When Leeds were relegated, it felt like Jackie Harrison would be one of the first players sold back to a Premier League club. Leicester had already tried to buy him – and Andrea Radrizzani had already tried to sell him – in January. Newcastle and Tottenham have regularly been linked with making a move.
Harrison was one of the key players the 49ers Enterprises were determined to keep, but who knows whether that was before they were aware of the widespread release clauses across the squad – even, in Jackie’s case, when he’d only been given a new deal in April, when Leeds were two points above the relegation zone.
In truth, the only reason Harrison hasn’t left sooner is likely to have been his hip injury. On Monday, he joined Everton. He was one of the few players Leeds could have made a profit on to buy themselves some FFP wiggle room, but no: it’s a season-long loan, like everyone else, except with the caveat that Everton will ‘push to make the move permanent in due course’, presumably when they have their own FFP wiggle room.
Like most things in football, it reeks of stupidity, right down to Aston Villa supposedly trying to hijack the deal only to realise he’s injured, which everyone has known for weeks. Good work all round, fellas.
To put Harrison’s time at Leeds into context, the day after he joined the club on loan from Manchester City, Leeds loaned Hadi Sacko to Las Palmas. Harrison was the perfect example of how it seemed just as likely that the decision to appoint Marcelo Bielsa as manager could be a spectacular failure rather than an era-defining success. Jackie made his name thanks to the quirk of being a lad from Stoke playing at New York City, but upon returning to England he was afforded all of 48 minutes under Tony Pulis on loan at Middlesbrough. Was this really the guy to help us end a decade and a half of Football League purgatory?
His first season at Leeds ended with a beautiful cross for Kemar Roofe to take a 1-0 lead into the second leg of the play-off semi-final against Derby, but we all know what happened then. When Leeds were planning how to attack a second promotion challenge with Bielsa, they acknowledged they needed to get better value out of their loans, and most supporters – myself included – preferred Jack Clarke to Jack Harrison.
Jack Clarke wasn’t better than Jack Harrison. The summer after the play-off defeat set a theme for Harrison’s time at Leeds, as he spent his holidays grafting to get better, returning to become a cornerstone of Bielsa’s team. Like Bill Ayling and Mat Klich, Jackie earned a reputation for hard running that meant his technical touches of class were often overlooked.
Such is the nature of football, despite Harrison always striving to get the best out of himself, a section of the fanbase always wanted more. Jackie Harrison can only be as good as the best Jackie Harrison, and that was pretty bloody good: under Bielsa, only Mat Klich played more, only Pat Bamford scored more, and only Pablo Hernandez created more. No player created more goals for Leeds in our three years back in the Premier League, only Bamford and Rodrigo scored more. For someone so regularly criticised as inconsistent, Harrison has been one of Leeds’ most reliable players. He played in every game of the promotion campaign, has played through injury, and bookended Leeds’ time in the Premier League by scoring our first and last goals in the competition.
While Harrison was still waiting for his first goal or assist after a slow start to the 2021/22 season, Bielsa neatly described how I felt about him:
“Harrison will continue to shine or will shine again in proportion to the faculties that he has, and it’s my job to put him in situations in the game where he’s able to shine and to make him as important as I feel that he is. Of course any question that invites public criticism for my players, I reject.”
And he has a first touch I want to snog.
Honourable mentions go to:
But it’s Brentford, innit? I’m glad this gets misremembered as the goal that kept Leeds up – we’d have stayed up with a draw anyway – because during the run-in Harrison had played while battling against his own limitations. I lost count of the number of times I saw him hunched over by the touchline, crippled with frustration that whatever he was trying to do seemed to be going wrong, so it was fitting that Harrison scored the goal that lifted a weight off the shoulders of the entire club.
Talking about that goal, Harrison said:
“People cried that day, it meant that much. We were almost rock bottom. The home game against Aston Villa (a 0-3 defeat) was the epitome of that. Fans were chanting for Marcelo and not everyone was on the same page. We had new tactics and new ways of playing. It was tough.
“So to survive meant everything. I have watched that clip back from the Brentford game so many times. Players were on their knees. People were crying while we were actually still playing.
“As we went back to the kick-off after my goal, Junior (Firpo) was playing behind me. I had never seen him cry before. Never. But he had a tear in his eye. I had to tell him to concentrate on defending!”
I imagine he had to tell Firpo that a lot.
Twitter never dealt well with every time he overhit a cross or whispered with Brenden Aaronson at a set-piece before failing to beat the first man. I was more frustrated with Andrea Radrizzani sending him for a medical at Leicester on deadline day in January before he was told by someone else to come back to Leeds, when all Harrison could say afterwards was: “The situation opened my eyes to a lot of things that goes on behind the scenes but at the end of the day it’s how you focus back in as a player.”
But none of that was as embarrassing as having to come off the pitch after a defeat at Arsenal and reveal:
“[Marsch] showed a quote from Gandhi before the game about having belief and that’s the most important thing for us. Just having belief and everything else comes after that, staying together and the tactics and everything like that.”
The main criticism of Harrison seems to be that he should have just been better, but I’m not sure what else he really could have done about that. Maybe he’d have been helped if Leeds bought some better players for him to play alongside, or if Leeds never sacked the manager who made him this good in the first place. Or maybe we should have just sold him to Newcastle when we had the chance, at least then he wouldn’t be joining Everton on loan.
The PR dribble of goodbyes from the likes of Marc Roca and Brenden Aaronson have felt incredibly insincere, but Harrison took his time before posting his farewell to Instagram, presumably penning a heartfelt ode to his five years in Leeds. Errrr:
Thank you @leedsunited fans. We have shared so many amazing memories over the last 5 years. I will keep an eye on the results and wish you nothing but the best for the season ahead. Always MOT.
I genuinely admire the brevity. No bullshit. ‘I will keep an eye on the results’ might be the most Jackie Harrison thing he’s ever written.
Sam Allardyce liked Jackie Harrison, so Sean Dyche will love him. I’m not so sure what Jackie will make of Dyche, though. I hope they get relegated. ⬢
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