On Jan 20 1964 and the same day 26 years later, Leeds United were top of Division Two and finished both seasons, their last two successful promotion campaigns back into the top flight, in the same place after six months of occasionally jittery front-running. Today they are third in the Championship behind one well-run and one well-financed club, neither of which Leeds have been for decades. After years of distress, decay and discord, of perilous hand-to-mouth subsistence and the bleeding of the club’s assets - ground, training complex, staff, players, always players – to foot both running costs and extraordinary expenditure on gratuitous or avoidable litigation, Leeds have at last acquired an air of genuine stability.

And to understand why we can be grateful to two Liverpool heroes. The first, Kenny Dalglish, was the man who piqued Andrea Radrizzani’s interest in Leeds United last March. During lunch Dalglish spoke warmly of a club whose potential had been starved but not quashed and the fierce ardour of their fans. Radrizzani, a global investment and sports rights entrepreneur, began to analyse Leeds and 10 months on now owns half of it.

Because tact is essential to maintain equilibrium with his equal partner, Massimo Cellino, we know neither the specifics nor extent of his clear-headed influence as a brake on his compatriot’s impulsiveness and volatility. But if we contrast Cellino’s restraint and novel inconspicuousness since negotiations began last summer with the unrelenting turbulence that preceded them, it is plain that the club is acting less impetuously and more soberly than before.