2018–19 Leeds United F.C. season
season of football team
The 2018–19 season saw Leeds United competing in the Championship (known as the Sky Bet Championship for sponsorship reasons) for a ninth successive season.
Season summary
Leeds' season started with an impressive win against relegated Stoke City at Elland Road, followed by a 4–1 win against Frank Lampard's Derby County at Pride Park, moving Leeds up to 3rd in the Championship table.
Leeds' first defeat of the season was against former manager Garry Monk's Birmingham City in mid September, but by the turn of the year the side were in pole position, despite a 4–2 defeat to Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on 1 January 2019.
Before a 2–0 victory over Derby County on 11 January 2019, manager Marcelo Bielsa admitted he had sent a spy to Derby's training ground, after reports emerged in the press that a man was spotted the previous day outside the training ground. Derby manager Frank Lampard was critical of Bielsa's method. On 12 January, Leeds United released a statement in response to the incident. Tottenham Hotspur Manager Mauricio Pochettino described the incident as 'not a big deal' and commonplace in Argentina.
On 15 January, the EFL announced they would be investigating the incident. With intense media scrutiny on what was coined 'Spygate' in the media, Bielsa announced a press briefing on 16 January 2019, where he gave a detailed analysis of his research on a PowerPoint presentation to the gathered media and journalists, detailing his meticulousness, thoroughness and preparation over his opponents, with some journalists in attendance describing it as a 'coaching masterclass' and 'genius'.
The 'Spygate' saga was resolved on 18 February, when Leeds were fined a sum of £200,000 by the EFL for breach of a portion of Rule 3.4 of EFL Regulations ("In all matters and transactions relating to The League each Club shall behave towards each other Club and The League with the utmost good faith."), with the EFL also announcing a new rule as a result, that teams could not watch opposition training up to 72 hours before a game.
“2018–19 Leeds United F.C. season” enters the record as season of football team. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Leeds, United and season can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55388440. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “2018–19 Leeds United F.C. season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.