YEP Says: Time will tell if Leeds United fans can grow to love new badge

It’s been hard to find any fans who feel positive about it.

But the club didn’t just dream this up on a whim. 10,000 people’s opinions were sought, the club thought long and hard about what Leeds United means to the fans and what brings them together. And the club salute, like a secret handshake, is one of those things. It’s a symbol of belonging, of being part of Leeds United, of marching on together.

The Yorkshire Evening Post fully supports the club’s ambition to draw a line under its recent past and forge ahead with its ambitions to build a club and associated facilities worthy of our city. Leeds deserves it, the people who live in and around Elland Road deserve it and the fans themselves deserve it.

And a new badge is a way to say this is a new era. But it’s hard to sugar-coat the reaction to it. Within a matter of hours there were 20,000 names on a petition calling for the club to scrap the new design. Could some of those be rival team fans trying to make mischief? Yes, that’s possible.

And maybe that will be the thing that grudgingly unites Leeds United fans behind this new crest. Perhaps, after the shock of seeing what is unquestionably a bold new design, they will get behind it and take it to their hearts.

Time will tell.

And as for this being just a logo, to misquote Bill Shankly - some people think football crests are a matter of life and death - it’s much more serious than that.