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Articles, Leeds United

Leeds United: Let’s be realistic about O’Leary

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By Dominic Smith

I can’t blame Leeds fans for wanting David O’Leary back, however daft the idea seems.

It was, after all, under O’Leary that we enjoyed our finest years in the (relatively) modern era. Now
that it’s almost ten long years since we were last in the Premier League, and twelve since THAT
Champions League run, it’s that O’Leary side that represents the best that a sizeable group of our
fans have seen, myself included.

As a 23 year old, I don’t remember the great 1991/2 title winning side, and have only hazy memories
of seeing the likes of Strachan and McAllister strut their stuff in our midfield. As difficult as it is to
admit now, my childhood heroes were the likes of Lee Bowyer and Harry Kewell. It was that O’Leary
side that I loved so much, whose posters adorned my walls, who represented all that was good
about our club. The gutsy heroism of Radebe, the grit of Barry, the trickery and pace of Kewell, the
cool finishing of Viduka. It’s embarrassing, knowing what we do now about the corrosive behaviour
in the boardroom, and how so many of those players disgraced themselves after leaving the club.

But my generation still look back on that period with so much fondness. Years of abject
performances make us long for that time again, when finishing 4th in the Premier League was
deemed a failure.

And it’s not simply nostalgia. Who can blame fans for wanting to relive the better days when there
is simply no future vision for the club? We have owners who seem desperate to flog the club a bit
at a time, a recently departed manager who kept telling us he wanted to leave, and a bunch of new
players accustomed to the nomadic lifestyle of being second-rate journeymen.

How different to how it was under O’Leary. Young players were plucked from the Academy and
shone in the first team, complimented by wise old heads like Nigel Martyn. The fans, players
and management were all seemingly united in a modern vision of Leeds United, playing exciting,
attacking football. We took on the giants of Europe and beat them. Who can forget the last-minute
victory against AC Milan or the humbling of Anderlecht?

But we have to take off these rose-tinted glasses. We won’t progress as a club by trying to relive
the old days. The great Revie side were thrust into management, one by one, in the 1980s, to try
and bring some success back to the club. Bremner, Clarke and Gray, all legends, failed, because of
financial mismanagement and no vision for how we moved forward as a club.

And don’t forget O’Leary’s part in our demise. He oversaw a ludicrously imbalanced and bloated
squad, signing the likes of Robbie Fowler and Seth Johnson for crazy fees on inflated wages,
made increasingly bizarre statements to the press and wrote a book when he should have been
concentrating on our stuttering on-field performances.

Not even considering the fact that O’Leary has been out of serious management for seven years, his
return would be a bad mistake. We cannot move forward as a club by reliving the past.

Follow Dominic Smith on Twitter (@DomoTheBold).

Articles, Leeds United

Leeds United: Warnock – the happy memories

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By Nadav Winehouse
Let’s face it, the last 13 months have not been fun for Leeds fans. Well, the last 94 years have not been fun, but that’s not the topic for today’s article. 13 months ago, I was sprawled across the floor of a Kibbutz in Northern Israel, stealing WiFi from a another member of Kibbutz Beit Haemek in the hope that Ken Bates had replaced Neil Redfearn with someone with an ounce of competence. When the sluggish internet connection finally loaded WACCOE, the members seemed in a state of euphoria, Neil Warnock had been pictured with Ken Bates and Shaun Harvey outside a café in Monaco. I, for one, also shared the glee that they were experiencing, delighted about the fact that ‘Mr. Promotion’ himself was joining Leeds. Unfortunately, we all know how the 13 months that have followed turned out. The majority has been spent with depressing hoof-ball, increasingly tedious interviews and Michael Brown. Despite these factors, there have been a handful of enjoyable moments during Warnock’s reign of terror as manager of Leeds United.

Good Friday 2012 saw Leeds go to the Madjeski Stadium and face eventual champions Reading. The match not only saw Reading put a hand on the Championship but saw Leeds’s transformation into a Neil Warnock side. The innocent Zac Thompson suddenly had his mind hijacked by his midfield partner Michael Brown, and the only instruction was “destroy!”. He was sent off for a needless challenge 13 minutes into the match. Challenges akin to this were committed later on in the match by Danny Pugh, Paul Robinson and Michael Brown, with Brown not only breaking Jem Karacan’s leg, but also leaving a nasty hole within his sock – Don Goodman was disgusted. It was hilarious watching the fans within the flatpack, IKEA stadium watch on, ashen-faced as 1960’s style tackles flew in. Although in the end we lost, this match will go down as typifying Neil Warnock’s brand of football.

Leeds United’s rightful position is by the likes of Spurs and Everton. To my bemusement, we somehow managed to beat the two of them under Neil Warnock. Not only did we beat Everton, we beat them with the worst possible Leeds midfield imaginable, Aidy White playing on the right-wing in this match, a man whose only characteristic to suit this position is his pace, lacking all of the required technical ability to perform adequately in this role. The only man who thinks that Aidy White is a Right Winger is Neil Warnock. The other wing was occupied by Michael Tonge, who has the polar opposite characteristics to Aidy White, half-decent technically and provides some creativity, yet the speed of a 50-year-old man and no left foot. I’m still baffled how the central midfield of Rodolph Austin and Michael Brown managed to cope with the presence of Marouane Fellaini. Spurs was a similar encounter to this, Mourinho’s prodigy was tactically outclassed by a man whose strategical acumen is that of a 1960s . The two results were achievements, but the destructions at the hands of Chelsea and Man City that followed these results weren’t.

We can look at these three games and try to forget the other myriad horrors of Neil Warnock’s time as Leeds manager. I don’t think it’ll be possible, the post-traumatic stress of Michael Brown traipsing around our midfield, ‘Sharon and the kids’, and hoof-ball will be causing nightmares for years to come.

Follow Nadav Winehouse on Twitter (@nadavwinehouse1).

Articles, Leeds United

Leeds United: An Open Letter to GFH Capital 2

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To whom it may concern,

You may remember me from my last letter, where I said you were doing alright, but you could be doing a lot better. You (you being GFH Capital or whichever PR company you’ve hired this week) have done some other things since, and they’ve mainly been alright, with a handful less than alright, and a couple that are better than alright. A summation of your time in charge of Leeds in one word: alright.

On that note, let me put forward what I think you should do next: sell the club. No ifs, no buts, no selling tiny cuts. Today’s sale of 10% to IIB is hopefully not the beginning of a continual sale of tiny percentages to a great swathe of purchasers, because it will create a club that, in the future, grinds to a halt as people without the knowledge play at being football club owners. As much as it seems a way to bring funds in, it will ultimately result in a club being run in a shambolic fashion. Too many cooks and all that.

On the other hand, everyone and their mother seems to be aware of this supposed takeover by Parkin and Pearson, with Phil Hay noting that that is seemingly not off the table after today’s announcement. Rather than selling segments off piecemeal, just give the whole megazord to the adults who have kindly come over to the kid’s table and put down the food you’ve been waiting for. It’ll save a lot of problems later.

The reality is that you’ve got a lot of good ideas, and these ideas are all an improvement on what went on during the previous regime. No one in their right mind would call for a return to the days of yore, where a tyrannical dictator sat on the throne, refusing to speak to anybody who couldn’t produce 47 individual charters that decreed them worthy of his presence. The reality is, however, that ideas are not money. Hell, I’d love ideas to be money, who wouldn’t? But they aren’t, and having the best intentions in the world doesn’t mean you can carry them out. We’d rather, as a group of fans, not see more mystery men buy pieces of the club in order to fund your ideas – by all accounts there are people out there who have both ideas and money. By all accounts they’ve been swimming around the good ship Leeds United for years, and it’s time to let them come aboard.

A few months back, shortly after I wrote the first letter to you lot, I sat with El-Hadji Diouf for about half an hour, and he said something very clever that I’ve been wanting to share for a while. He said that when he came, he could hear people singing “you Chelsea bastard, get out of our club”. Diouf was under no doubts about what the future of Leeds United needed. “For eight years, Leeds fans have been waiting for a Messiah”. I have thought about what he said often, and agree wholeheartedly that it is true. This Messiah is not necessarily a sheik or a billionaire, but merely one with the club at heart and the power to take us back where we belong. History is littered with false prophets GFH, and we’re on the cusp of a celebration of a man who claimed to be a messiah, whichever way you fall on your belief in that. You are not the coming of the Messiah we have waited years for, it is time to take the opportunity to leave.

Thanks,

Amitai Winehouse

 

P.S. Sell the club.

Follow Amitai Winehouse on Twitter (@awinehouse1).