Just back from Elland Road, loooong drive feeling seriously frustrated. Coventry City were very, very poor, and I would set them as a team that will be battling the drop to the bitter end. We started well, City were slow out of the blocks and looked like a team that was badly organised and devoid of talent and confidence. They struggled to put any passes together and they simply did not threaten bar the occasional pop from distance. Even though we were in control, the first issue surfaced...Howson simply did not get forward but rather sat back as a holding midfielder marking...well, no one because City didn't have a clue going forward. So, we had an attack-minded player doing sweet FA because Grayson wanted him to defend. Trust me, City were there for the taking. When we finally scored, I really believed we would do Coventry by three or four, they were that bad. Second half and City made two changes which totally threw the balance of their side. They had no right-sided midfielder and their right-back was shocking. Acres of space for us to attack, my call immediately would have been to move Pugh to left-back and push White forward with his pace against a defender who was constantly out of position and who wanted to go forward all the time. With White's pace we would have had an "out" ball every time, and we would have pushed City back and forced their centre backs into areas they didn't want to go into. Grayson chose to leave the slow Pugh out wide, wasting a superb opportunity to exploit a clear weakness. He also continued to deploy Howson as a deep lying midfielder to protect the back four against a non-existent threat. Not only that, but when he took off Keogh and McCormack for Forsell and Becchio it was a senseless change, which I will explain in a moment. When the subs were made, Clayton immediately dropped back to play alongside Howson, thereby giving Coventry the freedom of Elland Road in which to push up into, forcing our back line to drop deeper and deeper. Now, by removing our starting strikers, we suddenly had no mobility up front. You see, what McCormack and Keogh gave us were two hard working lads who ran and ran and harassed the City defenders all across the line. This meant Clingan had to play closer to his defenders to get the ball and try and move City forward. With Becchio and Forsell we had two big strikers who were not as mobile as the other two, and this suddenly gave City the opportunity to play from the back and also push up more as the ball over the top was not a threat from Leeds anymore. How the hell does Grayson not see this? Grayson clearly got to a point in the game where he decided that he wanted to hold onto a 1-0 lead rather than push for the killer goal. This is a dangerous game to play, because two things happen. Firstly, your players, who were easily in control of the game for over an hour now suddenly have to change their mindsets, and this invites pressure from the opposition. Secondly, at 1-0 it only takes one error, one slip, one poor refereeing decision and your win is gone. Also, if they do score late on you have no time to get back....and lo and behold, doesn't that just happen. Grayson just doesn't seem capable of reading a game. I have seen this happen far too often. I can name a number of games where he has tactically buggered it up, and I'm sure you can as well. The only conclusion I can draw, and I say this again, is that Grayson simply lacks intelligence. He is not a smart lad, and is a very "jumpers for goalposts" cliched manager. He simply never seems able to spot the obvious. He did his best to screw up our promotion run from League One, and had some teams around us not run out of gas we would have botched that one. Regardless of what people say about last season, we should have been in the play-offs and probably gone up, but once again Grayson messed it up. How can he get the team to lose momentum when we hit second place? It's just not good enough. I said at the start of the season that Saints would be a threat, as would Brighton. Why? Intelligent managers who know how to get the best out of their resources and who also understand how to influence a game from the touchline. Lambert at Norwich is another intelligent leader, as is Rodgers at Swansea and Martinez at Wigan. Grayson is starting to resemble a muppet the way he does things from the touchline. The other thing that doesn't sit well is his support team. What the **** are Miller and Snodin doing? Can't they see what's happening? After Clingan had a long range effort in the second half, I saw Miller step forward and point out to Grayson that we shouldn't allow Clingan that room to shoot. From 45 yards?? **** off, let him, the only threat he posed was to some bloke in row K in the South Stand whose Bovril was in danger of being knocked out of his hand. No, next thing Snods is off for another holding mid, and Forsell drops back into midfield leaving Becchio alone up front. No out ball anymore, now every time we get the ball we have eleven men in our own half and no one to pass to allowing us to get moving forward. What the **** Simon!!!!!!! Suddenly City have two full-backs getting to our byline, and the whole team is knocking it around like Barcelona when a mere ten minutes earlier they couldn't pass two yards nor look like they could trap a bag of cement!! Oh my God!! Last point. Please Eddie Gray, can you stop talking so much **** on Yorkshire Radio? Please can you stop defending Grayson and being a Bates yes-man? It is unbecoming of a Leeds United legend. How can you say we are better away from home as an excuse for this tactical blunder when we only got our first away win last week? Come one Eddie!!! We are Leeds United, the biggest club outside the Prem, and we should be EXPECTING promotion, not hoping that we fluke it somehow. Grayson is clearly not going to take this great club forward, and Bates has shown no ambition. I would like our chairman to come out and say that he expects Grayson to deliver promotion or walk. I expect some urgency that shows we are at least committed to gaining promotion. Yet when I see this type of display from our manager, this spineless approach to a game we are in control of against a team as poor as Coventry, and the lack of funds from the chairman, I can only but hang my head.
Couldnt have put it better myself. McCormack and Keogh put pressure on forcing mistakes leading a high line up the pitch, Forssell (overweight) And Becchio (un fit) put no pressure on and held their line on the half way inviting pressure letting them run the game, something that happens over and over im not sure whether its grayson that turns the game so negative or the players just absolutely **** themselves
it wasn't entirely down to forsell and becchio. The attitude changed when McCormack and Keogh came off. Those 2 lads didn't stop working the entire match and despite being off target a few times I'd find it hard to criticise mccormacks game in other areas. As soon as they came off, we backed off. Every time we showed a sign of going forward our players were scared to get up the field and it's this fearful attitude that cost us. I've noticed a few times we defend best when we're attacking well - and I don't just mean on the ball, we attack off the ball as well. Not giving them an inch and being ready to pour men forward as soon as they make a mistake, this is when we play our best. We spent the last 20 minutes sitting back in our own half and it's that attitude that cost us. Waiting for them to come to us instead of going at them. We had no reason to sit back, they were showing no signs of scoring at all until the panic set in. As for Forsell, he's fat and slow and past it. Becchio didn't look great but he'd still have to do a lot wrong to change mine and anyone elses opinion of him. Mika Varynen looked lost. We'd have had better luck putting Nunez on instead of Forsell - then we'd have been swapping McCormack and Keogh for 2 similar players in Nunez and Becchio, but alas, Nunez has done something to lock himself out of the bench. **** knows what, we just got him to sign a new deal! Of course the refereeing staff is partly to blame. They gave the most unexplainable throwin I've ever seen to set up the move that lead to the goal. From right in front of me, Howson gets taken out in midair, the ball rolls out of play. That is one of 2 decisions, either their player got the ball and it wasn't a foul, so he was the last player to touch it and it's a throw in. Or he didn't get the ball, it's a foul, our free kick. ****ing awful refereeing and that fat bastard linesman needed to stop eating his burger, watch the game and make a decision for his ****ing self. I'm considering writing a strongly worded (but polite) email to Mr Bates. I had a think last night and found it impossible to think of a player we got on a free transfer that has made any significant impact in recent times. The best ones have been paid for, on loan, or brought in from the academy - Gradel, McCormack, Clayton, Lonergan, Pugh, Keogh, Lichaj, White, Lees. None of those were free transfers.
Agree with everything that has been said here-i was a grayson fan up until beginning of this season. I think he is lacking in tactical awareness, doesn't read the game and is from the "close my eyes, pray and hope everything works out" school of thought. He's not the worst manager in the game, far from it, but he is NOWHERE near being a good manager
Leaving aside previous seasons, I suspect that the malarkey in his home life is going to impact his work life for some time. Difficult to be 100% and focussed when you've gone from worrying about the missus/press/anyone finding out what you are up to, to worrying about the press reports and getting handbagged to getting turned over in the divorce settlement and perhaps having the kids turn against you. The dust will take a long time to settle.
I thought the officials were very biased towards us in the first half, but then felt they had to give Coventry everything in the second period. That did play a part. Him and his wife have been separated for months. One Sun report and a few chants are hardly going to affect the team performance - in fact we've been playing well since he apparently made it clear what had happened to the players in pre-season. I'd also like to disagree that Grayson is tactically immature. We've seen a few poor decisions over the last few seasons, but Sven Goran Eriksson, one of Europe's most decorated managers, is by all accounts making worse decisions game by game at Leicester. The grass might look greener elsewhere, but managers always make a few poor subs over the course of the season whether it's Grayson, Ferguson or Dean Saunders.
That did make me laugh the ref was awfully biased in the first half towards us and then made 2 decisions against us and we where booing him like mad with a few singing "we only get shif refs" hahaha
There's a lad at the top of the Kop who sings that song literally every time we get a decision against us Leicester fans have said he's employed a negative approach at every away game and it's cost them big time. They're behind us in the table, are they not? And if my reasonable defence of Grayson is laughable, your insanely blinkered view that he genuinely is the worst manager the world's ever seen must be killing people with derision, you joker.
Without observing Sven at Leicester it's hard to judge what he's doing wrong. And, in any case, Sven making poor decisions does not excuse Grayson making them. I use Grayson's ridiculously poor decisions to back up my claim that he's the worst manager I've ever known. You come up with excuses for those same decisions in order to defend him.
Well said Billy. Grayson can't read a game. He's got to the point where he can set a team up but if things go wrong there's no plan B simply because he can't assess the situation and make decisions accordingly. He isn't the worst manager in the world, but neither is he a good one.
Jugster I think he set the bench up so that he had no1 who was available to bring on to make any impact, I dont think he expected the initial team to be so under the cosh, we all thought it was going to be easy
