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This thread has been in the conceptual works for a while, and is going to be sadly abbreviated, as two of the three teams I was thinking about have ceased to be utterly in the shit and have aimed more towards mediocrity. Fortunately, the squad of Tranmere Rovers is so thin and the forwards of Tottenham so inept that it can only be a matter of time before they are right back in it; already the gloss is coming off the Pleatmobile and victory in cup competitions is not going to help Brian Little if the draws keep coming in the league...
So, on to our main subject: Leeds United. Poor bloody Leeds United. All right, they do have a habit of spending large amounts of money on either poor players or poor human beings, and there is probably a massive and untapped mine of schadenfreude out there, but nonetheless, you have to feel sorry for them. How can this season be pulled around?
The departure of Peter Reid, probably a necessity despite the sad corollary that he is probably not going to get another Premiership job ever (although the blow will no doubt be softened by the £850,000 pay-off), means that Mills and Viduka might be returned to the fold. God knows, they could probably do with Mills, although I'm not sure that anything at this point will get Viduka back in the game; he's earning £65,000 a week to wait his contract out and/or force a cut-price transfer. If I were Professor Mac, I might well have tried to cash in on him a while ago, as he was prone to lack of interest even when Leeds were aiming for the Champions League. I suspect that any new manager will waste a lot of time and effort trying to give Viduka what he wants when what he ultimately wants is to play somewhere else.
It was observed that, as well as the 2 weeks' fine, Leeds should have given him a written warning, with a view to reacting to future misconduct by terminating his contract, Dennis Wise style. It's an insane thought - letting go of an asset with a book value of £10-20 million - but who would buy him the way he is playing at present, and what is he piling on to the operating debt every day?
And then there's the question of the manager. By the time this is posted, Paul Hart may well be in charge. It's an interesting choice - if he had been given some more cash to spend at Forest, and if they had not had such a profoundly mediocre opening to the season, he would probably have been well advised to stay. As it is, he can massively increase his salary, and in the worst case scenario he ends up back in the First Division, but you have to ask whether he can step up so quickly to go toe-to-toe with an apparently demoralised and rebellious dressing-room.
That's before we even get into the financial situation, which is so vastly knackered as to defy belief. Could Leeds of bankrupt, and have to start at the bottom? It seems massively unlikely, realistically, but administration must be a real possibility.
Meanwhile, as a little side note, Glenn Hoddle is apparently in the frame as a replacement to Paul Hart. Sweet Jesus. Obviously, this step down would be motivated by the realisation that no Premierhsip club would touch him with a Peter Reid, but even so - how on Earth can anyone offer him a role with any man-management element whatsoever. Head coach, yes. As long as he is not allowed to participate in five-a-sides. But manager? Of a young and potentially temperamentally vulnerable team? Lordy. So the curse of the white strip multiplies... |
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