Put promotion on hold - we still have our club back

Although the promising start to an up and down season may be fading fast along with the hopes of promotion, Leeds are still a club on the up.

With a new head coach in charge and more focus on bringing in the right talent in the summer, the Whites are well on their way to building a legitimate promotion challenge and a lot of this has been revolutionised since the arrival of a new chief.

Radrizanni has come in to Leeds with the respect the club needed and deserved - and delivered on so many promises

Leeds United had become synonymous with bad management, atrocious ownership and a crumbling brand. Once at the pinnacle of English football, years of mishandling have taken their toll. The once proud side are now well entrenched in second-tier life, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Nothing epitomises the grand shifts in our position more than the new badge debacle of the last twenty days. After six months of consultation, managing director Angus Kinnear unveiled the potential new badge to Whites fans and immediately regretted doing so.

It wasn't a case of what was wrong with the proposed badge, more a case of trying to find something, anything at all, that was right with it. It was in the right colours and had the word 'Leeds' on it, both of which are a prerequisite of a Leeds badge.

Everything else about it was absolutely awful. Thousands of Leeds fans had apparently been consulted, unfortunately for the club it was the thousands of Leeds fan who have no concept of style, design, history or taste.

Under the Cellino regime, the fans would not have been listened to. He treated the club as his own personal toy, a project in which he was master and commander and one hundred years of history and thousands of fans meant absolutely nothing.

Under Cellino Leeds were beaten and punished for being loyal to their club. Under the new ownership that is rewarded

Under him, if he wanted that badge, Leeds would have got that badge. In truth, had he realised how unpopular it was, he would have dug his heels in and demanded it be put on the shirts immediately.

This is a brave new dawn, though: this is a Leeds United taking the first tentative steps back out into the light after spending three years in the dark. The current regime do not want PR disasters or negative publicity, they want a club completely united and moving forward together. The holy grail is, of course promotion, but to achieve that there must be unity.

The decision to reopen consultation took a couple of hours, I would imagine when Angus checked his emails it actually took about thirty seconds. The backlash was immediate and incessant, the new design was widely criticised and derided. Leeds United of 2018 responded immediately.

It might seem to the average fan like the right thing to do, to fans of other clubs looking in it would have seemed the logical thing to do. To fans who have suffered Massimo Cellino, Steve Evans and all the other indignities of the past three years, it was a breath of fresh air.

Leeds United are 25/1 in current Championship betting markets, a little harsh as Brentford are 12/1 and currently below the Whites in the table, but potential promotion isn't the only cause for optimism right now. No, the slow return of our club to a credible football force is victory enough for long-suffering fans.

Andrea Radrizzani has returned Leeds United Ladies to the club and shown his administration is paying attention to the fans and the community. The transfer window has been strong, promising young talent arrived at Elland Road in scenes that demonstrate a clear plan for the future.

All around Elland Road, those green shoots of recovery can be seen.

It might not be this season, but recent events off the field have suggested Leeds United are on the way back, all we now need to do is fix it on the field. Not too hard right?