Team History Tuesday: Marching on Together
By: Matthew |
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Gary McAllister’s appointment as Leeds manager has me in a strange mood. If Leeds were England, I’d feel patriotic. They’re not, though, so here’s a (late) Team History Tuesday on one of the greatest terrace anthems in football: Marching on Together.
Few football teams can boast an original song as their anthem; fewer still can boast a song originally recorded by the team’s players; and I’m pretty sure only one team can boast an anthem written by the guy who wrote “It’s Not Unusual” for Tom Jones. That team is Leeds. Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Leeds Offside’s Lunchtime Links: January 30th
By: Matthew | Add Comments
Gary McAllister is the new manager of Leeds United! Fans the world over rejoice. I sit back with an apprehensive expression on my face and think, “but he’s never actually accomplished anything as a manager, has he?” Regardless, he’s contracted until the end of this season, with a remit to win promotion to the Championship. Think he can do it?
I can’t believe I missed this when it was published, but the Times has an article entitled “The Soul of Leeds United in 50 Moments” that is just brilliant. The highlights:
#43: Billy Bremner punching Kevin Keegan. Let’s be honest: who wouldn’t want to?
#38: The Smiley Badge of the 1970s (on the left). Probably the best team logo, ever.
#33: Playing with detachable commemorative sock tags in the 1970s, which has to be one of most deranged ideas in football history.
#26: The best goal in the history of football, as scored by Eddie Gray in 1970. I’ll post a video when I finish writing my “team history tuesday” piece on him - and it is, believe me, the best goal ever. Or at least of the 1970s.
#18: Marching on Together. How many teams have an anthem written by the guy who wrote “It’s not Unusual” for Tom Jones?
The whole list is great, and well worth a read.
Sheffield United are apparently strongly opposed to Gary Speed’s rumoured move to Leeds. McAllister seems to want him as his assistant manager, despite Speed having no managerial experience. The 39-year-old is about to start a player-coach contract at Sheffield, but is best known for playing alongside McAllister in the midfield of the title-winning 1991 team. I was already worried that McAllister doesn’t really know what he’s doing; now he’s planning to appoint an assistant who certainly doesn’t know what he’s doing. Count me officially concerned. Still, I had a poster of Gary McAllister on my wall when I was seven, so I can’t be too skeptical about him.
And those are your lunchtime links. I’ll be back later with a match report from last night’s defeat at Southend United.
Gary McAllister: in talks with Leeds this afternoon
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Well, that was quick. Ken Bates has already started talks with Gary McAllister, literally 20 minutes after Dennis Wise left for Newcastle.
Updates as they happen.
Leeds Offside’s Lunchtime Links: January 29th
By: Matthew | 3 Comments
Tony Cascarino on Dennis Wise leaving Leeds. He may have left a job half-done at Leeds, but Cascarino thinks Wise will prove everyone wrong and shine at Newcastle.
The Yorkshire Evening Post profiles Gary McAllister. Essential reading, especially seeing as he’s now the Red Hot Favourite for the vacant Leeds job.
Ken Bates won’t consider Assistant Manager Dave Bassett or First-team Coach John Gannon as replacements for Dennis Wise, but he does think he’ll have a replacement for Dennis Wise before the end of this week. Doesn’t hang about, does he?
Wise goes to Newcastle; is Steve McClaren the next Leeds manager?
By: Matthew | 1 Comment
So, he’s off. After 15 months as manager of Leeds United, Dennis Wise has become Director of Football at Newcastle United.
It’s hard to know how to react to this news. Dennis Wise was never popular with the hardcore of Leeds fans, thanks to his time spent as a player at Chelsea. Chelsea, of course, is one of the thirty-seven (and counting) teams that the hardcore Leeds fan thinks the team has a rivalry with, and as such, they saw Wise’s appointment as a slap in the face. This attitude is idiotic, not least because Leeds has so many “rivalries” that any appointment who hadn’t spent the previous 20 years playing for Leeds is usually open to criticism and cries of “how could you?”
That said, Wise has done an excellent job this season. Leeds’s form at the start of the season was nothing short of spectacular, and despite Wise’s inability to keep Leeds in the Championship last season, he deserves a great deal of credit for rebuilding the team and restoring their shattered confidence.
It’s possible to criticise him. Leeds’s form since Wise lost his trusted assistant manager Gustavo Poyet to Tottenham Hotspur before Christmas has been quite poor, and I do get the feeling that Wise isn’t the same man without Poyet at his side. I don’t personally rate his new Assistant Manager, Dave Bassett, at all. Still, on balance, Wise has done a good job.
But now, moving on. Who will be replacing him?
According to the BBC this evening, the three bookies’ favourites are (in order):
1. Gary McAllister
2. Sam Allardyce
3. Steve McClaren
The first, Gary McAllister, won’t be familiar to many readers. He’s a legendary former Leeds midfielder, playing alongside Gordon Strachan, David Batty, and Gary Speed in the league title-winning campaign of the 1991/92 season. He managed to extend his career to the age of 35, when he signed for Liverpool and was key to Liverpool’s cup campaigns in the 2000/01 season. After his retirement, he worked as a pundit and later as manager of Championship club Coventry City. He resigned after a year to care for his wife, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She died 18 months ago, and McAllister is (reportedly) considering returning to work.
Sam Allardyce is a more familiar figure, and (in my view) unfairly maligned. It’s not clear, however, how Leeds would be able to afford to hire him, and I think he’s a bit of a long shot.
Steve McClaren … well, we all know who he is. Hopefully, his name will have vanished by tomorrow.
Gary McAllister would be a popular appointment with the hardcore fanbase. I’d personally prefer someone more experienced, but I do think that McAllister would be a competent and inspirational manager.
Updates as they happen.
Holy S***: Dennis Wise leaving Leeds for Newcastle?
By: Matthew | 1 Comment
Leeds manager Dennis Wise has been offered the position of Director of Football at Premier-league outfit Newcastle United by Kevin Keegan, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post. Wise will definitely be in charge of Leeds for tomorrow’s match against Southend United, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll be there any longer than that.
It speaks volumes of the talent in Leeds’s backroom staff that both Dennis Wise and former Assistant Gus Poyet (who became Juande Ramos’s assistant manager at Tottenham earlier this season) are being headhunted by top Premier League clubs, but where does that leave Leeds? The team is just a few points away from an automatic promotion slot with eighteen games to go in the current season, and considering the 15 point penalty the team began the season with, every game is crucial to Leeds’s push to the Championship. Losing Wise now could destroy a talented and successful team and leave Leeds in a similar position to Nottingham Forest - strong, overachieving, but stuck in a division far lower than the team’s reputation and history deserve.
Dennis obviously has to make a decision in his own best interests (although, personally, I wouldn’t go within seventy miles of the pending-death-sentence that is a job at Newcastle, where fans consider anything less than a 5-4 Champions League final win - every season - an abject failure. Unless you’re Kevin Keegan.) and I can’t begrudge his taking the opportunity to work in the Premier League. Still, it’d be a shame for Wise to exchange an opportunity to make history as a Leeds manager by overcoming a 15 point deficit to win automatic promotion, for a forgettable job as Director of Football at a mediocre Premier League club with about as much chance of breaking into the Big Four as I do of growing wings.
Go to Newcastle and be derided by a needy and petulant fan base, or stay at Leeds and be a hero at a team commanding the thirteenth largest average attendance in England despite being in the third-tier of English football? I know which I’d choose. Let’s see what Wise does.
Updates as the happen.
Luton Town 1 - 1 Leeds United
By: Matthew | 2 Comments
Frustration? You bet. Leeds led 1-0 (courtesy of a Paul Huntington header from a Peter Sweeney free-kick) until the dying seconds of the match, when Luton Town’s Sam Parkin tapped in a cross from Dean Morgan. This came after both Jermaine Beckford and Tresor Kandol couldn’t get a pair of easy shots on target.
It’s frustrating, yes, but at least we didn’t lose. Full match report when video highlights are online. In the meantime, I’m off to the TV to watch Tottenham Hotspur (hopefully) destroy Manchester United. Is there a better way to spend a Sunday? Am I deluded by my natural Leeds-fan hatred for Manchester United? We’ll know in two hours…
Forget about Leeds: a teacher, a taxi driver, and a janitor take on Liverpool
By: Matthew | 5 Comments
Nothing to do with Leeds, but frankly, theirs isn’t the biggest game tomorrow: it’s non-league Havant and Waterlooville’s FA Cup match against Premier League Liverpool. The BBC just posted Havant and Waterlooville’s first-choice team and it makes fascinating reading. It also makes it even more ludicrous (not to mention offensive, blinkered, shameful, and against the spirit of the FA Cup) that the BBC will not be broadcasting the game live:
Kevin Scriven
On the pitch: Goalkeeper
Real life: Builder
Justin Gregory
On the pitch: Right-back
Real life: College student
Gregory, sadly, won’t get to play at Anfield: he picked up 5 yellow-cards and is due to serve a one-match suspension during the Liverpool game. The FA, being made up of aging, insensitive incompetents, refused to allow him to serve the suspension at a different time and refused to allow him to sit out on another, rescheduled game instead.
Jay Smith
On the pitch: Centre-back
Real life: “Works in planning”
Phil Warner
On the pitch: Centre-back
Real life: Drives a van
Tony Taggart
On the pitch: Right-back
Real life: Bin man (Garbage man for Americans)
Mo Harkin
On the pitch: Right-winger
Real life: Used to play for Wycombe
Jamie Collins
On the pitch: Central Midfielder & Captain
Real life: Primary School Teacher (Elementary School for Americans)
Charlie Oatway
On the pitch: Central Midfielder
Real life: “I work for Brighton and Hove Albion on a scheme called, ‘Albion in the Community’.”
Alfie Potter
On the pitch: Left-winger
Real life: Youth player at Peterborough United - currently on loan at Havant and Waterlooville
Rocky Baptiste
On the pitch: Striker
Real life: Training to be a taxi driver in London
Richard Pacquette
On the pitch: Striker
Real life: School Caretaker (Janitor for Americans)
The hell with Leeds - and with the dull, Premier League-only FA Cup matches the BBC will be showing this weekend - I’m slapping the radio on and listening to Havant and Waterlooville have the night of their lives.
Former Leeds player in African Nations sex scandal! (Allegedly…)
By: Matthew | 3 Comments
The scene: African Cup of Nations, 2006. A retired Ghanaian footballer, who “fans of English football will remember him from his highly successful period with Leeds United“, has joined the Zimbabwean national team for a drink. (The following is alleged by Peter Ndlovu on footyhighlights.com. Take it with a grain of salt.) Being a sensitive and proud soul, our Ghanaian friend didn’t enjoy the evening:
“The lads started giving my friend a lot of stick for his country’s loss, especially our head coach. My friend was taking it quite gracefully but, as a proud Ghanaian, I could sense his patience was wearing thin. Nevertheless, the drinks kept flowing and so did the jokes.”
Soon, everyone began to head to bed. In a playful mood, some of the Zimbabwean players decided to get their own back on their manager, who had woken them up early in the morning for training sessions. They persuaded hotel reception to give them keys to his room, stormed up the stairs at 4am, and burst in … on said Ghanaian and former-Leeds player, in bed with the manager’s wife. The players fled, found the manager passed out in a hotel toilet, and tried to keep a lid on things. The next morning, one of the Zimbabweans asked the Ghanaian why he had slept with the manager’s wife. He told his friend:
“When a man insults my country I insult him, by taking his woman.”
There’s a lesson in this for all of us, it seems: don’t screw with Ghana if you want to keep your wife.
[via Kickette]
Leeds sue the Football League: More info
By: Matthew | Add Comments
More details about the Leeds Lawsuit were in the Post today.
The details themselves aren’t that interesting to non-Leeds fans: Leeds allege that they were compelled to enter a CVA that knew would invoke a legal challenge from HM Customs and Revenue, in order to retain their “Golden Share” in the Football League. Doing so, however, created a situation in which the League was able to deduct 15 points from the team, despite Leeds having no alternative path available.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens here - it could lead to the 15 point penalty being rescinded, in which case Leeds would be top of the league.
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