More luck than Lucky Lou from Lucksville.
It can no longer be denied, Grayson has the pox of the gods.
Regular readers will be aware my respect for Simon Grayson is not what you would describe as intense. In reality I tolerate rather than appreciate him having always felt his nay on 50% win ratio from nearly 150 league games is a manifestation of something else than his ability. The Ipswich Town game topped up my prejudices around that and then some.
Recently a lot of cyber talk has been around his so called impending removal from the manager’s job at Elland Road with the assumption being Bates and he are no longer close (although Grayson’s somewhat banal witterings on the Howson transfer don’t support that). This site sticks to its long held position that there is no point removing Grayson so long as its Bates’s prerogative to appoint his replacement so let us leave that behind straight away. No what I want to focus on in this Monday Talking Points is the almost Zen-like balance between Simon Grayson’s faults and his never ending good luck.
The last two home games have seen the team play badly, get lucky with the opposition’s sending’s off and then get lucky again with late goals. The comedy of errors of the Ipswich game however shouldn’t disguise something fundamental; Grayson is losing what little tactical plot he had. What possessed him to play Mikael “no league goals in 4 seasons’” Forssell from the start only he can explain? Clearly his relationship with Becchio is stained, probably never to be mended, but even so as a decision it stank of mediocrity and desperation. Equally his reward to Aiden White for agreeing to sign a new contract of being dropped has to constitute the worst man management so far of this still early year (and will take some beating).
The 70 minutes of shoddy play and long balls to nowhere were littered with examples of Grayson’s limitations. What is the point of whizzing fast and long balls over McCormack’s head exactly, where was the advantage of Townsend and Snodgrass being denied possession then? Equally puzzling is the decision to play a central midfielder in Zac Thompson at right-back, he looks so out of position it was almost painful, yes he can carry the ball a bit but his defensive positioning is woeful. I can see the logic of dropping Connolly but please Thompson is not going to play in that position for the rest of the season without becoming a Collins type liability. If we haven’t signed a genuine right-back by the close of the transfer window we might as well go 3-5-2 for the duration. I don’t like criticising young players so I will assume the issue is one of managerial competence rather than player limitations!
The decision of a post Howson club captain is an important one, there is no reason why a goalkeeper can’t be it but that requires a man prepared to stand up and accept responsibility. If Lonergan’s response to his own Sprake style blunder is anything to go by all we have for a captain is a blame redistributing accident already happening! I know that for some reason parts of the support like our signing from Preston reserves but already he has add a few games where his erratic confidence has been found wanting. I think it is a bad reflection on Grayson when he makes captain a player who will be lucky to be playing if his 1.5 goals conceded a game ratio continues (for the record Rachubka’s is 1.8 including the Blackpool mare and Schmichel’s from the whole of last season and with a sieve for a defence in front of him was 1.3!).
Snoddy was torrid until the sending off, his body language as poor as it could be. McCormack was equally tepid. Given that between the two of them they are responsible for most of our goals and assists that is a sorry state of affairs. Snodgrass’s issues are easy to understand, he wants his transfer to the PL and he wants it now, McCormack’s seem to be about tactics and particularly the requirement from the manager that he should forget his is a winger/forward and pretend his is Billy Paynter only with more effort!
When the Ipswich back 5 decided to commit collective suicide they added to the sense Grayson is a lucky manager. The substitution of Forssell and Townsend (will that lad ever get a cross over?) for Becchio and White at least suggested he understood he had made an error? Well I’m not sure, firstly the game didn’t change at that moment, it required an abomination of a mistake from our ex loanee goalie (they way McCarthy laid there still clutching the ball was stunning) and secondly he really had no other options, Bruce and Brown were never going to be used in a losing situation. Speaking of Brown, what a classic example of Grayson’s consistent ability to import useless, over-paid, aged footballers for no discernable reason. What does it say about Brown and Grayson that Delph had to play the defensive midfield role? It tells me a lot and it looks like Delph will be lucky not to suffer from the Livermore/Bannan style curse before Grayson has finished with him!
Even with the introduction of White our defence looked suspect and would have suffered against a side with more attacking flair than that toothless Ipswich Town side. Lee’s was having his worst game in a white shirt; O’Dea just didn’t seem to be able to read situations. Once White slotted in where Pugh had been the average age of the back four dropped to 21! Basically absolutely no experience and thus no leadership, what a Grayson manufactured mess!
Obviously you can overdo Grayson analysis sometimes, look for things that don’t exist. I don’t recall Grayson been quite as permanently on his feet during games in the last 3 years as he was Saturday but maybe I had missed that aspect previously. I really don’t think he needs to add meaningless mouthing to his bad eye for a signing, his banality in interviews, his lack of tactical variety and his inability to settle on a first 11 (not to mention his player turnover and falling out ratio). Grayson is still lucky in the reputational sense, only this weekend the Football League paper did a pap piece on him and it is still a wonderment to me that his walking out ability, jobs and other half’s, is not allowed to dilute his goodwill pool.
In the end, and I repeat there is no point discussing alternatives at this juncture, the best piece of luck is the league table. I may believe we won’t make the play-off but to be so close to the top 6 after 8 out of the last 10 league performances being average to poor is the ultimate sign of the 8 leaf clover Grayson must have in his wallet. It is rumored Bates had decided Grayson was gone after the Barnsley game, maybe some of Grayson’s luck will come our way and he will still be at Elland Road when the old curmudgeon isn’t. If that does happen he will need more than luck to survive 3 months beyond that, he will need to up his game on all those frailties luck is covering up!
I largely agree with all this but:
Playing Delph at DCM isn’t that crazy, he was doing it for Villa. He also came out after the game and eulogised the team and said he wants to stay all year.
Similarly, Zack Thompson is a right back as much as he is a CM. He’s played both for equal periods in his (short) career. I agree he isn’t experienced enough to be in the starting XI, but SG has clearly lost faith in Connolly (not entirely sure why – the man was captain of Derby…). Loan (Lichaj?) needed.
Captain: it should be Snodgrass, no questions for me. He is our best and longest-serving first teamer. He always gives 100%.
Andros Townsend = Can’tCross Townsend
Forssell has apparently been good in the reserves but, other than as cover for Somma, I can’t understand why he is even at the club, let alone the starting XI.
In short I totally agree we need a leader on the field. Someone to bark orders, get the ball from defence and move it to the wings. Someone in the centre of the midfield. I don’t even think Howson was perfectly suited to this role. I think it needs to be an anchoring DCM. Someone with tenacity and Leeds in his heart. Someone like… Alan Smith.
We shold get clinghan from coventry maybe offer 1.5 mill and brown to get him?
I’ve been quiet lately as I suffer from the “hoping for the best” syndrome, as many Leeds fans do, but I see things when I’m at Leeds that are plain wrong. I managed, captained and played for years to a decent level,I really do have some idea! The Leeds fans who write on these things think we just say this stuff to cause trouble….wrong!! They were abysmal on Saturday, it’s not just the obvious either, there’s loads of wierd shit going on. Players are sulky, angry, lost and at times plain bloody useless. I reckon if anyone with any brains or psychological awareness was allowed in the dressing room, it would be as plain as the nose on your face. Something doesn’t smell right. Professional well paid men CANNOT be that bad, it was like they’d just met at a bus stop and been asked to play. How can Grayson get it so wrong?
I love all the Grayson naysayers who berate his tactics, his substitutions, his poor coaching also his lack of skill in analysing players! Yet his record stands with any manager outside the Premier League & most of those in the PL. With the news breaking that SG had a total let me empahsize again TOTAL budget of 9.5M for transfers, wages, NI and any other fees this season it is hardly shocking that the guy has to rummage the bins for castoffs or frees, or get in castoff loanees because the LUFC wage/contract policy is so disfunctional nobody with any real ambition would ever sign for us. Add to that the propensity for the club to sell or loose our best players is careless at best criminal at worst. Maybe another charge against SG would be his inability to predict that the euro was going to devalue so after Gradel was sold from underneath him it was his fault that the monies received are 7% less than anticipated, or maybe someone else maybe has to carry that blame. My last comment is if you pay peanuts you get monkeys & SG seems to have an ability for all his supposed faults to successfully get results out of these monkeys, with quite a few failures addmittedly but is that his failing or the constraints he works under.
Sound like a …. (Ed, just a polite reminder that this site gives not one dot what you or others think, it is not a forum or a democracy, anymore personalised comments and spam will operate. The rest of your contribution is kept because I’m in a good mood this morning)….. Simon Grayson is human and not everyone agrees with his tactics, but most knowledgeable critics recognise that he is doing a fantastic job on a shoe string.
I understand all the anti-Bates stuff, giving Grayson nothing to work with, but my point is this. Even if he got players in from League 2, even if they’re past their best, they should all be able to run around a bit, and use their eyes and ears to work out how to play, and tackle ( hard preferably), and sweat and fight, you know, all the things they’re supposed to do as footballers, assuming GRAYSON has told them exactly what to do. We can assume GRAYSON has done that, can’t we? BEFORE he even signs them,(even if on loan?), before he sends them out to hopefully play in front of us?? This IS NOT HAPPENING!…They look clueless. Long ball, no idea, strangers on the pitch. Graysons fault as manager. No one else involved, just Grayson. He makes it worse by trying to cover it up, badly. He’s lost it, he’s scared of his own players.