Dear Shaun I have just listened to Mr Bates weekly interview on Yorkshire Radio, and find myself once again outraged by his behaviour. Do you or him still think shifting blame from yourselves is working? It's not, we can all see through it. Some choice ideas presented, I am paraphrasing: "some players are demonstrating that they are not worth the money they are being paid. While some of the blame lays at the feet of the player, you have to look at who signed that player" - another jab at Simon Grayson. If I were Simon Grayson I'd be seeking legal advice on the basis of slander. This continued barrage of petty insults towards Simon Grayson is nothing more than an attempt to shift blame from a failing board. You have underestimated the intelligence of the fans in assuming we can't see through this. "Reading have spent time building up a team that works well together from the ground up, rather than splashing cash on expensive players. The benefits are showing" - This is implying that Leeds United is attempting to go in the same direction as Reading, building a team from the ground up using quality, value for money players that work well as a team and perform as a unit. But hang on a second, if that were true surely our transfer policy would be to hold onto our best players, get rid of players who aren't making much impact, and bring in players who can improve what we already have, wouldn't it? So players such as Max Gradel, Jonny Howson and Bradley Johnson would be players to hold on to and build the team around, and players such as Billy Paynter and Ben Parker who don't fit in or are injury prone would be the kind of players to move on, right? And on the basis of last seasons performance, the kind of players to bring in would be high quality centre backs and full backs to shore up the defence and work better with the midfield, right? Wrong. Just because of how insulting it is to the intelligence of us fans to even attempt to compare our business model to that of Reading, I have provided a comparison of how the squads of both Reading and ourselves has developed. Reading's first 11 has 7 players that were in the first 11 last season: Federici, Harte, McAnuff, Karacan, Leigertwood, Kebe, Hunt 3 first 11 players were in the squad last season: Church, Cummings, Pearce 0 regular squad players who were in the squad but not featured last season 3 in the squad who were regulars last season and still make regular appearances: Griffin, Tabb, Robson-Kanu That's 13 players who were there last season who are still making regular appearances, with a majority of them in the first 11 both seasons. There are also 3 players who were there last season who no longer appear regularly: Howard, Gunnarsson, McCarthey In comparison, Leeds United's first 11 has 3 players that were in the first 11 last season: Becchio, Snodgrass, Conolly 4 first 11 players were in the squad last season: McCormack, White, Clayton, Lees. 2 regular squad players who were in the squad but not featured last season: Nunez, Kisnorbo 1 player that played somewhat regularly last season is still featured relatively often: Sam That's 10 players who were here last season who are making regular appearances, with a majority of them outside the first 11 in one or both seasons. There are also 4 players who were there last season who no longer appear regularly: Bruce, Bromby, O'Brien and Paynter Now lets have a look at the players Reading brought in from outside during the summer to strengthen their squad: Mikele Liegertwood - a defensive midfielder who was on loan with the club for the majority of the 10/11 season. Must have done something well, as Reading decided to make the transfer permanent, signing him from QPR for an undisclosed fee in the summer. Kaspars Gorkks - a centre back brought in from QPR, he made 42 appearances for the team that stormed to the Championship title by keeping 25 clean sheets. That is an astonishing number. He was brought in for an undisclosed fee. I doubt he'd have been a £multi-million signing, but he won't have been dirt cheap either. He is now in the first team at Reading, making 36 appearances in a team that earlier in the season kept 10 clean sheets in 14 games. Quality defenders cost money. Then again, he might just have a thing for blue hoops. Adam Le Fondre - the forward that was making noise at Rotherham United in the 10/11 season, expected to command a sizeable transfer fee, but we'll never know as it was undisclosed. He won't have been cheap, but with a return of 7 goals in 27 appearances after the step up from League Two to Championship, that's pretty good value for money. Joseph Mills - a left back brought in on a free from Southampton. Has made 16 apps this season, in a team that is seriously looking like pipping Southampton to the Championship title, so he must be doing something right. There are various other signings that were made that do not appear regularly, as they are prospects for the future. These players are either signed up to the academy, or are out on loan to lower league clubs. It should be noted that only one loan signing was made, for Tottenham Hotspur's Bongani Khumalo, who made 4 appearances before returning to his parent club. Presumably cover, or just wasn't good enough. Compare to the players Leeds United brought in from outside during the summer to strengthen their squad. I'll start with the loans. Brace yourself, there are a lot who have made regular appearances: Darren O'Dea - a season long loan from Celtic brought in to "strengthen" the defence. It should be noted that he couldn't make Celtic's first team, in a league where Celtic and Rangers are the only clubs of any quality, and even they are only mid Championship level at best. He is still in the first team despite making countless game-losing blunders, this says it all. Andy Keogh - brought in on loan until Christmas to cover for the injured Luciano Becchio. I actually rated Keogh, he was brilliant at link up play, seemed stronger, cleverer and more skillful than Becchio, but was just lacking good finishing. At times I thought him and McCormack had some kind of psychic link. This is the kind of loan signing we should be looking to make permanent, but hey, January rolled around and... nothing. Danny Pugh - brought in on loan as a panic move to provide cover on the left of midfield for the absent Max Gradel, after selling one of our best players and part of our core team on the last day of the transfer window, leaving no time to bring in a proper replacement. Danny Pugh wasn't, isn't, and never will be a good left sided midfielder. Or a good left back. He's decent cover in the centre of midfield, but gets played everywhere due to lack of quality cover. Was made permanent in January. I originally thought we should get him in because he makes a good central midfielder, but £500 000 is steep for a player of such lacklustre quality, especially when he's playing outside of his best position. Alex McCarthey - brought in as cover for Andy Lonergan after the discovery that our back up 'keeper, Paul Rachubka, didn't know how to catch. Brilliant goalkeeper, would love to get him in as our number 2 'keeper, but, alas, Reading won't let him go he's good and they know how to build a squad properly. Right player brought in under the wrong circumstances. The fact he's contracted to Reading is an irony that I couldn't have planned for, but it strengthens my argument. Andros Townsend - The first of 3 loans brought in during January, this fellow came from Tottenham Hotspur until the end of the season after impressing at Millwall. The idea was that we finally had a proper replacement for Max Gradel on the left wing, and he looked very promising, performing well in his first couple of games and even scoring a vital goal against Doncaster. Of course, that was before realising Leeds United are going nowhere, being here wouldn't benefit his career at all and potentially having a promotion on his CV playing for Birmingham City was a much better option. I don't blame him. Fabian Delph - brought in on loan from Aston Villa for a month as a reactive move of desperation to appease the fans after selling club captain and local hero Jonny Howson. He was never going to make any sort of difference in the 5 games we signed him for. He'd just come back from injury, he was out on loan to get fitness and we all knew Villa were never going to let us keep him as they wanted him for their own first team. I don't know which was more painful, seeing him be the best player on the pitch and knowing we weren't keeping him, or the fact he got injured and only ended up playing 3 matches for us. Adam Smith - The last of the loan trio we got in during the January transfer window, we got him from Tottenham Hotspur on a loan until the end of the season. A right back brought in to fill the place of the exiled Paul Conolly, he looked kind of promising at first until he started standing there gormlessly providing no support for Snodgrass. Him looking crap could be down to Neil Redfearn's tactical ineptitude, however, and he may have been staying back because he'd been told to. Irrelevant, as he was gone before Warnock had a chance to have a look at him, recalled by Spurs to provide cover for the injured Kyle Walker, who was injured a grand total of one match. I suspect there was more to it than that. I wouldn't loan my youth players to Leeds, to have their souls extracted and sold on the black market. Paul Robinson - brought in by Warnock during the emergency window because we needed a left back. He's been a bit hit and miss. Brilliant in the tackle, not so brilliant at keeping up with wingers. It shouldn't have gotten to the point where we needed to bring him in in the first place. I'd imagine he'll get signed in the summer, he's decent enough I suppose.
Sean McDermott - goalkeeper brought in as cover. I think it's as cover anyway, but he doesn't have a squad number and we already had Maik Taylor who is supposedly pretty good. I understand sending Maik Taylor out on loan to free up funds to get in someone else on loan from elsewhere, but an 18 year old on loan from Arsenal, we don't even give him a squad number. What the hell is he here for? Might as well just have Alex Cairns as cover, it would serve the club better as he's on our books and potentially one for the future. Already proven he has the potential to make the step up with a cracking performance against Blackpool, where he did everything that was asked of him. That's 9 players who were brought in on loan. 9, that is a sickening amount of players to bring in on loan in a single season. This highlights the problem whereby the team is not getting slowly built up, it's getting chopped and changed around constantly. So now permanent signings: Paul Rachubka - if it weren't for a last ditch signing of Andy Lonergan, we'd have started the season with this bloke in net, after selling Schmeichel. I went through a range of emotions when Schmeichel was sold. The first of which was "crap, we sold the first half decent keeper we've had since Robinson, and now we have an empty net". The second was "why have we replaced Schmeichel with Blackpool's third choice keeper, who in his last 3 appearances let in a total of 9 goals against teams like Everton?". The rumours surrounding Schmeichel and how he didn't fit in and had the wrong attitude made me feel better about this. I thought "good riddance". With hindsight, I'd imagine he wasn't lying when he said he was forced out of the club. By now you can probably work out that I'm avoiding talking about Rachubka, because it speaks for itself and it hurts too much. Single-handedly cost us somewhere in the region of 8 points or more in the space of 5 or 6 games. Michael Brown - 34 years old. 34. Thirty. Four. Signed on a free from Portsmouth, this is who we were to accept was the replacement for Bradley Johnson. I had mixed feelings about letting Bradley Johnson go, with hindsight he'd have been brilliant in our current squad. All he wanted was a first team wage, the rumours at the time putting that figure at £11000 a week, which seemed a bit steep. Of course, I know now that we're not paying any of our players anywhere close to that, not even our best. Kilkenny I was happy to let go, he was too one dimensional. As for Brown, he's proven he's still up to the pace. Despite his age, seemed like the liveliest player we had against Forest when the rest of our players were knackered. Decent signing, but at his age? Too short term. Continually signing players of his age is enough to prove our squad policy is not even slightly similar to Reading's. Don't imply it is. Andy Lonergan - decent signing. Better than Schmeichel although he's faltered a bit of late. Went the entire first half of the season only making a single game changing error, the miss-kick that lead to a Bristol City penalty and a red card for Kisnorbo. A penalty he then saved. This is the only case of genuine good business in countless scenarios in Leeds United's recent transfer activity. Sell Schmeichel for £750k, getting his extortionate wages off the books, and get in Andy Lonergan for £200k from a freshly relegated Preston North End. If you focus and try really hard, you might be able to acknowledge that this one single act of good business is not the only piece of information to take from this email. Don't even try and do that selective listening act you so often do. This one act does not justify the way you're running the club. Mikael Forsell - a free brought in from Germany originally as cover for the injured Luciano Becchio. Brought in because Paynter was useless, but why bother if we haven't got rid of Paynter? Has made absolutely no impact whatsoever. His only decent act was deflecting Becchio's miss-hit shot back at him to give him a second chance and score the winning goal against Doncaster. Slow, clumsy and poor at finishing, he's never been prolific. We're supposed to accept he's good because he played with Chelsea in Europe, despite the fact he only played 33 times in 7 years, scoring a dismal 5 goals. Poor return for a supposedly "great" striker. Lets not forget that he shows absolutely no signs of cohesion with the rest of the team. He just does not fit in. Mika Vayrynen - another free brought in from some Dutch team I've never heard of, I originally suspected this was the real reason we got Forsell. The two are friends and I hear he only signed to link up with Forsell. Technically skillful, but no cohesion with the rest of the team. Seems on a completely different wavelength. Why is he still here? Maik Taylor - another goalkeeper brought in because Rachubka was useless. Deep in the twilight of his career at the ripe old age of 40. He's supposedly very good, which is fair enough. But we've just sent him out on loan to Millwall. This was obviously done so we could get McDermott from Arsenal, but why bother getting in a loan youth 'keeper as cover when we have a youth 'keeper already on our books, who we'd actually benefit from playing? Sometimes I think we move players around for the same reason a lazy office worker plays around with files whenever his boss walks past. "Crap, the fans are watching! look busy..." Danny Pugh - already went over this. Robbie Rogers - we've signed the Robbie Rogers! Well now we'll be feared. One with potential for the future, I do understand why we've got him. But he's not getting used. These are the sort of players that show we're attempting to build a squad from the ground up, but the rest of the framework isn't there. We're not doing anything else, just buying these nobodies and hoping they come good. Danny Webber - brilliant signing. Shown nothing but desire, skill and quality, and seems to fit effortlessly into the team. But it's short term. He's one of Warnock's trusty signings, someone he knows he can count on to deliver, but this isn't squad building this is Warnock doing his best to get promotion in the limited time he's got, and it is limited as he's a short term manager. Past next season he won't be here. On that final point, I might as well go over how Neil Warnock's appointment proves we're nothing like Reading, they are doing it right, we are doing it wrong. Neil Warnock is a brilliant manager. He knows how to get clubs promoted, it's what he does. It's his "thing". If you want your club out of the Championship and in the Premier League, hire Neil Warnock. He'll get the players in that will get you promoted. But that's all he'll do. He won't build you a long term team. He's shown he doesn't know what to do in the Premier League and that's because he doesn't build squads that are set up to succeed long term. He brings in players that will deliver, now. Given time he might do better than that, but he's not got time and he doesn't want time. At the end of the next season, he's off. A short term manager rules out building a squad for the long term. But we sell all our best players any way, so we've no chance of building a squad for the long term, because we constantly have to start from square one. Back to my break down of why bates weekly rant has me riled. "We have assets we can sell if we need to provide funds to the manager for the transfer window" - translation : we're selling Snodgrass, McCormack and/or Clayton and we're going to pass it off as "good business" again. Warnock won't see the transfer fee, however. "In League One a player on £300 a week made a mug of a player on £10 000 a week. Proves that spending money doesn't guarantee quality" - that player on £300 will have stepped up his game, and the player on £10 000 a week will have had a bad game. The player on £10k a week is guaranteed to be older than the player on £300 a week, and is guaranteed to have more experience. He'll perform better consistently. I've seen Leigh Bromby and Patrick Kisnorbo on however little they are on a week make a mug out of the at the time £90 000 a week Wayne Rooney. Doesn't mean they'd fair so well week in, week out. Also, while Leicester is a perfect example that spending doesn't guarantee success, not spending guarantees failure. "We've just broken 10000 season ticket renewals, keeping up with the same time last year, proving to the doubters that they are a minority and fans still want to go" - A quote directly from Ken Bates, 23/3/11: "Everything is looking good so thanks to the fans, the season tickets we have now sold 11,200 for next year, compared with 13,000 this year." 2 weeks later on and we're 1200 renewals behind. So basically, this is just an outright lie. These numbers won't be made up from new season ticket purchases. In fact the only numbers being made up are by bates. I expect renewals to drop further. "We were expecting lower attedances due to the financial climate, so we budgeted for an average of 24000. We're currently on 23500, so close, and the Arsenal game made up that difference" - fans are still attending games. Average attendance in the Championship is up on last year by ~3%. In contrast, Leeds United's average attendances are down by ~18%. This isn't down to the financial climates, this is because nobody wants to show up to watch crap. People have money, they just don't want to spend it if they're not getting value for money. Fans want to know their money is being spent to improve their entertainment experience, which it's not.
"We have a large squad, so we need to cut that down to bring in more quality" - no we don't. I don't remember seeing a single team at Elland Road who didn't have a squad equal in size or bigger than our squad. This lie has been overplayed, it's pathetic. 28 players is not a large squad for the Championship. Quoted from the season ticket renewal letter: "With a very large First Team squad it is planned to reduce the numbers as the opportunity arises.” Again, translation: bye bye Snodgrass, McCormack and Clayton. We're being buttered up to lower expectations again. It's subliminal messaging and it makes me sick to my stomach. It's absolutely disgraceful and I don't know how either of you can sleep at night doing this. "I had nothing to do with Generations United, but it's a nice offer for the young kids and a great way to bring in families and get the young generation of fans in" - The "I had nothing to do with it" can be almost directly translated to "what? Free? You want to give a £30 shirt away for free?! Not on my watch!" before reluctantly agreeing and having a sulk in the corner. I remember a similar reaction from him in the interview when he was asked about the same offer for the Southampton game. "It's hard to believe that's the same team that battered Southampton, matched West Ham and emphatically beat Middlesbrough" - it's not that hard to believe. We lost to Southampton after the players played above their capabilities, full steam ahead and knackering themselves. We threw away 2 points against West Ham in the last minute, again after throwing everything into it. They put so much into that wasted opportunity that they were knackered by the following Tuesday, when they got absolutely decimated 7-3 at home by a relegation threatened Nottingham Forest. The same Nottingham Forest that we made look like a Sunday League team earlier in the season. Then again, that was on the back of Gary Speed's suicide. Our players were playing above their capabilities in his memory on that occasion as well. I think that just about covers everything. Ideally I'd like a way to contact Mr Bates directly so I can give him a piece of my mind. But you're just as incompetent, you'll have to do for now. Yours Mark Richardson Insulted Leeds United fan, or "moron" for short.
Whilst Reading are a club run much better than Leeds under Bates i would like to point out the following. Their main summer signings as you summed up well were Leigertwood, Gorkss and Le Fondre. They did however sell Matt Mills for a large fee to rivals Leicester and sell their striker Shane Long to WBA for a reasonably high fee. The contrast in January was the biggest though. On 21st January after 27 games Leeds were level on points with the royals, yet just days before Leeds agreed to sell Howson to Norwich. This under no circumstances can be considered good business. Then to make matters worse on 1 February Leeds Utd manager Simon Grayson was sacked after the heavy defeat by Birmingham at Elland Road, despite only being 3 points outside the playoffs and 9 points off 2nd. Reading now 3 points in front of Leeds didn't panic and look to start blaming their manager for being 7th and outside the playoffs, they stayed loyal and invested in the playing squad bringing in Tomasz Cywka from Derby, Jason Roberts from Blackburn and Matt Connolly from QPR on loan. So Reading pull together and work to improve their squad to have a go at promotion. Leeds United decide to sell captain Howson, resulting in protests by the fans, sack their manager and put all the blame on him when virtually everybody expected midtable mediocrity from Leeds this season, appoint Neil Redfearn temporarily resulting in defeat at home to Brighton, defeat at bottom club Cov and a struggling win at home to Donny.
Your efforts are much appreciated and spot on once again Marko. The quote about Boro, Saints and West Ham is laughable and means nothing. Bristol City fighting for survival did the double over Southampton. Ipswich just below us did the double and hammered West Ham 5-1 at home. Burnley below us won 2-0 at Boro also. So what? The league table doesn't lie and because of the squad Ken has assembled we are where we deserve and expected to be, no matter how he tries to twist it and no matter who he tries to blame.
Marko: Iv'e just googled you, there goes my stereotypical idea of a drummer. Great article (letter) yet again
All the evidence we've got is getting ignored constantly. They won't talk about the elephant in the room. Solution? Make the elephant bigger.
