Leeds United will head into the 2026/27 season in positive spirits after last year’s successful return to the Premier League.

The club were unable to cement their place in the top flight after their previous promotion in 2020, with their comeback from a 16-year absence from the Premier League ending after only three seasons. Supporters will now be hoping the side are back among English football’s elite for the long term.

Across the 1990s and the early 2000s, Leeds were regularly one of the Premier League’s most thrilling teams. Their peak came with the run to the Champions League semi-finals in 2001, before the structure built by Peter Ridsdale eventually fell apart.

Only three years after losing to Valencia in the semi-finals of Europe’s premier club competition, Leeds were relegated after a dismal campaign in which a squad still full of star names failed to avoid the drop.

Leeds United great Lucas Radebe was at the club through both the rise and the collapse. Injuries meant the South African could make only 14 appearances during the 2003/04 season, a campaign that still weighs heavily on him.

“That was very tough to take, especially as we had competed in the UEFA Cup during the 2002-03 season,” Radebe told FourFourTwo while reflecting on how quickly the club declined.

“The next year, we saw the decline in our players and standard of game,” he continued. “It was saddening because we were trying hard, but it felt like everything was against us.”

The club’s financial troubles were starting to bite after chairman Peter Ridsdale admitted Leeds had ‘lived the dream’ and funded a succession of spending sprees on the assumption that the club would become regular Champions League participants.

“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 continued.

For Radebe, who joined Leeds from South African club Kaizer Chiefs in 1994 and became one of the supporters’ most beloved players over the following decade, the reality of relegation truly struck when he looked at the fans.

“When we got relegated, we saw on the supporters’ faces what it meant to them. That was tough, very sad,” he recalled, before paying tribute to the steadfast 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.”