Promotion or relegation?

You could give us Billy Paynter as long as you pay half his £10k per week wages




























and we still wouldn't have a striker

 

fat boy greek is on £10k a week.

 

You really have got to be joking, the Leeds team were fecking awful last season (from Dec onwards) and without those two, we would have been relegated. The rest of the squad (including Howson) are at best average Championship players.

 

Nah, we'd maybe have got a mid-table finish without them but never relegation. Nunez, Sam and Watt could all have filled in pretty capably. Becchio, Connolly, Kisnorbo, O'Brien are all better than your average Championship player. Might include Somma, Nunez, Sam and McCormack in that bracket too. And there's still a number of places to be filled by new signings yet. We got 1.5 points per game from December onwards which - if you apply it to the 46 games across the season - would still have got us into 7th place. Chill, brother.

 

The teams coming up are stronger, the teams coming down are stronger and the teams that had poor seasons are also spending money and looking stronger.

As it stands our squad is weaker than last season, we should have enough quality to be okay but you have to factor in how poor the manager is.

 

You also have to consider our difficult start. They're not the sort of games Grayson can get anything from.

The end of season run-in is tough too if it comes down to that.

 

The manager's done very well considering the shoe-string budget he's been working with. Of course our squad is weaker than last season as it stands, we've packed off first team players who weren't good enough which has left a sizeable hole in our teamsheet. Hardly fair to be judging that yet against other teams just because they've moved quicker in the market than us. Other than West Ham, the teams coming down are hardly going to be tearing the division apart. Peterborough and Brighton will be no great shakes with their lack of Championship quality/experience, though admittedly Southampton look threatening. All in all, I don't really think the division's got as strong as the pessimists are keen to make it out to be.

Grayson's usually got Leeds performing well in big games against the opposition deemed the toughest. Squad rotation to avoid having an end-of-season slide is vital and it's a lesson I think he'll have learnt.

 

It's when we play the small teams like Millwall we tend to struggle.

 

You could see them crumbling under the pressure of the big crowd during that 3-1 at Elland Road last season, bless them. Only used to sanitized, non-intimidating, small-time atmospheres in that soulless little Den they play at.

 

I dont think Grayson will have learnt his lesson about squad rotation, as he didnt rotate in Div 1 either. I think his is of the mentality of always play your strongest team no matter what. That is a good philosphy as usually its a winning team you dont change, but if you see a player is dipping in form, thats when you change a position or two, but not half the team for rotation. I think for carling cup maybe play playersthat are on 1st team bench and the reserves.

 

They warned you about me, Donald.

The budget is irrelevant, it's the quality of the squad that counts.

Who wasn't good enough?

Moving quicker in the transfer market means you get the best players.

Blackpool and Birmingham were unlucky to go down. Even if they lose some key players they should still be challenging.

Peterborough are a decent side with Championship experience and a chairman who is willing to invest. Brighton have a lot of momentum and an excellent manager in Gus.

Name the big games in which Grayson has got us playing well. And why are you expecting him to learn a lesson he shouldn't have to learn in the first place, after two and a half years of not learning it?

 

In my opinion, Kilkenny, Johnson, Schmeichel, Naylor and Higgs were all players that it was right to clear out. The budget perhaps wasn't important in League One where Grayson inherited a decent squad for that level, but now that we're pushing for Premiership promotion, he needs financial support from Bates to succeed. Put simply, with the single exception of Blackpool, you now need to spend £3m+ over two seasons to assemble a playoff-standard squad. As I constantly drone on about, we've spent less than half that amount from 09-11.

Moving quicker in the transfer market doesn't necessarily imply good signings. Look at Hull and the dross they've signed despite moving quickly. There's no tangible link between early signings and success - the only advantage is that the squad has more time to gel/sharpen up in pre-season which is important. I'd hope we start to make signings over the next week, though it's not worth panicking over until the season starts.

Like I said on another thread, it's probably worthless assessing next season's competitors at this point - you can make any team look like a pro- or demotion candidate if you try hard enough. It's hard enough to tell whether a particular squad is promotion-standard in April with the volatility of this division!

Big games in which Grayson has got us playing well? Ignoring the cup ties which probably do count, last season I'm thinking of doing the double over QPR, beating Swansea at Elland Road, beating Forest 4-1 and a pair of creditable draws against Norwich and Reading in which we put in decent performances. Look at the games we lost last season and the vast majority were against lower-table opposition who we really should have been beating. Many of them as part of the Tuesday Night Debacle. Just a hunch, but I think as part of Grayson's end of season review, he will have seen those evening matches as a major area where we threw points away. Why wouldn't he notice that? It's glaringly obvious and he's admitted it in press conferences. It's his big chance to show that he's matured as a manager next season and squad rotation will be a large part of how we judge that.

And yes, I was warned plenty about you and LIW! Found both of you quite agreeable chaps though to be honest. The world's boring without the odd maverick.

 

Name the big games in which Grayson has got us playing well.

Alright let me think... QPR (both times) The Cup games (Manure, Arsenal, Tottenham etc.) Burnley was a must win game to stay in play-off contention, bristol rovers last season, there just off the top of my head really i could go on all day

 

This is how it should work, I raise my issues with Grayson, you tell me why you disagree, then I come back and try to pick holes in your argument.

Unfortunately, if you say anything against Grayson a lot of fans make no attempt to counter what you say and resort to personal insults. I really have no idea what it is about him.

If ja606 carries on as it has it'll just be deluded fans telling eachother how wonderful Grayson is while our season falls apart.

I thought the Schmeichel situation had tipped a lot of people over the edge regarding Grayson but it seems people are defending him more than ever.

I've always rated Kilkenny, when he plays well, we play well. I think we've missed him when he hasn't played. Look at how our form dipped when he was away with Austrailia.

Bradley Johnson is wanted to improve a Norwich team which finished 12 points ahead of us and is now in the Premier League.

Schmeichel is a fantastic goalkeeper, we'll struggle to replace him. And he was signed for a million pounds by a vastly experienced top level manager of a strong team who are aiming for promotion.

Naylor is past his best but came into the side at the end of the season and improved it. Like Schmeichel he was also treated disgracefully by Grayson.

The squad last season was at least as good as Norwich's and they finished second.

It's true that the best signings sometimes take the longest to complete, let's wait and see on that but I'm not holding my breath.

Our first victory over QPR came during our best run of the season and their worst. The second was on the last day of the season when both teams had nothing to play for and they were celebrating winning the title.

We were very lucky against Forest. We didn't play particularly well and they were the best side till the sending off.

So you've only picked out four wins and then you have to resort to...I can't resist this...clutching at draws. Reading didn't even turn up and were there for the taking, too, then you start pointing out that we had some poor defeats against lesser teams which only serves to strengthen the argument against Grayson.

Just how much does Grayson need to mature? Chelsea have just appointed a 33 year old who's never played the game. I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing you've never been a professional football manager, and you're expecting Grayson to learn things that you already knew?

 

And Josh, I don't count the cup games and we lost the Arsenal and Spurs ties anyway.

Burnley was only a big game because we'd been on such a poor run beforehand and the win meant nothing in the end anyway.

Bristol Rovers were a bottom half League 1 team and that only became a big game because of the almighty collapse that came before it.

Please do go on all day.

 

This is how it should work, I raise my issues with Grayson, you tell me why you disagree, then I come back and try to pick holes in your argument.

Clive, forums dont work like this, its not a competition for you to prove to us that grayson is a terrible manager, its about opinions. yes i think that we should have never got rid of schmeichal and im also a little bit dissapointed by johnson leaving but these players are replaceable and to be honest we should be looking at better players if we are going for promotion

 

Of course this is how forums work.

Do you think we should all just agree with eachother?

It's my opinion that Grayson is a poor manager and I'm explaining why.

Of course we should be looking at better players but are we?

And in the case of Schmeichel we'll struggle to find better and if we do it'll cost money that would have been better served invested elsewhere in the squad.

 

Fantastic? Did you see him against Barnsley home, Millwall away, Palace away and various others? His all-round game was simply not good enough for a promotion-chasing team. It may well be the case that his old mentor Eriksson and Leicester's coaching staff get the best out of him, though I don't see that as any indictment on Grayson who's cut loose a player who clearly wasn't Leeds in mentality or playing style. You seriously don't think we can do better?

One-dimensional. His passing was important, but lightweight players like him are ten a penny. We should be aiming at someone who can pass and press rather than an immobile, non-physical non-entity.

Says everything about Norwich and nothing about Leeds. He lacked a footballing brain and lost the ball numerous times, failing to win tackles cleanly and sometimes failing to win them at all. Another player I think we can improve upon with someone like Tamir Cohen, Jack Cork or Bolo Zenden.

He made some horrific errors and continued to make a couple of shockers even during his end-of-season comeback. Admittedly he did well but he's no longer needed at Leeds now we have Kisnorbo back. Do you think he belongs in a promotion-chasing squad - even on the bench? I certainly don't.

I disagree. Norwich had better defenders and central midfielders. I'd certainly have swapped Johnson and Kilkenny for their pairing. They scored more goals too.

Completely subjective analyses of those games. Why does it matter what form the teams were in? No-one's making the excuse that we should have lost games against the lesser teams who were in good form - it means nothing. If we're going for the form arguments, the draw against Reading who'd had eight wins in a row was an amazing achievement, likewise the 4-1 crushing of Forest which was totally deserved despite what some people say about the 'luck' of the sending-off and our apparently poor performance even though we played some great attacking stuff and cleared up most of their play in midfield and defence. Clutching at draws? Not at all. Those teams came above Leeds and I'm showing how we held our own against them with those results and, importantly, those performances. An indication of Grayson's (and the squad's) relative success in the big games.

I think comparing Grayson with the exceptional Villas-Boas is somewhat unfair and one doesn't have to have played the game to know it inside-out (which V-B does having worked in it for many years). Your point about us laymen recognizing the mistakes surely just strengthens my point - if we've seen it, surely Grayson has too? Evening games weren't a problem in previous seasons under Grayson* so I don't see how it's a lesson he should have learnt over two-and-a-half years as Leeds manager with this squad. Like I say, since that was his first time as manager experiencing that - a big contributor to our stunted campaign this season - I fully expect him to have identified it as a problem and to eradicate it next term.

*Three of 10 games lost in 09-10 were on evenings, six out of 12 games lost in 10-11 were on evenings.

 

It's getting to the point now where we're just going to go round in circles.

I've done that far too many times regarding Grayson.

It gets to the point where people use something that highlights a weakness of Grayson in one area to defend his weakness in another.

You've got your viewpoint and I've got mine, let's leave it at that.

 

Afternoon Clive - Does that mean you are going to stop posting your pointless comments?