No not something you could, many years ago, have picked up on a Saturday night in the Calls (before it was gentrified and boutique hotels abounded there) I seriously think we have a problem. Only one element of which has (hopefully, maybe, possibly) now gone away. Here's how I see the aetiology: 1. during the entire Bates era we sold all our better players - starting with Delph, then all the ones that went to Norwich, plus Max etc etc 2. in every window for many years - including the one just gone by - we had massive expectations of what we'd bring in, in reality the manager was either given nothing or not enough. 3. As a result, managers "make do". they all have different methods of making do, the NW version was to bring in old lags who, in some cases, may once have been good players but are now at the end of their careers, so although cheap in transfer fees, expensive in wages and - crucially - not really motivated to build a long career at LUFC. Other managers have brought in cheap players who maybe would not have been their first choices, but who - just possibly - might turn out just as good. (And sometimes they did - Snodgrass one example) 4. the fans. Leeds fans are great, probably it is no exaggeration to say as good as a top 6 Prem clubs. But deep down they know they want success and, despite giving the manager a bit of a chance, he always knows if he does not deliver for them they will soon be showing their disappointment. So the manager takes hurried actions, any action is better than no action, to placate them. Would you have wanted to be the Leeds manager after Rochdale? I wouldn't. 5. after failing to get promotion, any key player who we hadn't already sold, wanted away (cue Ross, this summer) 6. so we change our manager frequently, because of the above,. That produces another problem, the new manager inherits a budget for players which is actually quite large (due to the high wages) but manay of the players are not ones he'd have chosen and he's stuck with them for a few years in many cases. So there's SFA available to get new ones and, because of the nature of the players, the expensive ones can't be easily moved on. So you have to manage mainly with what you have got, which is not good enough 7. eventually the pressure of all this starts to tell, a few bad results happen and morale takes a dip, and suddenly the fans are speculating which new manager would deliver the promised land. I wonder what sort of manager would actually be tough enough to survive this and deliver success? I wonder if the new owners will give, whoever is the manager this summer, the funds to get in players who are genuinely good enough to take us into at least the top 6.
The bottom two lines of your post answers your question. No they will not get sufficient or maybe any funds. Deep down we all know that but some try to believe otherwise
It wasn't a question Eire, more a description. But I agree there's no sign the current owners are going to be spenders, though we do at least seem not to be sellers anymore
But that will not be enough. Despite some believing just developing youth will eventually be enough, it won't. Sooner or later, some owner will have to dig deep to make promotion possible. If it's not haighs new buddies, it will have to be someone else further into the future
You only have to look at the transfers website to see the truth of that Eire - over last 5 years, teams like Forest and Leicester have spend c £15m while we sold a net £12m - that £25-30m is why we are crap
I don't even need to look at it. Been glaringly obvious to me for years. My 81 year old dad, very sharp man and also lifelong Leeds fan, rang me after game and said he had tears in his eyes at end of game. Hope McD and his useless pile of **** on the field today someday realise what Leeds United mean to fans like us
Scott Wootton, Marius Žaliūkas, Gboly Ariyibi, Jimmy Kébé, Luke Murphy, Cameron Stewart, Noel Hunt & Matt Smith were all signed by McDermott - all on decent wages too probably - how many of those have improved the squad McDermott inherited?
