Leeds United: Cellino can stop the suffering

Article by e-Leeds Correspondent Gwyn Hughes

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When it comes to Leeds United these days there are two words that have popped into my head which perfectly describes their current season; circus and rollercoaster. Some may argue that this has always been the case for our club which indicates that we have had chaotic clowns in control rather than a visionary ringmaster. Now that we may be on the cusp of having a person such as Cellino as an owner, isn't it typical that his take-over is under the most unprecedented investigation that the Football League have ever conducted? Picking the Pope was an easier process than this! Now that he is likely to be passed as a fit and proper person they have gone out of their way now to find other dirt on his past, in the guise of avoiding to pay tax on a boat that he doesn't own. If they continue to adopt this strategy the Football League will try and find out if he was guilty of truancy in order to stop him taking over at Leeds!

The longer the time goes the more suspicious I become. It feels like the Spanish Inquisition sometimes and I don't want Cellino to lose patience and change his mind on taking over. To be fair to him he has put up with a lot of poking around and has always been confident that he will take over our club. His actions so far are just what the club needed though I do fear what will happen if he is not allowed to become our owner. He has sunk millions into the club already and will want that back if he returns to Miami for good. Effectively he will become the biggest creditor of Leeds United who will not be able to pay him back unless the club finds another Cellino. This will plunge Leeds into another financial catastrophe and years more in the doldrums.

Since the Ridsdale collapse Leeds have been run by a succession of faceless corporate individuals, headed for a number of these years in the wilderness by the passionless Ken Bates, who have acted with such apathy and pursued ineffective strategies that we find ourselves in our present predicament. In all these years there has been no drive to make Leeds great again, just to do enough for us to survive but stagnate. As fans we have been urging the club to do great things but in reality there was no chance in hell of our team progressing to the Premiership (and staying there) which is what we all have been hoping to happen. Seriously, how do we expect such progression when the conditions of growth have been virtually non-existent? In fact, I think under the circumstances Leeds have done the best they can considering that we have had no serious money to spend and been owned by non-progressive owners. Such a situation produces days like yesterday.

Another shocking result at Elland Road when Bolton Wanderers gave Leeds another humiliating result. How can a team who were considered unlucky not to win at QPR only a week ago succumb to a club who have been struggling all season by this kind of margin? Leeds don't make sense these days. I have given up predicting what they will do against teams. I had high hopes of a 3-1 win yesterday after the performance against the mighty QPR, but I am already dreading Reading on Wednesday night. There is something seriously wrong when we have a dangerous strike pairing of Ross McCormack and Connor Wickham who it would appear were ineffective yesterday. For Bolton to cut us up and score 5 goals suggest to me that the midfield must have been non-operational again, and the defence comatose. I did not have the heart to watch the highlights, but I can easily visualise how it happened.

I've never liked roller-coasters in real life and I equally hate the emotional one that I am experiencing now. Yesterday's performance is a playback to the Sheffield Wednesday debacle which I contributed to the instability and uncertainty of the Sports Capital take-over saga. Is the Cellino bid in serious jeopardy and is it affecting the players on the pitch? I find it difficult to accept that this is the sole reason because we had put in some decent performances away from home lately. I am more likely to believe that we have players in the team that cannot perform effectively on a regular basis, which explains the okay to good performances and the odd atrocious ones. The solution is an easy one. Get Cellino in and we will see better players arriving at Leeds and then we can see for ourselves whether the problem is with the manager rather than the players he has at his disposal. Easier said than done as it appears that the Football League are seemingly trying their best to stop Cellino taking over Leeds.

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