Leeds United to make major changes after complaint by Newcastle United fans
Leeds United ae going to make “major changes to their matchday processes” after a dangerous crush among Newcastle United fans at Elland Road in January, according to the Sunday Mirror.
The newspaper reported via their print edition on 20 March [page 71] that Leeds will alter their management of away fans after some Newcastle supporters complained of a crush [Guardian].
It is understood that the Whites have now promised to make improvements, meaning they’ll “upgrade turnstile readers” and also make their queueing systems better.
Get it done
Leeds need to ensure that something like this never happens again.
We all know what happened at Hillsborough and we all know the deadline effects that can come from fan crushes at stadiums.
The Newcastle fans who were affected by the crush at Elland Road in January were thankfully fine in the end but there’s simply no way in this day and age that something should be happening like this.
Elland Road is a stadium that had spent a lot of time outside of the Premier League before Marcelo Bielsa led the Whites back to the Premier League in 2020.
There were a lot of things that needed to be changed and updated with the floodlights, substitutes area and media room among the things that had to be improved in order to meet the Premier League’s standards.
It’s no surprise that the club struggled to keep things ship-shape as we dropped down into League One and had to fight for years to return to the big-time.
But there’s no excuse now and thankfully, a behind-the-scenes decision has been made to implement big changes.
In other Leeds United news, four senior players have been named after questions were raised about summer sales.