Well i was never going to mention this but the time seems right, my grandson who lives in Cornwall told me before Xmas that he now follows The Salford Yanks, i was devastated and asked him why, his reply was simple "Leeds are not a good team grandad, and not in the Prem" nothing more to add, gutted but he has a point.
It's alright saying bring in Pearson who I personally wouldn't mind, but do we have the players who would embrace his methodology and if not, would he be allowed to go and get them. I hope Radz and Orta get a real grilling when and if they outline their transfer policy this month. A signing like Sako for instance who we could already see was not really cut out for it and yet we go and give him another contract. We can go around in circles and change managers every 6 months just to pacify the fans, but I think there is something more rotten embedded in the way a lot of clubs are run at the moment including our own.
Spent 100m in 2 years, holding the club to ransom in many respects 10 LUFC players did not want to play for Leeds because of him His book Leeds Utd on trial His 4m pay off. His dodgy dealings with football agents I would ask people to read Ridsdale's book 'United we fall'. Whilst Ridsdale failed in his role as Chairman whilst he held his hands up for - his frank and honest book reveals facts about O'Leary which show DOL to be nothing more than a crook and I believe it. He even invites DOL to sue him if anything in his book is liable.
Yes, a period where we held our own in Europe, 6 players getting in the England team and great domestic results. Financial mis-management was an exec level feck up led by Risdale.
The players that got sent off wrre frustrated and getting stuck in.cardiff should had at least one sent off today and more booked.the ref was ****e and so were we.get some men in the team .
Yes but he had a 'manager' and board who should have controlled him and by default were the problem. Yes he ****ed up too but the football period before the meltdown was a high point.
The LUFC starlets were coming of age. It just transpired that we had the best crop of young players in the Country at the time.
Sorry gotta go, cant read anymore, totally pissed off with the whole affair, so going to go get pissed!!
United We Fall abounds with examples. Early on in his chairmanship he and his counterpart at Aston Villa, Doug Ellis, confide they both know that Bolton will sell Alan Thompson for £3.5 million. Why not both offer £3.5 million, Ridsdale suggests, and let the player decide? They shake hands. Leeds offer £3.5 million, Villa bid £4.25 million. Thompson goes to the Midlands. When Leeds sign Olivier Dacourt, the agent, Dennis Roach, tags along at David O'Leary's request, saying he will 'translate'. Dacourt's agent speaks perfect English. Roach does little more than nod. He submits a bill for £200,000 for 'translation services'. Ridsdale pays. Ken Bates, who has overseen the most humiliating moment in Leeds' history relegation to the old Third Division, and a 15-point penalty believes they are still paying Ridsdale's bill. ''When Leeds got to the play-off final in 2006 under Ken Bates, I got no credit and nor should I have done because it was nothing to do with me," said Ridsdale. "But what is startling is that when they get relegated, the year after, it is all my fault. I suggest you examine the creditor list when they went into administration in the summer and tell me how many of those creditors were there when I was and you will find it is very, very few." Nobody at Leeds United ever seems to have been honest with one another. They spoke in subtitles, telling everybody what they wanted to hear O'Leary, especially, appears to have been masterful at this. The only man who appeared straight was George Graham. "That is all fair comment," Ridsdale sighed. "Funnily enough, he was the manager I inherited rather than appointed, but I had the utmost respect for him. I found him straightforward, blunt to my face and when he wanted to leave for Tottenham, he told me." O'Leary has described Ridsdale's recollections as 'deranged'. They have fallen such a long way from the time when they would sit at the front of the team bus, the manager amused by his chairman belting out the Leeds battle hymn Marching on Together. ''Initially, he was a joy to work with," Ridsdale said. "But as he became more successful, we began to grow apart. He became more arrogant. David may have thought he was bigger than the club and it came to a point where he thought he could see me off as well. He thought he was indispensable. There are many examples of where, in the privacy of the club, he would say one thing, and in the public domain he would say another. ''When we transferred Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink he backed me to the hilt and then went to the papers and said: 'If they sell Hasselbaink, I will have to consider my position'. Amazing." Ridsdale is adamant that O'Leary's greatest error was writing Leeds United on Trial, which was launched in January 2002 when Leeds were top of the league. Within six months, O'Leary was sacked, Leeds had missed out on the Champions League for a second successive season and the road to perdition had been joined. ''The title upset a lot of people because we had made it clear that the Bowyer-Woodgate case was not Leeds United on trial, it was two of our employees. Some of the stuff in it was frankly fiction. ''I do know that a lot of the players who read it thought it took private matters into the public domain. Did the book do damage? I don't know. But what I do know is that after it was published we went eight weeks without winning a match. And when we stopped performing on the field, everything else suddenly became a problem."
Ok so that’s the problems of close on two decades ago clearly spelt out. I suggest we have far more pressing problems at the moment that need sorting
