Leeds United have been relegated from the Premier League as they lost their final game of the season to Tottenham Hotspur.
The Whites’ fans turned on both their team and the club’s owners as the West Yorkshire side’s three-year top-flight stay came to a meek and pitiful end at Elland Road.
Needing to win to stand any chance of preserving their Premier League status, Leeds trailed inside the opening two minutes through Harry Kane’s excellent finish.
Pedro Porro then doubled Tottenham’s lead when he fired in from a tight angle early in the second half.
Jack Harrison made it 2-1 to give Leeds brief hope of pulling off an unlikely escape, but Kane’s 30th league goal of the season restored Spurs’ two-goal advantage.
Lucas Moura marked his farewell appearance by scoring a fine solo goal in injury time, although Tottenham’s first top-flight win outside London since October was not enough to prevent them missing out on European qualification for the first time since they finished eighth in 2008-09.
For Leeds, however, the damage is far worse.
Chairman and majority owner Andrea Radrizzani was not at the game but was told in no uncertain terms to sell the club by the Leeds supporters, who chanted “sack the board” during the latter stages.
And, after a pitch invader had been hauled away by half a dozen stewards 15 minutes from time, they chanted “he’s got more fight than you” in a damning assessment of their team – with further songs in support of Marcelo Bielsa, the beloved coach who returned Leeds to the top flight in 2020 but was sacked last season.
With uncertainty over a proposed takeover by the San Francisco 49ers owners, who already have a 44% stake in the club, and Radrizzani’s holding company buying a stake in Sampdoria, who have just been relegated from Serie A, there is a lack of clarity at the club that needs to be dealt with.
The last time Leeds went down, in 2004, it took 16 years before they came back. The time before that, in 1982, it was eight. They can only hope nothing similar awaits them on this occasion.