Your YEP kicks off week of celebrations as Leeds United prepares to turn 100

To borrow a certain line from a certain song, we’ve been through it all together.
There have been plenty of ups and, sadly, quite a few downs since Leeds United arrived kicking and screaming into the world a century ago. PIC: GettyThere have been plenty of ups and, sadly, quite a few downs since Leeds United arrived kicking and screaming into the world a century ago. PIC: Getty
There have been plenty of ups and, sadly, quite a few downs since Leeds United arrived kicking and screaming into the world a century ago. PIC: Getty

There have been plenty of ups and, sadly, quite a few downs since Leeds United arrived kicking and screaming into the world a century ago.

But, during good times and bad, what remains constant are the lifelong memories that come with supporting Leeds.Attending your first match as a lad - or lass - with your dad at Elland Road and being transfixed by the noise, the passion and the songs as much as anything that was happening on the pitch.

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Older fans will, of course, fondly recall the exploits of the legendary John Charles, while their fathers and grandfathers may well have passed down tales about pre-war stars such as Tom Jennings or Willis Edwards.

All these snapshots and countless others like them underline how Leeds lives and breathes football and, most importantly, its football club.It’s also a place where the civic story has often seemed to go hand in hand with the fortunes of United.

Don Revie’s glory days of the late 1960s and early 1970s, for instance, came as the city swaggered self-confidently into a new era of urban motorways and ambitious building projects.

The club’s cash-strapped struggles during the middle years of the 1980s were set against a backdrop of communities riven by the economic and social effects of soaring unemployment.

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And, more happily, United’s turn-of-the-Nineties reinvention chimed perfectly with the fresh spirit of optimism that was engendered by the redevelopment of areas like Leeds’s neglected waterfront.

This, then, is a long-standing love affair between the Whites of LS11 and the people of Yorkshire’s unofficial capital.So it’s surely only right that the YEP marks the club’s 100 th birthday in style – and, rest assured, we are going to do exactly that.We will be running a series of in-depth features from this Monday to celebrate the anniversary of Leeds’s formation at Salem Chapel in Hunslet on October 17, 1919.

There will be lookbacks to great games and players, interviews with key figures from Elland Road’s past and a hundred quiz questions to tax even the keenest student of United history.

We will also be turning a spotlight on the events taking place on and around the day of the centenary itself, which falls on Thursday.

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Then, next Saturday, October 19, your copy of the YEP will include a free 24-page Leeds supplement packed with yet more top-quality writing and archive photos.Young or old, we’ve got you – and the club – covered during a week that promises to create a whole host of special new memories.

Happy birthday, Leeds United.

Let’s have a party.