He's had 9 signings, most of whom are great when at their best. A lot of them are young and we'll likely see them improve as time goes on (the time you're too impatient to bother giving, like a child). Noel Hunt is the only one that I've been totally unimpressed with, because the rest of them have shown real quality and I expect them to do better in the next couple of seasons as they settle in and get better. Blackstock looked great, got injured, went back to Forest. Smith looks great when he gets service, which he's not at the moment. He will improve, as he is only 23. Murphy is inconsistent but he's shown a lot of potential and guile and flashes of quality. He will improve of course, as he is only 23. Wootten has looked good in patches, bad in others. Like any other young player, he will improve, as he is only 22. Ariyibi is only 18. We've not seen a lot of him but he's pacey and has looked good from what we have seen. He will get better Zaliukas has looked quality until the whole team lost their bottle. If you're writing off Stewart and Kebe (Kebe is a player we already know is quality) after one bad game where the whole team underperformed, then why bother following Leeds? Why not just **** off and follow the flavour of the month team if you want instant success? I just don't understand why some people on here find it so difficult to understand that nothing is ever going to improve without time, patience and stability. For that, a manager, no matter who it is, needs to be given time to settle in, and despite what you believe it takes more than a couple of months. It takes at least 2 seasons. I know exactly what your response is going to be as well, so don't bother - "But we don't have a couple of seasons, we've been out of the Premier League for 10 years already blah blah blah" - well changing the manager isn't going to get us there any sooner so why do that?
From what I saw of this match the entire Leeds team without exception looked disinterested...no heart...no desire... no fight and no confidence. If you play like this against leicester it will be a cricket score
Because I can't do with people calling for the manager's head. We've had a result like this for the past 4 seasons, in fact in one of those seasons we had 2 of these results. What's the knee jerk reaction every time? Sack the manager, get somebody new in. Somebody new, who will still have an inadequate squad and will need time to bring players in. Doesn't matter what the result is, how bad it is, this is to be expected of any new manager. We're on a bad run, we're not in danger of relegation (yet), so there's no point in changing managers. I never advocate changing the manager after a bad run of form unless the team has been struggling for a long time. When a blip turns into the norm, then you start to worry. He's still experimenting with the formation and it's going to go wrong a few times, especially since he has very little talent to work with. I'm not prepared to accept "he's not up to the job" until he's had a real chance to fully clean the squad out of all the dross (all of it) and replace it with some talent. So far I feel he has done that. The players are at the very least young, and therefore have resale value if it's not working out. How much do you think it affects the first team's confidence knowing they don't have somebody that can be relied upon backing them up? How much more pressure is on them to perform knowing that if they are having a bad day, nobody is gunna tag in and cover for them?
I have only seen Leeds play this badly once before. In Turkey. Yes, that game. There was a reason for it then. There surely must have been a reason of significant magnitude this time around too. Must have been. I cannot think of any reason for the whole team to run about like headless chickens. They've all done it in the past, but never the whole team at the one time. Could it have been the baffling tactics that left them devastated before they took to the park? If so, could it have been the absence of a true leader who would have said 'WTF, Brian?' I certainly didn't see any leaders on the park today. Can't say I've seen any for a few seasons, TBH. Bugger wingers, lets get in leaders. They'll play anywhere and do anything for the cause. Even telling the manager he's being a bit of a ****er. Do you think Billy would ever have played today's tactics? (Clue - think Clough).
A few points. I have no intention ****ing off to follow a flavour of the month team. I have followed leeds for over 40 years and will do so till I die. I however chose not to have my head buried so far up my arse that I can't see what's happening at the club. We're clearly not all as patient as you and willing to wait indefinitely for progress so maybe you should **** off and support some outfit with absolutely no ambition whatsoever
Have to agree, tricky if it was yellow or red but we were going to get stuffed no matter what, we were second best to everything from a poor quality Wednesday team with SIX first team players missing. How poor does that make us
But you're clearly too stupid to see that progress will not be made by changing managers every season or even worse every 6 months like you seem to want. Changing the manager very rarely works. Look at Leicester City, they have been bottling it for years, went 17 games without a win last season after spending the first half in the auto spots, then bottled the playoffs. Did they get rid of their manager or did they have faith and stick by him, and give him a chance and the time to get it right? Look at them now. I genuinely fear for next week, but I'm still willing to give the manager time to get it right. It's a bad result, yes, but it has only been 4 league games since we had a win. It's not exactly the worst run of form in the world, considering how bad our squad is. I'll reiterate, the team currently flying at the top of the league, 4 points clear even IF Burnley win, went 17 games without a win last season and didn't sack their manager. You have to really believe that when the manager gets it right, he's going to get it very, very right. But that's not going to happen without time.
You're completely missing the point Cojones. So wide of the mark it's unreal. What we expect to see is a team that looks like it could go forward. We have the players to do it. The concern is that the manager can't see it, is pklaying very strange formations and tactics and is not coaching the players to do the right things, like most of the other managers seem to be doing. Now if he is doing the right thing and the players are just not doing it - then either he has lost the dressing room, or those players should not be used until their attitude changes. It's not difficult to set up a team to be difficult to beat, and then introduce little changes to the whole team's play to make them competitive in an attacking manner. But he is not doing that. Tell me - 3 CBs, two WBs and 2 brand new wingers. How can anyone defend that other than panic management of being desperate to bring in his new players Don't get me wrong - I want McD to be unbelievably successful. But he is not producing any proof that he even has an idea of how to deliver the goods. And he will feel under pressure given we shortly will have new owners that will demand to at least see things going forward for their money, not backwards
Smith, Zaklukas, Stewart, Kebe, Murphy the £1.2m man on the bench and Wootton on the bench, Hunt - They are all the managers signings.
McDermot cant be blameless Cojones, he picks the team, trains etc. I think people are not saying sack him but, he needs to self analyse himself. No communication, no passion, no commitment in the team, any sport thats critical. Again I say any sport needs a great spine from our goal Keeper, CB, CM, CF. I beleive that has not been addressed myself. Will McDermot do something radical we will see....... He also had oppertunity in cup to rest players he chose not too and see how other players could cope. Yes I hope he learns from his mistakes as that what good managers do. Just my opinion
Gentlemen, let's clear up a few point. 1. We did not play any wingbacks tody. 2. Had Smith started in a normal 442 in support of Ross, there would have been an entirely different result. 3. Will BMD have seen this? Yes. 4. Was the sending off fair? Not in a million years. 5. Was the 3d goal fair? No, Wendies player blocked off our defender. 6. What will happen next? Smith will be suspended for the next match, so someone will have a chance. A crap day, but nothing went our way. Sh^t happens!!!!!!
I'm with CJ. We sack McDermott now and it's 6 months of a manager (who? probably which ever the latest sacked Premier League manager is) complaining he hasn't had his own signings, then another season getting rid of McDermotts signings to bring in players he likes/prefers (not necessarily any better quality) and getting them to gell together only to get sacked for a month or so off bad results. We need some stability what if Man U had sacked Fergie after his bad first 18 months? what if Liverpool had sacked Brendan Rogers after his first season in which Liverpool were nothing more than a laughing stock? As CJ said the players are young and when there playing well they are very good players, the longer we have stability the more they will gell together and the better we'll get. We'll pay for it if we make a rash decision after a bad month, let's ride out this bad spell and we'll eventually get back on form just like we did after Barnsley (x2), Forest, Birmingham, Blackpool, Preston etc, Wednesday will get relegated and we'll be better for sticking with the manager for once.
If im not mistaken we did, 3 cbs (Lees, MZ, Peace) and Pugh and Pelts as wing backs but they need replacing by Byram and Stephan Warnock there not calm enough to keep possession going forward.
Or maybe the players are just de-motivated and suffering low morale due to the recent bad form? Like the rest of us prehaps?
Nope. He has lost them. From our professional funeral attender right through the entire squad he has lost them all. Wtf is going in with Byram? If not fit don't bench him, mend him. If he is fit play him, or is he already sold?
What about the most likely scenario, the players aren't performing because doubt has got into the minds of the players because the club is once again unstable due to another takeover? What if Brian is just doubting his job security in the back of his mind because of the quick sell that we were assured wouldn't happen back in summer is now happening, and taking what seems to be an unnecessarily long time to complete? People make bad decisions when they are in doubt, regardless of how competent they are. What if it is just a feature of our club that we go through a slump over Christmas? The only thing that hasn't changed over the last god knows how many years is the club itself, yet every year around this time results take a nose dive. It doesn't matter what we the fans think of the decisions he's made with regards to formation and tactics, because he is a football manager and knows a hell of a lot more about it than we do. There are more factors at play than just the numbers we resolve the formation to for simplicity. How the players set up isn't always as cut and dry as we'd like to make it. Either way, the manager's choices of formation and tactics aren't really the reason why Marius Zaliukas was ball watching for the first goal, or why Tom Lees constantly finds himself out of position, or why Austins passes always go astray to be followed by a look of frustration from Austin. We know what this team is capable of and what the manager can get them to do, so why not give him time to bring them out of the slump? We've just signed two wingers, decent ones at that, positions that haven't been filled since Gradel and Snodgrass left. He's clearly not a man who plays his signings for the sake of it to save face, or Murphy wouldn't have been on the bench, and Noel Hunt wouldn't continue to be frozen out. He got it wrong today, yes, but his attempts to rectify that were foiled by a reckless challenge by Smith. It's also not going to make much difference if the players just aren't concentrating.
