Leeds United still haunted by errors and former glory
Telegraph 18/1/14Brian McDermott is trying to raise the fallen giants' spirits by rebuilding the club from bottom to top but dreadful form is threatening his restoration job By Luke Edwards
No club have carried the burden of their history with as much difficulty as Leeds United. They are not only a football club who struggle to live up to former glories, they are a club hamstrung by the mistakes of the past. Hope had begun to set in this season as the club settled into the play-off zone just as Christmas approached but now, on the back of four straight defeats – the last a 6-0 thrashing by local rivals Sheffield Wednesday last weekend – and with league leaders Leicester the visitors to Elland Road on Saturday, Brian McDermott knows he is in the biggest fight of his managerial career.
He has hung a quote on the wall of the club’s training ground attributed to the Greek philosopher Socrates. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” It encapsulates what so many Leeds managers have failed to do since Don Revie turned them into the dominant force in England in the 1970s.
“If one quote can sum up this football, that is it,” says McDermott. “That is what we are trying to do. Whatever has gone, has gone and now we’re building something else. The history of a football club is important. You respect the past, but you also have to focus on trying to build something new that means we can be successful again.
“We want to write our own history, not constantly hark back to what other people did. No club has fallen harder than Leeds did and the reverberations are still being felt.”
When McDermott arrived last April, he found a club who were scared; a club with low self-esteem, still psychologically damaged by relegation from the Premier League nine years earlier.
These are the problems he is still wrestling with. The defeat in Sheffield means McDermott is in the midst of the sort of crisis that has cost so many of his predecessors their jobs.
Leeds have never risen to the heady heights of the Revie years, although there have been notable periods of success. They won the title in 1992 and reached the semi-final of the Champions League in 2001. But they over-stretched financially and tumbled out of the top flight, through the Championship, spending two chastising years in League One.
They have stabilised the books, with new owners GFH Capital taking over from the divisive Ken Bates in November last year before passing it on to a new consortium, Sport Capital, fronted by existing managing director David Haigh, last week.
“When I first came here, there was something bordering on fear at the club,” explained McDermott. “It was everywhere. It just didn’t feel right. The club didn’t seem a happy place. That fear had to go out the building.
“I think the club wanted something so much that, when it didn’t happen, it felt like a failure. I think the club had been blinded by the goal of getting back into the Premier League. That can happen, but Leeds suffered more than most in terms of where they once were and how far they fell.
“You have fear because you have these expectations and then you have this disappointment when they aren’t realised. It was crazy. If you keep doing the same things, you are going to get the same outcome, so we’re changing things. We’ve changed the focus to building a football club at every level.
“I was told the fans were demanding before I came, but all they really demand is maximum effort. A defeat like Sheffield Wednesday obviously puts pressure on you as a manager, as a team and a group of staff.
“I want to be part of something special at Leeds, but at this moment in time it’s a struggle. I just hope that all of us – the owners, the players, the staff – pick ourselves up, which we will do and move forward again.”
McDermott does not directly criticise any of the other managers who have worked at Leeds since their fall from European football’s top table, but he has identified their failing.
“A football club is about so much more than the first team,” he added. “Promotion was all that mattered so everything else got neglected. That isn’t good. You’ve got to get the academy right, you’ve got to have kids coming through. You’ve got to get things right at the training ground.”
McDermott led Reading to promotion to the Premier League in May 2012, but was sacked as they fought an unsuccessful battle against relegation.
“I don’t feel any bitterness,” said McDermott. “To have the experience of managing in the Premier League was wonderful, that is what I’m striving to get back to. I use that disappointment of being sacked, after taking the club up, as a driving force.”
McDermott feels like just the sort of manager Leeds need – calm, intelligent and with an eye on the bigger picture. Yet he will be judged on results not on improvements behind the scenes.
He needs time, but ultimately, his team’s midwinter slump must end before the spring or Leeds will be looking for yet another manager to try to return them to their former glory.
They have been in worse positions, but they were also far better than this once. No matter how hard they try, Leeds teams and managers will always be judged by the expectations of its past.