Those readers of my blog who take interest in the football related posts, may remember last December, when I blogged on the news that Leeds United were about to poach Blackpool’s manager, Simon Grayson.

At the time, I was very excited about this and highly optimistic about the success Mr. Grayson would bring to Leeds. 11 months on, and while failing in the play offs at the end of last season, ‘Larry’ has been nothing short of suburb.

Leeds currently sit top of League One. 6 points clear of second place Charlton and 9 points ahead of Huddersfield, who are third in the dreaded play off positions. Leeds even have a game in hand on these two teams.

The season so far has been more or less perfect – a statement that every Leeds fan will no doubt agree upon, yet will have not have been able to make for a long time. There was the disappointing defeat to Millwall, a slight hiccup against Carlisle, Charlton and Southend (which resulted in 3 draws) and, of course, the Carling Cup exit to Liverpool. Besides that, Leeds have won every single one of their games and are scoring for fun – their four most recent results being 4-0, 4-0, 3-0 and 3-0.

Every week seems to be a turning point in the ever improving season. Take this weekend – Leeds away to Brighton at Withdean Stadium. Despite being a much smaller club in terms of fanbase and history, Brighton have caused Leeds a lot of problems in recent years, especially at their home ground. With a resurgence of form under new manager and ex-Leeds coach, Gus Poyet, Brighton looked good and I had my worries. Therefore, at 4pm on Saturday, I was delighted to see Leeds were winning 2-0. I was even more happy an hour later to see the fulltime score of 3-0.

There is a long way to go until the end of the season and nothing should be taken for granted, but surely only a collapse of truly mammoth proportions will see Leeds not earn promotion to The Championship.

Who is responsible for all this success? Sure, it’s a team effort and the players are playing some excellent football, week in, week out; but the change in attitude and fortunes these last 11 months can only be down to one man – Simon Grayson.

To quote another Leeds fan, it has taken 10 years, but we finally have a decent manager.

Saying all this, we’ll probably lose to Leyton Orient tomorrow night!

and Grayson said, ‘let there be goals’; and there were goals
and Grayson saw the goals, and saw that they were good
and Grayson said, ‘let there be defence’; and there was defence
and Grayson saw very few goals conceded, and saw that this was good
and Grayson said ‘let there be promotion’; and …… (to be continued in May)