Following on from j’s last post as Leeds blogger, the semi final defeat to Millwall was a bitter disappointment. But maybe losing at the semi final stage was a blessing in disguise. Losing after a final can leave a bit of a hangover at times. But at the same time i think many were confident that we could come out of the Millwall defeat stronger than the last two play off defeats because of one man.

Simon Grayson has been a beacon of hope in what has been a dark period for Leeds. Taking us on a amazing run at the end of last season, his transformation of the team was simply amazing. Unable to lose at home, scoring for fun and getting better at the back. There was also a newly found determination, trying to get back a bit of passion for wearing the shirt.

But Grayson also knows what it takes to win promotion, he’s done it with Blackpool, and the mistake of thinking that having a big name as manager will get you out of League 1 is one is one we’ve been guilty of. But Grayson has an actual working experience of this division, and his astute summer signings shows he knows the league and what it takes to get out of it.

Paddy Kisnorbo has come in at the back and has been solid as a rock so far. A new Terry Butcher with his constant headband, he has shown a self belief in his performances, and of course some fantastic tackling. Throwing himself into everything and being part of a back four that has been very solid all season. For me he is the key signing.

Being so assured and confident in his performance is rubbing off on others. The defence has been worked on in the summer with the signings of Bromby and Crowe and has been a key part of our start to the season.

Another feature that grayson has brought in is the fluidity of the midfield. I confess i’ve only seen two games in the flesh plus the Liverpool game on sky, but the midfield is constantly moving and linking up well. Bradley Johnson has weighed in with 5 goals from midfield and is another player that has transformed since Grayson has come in, although he always has had the potential based on his loan spell with Brighton last season.

Snodgrass gets a call up for Scotland and unfortunately had to pull out but after a performance against Liverpool where he ‘had their left back on toast’ according to Grayson, his stock continues to rise.

Another key reason we have started well is the fact we only lost one major player in Delph. Beckford, Becchio and Snodgrass all stayed, plus players like Kisnorbo, Bromby, Crowe, Higgs and Doyle all joined to go with the likes of Howson, Johnson, Kilkenny, Naylor, Parker. It’s a strong squad.

I was going to say we have strength in depth and to a degree we do. But against Darlington (i lied earlier i’ve seen three games live) a lot of the fringe players were given a chance and some ‘played themselves out of the team’ according to Simon Grayson. The likes of Prutton, Robinson, Showunmi and Ankergren didn’t cover themselves in glory. And those are four names you expect to be solid players at this level. Robinson was in the League one team of the year before he joined, and at times has showed why, but he was decidely unfit when he joined and has never maintained a consistant level of performance.

For me this is a worry, against Charlton complaints rained in that with Snodgrass missing we lacked creativity. Something that Robinson could do, but maybe the fact he didn’t start is a sign of the managers faith in him.

But for me the most pleasing thing as i alluded to earlier is the work ethic and passion. The players really seem to be giving everything for the club and their gaffer. 1-0 down at Walsall with ten minutes to go and we went on to win 2-1. Normally our heads would drop and it would be game over. Not this season. It shows alot about Grayson to see the players give so much. Nothing is a lost cause.

With this, expectation soars and a 0-0 draw at home to a team in second was considered a disappointment. No way in a million years is it a disappointment in my eyes, but such are expectations after the start we’ve had. Maybe its a double edged sword. The fact that most seasons as of late a 0-0 draw at home against a second place team would’ve been a great result, but now its a disappointment, which shows that we have come on alot as of late.

The next thing is can we keep it going. As a Leeds fan you learn never to get optimistic…….but even i might start getting excited if we’re still in the top 2 by christmas.

I’m absolutely thrilled to be given the chance to write about a team that i’m so passionate about and i hope you enjoy reading everything i write to you all.

A bit about myself. I’m 23, i’m a trainee radio journalist, soon to be freelance in a couple of months. I’m from Keighley near Bradford and i’ve been a leeds supporter since i was 4 years old thanks to my dad. I had a season ticket for 5 years between 2002 and 2007 (Great years weren’t they!!) but had to give it up to pursue my dreams of journalism.

So throughout the ups and downs, i continue to be an ardent leeds fan and will always wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to all things LUFC for this blog.

I follow in such great footsteps from the last Leeds blogger and i hope i carry on the fine tradition.

Marching On Together!

Tim

P.S Sods law my first week as a lufc blogger and our game is postponed. But tomorrow i shall give my first thoughts on the season so far.

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.

Updates as they happen.

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?

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.

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.

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…

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.

Leeds played Crystal Palace on February 10th, 2007 – a game which went down in history as the beginning of MOLEGATE. A Leeds player leaked a copy of the Leeds teamsheet to Crystal Palace the day before the game. Leeds manager Dennis “The Menace” Wise – who is really, really, really not someone you want to piss off, and was described by Alex Ferguson as “capable of starting a fight in an empty house” – spluttered furiously after the match that whoever was responsible “will not be playing for this club again.”

Which is where Shaun Derry comes into it. He didn’t play in the match against Crystal Palace, and never played for Leeds again after the scandal erupted. He was injured for most of that time, and Wise hasn’t used him once in the month of games played since his return to fitness. All of this points to Wise considering him guilty of collaborating with Crystal Palace during Molegate. The argument is bolstered by Derry’s links to Crystal Palace before the scandal: his Best Man, Danny Butterfield, played for Crystal Palace at the time.

I say “bolstered”; what I actually mean is that there was enough random, circumstantial evidence for the media, and the excitable lunatic fringe of Leeds fans, to declare Shaun Derry the reincarnation of Judas Iscariot and call for his public lynching. The fact that there was no evidence against him was irrelevant to many, including, apparently, Dennis Wise.

Derry told the Post this week that he wasn’t the mole. Assuming he’s telling the truth – and, to be honest, I’ve never believed he was the Mole anyway – who else could it be? I can’t think of any suspects, although I’m sure Dennis Wise is formulating a list. We’ll probably know when we spot a team member watching Leeds play from the stands with a heavily bandaged face.