This is Clarkeonenil’s regular comment column, cutting through the various passing issues of football and getting to the core principle in the shortest time.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of this analysis here is a public service announcement: This article contains gratuitous criticism of Jermaine Beckford, some limited pops at Simon Grayson, some general moaning about the club, the usual stuff directed at Mr Ken Bates and some potentially negative predictions on the season’s outcome. If any of this offends, annoys, irritates or despairs you can just stop reading now and feel free not to come back. Thank you for listening.
Now if your still here let’s start with Beckford, this boy is royally pissing us about, only its becoming increasing clear it’s with the full co-operation of the club. Grayson and Bates have decided on a gamble, one which I believe to be flawed. For once I don’t believe that Bates is responsible for the ensuing mess, although as the ultimate glorified fund manager he could have resolved issues by accepting £1.5m is a decent figure for a L1 standard scorer (not footballer you note as he is far from being one of those) with less than 6 months left on his contract. No it has become very clear, from his statements, his general attitude of indulgence towards our scatter-gun striker and from other indications (one of the few direct messages sent to this site after the news of the transfer request being withdrawn informed me that in a “meet the staff” event earlier in the season Grayson was asked how he dealt with unhappy players and he is quoted as saying ‘Any player who is not happy at Leeds can leave….. except Jermaine!’ worrying words indeed) that Grayson is betting the shop on Beckford in the same way Gray bet the shop on Viduka (and we all know how that panned out). He is sending a clear signal to us all that he himself doesn’t think he has got Leeds to the top of L1, it’s all down to “Jermaine” in his head and as such is prepared to add disloyalty and disruption to the list of crimes Beckford can get away with.
Beckford and his agent have really milked the indulgence of the club and they now have everything where they want things. Everyone in football knows his contract is up, every club looking for a striker knows they don’t have to pay a fee for him. Newcastle and others know they are allowed to talk to Beckford and sign him on a pre-contract with a big fat signing on fee. Can I at this point add to my earlier public service announcement with this addition? Should you be soft enough to believe that Beckford signing a new contract at Elland Road is still possible, go seek help immediately! Now from a rational point of view I have to accept that Rubery is doing what he can for his client, what I don’t have to accept is a) the club should make life easier for them and b) that without Beckford our promotion hopes are screwed (although given the direction this missive is going it could well be that we won’t go up with or without him about, which would be the ultimate irony but one that would be lost on the Beckford worshippers). The results since the news of his transfer request speak for themselves, as does Beckford’s contribution, that damage has been done, the question is how much more?
If there was one aspect of how the club managed the news around Beckford’s “change of mind” that really got up my nose it was the ridiculous quotes feed to him about “100% commitment in every game”, what utter tosh. Even his most fervent apologists recognise he never has and never will put in the kind of shift expected of everyone else at the club. If he wants to make such outrageous claims without insulting our intelligence running would be a start. Not falling over and appealing for a free kick every time the ball is in the air near him would be another. Actually trying to get to balls that aren’t played directly to his feet or into his path would be yet another. Trying to win the ball back when he loses it instead of standing still looking bemused, that’s another. I don’t expect him to get back and defend all the time, or try to act like a midfield dynamo, but at least making it look like he’s trying, even at this late stage in his Leeds United days, would be a good start. You see this is what makes this whole business farcical, he is nowhere near being a decent footballer or team player, he has so much still to learn in both attitude and performance. He hasn’t earned to right to be treated in a special way, 70 L1 goals is not Hall of Fame territory, he has been the lucky recipient of 500 decent chances to get those goals, he is as profligate as he is selfish. He could no more be “100% committed” as he plots his exit as I could be diplomatic, and yet significant numbers of you lapped it all up without so much as a questioning murmur.
Before we leave the subject of Beckford to focus on other issues at this cross-roads we should remind ourselves that nothing has changed since December 30th other than Beckford has become even more egotistic. His goal at Old Trafford hasn’t made him any better than a L1 player, his passing hasn’t improved, his gob isn’t any less mouthy, his shots to goals ratio is still too high for even this league and he still isn’t worth more than £2m, 5 year contract or 3 months. No point writing something like this and being on the fence, despite what the club and the player may say I would like to see him gone before we play our next league game. If he isn’t gone then I am convinced our chances of securing an automatic promotion spot come May are less. Beckford, despite his goals, is a part burden to us; he affects how we play by the nature of our over-reliance on him and he has become in issues terms bigger than the sum of his contribution. His transfer request was an opportunity to take in some money, show confidence in the squad and to move on; we seem to have blown all three.
So what makes me concerned about our chances of promotion as we sit top of L1? Well the facts for a start. Firstly we are not the best team in L1 that is now clearly Norwich City who have recovered from a shaky start to be the form team and at the same time have strengthened well (irony alert whilst we spend 17 days of the transfer window worrying about one player others have gone out and added to squads!). I am willing, using my head not my heart, to bet Norwich City win the L1 title. But that leaves the second spot to play for and if one thing went right this weekend it was we narrowed down the number of possible automatic promotion clubs to 3. The problem is that the other contender, Charlton Athletic, have now lost the same number of games as us, a win today and they are 3 points behind us (hardly a mountain with 20 games to go is it). We have to go to the Valley, to Carrow Road, to St Mary’s, to the Galpharm. Anyone who says that we are cruising the division is a fool and anyone who doesn’t take seriously the prospect of us missing out should get real. It wouldn’t have been too bad if the post Old Trafford/Beckford hang-over happened against play-off contenders like Swindon Town or Colchester, both of which we play soon, but to slip up to Wycombe Wanderers and Exeter City!
At this point let’s cut down a small cul-de-sac called our cup competitions. Two games coming up against Carlisle for the dubious privilege of competing at Wembley, with all the expense involved for most, to win a cup we never wanted to enter in the first place and never want to defend. Notwithstanding getting to the final would mean the Norwich game being put back to late April, with all the 12 pointer connotations in that, it would also be a major distraction throughout the vital month of March. Personally there is only so many times I want to see 50K Leeds fans turn up to see their team under-perform on the biggest stage and I certainly have no desire to use up one of those on a JPT final. I would hope Grayson uses the B team in the two Carlisle games. In terms of the Spurs game, well apologies in advance for changing the whole tone of this piece by being positive but let’s go to White Hart Lane and go for it. Even Beckford could really enjoy himself there, he can witness at first-hand what a proper selfish striker looks like when he sees Defoe and with a bit of luck can use his arrogance to compete with the other Jermaine for man of the match, I’ll kiss his arse myself if his goals put Spurs out. But to be more realistic, even if we do pull off a second big PL scalp it has no bearing on the real prize of promotion.
If the blood isn’t boiling at me in some of you already this paragraph may well push some over the edge (but like I care, my blog, my opinions and I’m happy they are well founded). This site has already previously indicated that the “In Grayson we trust” mantra is just wrong and would be wrong even if his win ratio stayed at 60%+ forever. The reality is Grayson is a decent L1 and an ok CCC manager with a track record to match. He will have dips, he will make mistakes, he already is, not just with the over-indulgence of Beckford, but with other recent decisions that remind me of aspects of his managerial style that needs addressing. All real football thinkers were aware that the PL performance by a player in white on the Old Trafford pitch came from Howson and yet who has been benched in 2 of the last 3 league games? This is not because Jonny deserves to be benched, especially compared to Doyle, it’s because Grayson is about to repeat a mistake from last season, that of reigning in our creative side and reverting to a longer ball game, a mistake we practiced away at Leicester City last season and perfected at the New Den as an inferior Millwall kept us down. Now recognising Grayson’s mistakes is not the same as suggesting someone else should be making them, that would be silly, but it is an indication of the potential for further failure and disappointment.
Let’s look at Exeter as an example of where post Old Trafford Grayson could be reverting to preferred type. Note this sentence from the post match interviews (remember Grayson choose to pick Beckford but not Howson) “It was a very difficult pitch and we wanted to play as if it was a normal, dry pitch. We had to play the percentage football and we didn’t do that.” Now I accept I’m prejudice on this stuff, I can’t abide the thinking that says you play percentage football simply because your opponents are dire, long ball or play on a bog. To be fair, if you remember our away games at Colchester United, Southend United, MK Dons and Brentford that is exactly what we have done at times already this season (and to be even more fairer we got 8 points from those 4 games), but at Exeter we came unstuck. This seems another sign that Grayson is not fully confident in his own abilities and the squad. I’d be less worried if I thought the likes of Doyle, Hughes and Beckford, as the least talented parts of the first 11, were the likely victims of this cautiousness, alas its likely to be Kilkenny, Snodgrass and Becchio, our only real quality players, who might find themselves Howsoned! Norwich City don’t see the need to lower standards, they take their A game to anywhere and impose themselves on teams. What is Grayson doing except reminding us of his cautious streak? If that streak imposes itself on the team we will struggle to hold off the challenge of Charlton and will find ourselves in the familiar position of a stressful May and play-off paranoia.
Time for a second trip down a cul-de-sac and the question, does Grayson have funds for buying players or not? Bates, from the comfort of his holiday, has been promoting the incredulous claims that the club is healthy in finance and debt free. Meanwhile Grayson has only paid cash for one player in the year he has been with us. All the evidence, from the numerous loans signings and frees is that there is no transfer pot. Such a conclusion is entirely consistent with the real facts; a club that can’t find £6m to buy a £18m asset is hardly going to be sitting on a significant transfer fund. Yes you can say so far Grayson hasn’t needed to splash out but if we are to go up this season it would hardly hinder us to bring in another striker as cover or another decent midfield passer. All this club orientated subterfuge and double-talk just adds to the sense of a season turning badly from such a promising first half.
Any other clubs supporters could follow the premise I have set up and still have some confidence they could still go up, even via play-offs, they however don’t have the last 10 seasons to live with, where in everyone there has been some form of disappointment/disaster for Leeds United. We can’t divorce ourselves from that, pretending that isn’t going to happen again, it clearly can and inevitably will. It is my humble view that we will finish 3rd, based on squad and managerial abilities. Of course for us the Play-offs would not only be a potential disaster, they would set us up for another dose of ritual humiliation in front of the whole country. So what can be done to prevent this? Well not burying heads in the sand would be a start, accept that nothing is achieved yet and no-one is essential to achieving. We have all invested in getting out of L1, me as much as anyone but blind loyalty doesn’t help, a more realistic approach is required that doesn’t over-invest in Grayson or Beckford (or god forbid Bates).
Nobody who is a Leeds fan as long suffering as me comes to analysing the months ahead starting from a set position of misery. The conclusions I have come to reflect the fragile nature of our club at this time. If my analysis is interpreted as negative, so be it, if I thought we were going to walk the division, that Grayson was the next Wilkinson, and the club properly back on the up with stability, I would say so. The frustrating thing is on 2 out of 3 of those it wouldn’t take a lot to increase optimism, a bit more trust in our quality players and a little less in our selfish ones and a commitment from Grayson to put attacking intent above defensive caution and we could still do it (and to be clear I care not how we do it as long as we do). But that presumes all other things are equal and one thing the last 3 weeks have proved is that Leeds United remain the club most likely to shoot itself in the foot. Get in a supply of single malt whisky, stock up on valium and send the kids to grandmas, it’s going to be a heavy winter/spring.
