Morning all Phil Hay don't half talk rubbish ... he's been praying for Leeds to struggle so that he can spout his negative trash again ... Bielsa hasn't "underestimated" his squad, it's just unfortunate that this season has been bumpy with key players missing at the same time ... the quality in U23s is starting to show which is a massive plus ... the same players delivered top quality performances last season, don't understand why Hay is trying to stir the pot with this nonsense
Actually, Costa played a key part in our promotion season so money well spent ... yes, he struggled for confidence knowing Harrison and Raph would be ahead of him, but he did us a solid helping to get out of the hell that is the Championship
Good point well made. There is no shame in him but being good enough for the prem, there are more pro footballers who aren't then are. He should always be fondly remembered for being part of that promotion squad and even for some goals that helped with our God start least season rather than for not being good enough now.
So Conte is the new spuds head coach and it too only 24 hours to get the deal done. 3 weeks after Bruce sacked they are still struggling to bribe anyone to take the job. Emery is the latest who wants the same huge money he was paid at Arsenal. Well folks that just says it all, nothing about keeping the team up but all about his wedge. If I was a barcode fan I would want Eddie Howe who was given the job to try and keep them up but if it failed to rebuild and bounce straight back. He would have enough money to do it in style and they would walk the Championship with the vash they have and the team Eddie could put together. It would for a fan be more realistic and able to see a team being rebuilt from the bottom up, rather than a greedy mercenary coming in who would only be able to entice greedy mercenary players in who would leave if relegated
Radz on Bielsa: The Italian media mogul has again put on record his belief that the Whites can break into the Premier League's top six, if they stay up this season Leeds sit 17th after 10 games and have thus-far struggled to replicate the swashbuckling attacking football that led them to a Championship title and a top-10 finish in their first Premier League season in 16 years. Over the past several weeks injuries have struck time and again to rob Bielsa of his first-choice centre forward Patrick Bamford, right-back Luke Ayling, new left-back Junior Firpo and German international centre-half Robin Koch. Defensive midfielder Kalvin Phillips also had a spell on the sidelines. Although the head coach refuses to make an excuse of injuries and continues to insist he has the resources to cope with the absence of key men like Bamford, Leeds have struggled for goals and wins. The 2-1 victory at basement side Norwich on Sunday was only their second three-point haul in the league this season. "Also for himself, this has been the longest spell of his career as a coach, with Leeds United because as a club we supported him unconditionally." Staying in the top flight for a number of seasons has always been key to the grand plans of Radrizzani and ownership partners the San Francisco 49ers. They want to redevelop Elland Road and return the club to the upper echelons of the English top flight. Their European dream looked more likely last season than it does currently, but staying up remains central to their ambition. Leeds still need to walk among Premier League giants for a substantial period of time before they can run. "Now we are partnered with 49ers, this is fundamentally very important because it will be very difficult to stay in the Premier League, but if we stay in it this year I think we can go much more than last year and go into the top six," Radrizzani told the Web Summit in Lisbon. "Start to renovate the stadium and continue to grow the value of this club." Radrizzani's confidence in being able to make his and Leeds' dreams a reality is rooted in what he says is a history of proving critics wrong. He says the club is now likely to be worth four times the £100m his Aser group invested in buying and transforming it.
I personally think that the 'best' manager the Barcodes can ultimately get for the rest of this season will be Big Sam. If they have 2 brain cells on their board, they'll soon realise that they'll fail at the first attempt if they can't avoid relegation. That must be their priority, and much though the fans will hate him, Big Sam has a track record of avoiding relegation. The top managers simply don't dip their toes into relegation situations, no matter how much you pay them.
But he was on loan when we were in the Championship, we signed him when we won promotion, I am not singling him out on his own, I am questioning the money spent in total on wingers and even two defenders when we were crying out for a central midfield player. I just don't think we have spent our transfer budgets wisely
He actually cost us around £20m in reality because originally it was supposed to be a £15m sale which turned into £17m plus we had to pay a loan fee. He helped get Wolves promoted but was then got rid of to us straight away so never played in the Prem. He did actually help us get promoted too but we then had to buy him and so we persisted with him but hes a top championship player at best. Hes gone now and wont be back his agent is one of ghe top 2 in the world and will already have a gig lined up for him if his present loan deal fails. Hes now playing regular and seems to be doing a job in La Liga
Seems that only Kiko and Bogusz are having good seasons for their loan clubs. Caprile played every game, Alfie not doing too bad and now Costa seems to be improving, but look at the failures on top of the players we sold or released this summer. They get chances to show what they can do but if they fail they are gone. Cresswell, Gelhardt, Drameh, Summerville and maybe Greenwood have grabbed it Loan Players: Bogutsz ...............Club Ibiza Kiko ....................... Elche Edmondson ..........Fleetwood McCalmont ...........Morecambe Kun ...................... Real Union Elia Caprile .......Aurora Pro Patria Davies .................Bournemouth Poveda …………..Blackburn Costa …………….. Valencia
At long last the Swiss authorities have charged Blatter and Platini with fraud misappropriation of funds, forgery and a bunch of other charges. Been going on since 2015 ffs but one charge relates to Blatter stealing over £2.3m from FIFA accounts to pay Platini. Blatter had to forge documents to do it….. Platini found to have the cash in one of his offshore accounts. Anyway no worries we are having a world cup at Xmas
Mills makes 'incredible' Leeds claim after another shattering injury bulletin Danny Mills has suggested the mounting injury list at Leeds United is due to burnout under Marcelo Bielsa. The ex-Whites and England defender insisted there is only so long Leeds’ small squad can push themselves to the “absolute limit”. As quoted by Leeds Live (October 29), the latest shattering injury bulletin from Bielsa is that he has refused to put a return date on Patrick Bamford, Luke Ayling and Robin Koch. please log in to view this image Meanwhile, Raphinha and Jamie Shackleton were fit enough to start the 2-1 win over Norwich City but Junior Firpo was not risked. Kalvin Phillips, Diego Llorente and Liam Cooper have also missed periods of action this term. “The problem that Leeds have is, the first team have done incredibly well,” “But they’re now getting to this stage of three-and-a-half years under Bielsa, are they starting to get a little bit burnt out? They’ve been pushed to their absolute limit for that amount of time. “All of a sudden they’re starting to pick up a lot of injuries. Liam Cooper has had a lot of injuries, Luke Ayling’s been out for a while, Kalvin Phillips was injured. Liverpool had exactly the same thing last season and that was their fourth season where that team had been at it constantly. “It’s tough to consistently be at that high level. The fitness, consistency for three seasons is tough. “I think that’s why Leeds have suffered a little bit. The squad is not big enough to allow players to have a bit of a rest. “If you keep pushing people to the limit then eventually something has to give. Bielsa has always been accused of burnout in the past, maybe people are starting to see that a little bit with Leeds?”
Set your timer - Sunday, 8:45pm, BBC2. "Finding Jack Charlton". No idea what it's about, specifically, but I'll be watching it no matter what. Finding Jack Charlton review – how an Englishman became an Irish hero An elegantly spliced celebration of the footballer-turned-manager who made Ireland proud of their national team please log in to view this image Ever since Oliver Cromwell gave his troops no quarter at the Siege of Drogheda in 1649, and maybe even before that massacre, it has been well-nigh impossible for an Englishman to be a hero in Ireland. So when in 1986, Jack Charlton, veteran of England’s 1966 World Cup-winning team, was appointed manager of the Republic’s underperforming football squad, more than a few eyebrows were raised. “Go home Union Jack,” said one banner on his arrival in Dublin. But he didn’t. Charlton stayed and made the team a force to be reckoned with, beating England and otherwise performing creditably in the 1988 Euro tournament in Germany – even while wearing that era’s eye-wateringly short shorts. Returning to Dublin, the defeated team were greeted as if they were 11 popes. The Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, made Charlton an honorary Irish citizen and suggested, only half jokingly, that eventually he might become Saint Jack. “It worries me,” Charlton told the crowds, “what the reception would have been like had we actually won something.” Gabriel Clarke and Pete Thomas’s documentary Finding Jack Charlton (BBC Two) was filmed in the final 18 months of the footballer-turned-manager’s life, and tells the story of his sporting career. Ireland takes centre stage, as a damnable ould sod redeemed by a Siegfried-like fool of a hero. So economically weak was the nation that 210,000 people had emigrated since 1981; the Troubles seemed incurable; the Republic seemed as mired in priests and conservatism as it had been since De Valera’s era. “It was ripe for something to happen,” said Larry Mullen Jr, drummer of Ireland’s leading cultural export, U2. And that something was the genial bruiser from England’s coal country. Roddy Doyle, whose 1991 novel The Van depicted Ireland’s Charlton-catalysed feel-good factor during the 1990 World Cup, argued that Jack wrested the Irish tricolour from its capture by republican terrorists. An Englishman catalysed Irish patriotism. The film went too far with this thought, implying that everything happy and glorious in Irish self-reinvention between the mid 1980s and today – from the legalisation of abortion to the Good Friday agreement – was made possible by Big Jack. However, it made it abundantly clear that Jack Charlton was adored in Ireland as he was not at home. In Dublin, he got the adulation England gave his more accomplished footballer brother, Bobby. How did Jack feel about being feted in Ireland, Sue Lawley asked him on Desert Island Discs? “Grateful.” please log in to view this image In truth, not all Ireland fell for him. The novelist John Banville told me he was at a party at which everybody was raving about Ireland’s latest football match. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he whispered to a friend, “to care?” Journalist and former footballer Eamon Dunphy had the temerity to suggest that Charlton’s tactics – fancifully envisioned here as prefiguring Jürgen Klopp’s high-press technique at Dortmund and Liverpool – turned virtuosos into cloggers. To be fair, Charlton’s team never lost to Euro-minnows Luxembourg, as the Republic did last week. But Banville and Dunphy were in the minority. Ireland became a land of devoted football fans. Ardal O’Hanlon as Father Dougal in the sitcom Father Ted typified how the Republic found a new religion. He wore the Ireland shirt as a pyjama top. Heavens, Father Dougal probably wore it under his cassock. Clarke and Thomas could have made three poignant documentaries from the material they elegantly spliced together. One about recent Irish history. Another about Jack and Bobby’s sibling rivalry. A third about Paul “ooh aah” McGrath, a black orphan who, despite his alcoholism, became an adored defence stalwart thanks to Charlton’s faith in him. During filming, though, the directors learned that Charlton was struggling with dementia. He died in July 2020. Jack’s suffering, possibly due to heading heavy footballs for decades (his brother Bobby now suffers from the same syndrome), became a tragic counterpoint to the sweetness of the rest of the film. The documentary celebrated what Jack, increasingly, could no longer remember. “They think a lot of you in Ireland, don’t they?” said his wife Pat in their Northumberland kitchen. On the wall was his framed honorary Irish citizenship; fan mail arrived daily from across the Irish Sea. After a long silence, Jack replied, “I have no idea.” There was rage in that response, at the pitiless denial of what should remain to us in our dotage: the power to summon up the remembrance of things past.
Costa made 25 appearances in the premier League for Wolves in the 2018/19 season , starting in 16 of them, with the other 9 as substitute
Didn't even read that Danny Mills bollocks. He is a rent a gob who has proven time and time again he just makes sweeping statements which can be picked up by click bait sites and keeps him relevant. Loved him as a player for us but can't stand him now.
Seen it mate its brilliant and his son still runs the pub on the beach and still serves food. Eyes filled up many times watching it. The Iteland under Charlton was brilliant craique. Players out on the piss, the world cup in America where Ireland were everyones favs. Charlton was Charlton and he took no prisoners, a great watch but very sad
U21's live on LUTV tonight in the PJT...KO now 7-15pm. Team news on U23's sticky. Joffy, Greenwood & Cresswell all start.
I think burn out is the wrong phrase. But Bielsa has got what we all called average championship players playing well above themselves. Eventually they will not be able to keep that standard up against better quality players. At some point you need to start replacing with better players.
