It is becoming increasingly dangerous for the Peacocks as they remain level on points with Leicester and Nottingham Forest, who are in 16th and 18th, respectively, due to goal difference. A lot of external factors influence what actually happens on the pitch; an ongoing saga about ownership, chopping and changing of managers and directors of football being sacked, so Leeds are far away from having a stable platform on which to build from. In this blog, we aim to understand more what is going on behind the scenes at Elland Road and size up their chances of survival, which is so important for a club of the stature of Leeds.
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Marcelo Bielsa Hungover
Victor Orta has been at the club for six years, in the role of a Director of Football and well positioned to be the idea guy. He is a person that is openly opinionated and takes in all comments and tries various things, most of them have been good, but lately the scale is tipping towards the negative. That is why supporters of the club singled him out from the management as the culprit of these apparent bad decisions.
By the looks of it, once Marcelo Bielsa was no longer the manager of the club, management lost control and decisions were taken that shouldn’t have been, such as the signing of the player Jean-Kevin Augustin. In the end, Leeds has paid £40 million in return for just 48 minutes of services.
After the departure of Bielsa, the club started to go down a downward spiral, just avoiding relegation last season on the final day, and now the same situation presents itself, and they have put their hope towards the traditional manager of Sam Allardyce.
Pending Takeover
The current majority shareholder of the club is Andrea Radrizzani, who is an Italian self-made businessman. The well-known Amercian football team 49ers also own a 15% equity stake in Leeds which, over time, has increased to 44%. Rumours are surrounding the club that Radrizzani will be bought out of his majority shareholder position by the 49ers and they will take control of proceedings.
It will be interesting to see how the next four games determine whether the club remains under Radrizzani or the 49ers, the latter of which would assume control, stabilise everything and push for promotion when it’s the right time, benefitting from the increased revenue when they actually do get back up again to the Premier League. Like a good portion of the teams in the relegation scrape this season, the clubs involved aren’t being run properly, with many moving parts and bodies, it’s a recipe for disaster.
‘Fireman Sam’
Since the collapse in the second half of the game against Crystal Palace, Javi Garcia’s team just imploded, 21 goals conceded in April – the most in a single month by an English top-flight side since Newcastle in 1986. Should Sam Allardyce achieve his goals of keeping Leeds in the Premier League he would be handsomely rewarded with a seven-digit fee. This makes sense as the pool of manager who are willing to take this job and risk their reputation are very limited. A win-win situation for Allardyce, if Leeds stay up he would have proved to the world that he is still capable of doing the impossible when it comes to helping clubs retain their Premier League status, and if they go down, it would be down to the dire situation they were in before he came in and four games is not enough time to make a drastic change.
Upcoming fixtures will be a huge test for any manager, away at City and West Ham and then home to Newcastle and Tottenham. The home games will have a feverish atmosphere as we know and love Elland Road, making it more difficult for the travelling players to play their usual football. The last job that he had with West Brom did not go to plan; when he took over, they were 19th, and after 26 games, they remained in that same position, so maybe there is justified scepticism.
The bounce back from firing a manager has worked before with Javi Garcia, as they got a third of their points in just five games, but the style of play was similar to Jesse March’s. This time around, the players will have a whole culture shock when they learn that they are going to invite pressure on and hope to create chances on the counter-attack, but that could heavily backfire, as Leeds are not very good defensively.
The brutal truth for Leeds and their fans is that beggars cannot be choosers, and even if they dislike the taste of the medicine Allardyce will deliver, they will gratefully accept it if it cures their relegation ills.