Guardian 1/2/12
Simon Grayson had his faults but Leeds fans question timing of sacking
Simon Grayson was sacked the day after the transfer window shut, so his successor must now rely on more loan signings
Leeds United's announcement on Wednesday that they had dispensed with the services of their manager, Simon Grayson, and his coaching staff feels like it has been coming for the past two months. That the decision was taken following a 4-1 home defeat by Birmingham City was understandable but the fact that it came a day after the transfer window closed does not seem like a coincidence to many Leeds fans. As one wag put it, it's like getting divorced on Christmas Eve and remarried on Boxing Day so you save yourself the expense of presents.
Leeds's transfer dealings over the past month, selling the captain, Johnny Howson, to Norwich City and trumpeting the arrivals of players brought in only on loan, look like a microcosm of the way the club have been run over the past few years, taking one season at a time with no obvious long-term strategy in place. Howson is the fourth player in the past two years, following Jermaine Beckford, Bradley Johnson and Neil Kilkenny, whose contracts have been allowed to enter their final year without successful negotiations for extensions. All four have left, and been sent on their way with typically ungracious comments about their motivation and ability from the chairman, Ken Bates, who is now searching for a new manager. On Wednesday nightNeil Warnock was the odds-on favourite to fill the vacancy.
The income from player sales, Bates has repeatedly said, have gone into "Simon's pot" but the only signing Leeds made on deadline day was of the young Tottenham Hotspur full-back Adam Smith, who became, remarkably, Grayson's 33rd loan signing in 37 months at Elland Road. Since December 2008 Leeds have received, by Bates's own reckoning, £2m for Howson, £1.7m for Max Gradel, more than £1m for Kasper Schmeichel and £8m for Fabian Delph, as well as compensation from Manchester City for youth players Louis Hutton and George Swann and from Everton for Luke Garbutt.
The players Grayson has been allowed to pay a fee for during that period include "undisclosed" sums for Andy Lonergan, Alex Bruce, Adam Clayton, Ross McCormack, Leigh Bromby and Danny Pugh. Even a liberal estimate of the prices paid for them suggests that Leeds have made a profit on transfer dealings of at least £8m. That money has not been reinvested in the squad. On a turnover in 2010 of more than £27m, which is sure to have increased since promotion from League One, Grayson was given a budget of £9.5m to fund wages, agent fees and net purchases.
Meanwhile, the East Stand of a ground the club do not own has undergone a significant redevelopment, creating a museum, two function rooms and 24 corporate hospitality boxes, part of Bates's stated intention to turn Elland Road into a 365-day-a-year revenue-generating operation. Plans for a hotel are still in the offing. This is part of Bates's "sustainability" project, "rebuilding Leeds brick-by-brick" in contrast to the spendthrift recklessness of Peter Ridsdale's chairmanship. More graphically, in between tasteless digs at the Chinese Olympic team and calls for a tougher penal and social security policy for the UK, the Monaco-based tax exile has described Leeds's predicament thus: "In an age of instant gratification Leeds United is having a long, drawn-out affair with plenty of foreplay and slow arousal."
The arousal has certainly been slow and those who have complained about the club's once opaque ownership structure or asked for further investment in its principal asset, the football operation, have been dismissed as "idiots", "dissidents", "sickpots" and "morons".
For all that, though, Grayson cannot be absolved of responsibility for Leeds's tendency to ship goals. OK, he has been managing Leeds without the resources to compete in the transfer market. Moreover he has had to take on relegated Premier League clubs with budgets bloated by parachute payments and has lost several of his better players because they cannot agree terms with the chief executive officer, Shaun Harvey, but his tactics and consistency of selection, in particular the organisation of his defence since the club defeated Manchester United in the FA Cup in January 2010, have been shambolic.
Up to that victory Leeds under Grayson had conceded 32 goals in 47 league games. After it they have let in 143 in 97, including a humiliating 5-2 thrashing by Barnsley, losing 6-4 at Elland Road to Preston after being 4-1 up, being thumped 5-0 at home by Blackpool – and 4-1 again by Barnsley and Birmingham City in his last six games. After the latest Barnsley tonking Grayson, shaking with frustration, said that some of his players would never play for him again, but all but one did. He repeatedly blasted them for their naivety but didn't have the options available to make changes nor the training-ground nous to prevent it reoccurring.
On Tuesday night he sent out a back four of Zac Thompson, a 19-year old central midfielder at right-back, a centre-back pairing of the promising Tom Lees, 21, and the on-loan Celtic centre-half Darren O'Dea, 24, with Aidan White, 20, at left-back. Grayson said after they had been beaten four times by Birmingham's 6ft 8in Nikola Zigic that it was "men against boys", pointing out in mitigation that Zigic was on £50,000 a week. Little, though, was done to stop the crosses coming in to him and too often he drifted towards Thompson to tower over him and head on goal.
Strangely, though, in terms of performance it was the best Leeds had played for months in the first half, pinging the ball forward and exploiting the ability of the excellent Robert Snodgrass to get past defenders and find his forwards. Even with his depleted ranks, Grayson's teams have usually created chances – putting them away and stopping them going in at the other end have been the fatal weakness. Another criticism is an indecisiveness with making substitutions when the team was behind and his volte-face over players he had signed, especially Bruce, Bromby and Paul Connolly, to whom he gave lengthy runs, exiled to the reserves and then recalled before binning them again. Either he could not make up his mind, or could not afford to pay them off and returned to them as a last resort. Either way he shares the blame.The other factor is the sense of disillusionment in the crowd, down below 20,000 yesterday.
Charging top-six Premier League prices for mid-table purdah has had its inevitable consequences even without the chairman's lack of charm offensive. By bringing in someone new now, the former Chelsea owner will hope for a bounce that divides the increasingly vocal "Bates Out" demonstrators. If it is someone who can organise an inexperienced and unbalanced squad then in this absurd division Leeds improbably still have a chance of making the play-offs, which Bates and his fellow director Peter Lorimer maintain is a minimum requirement this season. Whoever it is will have to be willing to carry the weight of expectation from board and supporters with only the emergency loan market at his disposal. That was Grayson's primary resource and, like most of his 33 borrowed men, he ultimately paid the price of his transitory status.
BBC 1/2/2012
Simon Grayson sacked as manager by Leeds United
Leeds United have sacked manager Simon Grayson after three years in charge at Elland Road.
Youth team boss Neil Redfearn has been placed in temporary control of first-team affairs.
The former Leeds trainee's final match as United boss saw the club slump to a 4-1 defeat at home to promotion rivals Birmingham City .
Former Sheffield United and Queens Park Rangers boss Neil Warnock has been linked with the post.
Tuesday's defeat by Birmingham leaves Leeds in 10th place in the Championship, three points off the play-offs.
Chairman Ken Bates said he had no choice but to dismiss the 42-year-old and has hit back at critics who claim he did not offer Grayson financial support.
"We have to acknowledge the previous three seasons Simon got us to the League One play-offs then promotion and then we finished seventh [in the Championship] and we have backed him all the way," Bates told Yorkshire Radio .
"We spent over £12m on wages so why are people blaming me for the recent results?
"All the money we have received has gone back into the squad. The manager decides who he wants to buy, we as the board just pay for it. I only said no once."
Grayson left Blackpool to take over at Elland Road in December 2008 following the sacking of Gary McAllister .
He led the club to promotion from League One in his first full season in charge before finishing in seventh place in the second tier last season.
Chief executive Shaun Harvey told the club website: "We have 18 games to go this season and are still within touching distance of the play-offs.
"We felt with the transfer window closed we needed to make the change at this time in the belief that a new managerial team will be able to get more out of the existing squad of players and make the difference."
Former Leeds defender and Radio 5 live pundit Danny Mills believes the availability of Warnock, who was sacked by QPR in January , may have influenced chairman Ken Bates's decision to relieve Grayson of his duties.
He said: "I think so for definite [Warnock's availability influencing the decision]. He got sacked for QPR because he is basically known as a Championship manager who will get you up. That's what he has done time and time again.
"That has probably swung Ken Bates's decision."
Grayson at Leeds
• Played - 169
• Won - 84
• Drawn - 40
• Lost - 45
Mills also believes results will have played a crucial part in Grayson's sacking, but reckons that the Championship club will struggle to compete with the bigger sides in the division because of their financial situation.
"It has come as little bit of a surprise, but just before Christmas Ken Bates came out and said that if Grayson does not turn results around and get Leeds up towards promotion then his job would be under review.
"Leeds are a big club in terms of tradition but in monetary terms they are not. They have been out of the Premier League for a long time [since 2004]. They do not have the parachute payments that other clubs have.
"Leeds cannot compete at that end, 30,000 people in a week does not help you with that."
After leaving Leeds in 1992, Grayson went on to play for Leicester City, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers and Blackpool.
He took over as manager at Bloomfield Road in 2005, succeeding Colin Hendry.
Simon Grayson had his faults but Leeds fans question timing of sacking
Simon Grayson was sacked the day after the transfer window shut, so his successor must now rely on more loan signings
Leeds United's announcement on Wednesday that they had dispensed with the services of their manager, Simon Grayson, and his coaching staff feels like it has been coming for the past two months. That the decision was taken following a 4-1 home defeat by Birmingham City was understandable but the fact that it came a day after the transfer window closed does not seem like a coincidence to many Leeds fans. As one wag put it, it's like getting divorced on Christmas Eve and remarried on Boxing Day so you save yourself the expense of presents.
Leeds's transfer dealings over the past month, selling the captain, Johnny Howson, to Norwich City and trumpeting the arrivals of players brought in only on loan, look like a microcosm of the way the club have been run over the past few years, taking one season at a time with no obvious long-term strategy in place. Howson is the fourth player in the past two years, following Jermaine Beckford, Bradley Johnson and Neil Kilkenny, whose contracts have been allowed to enter their final year without successful negotiations for extensions. All four have left, and been sent on their way with typically ungracious comments about their motivation and ability from the chairman, Ken Bates, who is now searching for a new manager. On Wednesday nightNeil Warnock was the odds-on favourite to fill the vacancy.
The income from player sales, Bates has repeatedly said, have gone into "Simon's pot" but the only signing Leeds made on deadline day was of the young Tottenham Hotspur full-back Adam Smith, who became, remarkably, Grayson's 33rd loan signing in 37 months at Elland Road. Since December 2008 Leeds have received, by Bates's own reckoning, £2m for Howson, £1.7m for Max Gradel, more than £1m for Kasper Schmeichel and £8m for Fabian Delph, as well as compensation from Manchester City for youth players Louis Hutton and George Swann and from Everton for Luke Garbutt.
The players Grayson has been allowed to pay a fee for during that period include "undisclosed" sums for Andy Lonergan, Alex Bruce, Adam Clayton, Ross McCormack, Leigh Bromby and Danny Pugh. Even a liberal estimate of the prices paid for them suggests that Leeds have made a profit on transfer dealings of at least £8m. That money has not been reinvested in the squad. On a turnover in 2010 of more than £27m, which is sure to have increased since promotion from League One, Grayson was given a budget of £9.5m to fund wages, agent fees and net purchases.
Meanwhile, the East Stand of a ground the club do not own has undergone a significant redevelopment, creating a museum, two function rooms and 24 corporate hospitality boxes, part of Bates's stated intention to turn Elland Road into a 365-day-a-year revenue-generating operation. Plans for a hotel are still in the offing. This is part of Bates's "sustainability" project, "rebuilding Leeds brick-by-brick" in contrast to the spendthrift recklessness of Peter Ridsdale's chairmanship. More graphically, in between tasteless digs at the Chinese Olympic team and calls for a tougher penal and social security policy for the UK, the Monaco-based tax exile has described Leeds's predicament thus: "In an age of instant gratification Leeds United is having a long, drawn-out affair with plenty of foreplay and slow arousal."
The arousal has certainly been slow and those who have complained about the club's once opaque ownership structure or asked for further investment in its principal asset, the football operation, have been dismissed as "idiots", "dissidents", "sickpots" and "morons".
For all that, though, Grayson cannot be absolved of responsibility for Leeds's tendency to ship goals. OK, he has been managing Leeds without the resources to compete in the transfer market. Moreover he has had to take on relegated Premier League clubs with budgets bloated by parachute payments and has lost several of his better players because they cannot agree terms with the chief executive officer, Shaun Harvey, but his tactics and consistency of selection, in particular the organisation of his defence since the club defeated Manchester United in the FA Cup in January 2010, have been shambolic.
Up to that victory Leeds under Grayson had conceded 32 goals in 47 league games. After it they have let in 143 in 97, including a humiliating 5-2 thrashing by Barnsley, losing 6-4 at Elland Road to Preston after being 4-1 up, being thumped 5-0 at home by Blackpool – and 4-1 again by Barnsley and Birmingham City in his last six games. After the latest Barnsley tonking Grayson, shaking with frustration, said that some of his players would never play for him again, but all but one did. He repeatedly blasted them for their naivety but didn't have the options available to make changes nor the training-ground nous to prevent it reoccurring.
On Tuesday night he sent out a back four of Zac Thompson, a 19-year old central midfielder at right-back, a centre-back pairing of the promising Tom Lees, 21, and the on-loan Celtic centre-half Darren O'Dea, 24, with Aidan White, 20, at left-back. Grayson said after they had been beaten four times by Birmingham's 6ft 8in Nikola Zigic that it was "men against boys", pointing out in mitigation that Zigic was on £50,000 a week. Little, though, was done to stop the crosses coming in to him and too often he drifted towards Thompson to tower over him and head on goal.
Strangely, though, in terms of performance it was the best Leeds had played for months in the first half, pinging the ball forward and exploiting the ability of the excellent Robert Snodgrass to get past defenders and find his forwards. Even with his depleted ranks, Grayson's teams have usually created chances – putting them away and stopping them going in at the other end have been the fatal weakness. Another criticism is an indecisiveness with making substitutions when the team was behind and his volte-face over players he had signed, especially Bruce, Bromby and Paul Connolly, to whom he gave lengthy runs, exiled to the reserves and then recalled before binning them again. Either he could not make up his mind, or could not afford to pay them off and returned to them as a last resort. Either way he shares the blame.The other factor is the sense of disillusionment in the crowd, down below 20,000 yesterday.
Charging top-six Premier League prices for mid-table purdah has had its inevitable consequences even without the chairman's lack of charm offensive. By bringing in someone new now, the former Chelsea owner will hope for a bounce that divides the increasingly vocal "Bates Out" demonstrators. If it is someone who can organise an inexperienced and unbalanced squad then in this absurd division Leeds improbably still have a chance of making the play-offs, which Bates and his fellow director Peter Lorimer maintain is a minimum requirement this season. Whoever it is will have to be willing to carry the weight of expectation from board and supporters with only the emergency loan market at his disposal. That was Grayson's primary resource and, like most of his 33 borrowed men, he ultimately paid the price of his transitory status.
BBC 1/2/2012
Simon Grayson sacked as manager by Leeds United
Leeds United have sacked manager Simon Grayson after three years in charge at Elland Road.
Youth team boss Neil Redfearn has been placed in temporary control of first-team affairs.
The former Leeds trainee's final match as United boss saw the club slump to a 4-1 defeat at home to promotion rivals Birmingham City .
Former Sheffield United and Queens Park Rangers boss Neil Warnock has been linked with the post.
Tuesday's defeat by Birmingham leaves Leeds in 10th place in the Championship, three points off the play-offs.
Chairman Ken Bates said he had no choice but to dismiss the 42-year-old and has hit back at critics who claim he did not offer Grayson financial support.
"We have to acknowledge the previous three seasons Simon got us to the League One play-offs then promotion and then we finished seventh [in the Championship] and we have backed him all the way," Bates told Yorkshire Radio .
"We spent over £12m on wages so why are people blaming me for the recent results?
"All the money we have received has gone back into the squad. The manager decides who he wants to buy, we as the board just pay for it. I only said no once."
Grayson left Blackpool to take over at Elland Road in December 2008 following the sacking of Gary McAllister .
He led the club to promotion from League One in his first full season in charge before finishing in seventh place in the second tier last season.
Chief executive Shaun Harvey told the club website: "We have 18 games to go this season and are still within touching distance of the play-offs.
"We felt with the transfer window closed we needed to make the change at this time in the belief that a new managerial team will be able to get more out of the existing squad of players and make the difference."
Former Leeds defender and Radio 5 live pundit Danny Mills believes the availability of Warnock, who was sacked by QPR in January , may have influenced chairman Ken Bates's decision to relieve Grayson of his duties.
He said: "I think so for definite [Warnock's availability influencing the decision]. He got sacked for QPR because he is basically known as a Championship manager who will get you up. That's what he has done time and time again.
"That has probably swung Ken Bates's decision."
Grayson at Leeds
• Played - 169
• Won - 84
• Drawn - 40
• Lost - 45
Mills also believes results will have played a crucial part in Grayson's sacking, but reckons that the Championship club will struggle to compete with the bigger sides in the division because of their financial situation.
"It has come as little bit of a surprise, but just before Christmas Ken Bates came out and said that if Grayson does not turn results around and get Leeds up towards promotion then his job would be under review.
"Leeds are a big club in terms of tradition but in monetary terms they are not. They have been out of the Premier League for a long time [since 2004]. They do not have the parachute payments that other clubs have.
"Leeds cannot compete at that end, 30,000 people in a week does not help you with that."
After leaving Leeds in 1992, Grayson went on to play for Leicester City, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers and Blackpool.
He took over as manager at Bloomfield Road in 2005, succeeding Colin Hendry.