I fully expect that this article will draw derision, and loud cries for the separation of my head from my body. However, bear with me – hold the flaming torches and sharpening of pitchforks until the final full stop.
I, like many of you reading this – and likely beginning to ready the spitting of feathers – dislike those articles churned out by writers who ‘aren’t Leeds’ and are there just to earn a dollar off the back of the Leeds United name.
Rest assured, I am not that kind of mercenary who is a pen for hire and will write about a club like Leeds just to earn a bit of spare pocket-money to see me through my Sherbet Dib-Dab addiction.
I am a Leeds fan like you reading this. I have experienced the highs, such as a Champions League Semi-Final, and the lows, such as relegation to League One and all stops in between. I feel, and share, the same pain at the mismanagement of the club by a succession of inept/nefarious/disruptive [delete as necessary] owners to the degree that mediocrity was the accepted ethos we’d accept, yet strive to surpass.
Last season, with it becoming obvious that things were beginning to change, what with il duce Cellino relinquishing a part control of the club to fellow Italian Andrea Radrizzani in what was seen as an ‘investment opportunity’. That part deal became a full deal and Cellino shuffled off back to Italian football and Serie B with Brescia.
Results were better, in fact these results were performance driven and the Leeds United that fans were seeing on the pitch was decidedly different to the Leeds United of previous/recent seasons. 26 games, 142 days in the top six after a ‘typical Leeds’ start to the season gave hope, hope that was relinquished after a final stretch drop-off of form and meagre results.
Still, the Whites finished seventh and this gave fans hope that it was a platform, nay springboard, for this season – something that would catapult us onwards and upwards. First the stability provided by Garry Monk filtered away after he upped sticks for Middlesbrough after apparently not being happy at the contract extension offer from the new hierarchy at the club.
His replacement, that was the little-known Thomas Christiansen – former player at Barcelona and manager of Cypriot side Apoel Nicosia. A splurge on summer signings saw a mixed bag of players brought to the club with the excellence of players like Samu Saiz and Gianni Alioski balanced out by the lack of hope in players like Jay-Roy Grot and Madger Gomes – although he’s largely an Under-23 signing.
Still, back on track, the one thing that will damn Leeds United to another season’s slog in the Sky Bet Championship – the Ides of January.
Many Leeds fans, myself included, thought that last January’s failure to strengthen and consolidate in the January transfer window cost the club dearly in its 22-game run in that was the 2017 part of the 2016/17 Championship season.
Leeds turned the year in 5th place and on 42 points from 24 games. January gives an almost symmetrical split to a 46 game season, the Whites averaging 1.75 points per game up to the end of 2016. However, from January through to May, it was a stretch of 22 games and just 33 points at an average of 1.5 points per game for a faltering side.
Now you can throw numbers around like wedding confetti, recycling the throwing until the land where and how you want them to. But that drop-off of 0.25 points per game is equivalent to 5.5 points or nearly two losses over a 22-game period; not much, granted, but nearly two losses worse off than any side around them.
That season Leeds’ dalliances in the January transfer window were minimalistic in the extreme, the Whites only bringing in Spaniard Pablo Hernández on an initial loan from Al Arabi. Was Hernández’s arrival enough to really patch up the threadbare weaknesses in the 2016/17 Leeds United side? No, not by a long straw. That would be like trying to plug the leaking gaps in a dam using a mixture of cotton wadding and Elastoplast.
But it was a factor. And now Leeds United are on track to do the same thing again – refusing to heed the apparent lessons of history.
According to a Phil Hay article in the Yorkshire Evening Post, Thomas Christiansen doesn’t see January as a big deal when it comes to players incoming. Speaking to Hay, Leeds supremo Christiansen said;
“If the club decide to bring in a player or two then it’s an option but it’s nothing I want to think about or speak about. I have my job to do and if they come and tell me something then I’ll listen to it and give my opinion but up until now I’m very happy with what I’ve got.”Thomas Christiansen – Yorkshire Evening Post – December 9
