Welcome to today’s daily Leeds United comment column which looks at the game tomorrow.
I’m not a fan of previews of games, they tend to be speculative and uninformative, rarely go beyond a basic format and I certainly never intended they would be part of the Clarkeonenil mix. However I have decided to make an exception on this occasion for tomorrow’s home game with Oldham Athletic for two reasons. 1) Because of the present form dip, 2) to see if I can bring a more “hardened glare” to the concept. Whilst there are more glamour games to anti-preview given the context their probably isn’t a more pivotal one.
Oldham Athletic are a football club that despite a lot of contact over the years remains close to the memory of the older Leeds fan, wet, windy and predominantly irritant days out in the 80’s and 90’s. The club itself is one a low point, the memories of PL status and FA Cup semi-finals long gone. They have a decent lower league manager in David Penney but he is hamstrung by resources issues. The whole country could see (via the web highlights) when we beat them in the first round of this year’s FA Cup how decrepit a side they were, on the field and off. The knocking down of one side of the ground, well in advance of securing the monies needed to fund a new one, showed a club in potentially terminal decline.
Mention of the new stadium brings me to one of those ridiculous arguments you can guarantee in previews: the “old grounds are better than new boxes” discussion. Let’s be clear, the “new Boundary Park” whenever it appears could either be as feeble as the Walkers and the Riverside or as impressive as the City of Manchester or the Emirates, it matters not, the original Boundary Park is about as bad as it gets, facilities are a disgrace to farm animals never mind people, and have been for decades! Some would suggest that is reflected in the team, without Pawel Abbott they look a poor side and Sean Gregan’s presence reflects perfectly their limited ambition.
Having spent the season bombarded by those over-playing our chances of going up automatically and walking the division I find myself concerned about a game against poor opponents whilst Leeds sit second in the league. A little early in my book to be extrapolating the last 8 games to mean disappointment in May but even so all the signs are not good. Their remains the rather obsessive reliance on all things Beckford that operates so long he is an automatic pick when fit to slightly blacken the sky (and let’s not forget the permanent black cloud called Bates). Grayson could have done more with the present squad in recent games and certainly played the tactics against Orient and Brighton better. If I’m being harsh about his tactical judgment I am content to be so, still concerned about him when the pressure is on and now we have similar evidence to the end of last season about his instinctive cautiousness to the point of negativity.
Grayson must now come under specific scrutiny from us all, don’t care how many plaudits others have given it’s clearly time to bury the IGWT nonsense and focus on how he intends to change the present dip. Doyle or Howson or Kilkenny is an example of where he has to make difficult decisions and not fudge by picking all three (for me Doyle is the obvious choice for leaving out). Obviously the continued speculation looming large Beckford’s body language will be closely analysed and momentum is brewing asking why Grella doesn’t get starts (although Becchio isn’t who I’d drop for him). Personally I hope also to see Parker back in if fully fit to deal with the left back problem or to get some sort of run out soon if not.
The problem with this game is it changes nothing if we win, we should be beating sides like Oldham at Elland Road as a matter of course and all a win does is prevent us dropping out of the automatic promotion places. However should we fail to garner 3 points the feeling of depression around Elland Road and us all will inevitability grow. Grayson needs to start thinking the unthinkable, that he might not have the players or the ability to go up automatically and therefore might want to try and remember his experience of taking Blackpool up 3 years ago the hard way.
