Leeds Out of the Cup

Article by Gwyn Hughes

This afternoon was probably the most demoralising experience this season, if ever. There probably have been plenty of other similar ones in the past but time has helped me get over them. As a Leeds fan for nearly 40 years I've become resilient to multiple disappointments. The most significant is the most recent one, it always is, and the most hurtful. By all accounts Leeds United were well and truly dumped out of the FA Cup today, humiliated by League 2 Rochdale. It is hard to believe that without the brilliance of Paddy Kenny it would have been so much worse that Brian McDermott's position as manager would surely have been in question. I take my hat off to Kenny and personally thank him for not making that scenario a possibility. It is tempting to lash out and demand the manager's head after such recurring inept performances but even after today's debacle I wouldn't want to lose Brian McDermott. He has done so much already for the club and has done all he can with the substandard personnel he has inherited.

I have to ask the question: why were Leeds made to look less than ordinary today? Is the standard of football in League 2 so high? Maybe it is, but it seemed to me that they approached the game better than Leeds. I tweeted that that I wish that Leeds could play like Rochdale. And they should, week in week out. If Rochdale play like that every week then I have to accept that they are a better football team than we are. And that is a hard fact to admit to! Again Matt Smith had chances to get early goals for Leeds and I'm convinced if he could have finished those chances off we would have won the game. We still would have conceded 2 goals of course but I would be a lot happier tonight with a 3-2 win away at Rochdale. I won't resort to knocking Smith because he is still learning to acclimatize to the Championship and I am still confident that he will become an asset for the team. But I fear that the demands that naturally go hand in hand with being a Leeds United player may overcome him and quickly loses favour with fans and subsequently the management. We may be resilient and fair fans but more defeats like this and we will be heading for a similar experience we had last season.

So many of the Leeds team have been out of form lately and the fact that so many of them are suffering simultaneously is creating shocking performances. Any team can have a player or two not performing as they should which most teams can get away with but not when seemingly the entire outfield players are off their game. It just highlights the dire displays even more. There will be a time soon when enough will be enough. I'm beginning to feel that relying on the current 11 (minus Kenny) is fast becoming untenable. Is it time to try a few more kids out? Could they do any worse? With 4 or 5 new quality players and our crop of young talent who I'm sure are hungry to impress, we may find a way out of this crisis and make us proud of our team again. Is the management brave enough to consider such a dramatic change?

At the end of the day this was a defeat in the cup and this kind of result regularly occurs in the FA Cup competition. But it was the manner of the defeat that will worry the management and the fans. Couldn't even score against a side two leagues down? Some fans on Twitter were scratching their heads why no substitutions were made until late on which by that time the game was lost. I do think Poleon should be given another chance, or at least a decent enough time to come on and do something. Very puzzling decisions today but I have to respect that the manager had good reasons for those that he made. His game plan just didn't work out. Spectacularly.

I'm not panicking...yet. But with every defeat Leeds suffer there will be even more pressure on the manager to get as many signings in as possible this month. And they have to be of a better calibre than the ones we usually get in transfer windows. I am even more convinced that Leeds will be a slow burner in regards to getting promotion. Unless we find out soon that David Haigh has found a billionaire somewhere, who has the sort of cash to splash out immediately and fast track Brian McDermott's vision of his ideal Leeds United team, we will have to rely on the sustainability plan that the owners have said all along that they were going to implement. If the latter happens then so be it. A sustainable plan for the return to the Premiership should prevent us from becoming a yo-yo club, a scenario I am not in favour of because I don't want to see my team struggling to compete in the Premiership. It also eliminates the possibility of being thrashed every other week. Look what happened to Fulham, Norwich and Tottenham in recent weeks.

But wouldn't it be great if there was a billionaire out there who couldn't wait to give our manager anything he wanted?

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