Graham Smyth: Nothing can prepare you for Leeds United, a club that must be experienced to be understood

Those who know Elland Road and the beast that lies within can try to explain it to you, you can read the history and watch the documentaries but it is a club that must be experienced to be understood.

I’m not there yet. It might take years.

On July 29, I walked into the office of the Yorkshire Evening Post as the new chief football writer, tasked with the belt and braces coverage of Leeds United. By that stage Leeds fans had already commandeered my Twitter timeline, an army of Whites setting up camp in the notifications and laying siege to my phone. I am not, as was helpfully pointed out, Phil Hay, the legendary writer who made this post his own for 13 years, in the same way Don Warters did for 29 years.

“You’ll love it,” Phil said.

Three months on, the Scot’s statement is still holding true.

The football Leeds United play is different to the football I witnessed in the first 14 years of my career.

Covering Stocksbridge Park Steels, Worksop Town and Chesterfield gave me what you might call an ‘earthing’ in football reporting, with visits to non-league grounds ranging from quaint to near-derelict.

Games at every level from Northern Counties East League Division One to League One brought a basic understanding of how the game in this country is played, how things are done, how footballers behave and how managers think.

It did not prepare me for Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United.

Don Warters said of his own initial experience of the club: “I was in awe of everything, trying to get used to it, I was thrown in at the deep end.”

Within days of arriving at the YEP I was drowning in Bielsaball, drowning in statistics and metrics, the numbers that partly tell the story of the utter domination Leeds United bring to a game.

I would challenge anyone to spend their week watching and discussing the Argentine’s team without becoming fascinated.

The player movement, the positional rotations, the passing, the raking through balls, the theatre of his technical area – it is a lot to take in and there is a lot to like.

The first game of the season at Bristol City was passing me by until I remembered I was not there to simply marvel at the technical and tactical wizardry on display, in surroundings a little plusher than so many grounds I’ve visited on match days, in front of a bigger crowd, creating a louder, more raucous soundtrack to my working day.

It did not take long for the tiny imperfections in Bielsa’s slick machine to show, opening a window into the one of the reasons this club did not go up last season. Six days after Bristol it was Nottingham Forest, at Elland Road, two famous old clubs going toe to toe in a famous old ground. Not exactly toe to toe of course, one side spent 90 minutes on the ropes yet stole a point and took it back down the M1 to Nottinghamshire. The other side did enough to win the game, they did everything but put the game to bed.

Save that match report, you’ll be needing it again, I was told.

Not getting what they deserve is a recurring nightmare say Leeds fans who, for a lot of the time, are in dreamland. However, the first home game, the sight of white shirts pouring forward at pace, the sound of Marching On Together was quite something.

Covering every kick of any football team opens up the risk of developing an affection.

When it’s time to be critical, you criticise and the awkward moment when a manager doesn’t take kindly to your line of questioning is part of the job.

But so is enjoyment.

I loved watching Stefan Zoll, an Arabic student at the University of Leeds, waltz through Northern Premier League defences at Bracken Moor for the Steels. I loved watching a free-scoring Worksop Town team almost escape the NCEL Premier after a tragic two-division voluntary relegation.

I loved watching the Spireites, even from a seat in the Kop during a stadium ban for reporting the details of a rotten private academy linked to the club and even when they finished bottom of League One, then bottom of League Two.

I wasn’t entirely besotted with the National League.

The Championship and I should get on just fine though.

And, on the evidence of the first 11 games, it could be a brief relationship. Leeds should be a Premier League club even without Bielsa and his seductive brand of football, but they should be there on the merit of their performances this time next year, if they can iron out the kinks and solve their chance conversion conundrum.

This story could be a fairytale or a tale of horror.

Either way, it will play out on the pages and the website of the YEP, as each and every chapter of the 100 years of history Leeds United are celebrating today have done. And it will be my privilege to help tell it.