Good afternoon Leeds fans, I've finally had enough and decided to write a frustrated email to our lord and master, and I am posting it here first to make sure I haven't missed anything and to make sure I don't give him any ammunition to use as "moral high ground". Dear Ken I am writing to express my frustration at the current dealings at Leeds United Football Club. Despite the elephant in the room, it seems time and again you are unable to comprehend the fact that we are not competing in the Championship to the level we should be competing. While there are no financial problems at the club, there shouldn't be a single season in this league where we begin outside the top 3 bookies favorites to win the league, yet we weren't even close. Why? Because there was inadequate investment in players. No matter how much you try and spin that £12 milllion is a large budget for wages, it's not good enough when it includes transfer fees as well. Other teams competing for promotion are spending similar sums and more on wages alone, and transfer fees come out of another budget, for which they evidently have a significantly larger amount set aside. When Football League rules state a club can spend a maximum of 70% of turnover on wages, and we're spending 30% of our turnover on wages and transfer fees combined, it's no surprise we're nowhere near competing. I will make reference to this fact throughout this email. The summer transfer window was again a massive let down, the only players we brought in being replacements for players we've lost or other teams' rejects. Of the 12 players that were brought into the forefront of proceedings over the summer, I will give my reviews of each: Andy Lonergan - fantastic acquirement, great "bit of business" as you like to put it, selling Schmeichel (Who I believe wasn't good enough) and bringing in Lonergan for a fraction of the fee. I'd feel happier about this if the remainder of the money received actually went somewhere. No problems with Lonergan Paul Rachubka - I don't know what the hell was going on with this one, but he is the worst goalkeeper I've ever seen at Elland Road. We'd have been better keeping Shane Higgs. Solely responsible for the loss of at least 9 points this season. But this is what happens when you try get a team on the cheap. Not good enough. Patrick Kisnorbo - the risk was worth taking based on how good he was before his injury, but he turned out to be not good enough. This risk should not have been taken without any other quality, experienced centre backs brought in. Not good enough. Darren O'Dea - constantly goes missing. Won't run at players. Constantly making game changing errors. The fact that a loanee Celtic reject is one of our first choice centre backs is alarming, even more so when you consider he consistently underperforms for the standard we expect. Again, another casualty of your "on the cheap" policy. Not good enough. Tom Lees - promising young centre back, has shown nothing but quality since being signed from the academy. Academy products are the future of this club, but only if they have experienced quality players to balance out the team, of which we have none. Aidy White - same as above, except he's not good enough on the left wing. Quality left back, not good enough as a winger. But I suppose he's better any anyone else we've got on the left wing when you decide to sell Max Gradel on the last day of the transfer window giving no time to find a proper replacement. How conveniently unfortunate. Mika Vayrynen - Who? Seen him play a few times, doesn't fit in with the rest of the team at all. Not good enough. Michael Brown - good enough, but doesn't have the fitness to play every week. Would be a great asset if we had a full complement of quality players, but we don't. Adam Clayton - absolutely superb, great acquisition. No credit to you though, we got him in spite of you. Simon has done well to find him. Basically, we'd still have got him even if Simon's hands weren't tied. Danny Pugh - good player, doing well in the central midfield. Wouldn't say he's a first teamer but a great squad player and good to have. However, he was brought in as a last minute desperate attempt to replace Max Gradel. While the player is good, the context within which he was brought in makes me ask questions about how the club is being run. Ramon Nunez - showed early promise, too one dimensional. He's not good enough, so you can stop making snide comments to us about how good an acquisition he was. He wasn't. Not good enough. Mikael Forsell - absolute carthorse. Has shown absolutely nothing since being signed. Slow, heavy touch and doesn't even link up well. A player signed seemingly because we needed a player regardless of quality. Not good enough. As you can see, very few of these acquisitions have been good enough for a promotion push. Every single one of them stinks of a cheap transfer policy. But hey, I suppose you have to make cut backs on non-essentials like players when you're trying to develop someone else's stadium. This is why Howson wouldn't sign a contract, because the club won't match his ambition. I can imagine Gradel will have been the same. Oh how we've missed Gradel's urgency. Now onto the transfers we've made so far this transfer window. Of course, we've lost another one of our best players after countless promises in the summer and in the last couple of months that our best players weren't for sale. Danny Pugh - I wouldn't count this as a new signing since we've had him most of the season, but it's essential to my argument that I have him here. That you actually try and spin this as a new signing is laughable. This. Does. Not. Count. Signing a player we've had all season does not count as strengthening. Fabian Delph - again, laughable. Selling Jonny Howson, a local boy and one of our best players, and then bringing in another local boy who's done absolutely nothing since we sold him (and never saw the transfer fee for him - I wonder where that went...) as an attempt to "appease" the fans... there's absolutely no way Fabian Delph is good enough any more. He's not lived up to any of his promise, so do we think he'll magically start performing because he's back at Elland Road? I sincerely doubt it. He's been signed because he's available and he's cheap and some fans will eat it up. Not me. Not good enough. Andros Townsend - It took 4 months to finally replace Max Gradel. With a loanee. Another loanee. He's good, but the signing isn't good enough. Although this is what we should be doing with loan signings, young talented hungry players from top premier league sides, again it's not good enough when everything else about the transfer policy is so very very wrong. Players like this cannot be relied upon as the back bone of the team. Robbie Rogers - Who? The quality of the MLS as a league is laughable compared to even the Championship. Unproven, which would be fine if we had a solid back bone, but this again stinks of a cheap transfer policy. It stinks of a club trying to rely on finding diamonds in the rough. We've found plenty before, but we had a solid backbone. Not good enough. It is all such a horrendous state of affairs at Leeds United. It all stinks of cutting corners and trying to get something for nothing. Every transfer window we're promised signings and strengthening of the squad, and every transfer window it's the same excuses - "we were this close" or "they wanted too much money" or "the club wouldn't let them go" or some other arbitrary reason for why all we signed were mediocre players who'd be best off in League One. You quite famously quoted yourself "If you want premiership football, you pay premiership prices". We are paying premiership prices, so why aren't you? The hypocrisy makes me sick to my stomach and I've had enough. I don't want to go to matches anymore, something I loved doing, because I expect to see mediocre football from players who simply aren't good enough. I expect an atmosphere that stinks of unrest, despair and frustration. I don't expect anything close to the optimism we had during the first half of last season. Going to Elland Road is a grim experience at the moment, and even on good days it's tainted by the feeling that I'm getting robbed of my hard earned money. And to top it off, the away shirt I got with my name on the back at Christmas, that cost upwards of £50, started fraying after a week. The quality of the product doesn't surprise me, because I expect that they are bought cheap and sold expensive, but it saddens me. Everything at Leeds United Football Club absolutely stinks of trying to get something on the cheap. I've had enough, and I want to see changes. Yours Jack Package Unsatisfied Leeds United Fan.
bin that one, its rubbish.. dear ken, keep up the good work, at this rate leeds will be stuck in the championship or lower for many years to come. its important you resist pressure from the deluded fans to spend money the club doesnt have and run the club sustainably, to avoid the mistakes ridsdale made years ago. thanks, swamp.
Good points Marko.... wonder what the postage costs are to Monaco.... As this would just get filed in the bin as soon as it arrives at ER. I wonder what would make Uncle Ken actually listen.......
It's going in by email, and I'm expecting to get a response. My dad emailed with a complaint in the past and actually got a response from his secretary. I've also had a response directly from Larry using the same method.
where can i get hold of his email adress mate? i think your all being incredibly harsh on him, he's a human being at the end of the day..
now Leeds-18 isn't a mod, can we change our banning policy? Want this clown off our board. He's bugging me already.
He'll need to do something serious during the new era, for now just put him on ignore if he's bothering you.
My banning policy was basically 'if they're a bit of a moron, use some excuse to get rid of them'. I'd certainly have banished this absolute vacuity.
I don't think so, unless there's some compelling reason for Syd to remove their mod-ship. Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea lot were all trying to ban each other's mods a while back.
interesting how you have decided to go down that route, i may be forced to change my policy of not deleting / banning leeds WUMs on our board, theres nothing you can do though also, telling another poster to commit suicide is not good, far worse than anything i've done here..
i was wondering how long it would be before someone posted something xenophobic, you're very funny, i wonder how long it took you to come up with that extremely funny joke?
As I recall, Leeds18 simply told you to jump from a bridge. My take is that he was referring to you doing a bungee to get a bit of excitement in your life, rather than you have a tug whilst abusing our board. Get back on the anti- ****wit tablets you moron.
