Build us a team, not a hotel
THOUGH undeniably a factor, the cup win at Old Trafford – contrary to recent opinion – is not the reason for Leeds United’s 2010 form slump. If it was, then Simon Grayson’s predecessors, with no cup prowess to speak of between them, wouldn’t have hit the self-same wall 12 months into their reigns, too. But they did.
As highlighted back in September, not one has survived a second year in charge under the Beeston hotelier. Gary McAllister didn’t even see out his first, after a dismal run of results with which Grayson’s line-ups are becoming increasingly flirtatious. Since marking an extraordinary first year in charge with victory on Boxing Day and another three points two days later, his Leeds United haven’t registered consecutive wins in a 16 game period which has yielded just 21 points. It’s an alarming second-year slump worse than Dennis Wise’s; worse even than that of Kevin Blackwell.
What this means is that in returning Leeds United to where it was when Ken Bates first clapped eyes on it in 2005, avoiding the inevitable fate in the process, Simon Grayson has much trend-bucking to do. But it’s too easy to demand the manager’s head; less so to ask why we must keep plating it up. Cash black holes, escalating ticket prices, expensive courtroom failures, hotel plans and an overabundance of borrowed players all feed into the sense that this regime’s murky pursuit of off-field mediocrity is inconducive to excellence on it, whoever picks the team.
Where our forefathers stood by the finest players of any generation, we do likewise by a club that increasingly feels like Leeds United in name only. Our behaviour is monitored by the Members Club while the club itself continues to harbour the veiled interests of a chairman and his secret associates. But for how long?
With the incoming Football League chairman’s drive for transparency, the growing culture of fan protest and the realisation that we have problems with brass hotel doorknobs on, not much longer, one would hope. Once pacified by Ken Bates-sponsored media, we Leeds United fans are forming networks of our own and assuming positions to demand for ourselves the very best football club the bland old man’s capable of – unless, of course, that’s what we already have.
Instead of striving to copy his own Stamford Bridge template, Ken Bates would be well advised to heed the words of Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, the man tasked with making the west London development break even. “All a football fan wants,” he admits. “Is football.” Not a hotel.
