at Manchester United today, you wonder if they have the players who are quite ready for Sunday at 2pm. Is there anyone at the club who can prepare them for what they are about to experience? And by the way, let’s make sure they experience it.

This is more than a game, and while it is often something of a platitude when people say the fans are the 12th man and can really have an effect on a game, on Sunday this genuinely is the case. Leeds United fans can make the difference and make Elland Road a horribly unwelcoming place, and one where those who don’t fancy it, won’t fancy it.

If Leeds United’s culture is about players looking deep within themselves to become greater as a team than their individual abilities suggest they should, there is a discussion to be had about whether Manchester United have been the opposite of that since Ferguson left the club, and since we last made acquaintance. The wrong culture can dispirit, disorganise and inhibit talent and fracture attachment and togetherness. Perhaps there is an abject lesson here, that throwing money at a team doesn’t make it a team; because talent alone can only take you so far. It doesn’t create the right culture, because the pursuit of that can be maddening, tantalising and baffling.

Looking at the two elevens that line up against each other on Sunday, plenty of people wouldn’t expect them to be competing on a level playing field, but with the right culture you can, with the right culture players can be propelled further and higher than they ever thought they could go. Bielsa has been ruthless in achieving that, he has identified and discarded players along the way who haven’t bought into his methods and who haven’t shown the same trust in or commitment to their teammates, because what is sacrosanct and not up for discussion is the culture that Bielsa has created and the untouchable, unbreakable devotion to it.

Manchester United’s club charter states that their vision is “to be the best football club in the world”. Whether they currently have the culture at the club to make that a realistic vision is for them to pick apart and discuss. What we can talk about is the culture at Leeds United, and God knows, we’ve had our own problems with the values, ethos and principles the club has followed since that last dust-up with Manchester United in 2003. But a lot has happened very quickly, and despite this season’s varying problems, the culture that finally transformed Leeds United for the better is still strong and still revered throughout the club.

These players will die for each other, take risks for each other and ultimately, will never forget each other. The right culture can be elusive and unobtainable, but when you have it, you know it. And it’s worth remembering, among our frustrations and anxieties about this season, that, when the teams line-up at 2pm on Sunday, Leeds United’s culture is in the right hands.