Leeds United stick together to get their just rewards of Premier League football – Stuart Rayner

After 16 years of frustration, this was a campaign where doubts had to finally be put to bed. They waited until the final week, but did it.

The disappointment of last season’s play-offs – the fourth Leeds played in without winning promotion – was going to be either the making or the breaking of this team. As a result, they go into the Premier League a stronger unit than the one denied the elevation that ought to have been theirs last summer.

The fear was that the Whites’ catalogue of catastrophe was turning into a self-fulfilling prophesy. “Doing a Leeds” had entered the football fans’ vernacular, gleeful renditions of “Leeds are falling apart again” were becoming well worn. When they were heard in 2019-20, the players stamped on them.

Even in the glory years under Don Revie, Leeds were runners-up more often than winners. David O’Leary’s great side came close, but never actually won anything.

Being comfortably the best footballing side of last season’s Championship without winning it only fed into the negative narrative.

The big sliding doors moment came at the start of last summer when coach Marcelo Bielsa was persuaded to stay. He and his football are so charismatic, following in his footsteps would have been as hard as succeeding Revie.

It marked the start of a summer of little change. If anything, the squad looked weaker with the loss of Pontus Jansson and Keemar Roofe, key figures at either end of the field.

But Bielsa is an exceptional coach, not just a good manager, and an extra season working with his players got more out of them. The loan signing of Ben White to fill the Jansson-shaped hole was inspired, but the return of Jack Harrison was important too. Of the additions, Helder Costa grew into the season, Illan Meslier was only needed for the run-in and the attempts to replace Roofe did not come off but almost all the survivors of 2018-19 grew in stature.

After a pre-season which showed there would be no let-up in Bielsa’s physical demands, Leeds hit the ground running.

A 3-1 opening-day win at Bristol City reprised the football of 2018-19, and a seventh straight win, at home to Hull City, had them 11 points clear of third place after only 21 games.

Kiko Casilla, a weak point in the first half of 2019, had conceded only 10 goals and if teams were sometimes being let off the hook at the other end, it was not costly as they and West Bromwich Albion set the pace.

Of course there was a wobble – Leeds never do anything simply.

They were brilliant for an hour at home to Cardiff City in mid-December, taking a 3-0 lead. Despite the Bluebirds having a man sent off, they claimed a 3-3 draw.

It started a 12-game run with only two wins. Often they outplayed opponents without putting them away but not in February’s sobering 2-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest. It could not happen again, could it?

They straightened themselves out, drawing their final game at Griffin Park, then winning the next five. Casilla’s season had ended in shame, suspended for eight matches for alleged racist language – he still denies it – at Charlton Athletic in September.

It was a sign of Leeds’s greater mental resilience that it was shrugged off. The Spaniard was just showing signs of coming out of it, but had become a liability in the new year and Meslier picked up where he left off in an assured FA Cup debut at Arsenal.

Of all the things that could have stopped the Whites, no one could have predicted a global pandemic. Not only did it end their five-match winning run, it gave unwanted thinking time to consider the enormity of what faced them when the nine games were finally completed.

To their credit, Leeds consistently argued the case for the resumption, not the points-per-game table which would have sent them up as champions.

The results were patchy on their return, and Brentford’s relentless consistency meant even as Fulham dropped off, Leeds were made to wait until the final week of the prolonged campaign to book their place back in the Premier League after 16 years. The anxiety in the 1-0 home win over Barnsley was palpable.

No one could claim they did not deserve it, thrilling with a way of playing entirely in keeping with the top division. The formations and personnel change but the fundamentals are immovable.

Leeds play out from the back with players hugging the touchline high up the pitch. Their energetic pressing can be relentless, led from the centre-forward. In between there is great scope for ingenuity.

There will be no tearing up of the blueprint for a new division. Even if it was a good idea – it is not – Bielsa would not entertain it.

White will have to be replaced now he has shown parent club Brighton and Hove Albion and numerous richer suitors how good he can be, and a centre-forward (or two) will be needed who can match Patrick Bamford’s workrate whilst improving on his finishing. The reliance on Pablo Hernandez in the run-in was slightly disconcerting because he is 35, and someone to share the load would not go amiss.

But generally speaking this is a club and a coach deserving of English football’s grandest stage playing football fit for it. And after coming out the right end of the longest season in the history of our domestic game, one whose demons have been buried.

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