“Leeds were being dragged down to the relegation zone, and due to mismanagement were losing the quality that had pushed us up the Premier League” Lucas Radebe on Leeds United’s 2000s downfall
Leeds United will start the 2026/27 season on the up following last year’s successful return to the Premier League.
The club failed to establish themselves back in the top flight following their previous promotion in 2020, as their return from a 16-year Premier League exile ended after just three seasons, but supporters will now be hoping that they are back among the big boys of English football for the long haul.
During the 1990s and early 2000s, Leeds were often one of the Premier League’s most exciting sides, their high-water mark being the run to the Champions League semi-finals in 2001, before the house of cards built by Peter Ridsdale came crashing down.
Lucas Radebe on Leeds’ 2004 relegation
Just three years on from their defeat to Valencia in the last-four of Europe’s biggest club competition, Leeds found themselves relegated following a turgid campaign which saw a squad, still packed with stars, fail to beat the drop.
Leeds United legend Lucas Radebe was at the club throughout this rise and fall, with injuries meaning the South African was only able to feature 14 times in the 2003/04 campaign, a season which still weighs heavy on him.
“That was very tough to take, especially as we had competed in the UEFA Cup during the 2002-03 season,” Radebe tells FourFourTwo as he recalls the rapid nature of the club’s decline.
“The next year, we saw the decline in our players and standard of game,” he continues. “It was saddening because we were trying hard, but it felt like everything was against us.”
The club’s financial issues were beginning to hit home after chairman Peter Ridsdale’s admission that the club had ‘lived the dream’ and bankrolled a series of spending sprees on the assumption that the club would be regular participants in the Champions League.
“We were being dragged down to the relegation zone and due to mismanagement were losing the quality that had pushed us up the Premier League,” he continues.
For Radebe, who joined the club from South African side Kaizer Chiefs in 1994 and established himself as one of the fans’ all-time favourites over the next decade, relegation really hit home when he looked to these supporters.
“When we got relegated, we saw on the supporters’ faces what it meant to them. That was tough, very sad,” he recalls, before paying tribute to the unwavering loyalty of the Elland Road faithful.
“But the most important thing was that the fans never lost hope of a return.
“But for Leeds supporters it has been a rollercoaster ride, and it was a difficult time for the whole club until we finally made it back into the Premier League 16 years later, in 2020.”
