How Leeds United and their fans remained strong to bring Premier League football back to Elland Road - Leon Wobschall

“Leeds, Leeds are falling apart again” to the tune of the classic Joy Division hit Love Will Tear Us Apart. It has been sung from Nottingham to Norwich, Huddersfield to Hull.

In terms of popularity for certain clubs, it ranked alongside the chant of choice for those adversaries who used to mock Liverpool’s long-time failure to lift the Premier League title with a chorus of “And now you are gonna believe us, we nearly won the league’.

This time, Leeds did not fall apart and should their fans be resident in grounds and others were forced to listen, the song to their rivals in the second tier might just be: ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.’’

Given a near 16-year penance away from the big time stretching back to August 2004, Leeds’s followers are entitled to milk this moment for all that it is worth. It has been a long time in coming and borne out of a fair bit of adversity, despair, embarrassment, bewilderment and notoriety.

Adversity? Try the club being punished with a 15-point penalty at the start of the 2007-08 campaign when they found themselves in the third tier. Leeds against the world. Not for the first time.

Despair would come in a shattering play-off final defeat at Cardiff in May 2006 when Leeds produced a no-show in an abject 3-0 loss to Watford to leave their supporters crestfallen.

A similarly painful setback to Yorkshire rivals Doncaster Rovers in the League One showpiece at Wembley two years later – with the club’s purgatory in the third tier to last three whole seasons - added a vat of salt into wounds.

Then there was Millwall in 2008-09, Derby last season.

Embarrassment arrived in Cup exits to the likes of Histon and Sutton, with a nadir at league level coming on February 17, 2009 when Leeds suffered a 2-0 defeat to Hereford at Edgar Street.

For those stalwart United supporters who was resident in the away end on that bitter winter’s night, opening a bottle of something reassuringly expensive to mark their return to the top-flight would be appropriate.

Bleak episodes – too many – would arrive back in the Championship. A 5-0 home defeat to Blackpool on a night when Paul Rachubka achieved notoriety; a 7-3 loss to Nottingham Forest and several more X-rated episodes.

There was the sheet bewilderment of the 70-day David Hockaday era – a youth coach hopelessly out of his depth who would lead one of football’s famous names.

Not forgetting Darko Milanic – remember him – who lasted all of 36 days during the thoroughly chaotic era of Massimo Cellino; the manager eater. Many Leeds supporters may have chosen their own nickname for him.

The time of Cellino had followed the similarly dysfunctional GFH Capital era. Another unsatisfactory chapter.

Now Leeds are back and their supporters can finally breathe again. Finally.

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