As a boy growing up in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, it was inconceivable that I should ever support any football club other than Leeds United. My family came from Leeds, and although my Dad had moved down south just as I was coming into the world, My Mum was left behind in Crossgates, a suburb of Leeds, so that I could be born in Yorkshire. The hope was that I would someday play for Yorkshire County Cricket Club I understand, but a passion for Leeds United also ran strongly in the family. My Uncle Ray was a season ticket holder, and my cousin John had the all-white strip of the Revie era. On one of our trips back North, I was sporting a West Ham strip that my friend and hero Martin Baker had convinced me into getting. I was soon put straight on a few basic principles.

I’ve carried on supporting them ever since, although of course that was a much easier job then than in recent times. Until now that is. This season has been the best for a long time, almost entirely due to the arrival of Marcelo Bielsa at the club. Bielsa clearly lives and breathes football. When he arrived, we were told that he had already watched every minute of every match from the previous season – a feat of endurance that beggars belief given some of the performances. However, his transformation of that crop of players from mid-table strugglers to league-topping performers has been remarkable. We now understand something of how that has been achieved. As well as clearly being a remarkable coach, Bielsa also seems to be a true heir to Don Revie in the amount of preparation and research he devotes to every match and every team he faces.

Which brings me to “Spygate” – the latest in a long series of excuses for the football media and hierarchy to have a pop at Leeds United. It’s a lot of fuss over very little in my view. Much has been said about the morality of peeping through the fence at your opponents training sessions, but at the end of the day no rules or laws have been broken. Mostly, the   criticism has centred around the notion of fair play. This seems to me to be a bit rich when you look at the moral standards and behaviour of the Premier League clubs and players, but it did remind me of something from the distant past.

As youngsters in the 1960’s, we didn’t have much to guide us in shaping our world view – Blue Peter never explored the great moral issues of the day! Also, the amount of reading matter we had to hand was tiny compared to today. I probably had no more than a couple of dozen “Puffin” books on my shelves – Doctor Dolittle with its casual racism, Worzel Gummidge, and so on – but these were supplemented with a sporadic supply of comics.

Which brings me to the “Lion” Annual of 1969. “Lion” was a boys comic, full of war stories, wild west adventures, thinly disguised facsimiles of Tarzan (“Jungle Jak”), and football adventures, chief amongst which was Carson’s Cubs. This cartoon strip was about a football team of (literally) boy wonders, who somehow were able to compete in the world of the adult game.

I must have read this annual, cover to cover, dozens of times. I still have it, and just opening the pages I can still remember all the stories and pictures.  So when Spygate came around, I instantly recalled this story…

As you will see, the story revolves around a training session which is spied upon by an unscrupulous reporter. Once this subterfuge is discovered, Joe Carson the manager stages a mock training session involving various dirty tricks (including the goalie hiding the ball up his jumper) which are then dutifully reported on the front pages of the local rag. Needless to say, the shady spy gets his comeuppance in the end…

So, Marcelo be warned!