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Leeds United are back! The Premier League is about to crank it up a notch with the three-time English champions finally out of the wilderness and the pure enigmatic madness of Marcelo Bielsa bringing an added degree of intrigue.
For 16 years, the West Yorkshire club have been scrapping it out in the lower divisions, even dropping as low as League One in 2007. But those dispirited afternoons at Elland Road are now a thing of the past with Leeds finally returning to the big time after nearly two decades.
During that time a lot has changed in football. Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger have left Manchester United and Arsenal respectively, Leicester City clinched a fairytale Premier League title and Manchester City have emerged as a global powerhouse.

Things have changed quite a bit for the current Premier League managers as well. The last time Leeds were tussling with the heavyweights of the top-flight some were still in the prime years of their playing careers, while other were just starting out in the dugout.
Here we go back to 2004 and revisit what each current Premier League manager was up to.

Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)

Where: Rangers
Role: Player
Age: 22

Arteta joined Rangers from Barcelona in 2002 after a successful loan spell at Paris Saint-Germain, where he played alongside the likes of Mauricio Pochettino, Ronaldinho and Jay-Jay Okocha, and he immediately impressed in the Scottish Premier League.
Such was his form at Ibrox that Real Sociedad acquired his services in the summer that Leeds went down. The idea was for Arteta to form a midfield partnership with childhood friend Xabi Alonso, but he left for Liverpool that summer and the current Arsenal boss eventually departed for Everton in January that season.

Dean Smith (Aston Villa)

Where: Sheffield Wednesday
Role: Player
Age: 33

This was Smith’s penultimate season on the pitch and he marked it by captaining the Owls to safety in the third tier. Sheffield Wednesday had slipped down to the old Second Division (now League One) the season prior, and Smith helped them avoid back-to-back relegations by just three points in 2003/04. He left that summer for Port Vale, where he finished his playing career.

Eddie Howe (Bournemouth)

Where: Swindon Town (on loan from Portsmouth)
Role: Player
Age: 26

Incredibly Mr. Bournemouth was not at Bournemouth when Leeds plummeted down the food chain. However, normality was restored just a few months later when he joined the Cherries from Pompey on loan before completing a permanent switch. But in 2003/04, Howe spent the second half of the season at Swindon.
Howe was famously Harry Redknapp’s first signing at Portsmouth but injuries beset his stint at Fratton Park, leading to a temporary move to Swindon, for whom he failed to make a single appearance as he tried to recapture his form and fitness. He subsequently returned to Portsmouth that summer.

Graham Potter (Brighton)

Where: Macclesfield Town
Role: Player
Age: 29

Potter spent the 2003/04 season with three separate clubs. The former Southampton defender joined Boston United at the start of the campaign before moving to Shrewsbury Town on loan and, eventually, Macclesfield on a free transfer in February 2004. Potter spent one more season on the pitch and eventually hung up his boots with the Silkmen in 2005, where he began his academic career before moving into coaching.

Sean Dyche (Burnley)

Where: Watford
Role: Player
Age: 33

By the time 2004 came around Dyche had forged a very respectable career in the lower divisions as a hard-hitting centre-back. He had played under esteemed tacticians, ranging from Brian Clough to former England assistant Ray Lewington and would be skippering Watford in 2004/05 against Leeds in the Championship. One of the up-and-coming academy products he was captaining that season was a certain Ashley Young. Very odd imagining these two sharing a pitch together.

Frank Lampard (Chelsea)

Where: Chelsea
Role: Player
Age: 26

Where was Lampard when Leeds were relegated from the Premier League? Well, he was right there, at Stamford Bridge on the final game of the season as Leeds suffered a 1-0 defeat to Chelsea. Their relegation had already been confirmed, but this was just one final twist of the knife as the Premier League waved goodbye to the once dominant West Yorkshire club.
‘Lamps’ was already in his third season as a Chelsea player after moving from boyhood club West Ham, and he marked that campaign with his first Premier League double-digit haul, throwing down the gauntlet for many more years of goalscoring excellence in west London.

Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace)

Where: United Arab Emirates
Role: Manager
Age: 56

Hodgson was well travelled by the time 2004 came around. He had just left his position as manager of United Arab Emirates in January of that year and joined Norwegian club Viking in July, this being his 13th non-English job. Hodgson was dismissed from his position in charge of UAE after overseeing a dismal 16th Arabian Gulf Cup campaign, in which his side placed fifth in the round-robin tournament.

Carlo Ancelotti (Everton)

Where: AC Milan
Role: Manager
Age: 45

The 2003/04 season was a formidable one for Ancelotti, whose famed ‘Christmas Tree’ formation was flourishing on Italian soil as his AC Milan side went the entire campaign with just two defeats and cantered to a Scudetto in fine fashion. The Italian coach already had a Champions League title to his name and was tutoring illustrious names like Kaka, Clarence Seedorf, Andriy Shevchenko, Paolo Maldini, and well, you get the point.

Brendan Rodgers (Leicester City)

Where: Reading/Chelsea
Role: Academy director
Age: 31

Rodgers saw his playing career cut short prematurely by a genetic knee condition and eventually moved into a coaching role with the youth ranks at Reading. It was at the Madejski that Rodgers garnered the attention of top clubs in England for his work in youth football, and he was eventually recruited by Chelsea in 2004 after Jose Mourinho spotted his coaching potential.

Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)

Where: Mainz 05
Role: Manager
Age: 37

The 2003/04 season was the making of Jurgen Klopp. Having spent three seasons as Mainz’s manager, he helped stabilise them in the 2. Bundesliga, where he guided the Carnival club to successive fourth-place finishes, and in 2004, he masterminded an unthinkable promotion to the German top flight for the first time in the club’s history.

Pep Guardiola (Manchester City)

Where: Al-Ahli
Role: Player
Age: 33

Having rejected Manchester United, Guardiola opted for a move to the Qatar Stars League with Al-Ahli in 2003/04. The Catalonian was just beginning to wind down his career after 11 trophy-laden years with Barcelona, as well as brief stints at Brescia and Roma. Guardiola spent two years with the Brigadier before finishing his career in Mexico under now-assistant coach Juan Manuel Lillo at Dorados de Sinaloa.
We couldn’t get a picture of his time in the Middle East, so here is one during a match for Spain around the same time.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (Manchester United)

Where: Man Utd
Role: Player
Age: 31

The 2003/04 season was the beginning of the end for the “Baby-faced Assassin”. He began the campaign as Fergie’s unorthodox winger, but a injury sustained against Panathinaikos in September sidelined the Norwegian for several months. He recovered to play 19 games that season, including a late cameo in the 2004 FA Cup final win, but that summer he would require major surgery from which he never properly recovered.

Steve Bruce (Newcastle)

Where: Birmingham
Role: Manager
Age: 43

Bruce was in charge of Birmingham in the Premier League during Leeds’ collapse. The former Manchester United defender played his part in Leeds’ subsequent relegation as his Blues side did the double over the Whites in the 2003/04 season. At Elland Road, a Robbie Savage penalty and a late Mikael Forssell strike secured a 2-0 victory, while four goals, including braces from Bryan Hughes and Mikael Forssell, put the sword to Leeds at St Andrew’s.

Daniel Farke (Norwich)

Where: SV Wilhelmshaven
Role: Player
Age: 27

Following in the footsteps of his grandfather Franz, who won the German title as a player and donned the yellow and black of Borussia Dortmund, Daniel Farke spent most of his career in the lower divisions of Germany before moving into coaching. The self-proclaimed “slowest striker in the whole of Western Europe” was playing for SV Wilhelmshaven by the time Leeds’ dropped out of the Premier League.

Chris Wilder (Sheffield United)

Where: Halifax Town
Role: Manager
Age: 36

The current Sheff Utd boss was in the second of a six-year spell with the Shaymen. He presided over the reins in West Yorkshire for more than 300 games, during which time he tried to sign Jamie Vardy, but couldn’t afford the fee. Vardy later joined Halifax in 2010 after Wilder had already left.
“I don’t think I could afford the £10,000 that Halifax Town bought him for!” Wilder recently joked.

Ralph Hasenhuttl (Southampton)

Where: Bayern Munich II
Role: Player
Age: 36

If you glance at Bayern Munich II now you’ll find illustrious up-and-coming names like Joshua Zirkzee, Michael Cuisance and highly coveted English teenager Jamal Musiala. But, back in 2004 an ageing Ralph Hasenhuttl was finishing his playing career for the Bavarian giant’s reserve team. The eight-time Austria international called time on his career on the pitch that summer after two years for Little Bayern.

Jose Mourinho (Tottenham Hotspur)

Where: Porto
Role: Manager
Age: 41

This was the summer where English football would change forever. With Leeds exiting the Premier League, a certain “Special One” entered the frame and began his reign as Chelsea’s transformative tactician, guiding the club to Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup titles galore. But, that 2003/04 will always remain a glittering footnote on his CV as Mourinho masterminded a truly remarkable Champions League win with Porto. Cue obligatory snapshot of the Portuguese sprinting down the Old Trafford touchline…

Nigel Pearson (Watford)

Where: West Brom
Role: Assistant coach
Age: 40

Pearson was officially unattached at the time of Leeds’ relegation, having not coached at a club since 2001, but he was snapped up in 2004 by the Baggies to function as Bryan Robson’s assistant coach. That season West Brom survived relegation by the skin of their teeth, and Pearson eventually took over as caretaker coach following the sacking of Robson in 2006.

David Moyes (West Ham)

Where: Everton
Role: Manager
Age: 41

West Ham’s ‘Moyesiah’ looks to have performed his duties as the club’s go-to escapologist once again, but he will now be hoping to form some consistency and build a project similar to his one at Goodison Park. That started in 2002, and like Bruce for Birmingham, Moyes’ Everton did Leeds absolutely no favours in 2003/04 as the Toffees picked up four points against them, including a 4-0 win on Merseyside.
Incredibly, Everton finished just outside the relegation zone in 17th. Had Leeds reversed those results against the Goodison Park club, they would have stayed up and Moyes would have sunk with the Toffees. It is a game of fine margins football.

Nuno Espirito Santo (Wolves)

Where: Porto
Role: Player
Age: 30

In the same month Leeds were condemned to the Championship, Espirito Santo was sitting on the bench as Porto scooped the Champions League trophy against Monaco. The Wolves manager was picked up by Mourinho in 2002 as a back-up goalkeeper and performed that role well as the Dragons went on to sweep European football and achieve the unthinkable.

Jon Snow was arguably the hero of HBO's epic Game of Thrones. But the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch did made some truly baffling decisions.

BY Manax_pe
1 DAY AGO

Though Game of Thrones had one of the biggest ensembles in television history, it's not hard to argue that Jon Snow was the central character. As the seasons went on, Jon evolved from a heroic yet ignorant young man to the series' main hero. His journey was at the center of the show right until the end.

While Jon's character was certainly interesting, not everything about him hit the mark. There were certain decisions and developments that didn't really add up and it still has fans asking questions more than a year after the series finale. While he certainly became an iconic character, not everything about Jon Snow makes sense.

Continue Scrolling To Keep Reading

Click the button below to start this article in quick view10Joining The Night's Watch

When viewers meet Jon at the beginning of the series, he has only one dream for his future: to join the Night's Watch. He sees it as the most honorable position in Westeros and is eager to become one of the "brothers" of the ancient order.
However, Jon is shocked when he finds that the Night's Watch is filled with horrible criminals and people who are far from heroic. If this was his dream, how could he not have known what it was really like? It doesn't seem like it's a big secret in Westeros.

9The Battle Of The Bastards

One of the most impressive battle sequences in the series is the famous Battle of the Bastards, between Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton. It made for an epic, gruesome and thrilling fight, but it also showed Jon making some really dumb decisions.

Ramsay begins by taunting Jon, killing his brother Rickon. Jon immediately falls for the trap and charges at Ramsay's army alone. What was his plan? Did he really think he could take on an army by himself? How did anyone trust him to lead if he could so easily abandon all strategy?

8Saving The Wildlings

Initially, Jon sees the wildlings as enemies of the Night's Watch, but after spending time with them, he realizes that they are much different than he imagined. He grows close with them and eventually makes a plan to rescue the remaining wildlings and let them pass through the Wall.
The rest of the Night's Watch disagrees with this decision, but Jon goes to Hardhome to rescue them anyway. But how did he know the others would let him pass through the Wall when he returned? He even left the guy who hates him the most in charge when he was gone.

7His True Parentage

After years of mystery, it is eventually revealed that Jon is not Ned Stark's bastard son, but rather the son of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. Ned kept this secret and raised Jon as his own to ensure his safety.
Ned did a great job keeping it secret for all those years, not even telling his wife. But how is it that the truth never got out? Other people would have known Lyanna and Rhaegar were together. And did no one wonder why Ned was returning from Dorne with a baby?

6His Resurrection

Much like Ned Stark, Jon was always trying to do what he thought was right and it eventually got him killed. After rescuing the wildlings, his Night's Watch brothers turn on him and stab him to death. Luckily, Melisandre is around to bring him back to life.
Jon and Beric Dondarrion are the only two people who were brought back to life by the Lord of Light. But for such an amazing act of magic that has world-altering implications, no one really talks about his resurrection at all.

5Backing Daenerys

Fans had been eagerly awaiting the meeting between Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, which finally happened in Season 7. Their relationship started off tense as Jon refused to bend the knee because he wanted the North to remain independent.
But after Daenerys saves him from Beyond the Wall, he accepts her as his queen. This was a big move to make without consulting anyone from the North. It seems like a major betrayal of Jon's position as a leader.

4Plan To Capture A Wight

Jon was one of the only leaders in Westeros who knew that the threat of the Night King was bigger than anything else facing Westeros. In order to get the rest of the realm to acknowledge the severity of the threat, he devises a plan to go Beyond the Wall and capture a soldier from the Army of the Dead.
It is crazy how bad this plan is and yet everyone just goes along with it. Jon had no way of knowing if the dead man could be transported. The fact that they found one lone soldier to capture was just dumb luck. And they seemed to have no plan for escaping.

3Being Related To Daenerys

As many fans predicted when they first met, Jon and Daenerys quickly started a romantic relationship. But just as they are falling in love, it is revealed that they are related, which should complicate things.

Eventually, the truth is revealed to Jon and Daenerys as well. But neither of them really seems to be all that horrified by the revelation. It is a very big deal that is just sort of ignored by everyone.

2The Battle Of Winterfell

The climactic battle between the show's heroes and the Night King's army finally came in Season 8. The battle took place at Winterfell and many expected Jon Snow would be the one to finally kill the Night King and save the day.
Instead, he is pretty useless the entire battle. He flies around on a dragon, offering little to no help. He just sits there watching the fight for an extended period of time. For someone who is always rushing into battle, it makes no sense he would be so inactive.

1Being Sent Back To The Night's Watch

Once Daenerys burns King's Landing to the ground, Jon finally decides she has gone too far and kills her. He is quickly arrested and the council of Westeros' lords convene to decide his fate. Eventually, it is decided that he will be sent back to the Night's Watch.
Since the Wall is destroyed and the Night King is dead, Jon rightfully wonders why there is still a Night's Watch, and Tyrion explains there will always be a place for cripples, bastards, and broken things. But that still doesn't explain what the function of the Night's Watch would be now that there is no one Beyond the Wall.

The striker revelled in Monday's memorable achievement and the Reds boss joined the party

Adebayo Akinfenwa said he was only open to talking to Jurgen Klopp after Wycombe Wanderers secured promotion to the Championship and the Liverpool manager responded.

Wycombe reached the Championship for the first time in their 133-year history thanks to Monday's 2-1 League One play-off victory over Oxford United at Wembley

Joe Jacobson's penalty with 11 minutes remaining stunned Oxford and sent Wycombe up to England's second tier against the odds.

Wycombe cult hero and Liverpool fan Akinfenwa – out of contract at the end of the season – revelled in the achievement, telling Sky Sports in a memorable post-game interview: "Look, look, let me calm down. First and foremost, I want to thank God, because today he made the impossible possible. Four years ago I stood in front of you and I was technically unemployed.

"Let me tell you something, the only person that can hit me up on WhatsApp this time is Klopp, so we can celebrate together. You get me? Oi!

"I hope my story shows that the only opinion that matters is the opinion you have about yourself. I was lucky and blessed to find a manager and players who believed in me, so we are here today, and I'll say it for the people in the back: Wycombe's in the Championship.

"Wait, wait, I'll say it one more time: Wycombe is in the Champio- Wait! The people in the back didn't hear me! Wycombe is in the Championship!"

Premier League-winning manager Klopp heard the 38-year-old striker's request and answered.

In a video message sent to Akinfenwa, Klopp said: "Hello big man, congratulations!

"Watched the game, well I didn't see the post-match interviews but Hendo [Jordan Henderson] or one of my players told me that you want to get, what did you think to say? If you could get in contact with me on WhatsApp, here we go!

"Congratulations. I'm pretty sure your whole life at least a Championship player and now finally, you are there. Well done.

"Great, great victory. Even in strange times, I hope you celebrate appropriately."

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