By now, you’ll be aware of the various ways to check up on the latest news regarding the takeover, Newsnow, Twitter, WACCOE and FootballFanCast, obviously!

With the talk of a takeover now stretching out over several long weeks, the chances are that you need a new F5 button due to refreshing every page countless times, or you’ve forgotten how to actually lead a normal life. You might even be worried about what will happen to you once the takeover is completed, will you need to learn basic life skills again? Will you be able to go outside in the sun without sunglasses to protect your delicate eyes?

Well fear not, because here are a few essential survival tips to ensure that when this is all over, you wont be left with too many mental scars.

Tip 1 – Twitter

Twitter is a useful little thing when it wants to be, in regards to finding news out first it’s the best tool there is, but only if you look in the right places. If you’re reading this and you understand Twitter, I’m almost 100% positive that you’ll be following the key people, Phil Hay, Thom Kirwin, LUST, FootballFanCast and perhaps one or two of your own favourites. This is the right thing to do, so far, so good.

However, Twitter lets anybody say anything, to anyone, at anytime. Meaning that dodgy Dave from the pub suddenly became a club insider overnight. You’d think that with the amount of people claiming to be ‘in the know’ we’d have some decent concrete evidence by now, but as I’ve stated in previous articles, if the rumours were true the deal would have been on, then off, then it was completed about four weeks ago to fifteen different groups and at one point, Ken Bates even cleared his desk out every single day in a week.

So, tip one, avoid searching for Leeds news on Twitter, just stick to the people that are more than likely to be on the ball.

Tip 2 – Time periods

Now, before all this takeover talk began you probably got considerably more done with your day. If you work or are studying, your productivity has probably dropped a noticeable amount. If you aren’t working or studying, you need to remember that your friends/family wont put up with your non existence forever and they also wont understand, or care, that the latest takeover page has had 15 extra pages added to it in fifteen minutes.

So, how do we make sure that we can avoid the sack/failing a course/losing friends/losing family? Simple.

Set a time limit for how often you check. Believe me, checking every 10 seconds will achieve nothing, the takeover will happen whether you do this or not, so be realistic. If you have work or studying to do, agree with yourself to do a quick check on the hour, every hour. If nothing new has happened then carry on with what you were doing and check again an hour later.

If you don’t work, then do the same thing, but as you don’t have any work to do in the meantime, find something productive to do, see a friend, check on your kids etc. If you don’t break the cycle of checking constantly, you wont even notice when your partner walks out of the door with her/his suitcase. Actually, the only thing that could possibly draw your attention to the fact that you’ve been abandoned would be when the internet is cut off because the bills haven’t been paid. So, tip two – set a time limit, and stick to it.

Tip three – Dare to dream, but not too much.

It’s easy to get carried away. When you see rumours flying around linking Leeds with a takeover from groups richer than the Man City owners, why wouldn’t you? But there is a strong possibility that our new owners will simply be normal people, who want the club to do well without spending gazillions.

Of course, we would ALL have taken this at the start, Bates being out is the main goal here, but if we all start expecting oil rich Sheikhs throwing money around from an open top bus only for it to turn out to be a middle eastern businessman with enough money to get us promoted, we might actually end up making ourselves feel a little disappointed, which would be ridiculous.

Sure, it would be nice to be the richest club in the world, but I know we’d all settle for just having a good team. So tip three, keep things realistic and remember that aslong as Bates goes, we’re smiling.

Tip four – Avoid doom and gloom, keep the faith.

As frustrating as this has been, now is not the time to start expecting the worst. It’s easy to get caught up in the rumours and start believing that ‘no news is bad news’ all of a sudden, when in reality we’ve been told that the process is still ongoing and that we need to be patient. The key here is to keep your eye on the prize, nobody really expected a takeover this summer, we were getting set up for another pre season filled with disappointment, but here we are, potentially days away from having new owners with enough money to buy a new team for the promotion specialist manager we have in charge. Things are looking good, repeat that in your head. Things are looking good.

Tip five – Going back to your old life

You’re almost there. If you stick to the four tips above then you’ll be in with a chance of returning to the life you left behind before the takeover took over (see what I did there?)

But, you can’t just expect to just slip straight back into normality, it’s too dangerous. If you work, your boss will notice that you’ve suddenly become the productive, efficient employee you once were, but they’ll also notice that for 5-6 weeks you were absolutely useless.

This will play on their mind, they’ll check the internet records, you’ll get sacked.

So, all you need to do to counter this is ease yourself back in gently, work a little harder each day so that you gradually build yourself back up to the machine you once were.

If you don’t work, text one friend, just one, to see how they are. Maybe even arrange to meet up later in the week (somewhere indoors, your eyes wont be ready for the daylight) then move on to your other friends. Slowly but surely you’ll find that you start getting invited out again. You could even use your prolonged absence as a chance to reinvent yourself. Do your hair different before you meet up with your friend, you could become even more popular than before.*

*If you work, do NOT try to reinvent yourself. This is a sign of a midlife crisis, it’ll make people feel awkward around you.

So there it is, everything you need to become a pro at coping with the Leeds United takeover. Congratulations!

Now, get back to work.

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