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Joel Piroe scored four times as Leeds smashed Stoke 6-0 to confirm their promotion back to the top flight - Getty Images/MB Media
There is no question; no doubt. The argument is a simple one. The Premier League is a better place when Leeds United are in it.
It is not a sentence, perhaps, that many will agree with at first glance. Leeds is a club that provokes far too strong a reaction – and often intense dislike – for rival fans to simply welcome them back with open arms.
But that is the whole point, Leeds makes you feel something, the mere mention of their name stirs something in the soul.
They are a club with so many rivals, so many teams who would love to beat them, who will look forward to playing them. Fans will be excited about making the trip to Elland Road and will look forward to welcoming them to their own home turf too.
Leeds fans are noisy, boisterous, emotional and passionate. Wherever they go, the atmosphere inside a stadium will have an extra crackle of electricity.
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Leeds supporters are not known for keeping quiet - PA/Mike Egerton
Put simply, Leeds’s return to the top tier makes the fixture list more mouthwatering in a way that few other clubs could manage.
Certainly not Burnley, who also confirmed automatic promotion from the Championship this week. In turn, as well as they have done, matches against Bournemouth, Brighton & Hove Albion, Crystal Palace, Fulham or Wolverhampton Wanderers do not get the juices flowing in the same way as Leeds do.
Leeds United are not just one of the grand old names of English football, one of our many “sleeping giants”, they are a club that matters, a club that creates drama, noise and, yes, dislike. Playing Leeds matters, beating Leeds matters, losing to Leeds hurts. It is a fixture that evokes memories, that stokes the fires of history.
Whether it is Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton or Newcastle United, they all have “history” with Leeds.
I’m too young to remember the great Leeds team of the 1970s, but the old adage of “dirty Leeds”, an insult the club has revelled in for decades, was part of my football education.
The Leeds team of the early 2000s under David O’Leary was a menace and a threat. Even the club’s decline, their fall into League One, the threat of financial implosion, it all helped create an image of a big club that fought adversity, whose supporters felt the pain, lived through it but kept coming back for more. It demanded respect, even of the begrudging variety.
Even when it failed, even when rival fans mocked and sneered, it was because they knew, deep down, that Leeds are massive.
A one-club city, slap bang in the middle of the country. A large northern city, distinct, aggressively confident in its own identity and reputation with a football club that epitomises that spirit.
The Premier League needs more northern clubs and there are not many better than Leeds. You are lying to yourself if you disagree.
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Two hours from London, 90 minutes from Newcastle – Elland Road is a welcome addition to the Premier League circuit - PA/Richard McCarthy
There are also practical reasons to welcome Leeds’s rise. It is easy to get to thanks to its geographical location and excellent transport links. It is a great away day, a city in which to spend a weekend and with one of the best stadiums to experience football in too.
When Elland Road is rocking, there are not many more daunting places for away teams to perform. It is an arena that tends to bring out something primeval and football is always better with those sorts of emotions.
When Leeds were last in the top flight, it was the Covid years: that miserable era of empty stadiums and fake crowd noise on television. Leeds had something taken away from them in lockdown football. In fact, we all did.
But if there is one club that will have more than just a puncher’s chance of staying up next season, it is Leeds United. Their fans will give them an extra edge, an extra potency. And if they do manage to break the trend of newly promoted teams going straight back down, they have the chance to grow, expand and improve.
A new stadium is in the pipeline, the owners are wealthy and ambitious. Stay up and, in time, Leeds United could become a genuine threat at the other end of the table.
Clubs like Wolves, Tottenham and Manchester United – who have endured miserable league campaigns but have been saved by the dire quality of the promoted sides – cannot afford to have another poor campaign with Leeds, the Yorkshire terrier of football, snapping at their heels.
Leeds are back and a fascinating new Premier League plotline has been unlocked.
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