THE lynch mob will be there nice and early, waiting impatiently, eggs and bottles in hands, for the Manchester United coach to arrive. Rio Ferdinand will duck his head and hope for the best as he alights and walks the short distance to the entrance of Elland Road. There he will head for the sanctuary of the dressing-room, taking care to choose the right one, and compose himself before running the gauntlet again out on the pitch.
Ferdinand indicated last week that he did not know quite what to expect this lunchtime on his return to Leeds United, but, having had time to reflect, he will have a good idea. Security, inside the ground and out, will be high, with some reports suggesting that the SAS will be brought in to protect Ferdinand, but, even if the lunatic minority is restrained, an unpleasant afternoon awaits the England defender. As Eric Cantona would have warned him, swapping Leeds for Manchester does not go down well.
There will be, inevitably, the “Judas” T-shirts, the sick chants, perhaps, most tastelessly of all, even an effigy or two paraded among the Leeds fans who used to worship him. Every time the ball arrives at his feet there will be a dreadful cacophony of noise, a terrible din, the like of which he has never heard. When it is over, he will breathe a sigh of relief and hope that, in some small way, he is better for the chastening experience.
That, sad to report, is the best-case scenario for Ferdinand this afternoon as he returns to Elland Road for the first time since he made the fateful decision, two months ago, to join Leeds’s biggest enemies. A step up the career ladder it may have been, not to mention a hugely lucrative move, but the Leeds followers, who stripped him, retrospectively, of their Player of the Year award, may just struggle to share his rationale.
Over the past week, as the red-letter day of September 14 has edged closer, the two clubs, quite understandably, have attempted to defuse the tension. Ferdinand has sent the proverbial olive branch to Peter Ridsdale, the Leeds chairman, who has taken the £30 million transfer worse than most. Terry Venables, the Leeds manager, said yesterday that the club’s supporters should “get on with their lives and get behind their own team”.
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Gordon McQueen, vilified for his identical move in the 1970s, was nearer the mark. “I’m not sure quite what form it will take, but I can tell Rio one thing: it won’t be pleasant,” he said.
Sir Alex Ferguson does not expect the Leeds fans merely to subject Ferdinand to the most fearful of abuse; he can empathise. “Rio will get some stick,” the United manager said. “That is to be expected. It happens in football. Someone leaves to go to another club and it can be that way. Football is about passion and, when a top player leaves for a rival club, what do you expect? It’s natural to get that kind of resentment.
“The strange thing about Manchester United and Leeds is that so many players have crossed the county border. You would think they’d have got used to it by now. But the rivalry seems to run really deep, the more so when we transfer players from one side to the other.”
Cantona, whose passage from Elland Road to Old Trafford in November 1992 was followed, six months later, by that of the Premiership title, used to revel in the bile to which the Leeds supporters subjected him. “I think big players do thrive on that kind of atmosphere,” Ferguson said. “We never used to speak to Eric about it. Rio won’t be affected by it, either. I’m sure of that. He’s a top player.”
Ferguson frequently has been critical about the atmosphere generated by the home fans in this fixture, but is confident that it will not spill over into anything more hostile than verbal abuse this afternoon.
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“Leeds have conducted their operation very well in the last two years and the last two visits there have been done superbly,” he said. “In the past I would have to say it was not perfect, but it is now.
“As Rio has said, it’s not a war. It’s a game of football and he made a football decision. He loved living in Yorkshire, he loved playing for Leeds United, but he just felt that he wanted to go to Manchester United.”
That, though, is precisely what the Leeds fans have found so hurtful. “I went there this season and there were people wearing shirts with the word ‘traitor’ written on them,” McQueen said. “Those shirts had three names on them: Ferdinand’s, Cantona’s and mine.”
It is nearly 25 years since McQueen left Leeds for Manchester. Football fans, at Elland Road and beyond, never forget. Nor, in Ferdinand’s case, will they forgive.