Welcome to the new Leeds United blog!
I'm a soon-to-be postgraduate student at the University of Sheffield in England, and am currently working in deepest, darkest Peru (for all the Paddington Bear fans out there). Hopefully we'll have some fun as I grapple with a Spanish keyboard (no apostrophes, but I've gained an ñ, a ¿, and a Ç) and a maddeningly frustrating Leeds side currently slumming it in League One with the likes of Notts Forest and Swansea.
There's not actually a huge amount going on with Leeds at the moment, so tomorrow I'll post a quick roundup of the past week, in which Leeds were saved from a fate worse than death (i.e. losing to Leyton Orient) by a decidedly dodgy referee our manager spent the best part of a week trying (and thankfully failing) to have replaced. In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of Leeds's fortunes over the last few years, for the unitiated:
1992: Leeds win the old First Division, predecessor to the Premier League
2001: Leeds reach the semi-finals of the Champions League, and lose 3-0 to Valencia on aggregate. The team doesn't qualify for the Champions League again.
2003: Bottom falls out of the club financially, forcing it to sell most of its good players.
2004: Leeds are relegated from the Premier League into the Championship
2007: Leeds run out of money, declare insolvency, receive a 10-point deduction in the Championship and are relegated to League One. League One imposes a further 15-point deduction before the start of this season.
Which brings us to today. Leeds started the season in the lowest league in their history on -15 points. They're currently comfortably in the top half of the league table, having won nine of their eleven league games and drawn the other two, the best record of any professional English football club this season. Even with the -15 penalty, Leeds are only 6 points from the top of the table and looking fully capable of reaching it.
Tune in tomorrow - rubbish referees! Angry managers! Goals that aren't really goals! Come on, it's exciting ...