Leeds United: A Must Win Game for McDermott

Article by e-Leeds Correspondent Jeremy Taylor

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The stage was set on Saturday for a good performance and a home-crowd rousing three points against Bolton Wanderers. Instead, just under 29,000 fans saw lightening strike for a third time, with McDermott’s team taken apart by a Bolton side who have found travelling difficult this term. Fortress Elland Road has seemingly become as random a field as any other as far as having any advantage for the home team. To quote a certain Forrest Gump, Leeds United are like a box of chocolates, apart from the fact that a box of chocolates will usually be filled with pleasant surprises.

Naturally, the wave of frustration tore through social network sites with shouts for the manager to be sacked. Again.

After all, it’s his job and his responsibility to win football matches, end of story.

It’s all well and good sorting out the training ground and the scouting system and the pictures on the wall and the tea ladies equipment but what’s the point if the team you put out plays dreadful football and gets routinely humiliated by lesser opposition. If managers were judged on the sound-bytes they put out, buying pints for the fans and managing the ‘football club’ then McDermott would be up there with the greats, but of course there’s more, or less, to it than that.

It comes down to winning football matches.

It comes down to saying things to footballers that subsequently drives them on to play to the best of their ability. It’s about assessing the players in front of you on the training pitch and formulating a strategy to beat the opposition.

Somewhere, something is going very wrong for Brian McDermott because seemingly talented footballers are playing for him like they have concrete boots on and a collective migraine.

Earlier in the season, McDermott was defended by talk of a poor, ageing squad who know their days are numbered, and players such as Stephen Warnock and Michael Brown fall into that category.

However, looking at the squad that were humiliated on Saturday, in spite of there being a vociferous home crowd willing them on, it was filled with footballers that have everything to play for. They should have been trying to prove their respective points to whoever it is that is deciding their future and wanting to win.

Passion and fight can often be an able substitute for talent, but Leeds showed neither, and that’s unforgiveable. Something is wrong at Elland Road and it’s not the takeover and it’s not Brian’s lack of financial support.

Ask McDermott and he’ll probably repeat that the lack of stability brought on by the protracted ownership situation is serving as a distraction. In actual fact though, it’s likely the ongoing saga is the very thing that’s keeping him in a job this week.

After the fiasco of his last sacking, Cellino won’t and can’t make the same mistake twice. Technically it’s up to GFH to make any such decision, but of course they won’t move a muscle either. They don’t care about such things anymore, and are just patiently waiting for the rubber stamp to come down on their deal, so they can re-coup their cash and disappear into the sun again.

As ever, Leeds’ chairman is totally absent in his input. Managing Director David Haigh is equally distant from events, only surfacing to offer out awkward smiles from over the shoulder of Massimo Cellino, although he won’t have been smiling at 5pm on Saturday one doubts.

McDermott claimed to have had a good conversation with the owner immediately after the match and while the general gist will have been further lambasting of the players, he surely knows that his own position has become infinitely more perilous following that performance. It’s somewhat ironic that next up is Reading, the very side that McDermott has cited over and over, like some sort of reference or proof of his credentials to get Leeds out of the mediocre swamp they are stuck in. It’s almost cruel that they could be the club to deliver the final blow to a wounded and increasingly strained position.

Still, as things stand the only way McDermott will leave the club before March 18th is if he resigns, and he’s just not that kind of chap. Nothing drastic will happen until Eleonora Sport Ltd is fully in charge, and even then Mr Cellino may prove to be calmer and more tactical than his reputation suggests.

He may decide that next season is to be the season of progress and change, leaving Brian to battle on until the summer. It would certainly prove a frugal tactic for the Italian based on McDermott’s contractual situation.

Leeds fans can certainly expect wholesale changes from a player perspective when the season draws to a close. While the fact that the current crop are playing for their futures seems to be totally lost on them, it certainly isn’t on the owners in waiting or any of the fans who pay to watch the dross being put out. Other than the ever-green Ross McCormack and the prodigal talents of Sam Byram and Alex Mowatt, it’s hard to see anyone else on the pitch on Saturday being considered a real asset to the club. That’s not to say the rest are on their way though. Wooton, Pearce, Smith and Luke Murphy will surely be given a chance to save their Leeds careers with another season but they have some serious improving to do. The others though will surely be playing elsewhere next season. Tom Lees has always struggled in the Championship, Austin has simply collapsed as a footballer over the past six months and Lee Peltier has deteriorated equally since he joined the club.

While the players that have particularly underperformed were not McDermott signings, there’s only arguably Matt Smith that can hold his head up and say he’s fulfilled some promise. Murphy is struggling to adapt to this level, Wooton can’t get in the team in spite of us having a defence every bit as robust as a wet newspaper and as for the recent wing additions, they don’t even bear comment anymore.

Still, although a fair and a satisfying exercise, bashing individuals will never actually help anything so it’s back to the imminent visit of Reading and the hope that the trend of performing better as the underdog continues. It’s hard to see how another heavy defeat will result in McDermott staying in his job for the next match, but equally all is not lost quite yet.

Win the match and all eyes will be on the next game and hope will return. After all, even as the tide of support for Brian continues to disappear, he’s still a likeable person and the will of the fans remains for him to succeed at Leeds. He just needs to get on with it and quickly.

The axe may well be poised already and waiting for the right time to drop, but he can still salvage dignity and end on a high.

Or perhaps he can actually begin the run of victories “just like at Reading” and somehow still have a job in August. Stranger things have happened, especially at Leeds United.

@jezaldinho

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