Leeds United: Marching On With Caution

Grayson has a lot of work to do

It’s hard to deny that Leeds United fans have had to suf­fer for the past half a decade. It was always one of England’s biggest teams, in the 60’s and 70’s Leeds were in the same mould as what the likes of Chelsea and Arse­nal are today. I won’t go into the down­fall of things too much as I’m sure Leeds United fans are sick of hear­ing it and any­one famil­iar with Eng­lish foot­ball will know that this West York­shire out­fit is truly a big side. After sev­eral sea­sons of frus­tra­tion in League One, the team finally man­aged to gain pro­mo­tion that so many expected of them, although it ended up being quite a bumpy ride towards the end. The team didn’t win the league, despite being in a strong posi­tion in Jan­u­ary and were forced to play out an ago­nis­ing final day pro­mo­tion match which they needed to win; oth­er­wise they would drop in the play­offs once again. We all know now they did that and as per ever, due to Leeds stature, we got the usual whirl­wind from the media sug­gest­ing that the club  were now straight back on track and would def­i­nitely be chal­leng­ing for pro­mo­tion once again in the Championship.

I used to live in Leeds and I worked at Leeds United and they are fans who are unfor­tu­nate enough to often be mis­quoted by the media. Yes, this is a big club, you only need to look at how many fans turned up to watch them in League One on aver­age to see that and the his­tory of the club speaks for itself, but take it from me — Leeds fans know that they’ve just been pro­moted to the Cham­pi­onship and to chal­lenge for pro­mo­tion would be as much of a sur­prise as it was for Leices­ter last sea­son. Can they chal­lenge? Of course, but it’s not very likely when you con­sider that the club had poor form for the sec­ond half of last sea­son and they will miss Jer­maine Beck­ford big time, who has left the club to join Ever­ton. With any team that gains pro­mo­tion, you have to con­sider that time is needed for the squad to develop and although Leeds have a team that should be capa­ble at this level, the board should under­stand that mid-table is an accept­able goal for Leeds in 2010/11.

Leeds may have caught the atten­tion of many peo­ple who are new to the Pre­mier League last sea­son, as they man­aged to beat their bit­ter rivals Man Utd in the FA cup at Old Traf­ford and many peo­ple saw how much the game meant to Leeds. Beyond that though, the wheels started to come off and the club started to lose its hold on the league some­what. I spoke to one of my mates about this a month or two ago as he has a lot of fam­ily mem­bers who are Leeds fans and he told me that he remem­bered at around Jan­u­ary time, man­ager Simon Grayson was start­ing to speak about the 2010/11 sea­son, almost as if they had already wrapped up League One. This may have shown a lack of focus from Grayson and he strug­gled to get con­sis­tently good form back in the side despite their even­tual auto­matic pro­mo­tion. I think Grayson might be a worry for the side, he had such a good start at Leeds but it seems like he may be strug­gling with some con­fi­dence aspects in his side; he recently apol­o­gised for his side’s 4–0 defeat to League Two out­fit Bury. A good start to the sea­son is very impor­tant to not only Leeds, but Grayson as well; the fans do have faith in their man­ager but a string of results sim­i­lar to what Gary McAl­lis­ter expe­ri­enced and you have a board that won’t hes­i­tate to give their man his notice. He’s recently signed a new three year con­tract and in this day in age, that is a lot for any man­ager, so if things are going badly for the York­shire club and they want to dis­pense with Grayson, it will cost them. I do how­ever wish him all the luck in the world, as he is a young Eng­lish man­ager and we unfor­tu­nately do not have enough of them get­ting recog­ni­tion at the moment in this country!

As men­tioned pre­vi­ously, Jer­maine Beck­ford is a big loss to the club, despite that his exit was inevitable. Billy Payn­ter has come in as Beckford’s replace­ment and has a big weight on his shoul­ders next sea­son and it remains to be seen as to whether or not he can shine for Leeds like his did along­side the highly rated Char­lie Austin. I’m cau­tious on how Payn­ter will per­form next sea­son, as Austin was the key to a lot of his goals last sea­son, you could argue that he scored one more than Beck­ford last sea­son in a side with a smaller bud­get, but this is a step up for Payn­ter and he will be expected to the spear­head of the United attack many times. Grayson has made no secret that he wants to add another striker, so maybe they aren’t look­ing to rely heav­ily on one striker like they did with Beckford.

Leeds do have a hand­i­cap at the start of the sea­son as Patrick Kisnorbo will be miss­ing until around Christ­mas time, mean­ing the side will not be at full strength for half the sea­son. There are also a num­ber of other injuries that have been picked up in pre-season, mean­ing Leeds have a dis­rupted warm up towards their return to England’s sec­ond tier and more depth added to the squad would be wel­comed by the sup­port­ers. Kasper Schme­ichel has joined up after prov­ing he was too good for the League Two level and he will con­tinue his pro­gres­sion as a player and get an oppor­tu­nity to take on a good chal­lenge. Many Leeds fans will also tell you how under rated Rob Snod­grass is and he’s a player who has impressed me many times and has often lived in the shadow of Jer­maine Beck­ford for the past few sea­sons. This could be his sea­son to shine and I sug­gest you tune in to the open­ing round of fix­tures on Sat­ur­day 7th August as Leeds will be live on T.V in a late 5.15pm (GMT) kick off against Derby County — a per­fect chance for the likes of Snod­grass to show many what he is capa­ble of.

I think Leeds will be OK this sea­son, I think ide­ally for them mid table would be a fine fin­ish, but cur­rently they are lack­ing a goal scorer you can really bank on and although they’re often hard to find, Leeds are the sort of club that could appeal to many play­ers. There is def­i­nitely a chance that they could chal­lenge for pro­mo­tion, but in truth it isn’t likely and the major­ity of Leeds fans will tell you that although they are opti­mistic (like many of us foot­ball fans are!) they aren’t expect­ing their side to take the league by storm this sea­son. I do expect them to be great enter­tain­ment this sea­son and due to their large fan base, you should prob­a­bly be pre­pared to see them in live tele­vised games almost as much as New­cas­tle were shown last season.

Tagged as: beckford, Championship, Leeds United, npower championship, simon grayson, snodgrass