The professional football team of Leeds, England. Formed in 1904 as Leeds City. They became Leeds United in 1919 and turned professional the next year in 1920. Their most famous player is Billy Bremner who played for them from 1960 to 1976 and was also capped 54 times by Scotland. His statue stands outside Leeds' ground, Elland Road.
They have won the old First Division three times in 1968-69, 1973-74 and 1991-92 the last ever before the Premiership was created.
They were FA Cup winners in 1972
They were European Fairs/UEFA Cup winners in 1967-68 and 1970-71.
In the 2000-2001 season they were Champions League semi finalists and looked like they would go from strength to strength having signed lots of new talent including breaking the English transfer record with the signing of defender Rio Ferdinand in November 2000.
Unfortunately they had got into heavy debts buying these players and secured the loans against the value of the players. As soon as results started going badly and Champions' League revenue was no longer there players had to be sold, but since the team was losing the players had gone down in value and the debts could not be repaid.
The club racked up a £70m pound debt and was fighting to keep their creditors from their door when it was taken over by a consortium of Yorkshire businessmen early in 2004. Under the new ownership's agreement with its creditors the debt was greatly reduced but performance on the pitch did not improve enough to keep them from the drop and Leeds was relegated to the First Division at the end of the season.
Sources:
http://www.napit.co.uk/viewus/infobank/football/premiership/leeds.php
http://www.leedsunited.com
http://www.geocities.com/hasthisbeentaken/luhis.html
Accessed 28/05/2004
I lack the encycliopedic knowledge to do justice to this WU. If you can do a better job please do. I felt I had to rescue this nodeshell and put something here as I could not stand Man U to have a WU and not the Mighty Whites.
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