"ALL good Yorkshiremen like a sense of grievance and a chip on their shoulder, thinking the world is against them."
So said Ken Bates yesterday when asked if the Football League's 15-point penalty had been a factor in United's spectacular start to this season.
He was actually responding to the question a few hours before discovering that the Elland Road club's attemptto overturn the sanction had failed.
But, equally, the Leeds chairman's words could have come after the arbitration panel's decision was k
nown with a clear siege mentality having last night descended on the city.
Just like last August, United fans feel their club has been victimised. Or, as one United fan succinctly put it last night: "This lot might be in the same division as us right now, but they will never be in the same league."
The sense of grievance that Dennis Wise, imbued with the spirit of Wimbledon in the Eighties, used so spectacularly to galvanise the whole club in the late summer months is back with a vengeance after having gradually ebbed away once a haul of 35 points from the first 13 games had pushed United into the play-off places.
A determination to stick two fingers up to the Football League has also returned, and what better way to do that, angry supporters were suggesting last night, than by winning at Wembley later this month?
To win promotion, United have four more games to negotiate - starting tomorrow with the visit of Gillingham to Elland Road on the final day of the regular season. Passions are certain to be running high, especially with the visitors' chairman Paul Scally having been one of Leeds's biggest critics last summer.
A home win would mean the Kent club are relegated to League Two, a fate which Bates says would be "poetic justice", so expect the noise levels to be cranked up as high as they have been all season.
Even then, tomorrow's game will surely merely act as the appetiser for the main course that will now be the play-off semi-final first leg at Elland Road - a game that will take place a week tonight if Leeds finish sixth, or the following Monday if Gary McAllister's side can claim fifth place.
It is then that the sense of resentment burning deep within every United fan right now is likely to really come to the fore and it will be a brave group of visiting players who are willing to tackle 35,000 seething Yorkshiremen who feel the world is an enemy that needs to be crushed.
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