Pick a Leeds United greatest XI in a Yorkshire pub and you will not get out before closing time. Seven decades of Elland Road football have produced World Cup winners, a captain who is cast in bronze outside the ground, and a handful of forwards whose goals are still replayed every time the Whites need reminding of who they are.
This is our all-time Leeds United XI, lined up in the 4-4-2 that suits the bulk of these players best. It is a judgement call rather than a statistic, and it is meant to start the argument rather than settle it.
The Leeds United greatest XI: goalkeeper and defence
GK: Nigel Martyn. Signed in 1996 and, for six seasons, comfortably the best goalkeeper at the club since the Revie years. Martyn was an England international who kept Leeds afloat in ordinary sides and was outstanding in the extraordinary one. David Harvey and Gary Sprake both have strong cases, and we ranked the contenders in full in our look at the greatest goalkeepers in Leeds United’s history.
RB: Paul Reaney. A one-club man and a Don Revie constant, Reaney was quick enough to police the best wingers in Europe at a time when full-backs were expected to defend and little else. He won two league titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup and the Fairs Cup in white.
CB: Jack Charlton. The only Leeds player with a World Cup winner’s medal, earned with England in 1966. Charlton spent his entire career at Elland Road, made more than 600 appearances and was awkward, relentless and impossible to play against. Any Leeds XI that leaves him out is not a serious one.
CB: Norman Hunter. “Bites Yer Legs” was the banner, and Hunter never minded it, but the nickname undersold a defender who could pass and read the game as well as he could tackle. He was the first winner of the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award in 1974, the year Leeds won their second title under Revie.
LB: Terry Cooper. Converted from a winger, and it showed. Cooper attacked from left-back in a way that was decades ahead of its time, and he scored the winner in the 1968 League Cup final at Wembley.
Midfield: the engine room
RM: Peter Lorimer. The club’s all-time leading scorer and the owner of the hardest shot in English football, by common consent of everyone who had to stand in front of it. Lorimer is top of our list of Leeds United’s all-time top goalscorers, and he made his debut as a 15-year-old.
CM: Billy Bremner (c). Voted the club’s greatest ever player by supporters, and the captain of the Revie side through every trophy it won. Bremner was 5ft 5in, played like he was twice that, and his statue stands at the corner of Elland Road for a reason. We told his story in full in our Billy Bremner explainer.
CM: Johnny Giles. The brain alongside Bremner’s heart. Giles arrived from Manchester United as a winger and was remade as a deep-lying playmaker, which turned out to be one of the shrewdest pieces of business Revie ever did. The Bremner-Giles axis is the best central midfield partnership the club has had.
LM: Eddie Gray. On his day, the most gifted footballer to wear the shirt. Gray’s performance against Burnley in 1970, and his destruction of Chelsea’s David Webb in that year’s FA Cup final, are the two clips every Leeds supporter knows. Injuries cost him a decade of what he might have been.
Up front
ST: Allan Clarke. “Sniffer” scored the winner in the 1972 FA Cup final and finished chances with the sort of cold precision that does not date. Clarke’s understanding with Mick Jones gave the Revie side the goals to go with the grit.
ST: Tony Yeboah. The shortest Leeds career on this list and one of the most vivid. Yeboah’s volleys against Liverpool and Wimbledon in 1995 are still shown whenever anyone compiles a Premier League goal-of-the-decade list, and for a season and a half he was unplayable.
The ones who missed out
This is where the arguments really start. Lucas Radebe is the hardest omission of all: The Chief captained the club, gave it a decade of loyalty when he could have left for more money, and remains one of the most loved figures in Elland Road history. Rio Ferdinand, briefly the most expensive defender in British football, was the best pure centre-half of the Champions League era.
In midfield, Gordon Strachan drove the 1991/92 title win and was named Footballer of the Year in 1991; Gary McAllister and Gary Speed were alongside him in a midfield that stands comparison with any in the club’s history, as we covered in our piece on Leeds United’s last league title. David Batty, a Leeds lad who won the title at home and then came back for more, is the one every local supporter wants in.
Up front, Mick Jones, Mark Viduka, Harry Kewell and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink all have cases, and Viduka’s four goals against Liverpool in 2000 remain the single most absurd individual afternoon in the club’s Premier League history.
The verdict
Eight of our eleven come from Don Revie’s side, which is not laziness so much as arithmetic. That team won two First Division titles, the FA Cup, the League Cup and two Fairs Cups, and no Leeds squad since has come close to that haul, as the full list of the club’s honours makes plain. Martyn, Yeboah and, at a push, Lorimer’s rivals are the only doors the modern era gets a foot in.
That is a tribute to Revie rather than a slight on anyone who followed. It also sets the bar for the current squad: Daniel Farke’s side are back in the Premier League for a second successive season, and the players who eventually force their way into conversations like this one will have to do something historic to manage it. For the full archive of club and player profiles, the Yorkshire Evening Post’s Leeds United section and the BBC Sport Leeds United page are both worth a bookmark.
Disagree? Most people will. That is rather the point of a Leeds United greatest XI.
