May 2021, the end of our first season back in the big time. 59 points in the ball bag, a 9th place finish secured and a club that looked like it was settling down for a lengthy stay at the top table.
The headlock that Marcelo Bielsa had over the club’s direction was both reassuring and exciting in equal measure. Fans would be forgiven for thinking that a ninth place finish could be improved upon. That was the thing with Bielsa. He inspired the belief that improvement was always possible, never resting on the glory of prior achievement or a lofty 9th place standing. This was the man after all who took Luke Ayling, Liam Cooper and Stuart Dallas from Championship day dreamers to the periphery’s of European qualification in a short few years. We slipped into a new world, and as we did we collectively healed as a fanbase and football club. No longer when I closed my eyes at night did I see the pulsating head of Steve Evans in my nightmares. Instead, I was dreaming of Marcelo. Oh how well I slept.
Fast forward just two years, to May 2023. Our fourth manager post Bielsa sits in the dugout for the final game of the season at home to Spurs. The blanket of security and vision that Marcelo had woven for us all had unravelled to such a degree that Sam Allardyce, yes the big Sam man was the guy tasked with clinging us up to safety. Not that Sam is to blame, it was always win win for him, but seeing him enter the technical area in his XXL Leeds jacket, you certainly would have to work hard to find a sadder physical indictment of how this club has been failed since that summer of 2021.
If you condensed the goings on of the last two years into a weekend, Leeds United went for some pints in the city on a balmy Friday evening in a secure and loving relationship. Come Monday morning they are wandering around Beeston in a booze soaked pair of jeans looking for a party with their new girlfriend. What we had was slashed so carelessly up against a wall, it is sometimes just best to not even think about it.
But the good news is there is hope, and despite the winds of uncertainty that are circling LS11, there are opportunities afoot. Gelhardt, Cresswell, Joseph, Gray and Gyabi to name a few, will be given a chance they might not have had. Others like Struijk, Summerville, and Wöber would add a useful blend to a championship squad, were they to stay.
Then, you have the old guard. Many will want a fresh start and a refurbished core, but there is an argument to be made for keeping the likes of Ayling, Cooper, Dallas and Bamford at the football club. As we are all too aware, the Championship is a back breaking beast that requires an immense effort to overcome. A major aspect of any successfull team that has managed to climb out of the second division shit is having the experience of players who have been there and done it, but also players you get the sense would break their backs to do it again. Those guy’s are hurting, and will not want their legacy at Elland Road to be tainted with relegation.
Take Liam Cooper, who is soon approaching ten years with Leeds United, most of which have been as captain at the heart of the defence. A player who has been subjected to unreasonable derision from the first day he arrived. Granted, he is not without his flaws, but yet 246 games later he is still here and still has qualities that will make Leeds United more forbidable next season. Liam Cooper is not the reason we were relagated this summer, yet he, Luke Ayling & Co are often the causalties that lie beneath the lightning rod that struck the club post Bielsa. For some they may represent a time that has come and gone and the temptation to rip it all up and start again is strong, and perhaps would work. But we need to come to terms with the fact we have missed the boat on our opportunity to push on and fill the squad with the type of players that signal vast progession. As things stand, I would rather go into next season with some seasoned Leeds United stalwarts in the squad rather than a complete overhaul into the unkown.
A sprinkling of the old guard experience could be fundamental to our success over the next two years. The perfect storm could be created between the old and new, the young and distrusted, the first timers and the last chancers. Has the makings of a decent weekend doesn’t it?
