That quote could be attributed to any number of players who have come through the front door of Elland Road and scrawled their name on a contract over the past few decades. Many will say the words because it is simply what you say when you sign for a club, any club. It is a cliche that is trotted out across the footballing landscape on an amusingly frequent basis. For those who didn’t grow up in West Yorkshire, the statement is perhaps borne of a general knowledge of Leeds United, rather than any actual insight or realisation of just how important a role it plays in the everyday life of the city. Even if it is 27 years since they won the Division One title and 15 since they last played in the Premier League, it isn’t difficult to ascertain the prominence of a football club, when it has a big stadium and rightly boasts of its rich heritage. But for every player who arrives at the club, bar maybe those who, like Kalvin Phillips, count Leeds as their home city and Leeds United as their boyhood team, the intensity of the club’s support still comes as a shock to the system. Stuart Dallas became a Leeds player four years ago. His only prior experience in LS11 was a 1-0 February, 2015 victory for then employers Brentford. Leeds were at a low ebb, 19th in the Championship and the game still attracted 23,164. The last time Dallas turned out at Elland Road, on a Tuesday night, a crowd of 34,648 packed the famous old ground. “Whenever you sign for a club like this, everyone says the same thing, how big the club is,” said the Northern Ireland international. “But I don’t really think you realise until you’ve been here a while, just how big it is.” Dallas has played in front of big crowds, in big stadiums. Wearing the colours of his national team, the winger-turned-full-back graced Parc Olympique Lyonnais in the 2016 European Championships, with over 50,000 there to watch Northern Ireland beat Ukraine 2-0. Yet Leeds fans still managed to take the Cookstown man by surprise earlier this year. The Whites went on a pre-season tour Down Under, delighting legions of their fans who live in Australia, but also inspiring many to make the trip. Four years into his time with the club, Dallas’s appreciation for the support he and his team-mates receive took on new meaning. “When we were out in Australia, I’ve never had it before,” he said. “We were sitting having a coffee and older folk were coming over and zipping their tops down and they had Leeds tops on underneath. On the other side of the world. “I’ve been away in pre-season with other clubs and taken a couple of hundred. On the other side of the world the Leeds fans were unbelievable.” Adam Forshaw is another with big game and big atmosphere experience. He played for Brentford at Stamford Bridge in an FA Cup defeat to Chelsea, with 40,000 in attendance, then played at Wembley at the end of that season in the League One play-off final against Yeovil. Forshaw’s 2016-17 season featured Premier League appearances at The Emirates, The Etihad, Anfield and Old Trafford for Middlesbrough. Leeds United fans still managed to move their midfielder with a display of support in a moment he recalls vividly from the tail end of last season. “There was one game that stood out massively for me” he said. “We played Derby at home, we saw all the scarves being waved. There was a stoppage in play and I got shivers. That’s the best atmosphere since I’ve been here.” Forshaw, at least, had a heads up about the fanbase before he made the switch from Middlesbrough in January, 2018. A club favourite clued him in: “I played with (Jonathan) Woodgate and before I left I told him about Leeds being interested and he said ‘you’re signing for a whopper of a club’, he couldn’t say enough good things.” Playing for a ‘whopper’ of a football club, with an obsessive and relentlessly expectant support could be seen as a burden to shoulder. Forshaw sees it as daily motivation “You just relish it. It just makes you want to do well day in and day out.”