“The squad was too good to be in League One but we were there for a reason.”
Casper Ankergren arrived at Elland Road during Leeds’s darkest hour. Years of financial mismanagement had culminated in relegation to League One – an unthinkable fall from grace for a club steeped in tradition and which, just seven years before, had reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League.
Leeds had swapped footballing cathedrals such as the Camp Nou and Santiago Bernabeu for the less serene environs of Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium and Crewe Alexandra’s Gresty Road.
Nonetheless, Leeds supporters travelled in their droves across the country, and it was one afternoon in particular that sticks out during the Whites’s three year spell in the third tier.
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“It’s always something that will stay with me,” Ankergren recalls. The date was January 3, 2010, and Leeds travelled to Old Trafford to renew their intense rivalry with Manchester United after a six-year hiatus.
The hosts were in no short supply of headline acts, especially with Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov spearheading the attack. But Leeds, who were no fewer than 41 places below the Red Devils in the football pyramid at the time, had assembled a very strong squad of their own.
“They were all very good players. I think we knew that they were talented. Fabian Delph [who left for Aston Villa in 2009] was young at the time, Jonny [Howson] was very young,” Ankergren reflects.
“[Luciano] Becchio and [Jermaine] Beckford were fantastic together up front and then we had some older but solid centre-backs.”
Out of the 14 that featured at Old Trafford, three had previously played in the Premier League and a further five would eventually make the step-up into the top-flight.
Rooney had already scored 13 times across all competitions, in a season which would see him crowned FWA Player of the Year and the PFA Fans’ Player of the Year. But it was Beckford, a scorer of 16 goals at that point himself, who would deal such an historic blow to the defending Premier League champions.
After Howson’s long ball dissected the entire Man United defence, Beckford plucked the ball from out of the air and applied a deft finish past a stranded Tomasz Kuszczak.
Ankergren made crucial stops to thwart Rooney and Berbatov respectively with Jason Crowe following up on the line to hook the former’s effort to safety.
Leeds had chances to add to their advantage. Beckford sent a low shot whistling wide of the bottom corner, while Robert Snodgrass emerged from the bench to crash his free kick against the post.
The full-time whistle blew, and despite the unadulterated euphoria which permeated the air in the away stand, it was only after that Ankergren understood the significance of the result.
“It was a great day and a great experience,” Ankergren says. “But at the time I probably didn’t understand how much it meant to the fans.
“It was only afterwards that I found out how much it meant to the Leeds fans to beat Manchester United at Old Trafford. I don’t know whether we would've won many, if we had played them another 10 times, but we had a really good team.”
A first win at Old Trafford since 1981 set-up a fourth round tie against Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane. Ankergren once again produced a match defining contribution, saving a penalty from Jermain Defoe to earn Leeds a 2-2 draw in North London.
Although Leeds would subsequently lose the replay at Elland Road, Ankergren would end his final season in West Yorkshire with automatic promotion.
“Winning promotion was the bigger achievement for me,” Ankergren admits. “It’s crazy when you think about it but we were actually a little bit lucky to get out of League One with the way it all panned out.
“We went a man down and we were trailing against Bristol Rovers. To end up winning was incredible and the legacy of that side continued because so many them went onto have brilliant careers.”
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