'Impartial' observer wants Coventry Leeds United top two boost despite 'churlish' Ipswich admission

Someone in the employ of a club once quipped to local journalists that they would all soon be out of jobs if the wins kept coming. As light-hearted as it was intended, that joke actually showed a fundamental misunderstanding of how this all works because the very opposite is true, for a number of reasons.

Our industry is no longer measured in paper sales but in other, digitally-centered metrics, yet it remains a fact that people want to read your stuff when a club is flourishing. Simply put, the Yorkshire Evening Post does well when Leeds United do well. The Marcelo Bielsa promotion season, particularly during a pandemic, was golden for the YEP. A city like Leeds might not rush out to the shops to get their hands on still-warm printed paper as it arrives on a daily basis, but when the Championship was won and special commemorative supplements were inserted into copies of the YEP the orders came thick and fast, from all over the place. All over the world. Writing about winning is a lot more fun and a lot more creatively inspiring than the alternative.

Yes, of course controversy sells and brutal, L'Equipe style player ratings might capture the imagination for a brief moment, but when Leeds win at the weekend, people are still reading about it online come Tuesday or Wednesday. The appetite for content is avaricious. To let you in on a secret still not quite understood by many in the industry who don't work with a football audience, when Leeds lose, especially if they lose the last game prior to an international break, club writers like this one are left tearing out what little hair they might have left. Hard going is putting it mildly. Wins equal audience. People want to bask in them. Defeats equal a collective desire to switch off and look away from the disappointment.

The relationship works both ways. A thriving Leeds United in the Premier League brought more eyeballs to the work that the YEP does. And if Leeds are ever in need of support to drive home an important message to the fanbase, the YEP is there. A critical friend is how we often like to describe our role as the local media. When clubs are struggling financially we'll be there with pleas for aid, banging the drum. If the truth needs to be spoken to those in power, who have perhaps fallen down on their promises, then we'll be there with front pages, campaigns or questions aimed at the game's authorities. That's what the local press do. It did not earn the Derbyshire Times much credit with those running Chesterfield during a rancid slide from League One to the National League, amid off-field shenanigans like a fictitious raffle and a problematic relationship with a financially failing private football academy, but to the people who mattered, the people inside and outside a stadium who really make up a club, the local press played an important role.

That's not the real reason why a football writer wants to see the team he or she covers do well, though, because as impartial as you might like to paint yourself, you do get swept up. There are lines you cannot cross - no cheering in the press box and no turning a blind eye to nonsense - but while existing outside of it all, as an observer, you are still part of it all. An historic promotion for Leeds was thrilling to watch up close. Why would you not want a team of previously midtable Championship status to win a title playing such gorgeous football? Why would you not want to write about Bielsa's triumph and what it meant to a city? History was being made and it was right there to be written about.

The other big factor is human beings and relationships. There are people working in clubs who do their jobs efficiently, with huge amounts of passion and treat others with respect. Those people, whether they be security staff, car park attendants, office workers, catering folk, communications bods, players, ex-players, medics or coaches, are people you want to see with smiles on their face. You want their work, sacrifice and their good character to be rewarded. You see how much they care about Leeds and what it means for them to win. And then there are the supporters. It might be a friendly face near the press box with a never-correct weekly prediction, a Leeds-supporting colleague with an irrational distrust of certain players or an internet comedian with reams of memes up their sleeves, but when a connection is formed and Leeds United is at the centre of it then you cannot help but pull for their footballing dreams to come true.

All of this is why an Ipswich Town defeat tonight would go down pretty well with the YEP. That feels churlish to say, because Ipswich are just brilliant. The season they have had, as a newly promoted team without £30m-plus signings or parachute payments, is utterly remarkable and it deserves a fairytale finish. They're good to watch, as entertaining as anyone. Kieran McKenna is incredibly impressive and, what's more, he's Northern Irish. One of the fellow dads who stands and watches our sons' Under 11 team on Sunday mornings is an Ipswich fan and he has been living the dream this season. For East Anglian Daily Times chief football writer Stuart Watson a second successive promotion would be a dream scenario. From reporting on League One to the Premier League in the space of a year. He will, undoubtedly, be wholeheartedly invested in seeing it come to fruition. But, forgive me, you have had fun for two years whereas we have had the sad demise of Bielsa, Marschball, pea-hearted performances like the one at Bournemouth a year ago today, Andrea Radrizzani's Elland Road loan farce and, ultimately, relegation. Not even the finest of press food at Tottenham Hotspur could take away the bitter taste of all that. This season has, admittedly, been a lot more fun once the transfer exit door was finally allowed to close, but it would be far less of a disaster for Ipswich not to go up automatically than for Leeds. There's always the play-offs for the Tractor Boys to plough their furrow all the way to the top flight and a promotion trio of Leicester, Leeds and Ipswich has a satisfying ring to it.

So here's to you Coventry City, Mark Robins, Callum O'Hare, Ellis Simms and Haji Wright. So solid and commendable, twice, against Leeds this season. So incredible against Manchester United. Their season deserves to end on a high note too, does it not? It's going to the last day anyway but all of us who have lived this gruelling slog from August to May deserve a grandstand finish between a neck-and-neck 90-point pair of Leeds and Ipswich, do we not? Coventry, though battered and weary, can make that happen. Do it, if not for Leeds, then for football. Or just for me. Play up, Sky Blues.