Tag Archives: promotion

Brian McDermott Preparing Leeds United for 46 Cup Finals

Posted on 03/07/2013 | Leave a comment

He’s a pretty downy old bird, Brian McDermott. You get the feeling that he doesn’t miss a trick in the business of getting the very best out of the resources at his disposal, and it’s a safe bet that he’ll be bang up to date with any factors that might affect his team’s chances of success. The last time he operated in this league, his Reading FC team recovered from a dodgy start to scorch through the pack and leave the rest of the division breathless in their wake as they clinched the Title. On the face of it, there’s no reason he can’t do the same at Leeds – as long as he’s fully aware of one vital fact. Everyone raises their game against Leeds United. We are everyone’s Cup Final.

What this means, in effect, is that – more so than most clubs – our players have to be prepared to face a very stiff challenge almost every week. When the fixtures come out, fans of every other club in the league dive to examine the list, looking for one game: Leeds at home. Those fans will leave their club and team in no doubt in the weeks and days leading up to their Cup Final – we must beat Leeds, or die trying. So many times since we dropped out of the Premier League – and even before that – I’ve seen teams put in gut-busting, lung-bursting performances to pull off a great result against my hapless heroes in White. So many times I’ve noted that this team’s next game produces a limp and pallid display as they struggle to a draw or defeat. But, no matter – as long as they did it against Leeds United, their fans and their manager are happy. We’re the scalp they all want, the potential feather in everyone’s cap.

This is particularly so when you look at the other teams in Yorkshire, for whom – you get the unmistakable impression – beating Leeds really is the be-all and end-all. Your Huddersfields, your Barnsleys, your Sheffield teams. Doncaster, even. All those Hovis and cobblestone outfits. They all have this chip-on-the-shoulder, urgent NEED to do it against Leeds. Their fans demand it, motivated by a hatred for which they’re not even sure of the reason – summat to do with what their dad said about the sixties and Don bloody Revie. But they simply must beat Leeds – do that, and avoid relegation and it’s been a good season. Look at opposition message boards after Leeds have beaten their favourites. The grief and bitterness are palpable, it’s something they just can’t cope with. It’s the same for the managers. Remember the amusing sight of Darren Ferguson on the very edge of tears after defeat at Elland Road?

Brian McDermott, you feel, will be thoroughly aware of this – of the local derby factor, and of the feeling further abroad which inspires the likes of Forest and Derby, Millwall and Leicester to raise their performance levels against us. If anyone can make this deep-seated hostility work FOR Leeds, you can bet Brian is that man. He’s building his squad, and he’ll be building an attitude as well, the us-against-them solidarity that served him so well in this league at Reading. Leeds is a horse of a different colour, of course, but the wily Brian will have it figured out, and he’ll want to use the other lot’s hostility against them. We supporters will have our part to play too. The fans just have to make Elland Road a cauldron of hostility again, somewhere that other teams and opposition players hate to play, because they know they’ll be facing 11 motivated and buzzing white shirts and 25000 12th men, screaming abuse at them the whole game through. That’s how we handled it in 1990 under Wilko, and this guy can get the same thing going, if anyone can.

46 games is a long, long haul – the original football “marathon not a sprint”. The advantage the other clubs will have is they’ll only face two Cup Finals in the season, maybe a couple more for those with local rivalries. But for the other clubs, Leeds is The One, so we’re going to have to be up for it – bang up for it – each and every week. If Brian McDermott can foster that attitude and that fighting spirit, and if we can win enough of those 46 Cup Finals as a result – then maybe, this time next year, we’ll be poised at the gates of the Promised Land.

Norwich Fans Getting Cheekier – Time They Showed Some Respect

Posted on 03/07/2013 | 5 comments

Over the past couple of years, Leeds fans have had to grin and bear it as little Norwich – an unfashionable club from the back of beyond – have used the fact of their temporarily higher league status to pluck such gems as Snodgrass, Howson, Becchio and, erm, Bradley Johnson from the Elland Road payroll. In truth, only the first two of those four departures were all that painful – the odd twinge caused by Luciano’s departure has been relieved by his zero contribution to Naaaarritch since he joined them – but that hasn’t stopped those loveable Ciddy fans from gloating and grinning and taking the mick. Every time another transfer “coup” has been completed, there they’ve been, savouring the novelty of lording it over Mighty Leeds, crowing about us being their “feeder club” (no marks for originality there, lads) and generally cavorting all over the internet like the small-time wurzels they are.

Now, just as things seem to be looking up at Leeds, there has been a mischievous little article on the Norwich “Vital Football” site, wondering with innocent glee whether our Boy Wonder, the one and only Sam Byram, might be the next to tread the path from LS11 to the backwoods obscurity of East Anglia. The article appears to be based on nothing more than hubris; there is no suggestion that Byram – a lad surely aware of his potential career path – would choose to make such an oddly negative, sideways-at-best move. It appears to be a case of a lazy hack with nothing better to write, trying to cater to the schoolboy excitement of Norwich fans still grappling with the unaccustomed chance to make fun of a much bigger club.

And where, after all, is the harm you might ask? If this internet bravado helps the currently happy Ciddy fans forget their inglorious past, then good luck to them, right? After all, prior to their recent double promotion success, their club was mainly famous for the tired and emotional display of Delia Smith when she unwisely seized the match-day mike after lavishly sampling the vino cabinet, and treated the stunned home crowd to a slurred and cringeworthy motivational speech: “Wheeeere aaaare yoooouu? Let’s be ‘aaaavviiiin’ yooooouuu!!!” It was entertaining for everyone outside Carrow Road, but hardly a siren call to tempt a future England star who already has a first team berth in a far bigger club.

Pride, they say, goeth before a fall. I have a funny feeling that the Chris Hughton magic may be a little harder to work this time around, and that Norwich may face a long and bitter, possibly fruitless, battle to retain their top-flight status. And if they come tumbling down, Snodgrass,Jonny Howson, Becchio and all, wouldn’t it be poetically just if a Brian-inspired and Byram-powered Leeds hurtled in the opposite, upwards direction? Who would be laughing then?

If Byram has any sense (and all the indications are that he has), he’ll stay where he is for at least one more season unless a truly irresistible offer comes along. This would be from a proper Premier League club, one that can offer him the chance of playing at the highest level and possibly competing in Europe. Failing that, he would do well to continue last season’s meteoric development, if he can, at Elland Road – possibly helping to elevate Leeds United back to where they belong at the same time. It’s not an unrealistic prospect, all of a sudden.

If, this time next year, Leeds have gone up and Norwich have been relegated – might we not be reading transfer speculation of a return to Elland Road for Snodgrass and Howson? Maybe, after all, we’d need the cover in midfield and on the wing. And if we did read that speculation – would that be hubris, or taking the mick? Not really. It’d be more like the natural order reasserting itself, as it inevitably must at some point (the Norwich fans know this, deep down.) Perhaps then, they can be excused their current cockiness – they’re just making hay while the sun shines and trying not to worry too much about what tomorrow will bring.

Tomorrow will come though, Norwich. And then we’ll see who’s the feeder club for real.

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Posted in Football, Leeds United, Life, News, Sport

Tagged Brian McDermott, Leeds United, norwich city, promotion, relegation, Sam Byram, soccer, transfers, UK Football

Leeds United Needs a New Vinnie

Posted on 01/06/2013 | 1 comment

Sir Vincent Jones

The men who took Leeds United back into the top-flight the last time it happened in 1990 are, of course, legends now. They rank alongside some of the Revie boys because they rescued the club from eight years in the wilderness and restored us to the big time. We had our own diminutive red-haired midfielder as a sort of latter-day homage to Billy Bremner – wee Gordon Strachan, who played a mighty part in the renaissance of Leeds with his leadership and goals. It was a team effort though, and it was as a team that they succeeded – Strachan apart there was no major star, but the guts and drive of the collective effort eclipsed all rivals by the end of that fantastic season when we were crowned Second Division Champions in sun-drenched and strife-torn Bournemouth. And nobody in the whole club at that time epitomised guts and drive, as well as sheer fist-clenched, vein-throbbing commitment and fight, better than Mr Vincent Peter “Vinnie” Jones.

I’d been aware of Vinnie, of course – who hadn’t? His Crazy Gang antics were legendary and he’d lifted the FA Cup, but he was regarded as a bit of a maverick – still more hod-carrier than footballer. So never in my wildest dreams did I imagine him as a signing for Leeds United, where stirrings had been going on ever since Sergeant Wilko marched in and started shaking the place up. The “marquee signing” – you didn’t actually hear that phrase in those days – was Strachan, plucked from under the nose of his old Man U mentor Ron Atkinson at Sheffield Wednesday to provide the quality at the heart of the Leeds engine room. Now that was the sort of signing I’d hoped and prayed for, and with the likes of Chris Fairclough joining Gordon at Elland Road it seemed to bode well for a real challenge as the close season wore on and 1989-90 loomed closer.

I was in a caravan on the east coast when I heard on the radio that Vinnie was signing for Leeds for around £650,000. I frankly didn’t believe it, but when the reality sank in, my reaction was to think – bloody hell, Wilko, what are you playing at? The signings of John Hendrie and Mel Sterland reassured me somewhat, but I was having trouble seeing what the Jones Boy would bring to the United table. The early signs were not encouraging. Strachan tells of an incident in a pre-season game against Anderlecht, where he saw an opposing player go down with his nose spread halfway across his face and blood greatly in evidence. Vinnie had casually “done” him en passant before sidling off looking innocent, and Strach recalls thinking: my God – what have we signed here? Vinnie himself remembers his early days at the club, and being moved to violence by the negative attitudes of some of the players being edged out as Wilko’s new broom started to sweep clean. Among this disaffected few was John Sheridan, something of a Leeds legend – but Jones stood for no nonsense, and there were punches thrown and people seized by the scruff of the neck as he explained his views on solidarity and team spirit. Vinnie was obviously going to be a kill or cure measure – there were signs he might have much to contribute to the collective effort, but equally that he might turn out a loose cannon which could blow up in all our faces. Yet Wilko had a magic touch in those early years, and generally it was proved that he knew what he was doing.

In the event, and despite an uncertain beginning, Vinnie played a massive part in our promotion that year. The fans took to him from the start – the sight of him coming on as a sub in the first home game against Middlesbrough will live long in my memory. I can see him now, in the middle of the park with the game poised at 1-1, shouting and screaming as he conveyed encouragement and instruction in equal measure, arms pumping in an ungainly, baboon-like way, team-mates and opponents alike staring at him aghast. And then he frightened a Boro’ defender into scoring a late, fluky own-goal and we had won, setting us on our way after a disastrous opening-day defeat at Newcastle.

Vinnie just carried on making a difference. He worked and worked, encouraged and exhorted, fought for the cause and put the fear of God up the enemy wherever he encountered them. He scored spectacular goals, important goals. He showed flashes of genuine ability and some of his passing was sublime. He avoided disciplinary trouble to an amazing degree, given his lurid past. He sold himself to no less a judge than Strachan as an honest performer who could “play a bit”. He created a rapport with the crowd I’ve rarely seen before or since, chilling and joking with the wheelchair-users at the front of the West Stand before games, and smoking imaginary cigars as he took the plaudits of the adoring masses after finding the net. In the warm-up before the Wolves match at Elland Road, he provided one of the great moments of humour in a tense campaign, bringing down 5 year-old mascot Robert Kelly in the area with a signature sliding tackle, much to the delight of the Kop. Vinnie loved Leeds, the players and fans loved Vinnie and the partnership proved fruitful. Up we went, and when Vincent Jones finally took his leave for the humbler surroundings of Bramall Lane and Stamford Bridge, it was with a “LUFC Division 2 Champions” tattoo proudly inked onto his expensive leg, a partner for the “Wimbledon FA Cup Winners” one on the other limb. He was a Leeds United legend in only a little over a year at the club, a larger-than-life personality of massive ebullience and impact – and he is held in the highest of esteem in LS11 even to this day, when he mixes effortlessly in the rarefied, glitzy atmosphere of Hollywood.

So what do we need more right now than another Vinne type, as we hope to embark on another long-overdue return to the top table? Those Jonesy ingredients of passion and power, guts and gumption, are just as important in this league today as they were in those far-off times as the eighties became the nineties. Who could possibly fulfil that role now? I’m really not too sure – Joey Barton maybe? Even he could hardly be a greater culture shock than Vinnie was 25 years ago, but Barton is likely to be far beyond our purse – and to be frank I think he lacks Vinnie’s essential honesty and sheer bad-boy charm. It’s difficult to say who if anyone we might secure to play the Vinnie part – but if it were possible, in advance of the season before us, to distil essence of Jones, or to clone him right from his bloodstained boots and tattooed ankles up to his fearsomely-shaven head, then I’d do it, and I’d present the result gift-wrapped for Brian McDermott to deploy as he saw fit.

A man in the mould of Vinnie Jones would be just the shot in the arm our club needs right at this point in time, just the incentive for the crowd to roll up its sleeves and get behind the team for a series of battles in a 46 game-long war of attrition. If only we could have our Vinnie back now.

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Posted in Family, Football, Humour, Leeds United, Life, Sport, Television

Tagged Champions, Chelsea FC, Elland Road, FA Cup, film star, Hollywood, Leeds United, movies, promotion, Sheffield United, soccer, UK Football, USA, Vinnie Jones, Wimbledon FC

McDermott’s LUFC Promotion Formula

Posted on 06/05/2013 | Leave a comment

Brian has said it himself: promotion next season is the expectation – nothing less will be good enough. So how should he set about realising this desirable outcome?

Recruitment with a view to moulding a competitive and combative squad goes without saying. We will all have our ideas about who needs to come in – from those who wish to see us reclaim our lost boys from the likes of Norwich and Leicester to the more forward-looking who would prefer hungry players, new to Leeds but maybe familiar to McDermott, your le Fondres and your Robson-Kanus and so on.

How else can Brian make a difference? What have the problems been in the past? One major drawback for a less-than-excellent United squad has been the difficulty of coping with the massive anti-Leeds chip on the collective shoulder of our rivals: the so-called “46 Cup Finals Syndrome”. This is a crucial factor, but it is one that can be exploited by a real leader. A certain charmless Scottish git over the Pennines in Salford is well-known for his preference for fostering what is known as a “siege complex” among the various teams he’s had There over the years. He’s generally had a squad to compare with the best anyway, but there’s been that undeniable edge provided by the attitude of “They all hate us, lads, so let’s get stuck in and ram it back down their throats”. The fact that Brian appears to be a mild and likeable guy, as opposed to the bile-choked monster in charge at the Theatre of Hollow Myths, is no impediment to the fostering of a “them against us” mindset. It’s just good psychology, good man-management, and most of all, good for cohesion and team spirit. There hasn’t been enough of that at Elland Road lately.

The hate comes mainly from opposition fans, particularly in Yorkshire where we will again play quite a few “Derbies” next season after Huddersfield’s and Barnsley’s mutually-collusive escape from relegation. This fever of hate, eclipsing all other emotions, was adequately demonstrated when the cameras focused on a rabble of Barnsley fans in the very moment of relief after their last-ditch reprieve. Were they applauding their team, or proclaiming their barely-salvaged Championship status? No, their tiny, obsessed minds could find no room for anything but a tuneless chorus of “We All Hate Leeds Scum”, with the similarly brainless Huddersfield fans happily joining in. Clearly, fellow Whites, we are not famous any more. If Brian does choose to utilise the hate of Leeds for positive gains in terms of team bonding and incentive to win, he will not find it in short supply.

Beyond this, we the fans have a massively important part to play. But Leeds have usually been helped by terrific support; given the least encouragement, the fans will be like a 12th man out there. We know from awed testimony in the past that playing at Elland Road can be an intimidating experience for the very best. McDermott’s fostering of an atmosphere and team ethic comparable to that at Reading last season, where a squad not over-packed with stars pulled back an 18 point deficit to pip Southampton for the Championship Title, would not go amiss. The fans would respond to the effort and togetherness of such a team, there is a parallel there with Wilko’s promotion side of 1990, who used to set about the opposition with voracious hunger and would usually wear them down before over-running them. That kind of thing would certainly do; I remember Wilko’s Warriors very fondly, and they’re just the kind of team we all love down in LS11.

Once the business of Summer is done – and you sense that Brian wants to do his shopping early so that he can put his print on a super-fit squad – then the fine-tuning can start towards next season. We hear that improvements are afoot at Thorp Arch – training pitches to match Elland Road dimensions, with equivalent watering systems; squad-numbered reserved parking spaces for the players. Small enough improvements, but brought about in the name of increased professionalism. It’s all good.

Give Brian the squad he wants, and let him turn them into lean, mean, motivated machines, ready to feed on hate and use it as fuel for a tank of a team which will grind the opposition into the turf, and we could be all set for a memorable season with the reward we all crave waiting at the end of it.

Leeds United Back at the Crossroads

Posted on 01/04/2013 | Leave a comment

Bye bye, Colin

As the final whistle blew after Leeds United’s most recent defeat at home to Derby County, in many ways it just seemed like business as usual. The team had huffed and puffed, flattered to deceive, taken the lead through a goal of genuine quality and then finally – as seems all too normal – frittered away a fragile advantage to end up with nothing. It could be a metaphor for the entire season, or even for the whole three year period since United dragged itself back, by the skin of its teeth, to the second tier of English football which represents the very minimum acceptable status for a great old club. It’s been three years of hollow promises, screwed-up priorities, bizarre transfer activities and chronic instability.

The last point – that lack of stability – has been felt even more acutely than ever these last few weeks. Ever since Neil Warnock made his first wistful noises about wanting to be in Cornwall with his family and his Massey-Ferguson, the alarm bells have been ringing. The one thing above all that any sports team needs is a high degree of certainty as to where it is going and how it proposes to get there. Take away the certainty, the sense of direction and leadership, and – try though the individual team members might – the fine edge will be taken off that team’s performance. In a game of fine margins, as any game is at a high professional level, the lack of that edge makes all the difference.

It’s actually been worse even than that for Leeds. Rumours of a second takeover won’t go away, and memories are returning of the long and drawn-out saga of last summer, with all the disruption that entailed for any planning and preparation for the season ahead. Those rumours have gathered pace, and have come to a head at about the same time Warnock made it clear he was sidling towards the exit door. So not only does the team itself lack for leadership and the security of knowing who’s calling the shots on the football side – the whole club is embroiled once again in a fever of speculation as to who will own it, or various discrete chunks of it, by the time the next transfer window opens, and the all-important work has to start in order to ready us for a tilt at promotion next time around.

The past week has seen 10% of the club sold off to a “strategic investor”, but there is no clarity as to what this might mean for team-building. Is it any wonder that the mood among fans, despite reduced admission prices, is one of apathy at best? Now it has been confirmed that Neil Warnock has indeed parted company with Leeds United, so a club in a state of anguished flux must seek the right appointment at a time when it’s difficult to see any credible candidate being tempted to take up the challenge of restoring direction to a once-mighty ship, now seemingly rudderless and hopelessly adrift.

So we find ourselves speculating on two fronts, as this season sputters to an uninspiring close – always supposing that we don’t get dragged into an unseemly scrap to avoid relegation. Fans are bound to speculate after all – it’s in the nature of passionate support that we will be preoccupied by what, if anything, the future holds. But at Leeds United, more than at most clubs, that speculation is undertaken in an information vacuum and in almost complete darkness in terms of what’s going on behind the doors.

What we can and should do, with some degree of self-righteousness, is point out that the changes taking place now regarding team management might more usefully have been accomplished weeks ago, when there was still a realistic chance of making the play-offs, and when the introduction of a degree of certainty might have paid dividends. The points so carelessly tossed away in recent weeks as Warnock has yearned for his tractor from afar, taking his eye right off the ball, would have seen Leeds bang in contention. Last minute equalisers conceded at Wolves and Leicester, silly home defeats to Huddersfield and Derby, awful beatings at Ipswich and Barnsley, all these avoidable calamities add up in terms of points we could and should have taken. A Mick McCarthy at the helm, or maybe a Nigel Adkins or – dare I say it – a Simon Grayson, and I’m convinced a good proportion of those points could have been snapped up, and we might yet have found ourselves occupying a play-off berth right now. The club, the new owners, have let a golden opportunity slip through their fingers, from the moment those alarm bells started to ring.

Now, they simply have to get it right. There’s been a bit of talk around the city this last few days – wouldn’t it be strange if the Leeds Rhinos and Leeds United both had a winger called Ryan Hall, and a coach called Brian McDermott. Maybe that could now come to pass, and I for one wouldn’t object – as Mr McDermott has done a genuinely competent job at Reading, and was possibly unlucky to get the sack there. But whoever we get, he has to be installed, made to feel happy and welcome, and backed financially to undertake the surgery the squad still undeniably needs. The right appointment would still get the crowd back onside, as would some definitive statement of intent from the current owners about their plans. It has to happen, and it has to happen soon, or we can write off another season in the long-term quest to return to the top flight – it will now be a minimum of ten years out of the Premier League and a club like Leeds simply has to aim to be there in order to have any chance of fulfilling the potential that its still-devoted fans and its global profile afford it. A return to the top, then, is now a matter of increasing urgency.

So here we are again, at yet another crossroads, between managers and with everything up in the air for the umpteenth time. Situation normal. But it can’t go on. Whatever happens between now and August, one thing we know beyond doubt is that we certainly can’t afford another season like this one.