Leeds United: What happened? - The Athletic 8/5/23

Adam Crafton and Phil Hay

In the week leading up to this Premier League season, the Leeds United owner, Andrea Radrizzani, set out his expectations.

“The target I set is between 10th to 14th position,” Radrizzani said in an interview published by The Athletic. “If we’re lucky, we are close to 10th or more. If we aren’t lucky, we are 15th. But I think we are in that range. I don’t want to have any more heart-attack risk.”

Last season, Leeds endured spring-time palpitations when the club required a win on the last day against Brentford.

“I don’t have any doubt that we’ll avoid a situation similar to last season,” Radrizzani insisted. “It’s impossible.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Radrizzani’s pre-season words now appear laced with hubris. Leeds have three games remaining in the Premier League — they are still to play Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur at home, with a trip to West Ham United sandwiched in between — but they are sinking into the relegation quicksand. Leeds have won only three of their last 22 Premier League matches, a sequence that has left one of England’s most famous clubs on the brink of a return to the Championship only three years after returning to the top flight.

Since the beginning of February, Leeds have played 16 Premier League games, with the team being led by four different managers. First, the American coach Jesse Marsch, who was sacked less than a year after replacing the immensely popular Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa; next, the club’s then-under-23 coach Michael Skubala took the reins for a three-game period. Spaniard Javi Gracia then had an 11-game run which became so traumatic that Leeds parachuted in veteran English coach Sam Allardyce in a desperate bid to fight the fire engulfing the club’s season.

For the Leeds supporters, the defeat at Bournemouth at the end of April — a month in which the club conceded a Premier League record 23 Premier League goals — resulted in the club’s fan advisory board demanding change.

They said: “The narrow escape from relegation last season should have been the catalyst for a season of growth, but this season has now turned into a humiliating disaster.

“We are therefore asking for immediate changes to be made to the first team coach and to those responsible for the recruitment of the managers and players who have been brought in over the last 14 months.”

On the same day, Radrizzani sent a private message to a Leeds supporter on Twitter, which was made public. It read: “I am broken. I am responsible for this s***. You don’t deserve this. Ridiculous.”

Within 48 hours, Gracia had been sacked, spending 71 days in the job, which is 16 more than Liz Truss managed as Britain’s Prime Minister in 2022 and one day more than arguably Leeds’ worst-ever managerial appointment Dave Hockaday endured in 2014.

Allardyce replaced Gracia, while the club’s sporting director, Victor Orta, appointed in May 2017, left due to his refusal to support the decision to sack Gracia. In an interview this week with The Athletic, Gracia described the team as being caught in a “vicious cycle”, comparing them to a boxer taking repeated blows, “trying to get up but unable to”.

In the backdrop, the club’s long-term future in the boardroom remains uncertain. Radrizzani currently owns 56 per cent and therefore a controlling stake in Leeds, but the club’s minority shareholder, 49ers Enterprises, (the investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers) possesses 44 per cent after gradually increasing its stake from an initial 10 per cent investment in 2018. The 49ers hold an option to buy out Radrizzani by January 2024 and are targeting ownership by July 1 in the event Leeds retain their Premier League status, while the club would also press ahead with ambitious plans to increase the capacity of Elland Road to 60,000. Relegation, however, would be a game-changer and the investors behind the 49ers are more cautious about a buyout of a second-tier club.

From the outside, the events of the past 14 months appear utterly bewildering, with many wondering quite how a team that had become arguably the division’s most watchable under Bielsa careered so spectacularly off course that they have now reached for Allardyce, a manager of substantial talent and experience but who could not seem less in-keeping with the brand of football to which Leeds supporters had become accustomed.

So, Leeds United: what happened?

To Leeds supporters, the word “relegation” is a frightening prospect. When Leeds first dropped out of the Premier League in 2004, it took 16 years for the club to return, dropping as low as League One amid a series of administrations, farcical ownership regimes and doomed managerial appointments. Any conversation around relegation from the Premier League tends to involve phrases like “cliff edge” and “financial precipice”. It is such melodrama that explains why seven of the Premier League’s bottom nine clubs have sacked managers this season, with several of those clubs making multiple changes.

Plainly, relegation is a highly undesirable outcome and there would be consequences for Leeds. The club’s own strategic report acknowledges that relegation is the “primary risk” facing the club due to the impact on key revenue streams, with the Premier League’s broadcast deals the most lucrative in football.

For Radrizzani, relegation would be a personal disappointment. A balanced assessment of his period as Leeds owner must acknowledge that the Italian media mogul picked up a failing club for £45million in 2017 and the majority of his six-year reign has been uplifting on the field and stable in the boardroom, relative to the calamities that stalked this club before. Leeds returned to the Premier League under Bielsa, finishing ninth in the 2020-21 season, and Radrizzani has spoken previously of his ambition to return Leeds to UEFA competition by the time he hands over the keys. By his own metrics, therefore, relegation would represent a failure and cloud his legacy.

This summer, he and the 49ers will need to decide what happens next. If Leeds stay up, Radrizzani will likely sell his share and the valuation has increased 10-fold since he acquired Leeds in 2017, with the overall value expected to be £500m. Should Leeds go down, different options emerge. There is no agreed price in the event of relegation, which means Radrizzani may be lowballed by the Americans who would value Leeds very differently as a Championship club compared to a Premier League outfit. If a compromise is not reached, then Radrizzani may look to sell a percentage of his 56 per cent stake but not the entirety, which may mean ceding control but maintaining a percentage that could be sold for a higher value should Leeds return to the Premier League.

Another possibility is that Radrizzani decides to remain as majority shareholder and use parachute payments from the Premier League to fund an attempt to return Leeds to the top flight at the first attempt. Relegated clubs get 55 per cent of the central distribution that every Premier League club receives in their first season in the EFL and 45 per cent in year two. Clubs that have been in the Premier League for more than one season qualify for a final payment in year three at 20 per cent. This should provide Leeds with a safety net worth around £100million spread over the three years. The downsides are that any ownership group would be reluctant to advance stadium plans while in the second tier, with the immediate priority to restore top-flight status. Leeds must also pay their former striker Jean-Kevin Augustin £24.5m after being found by FIFA to have breached their former player’s contract, although it remains subject to appeal.

The better news is that Leeds are protected by significant clauses inserted into every player’s contract, which will see wages fall by a minimum of 50 per cent and maximum of 60 per cent in the event of relegation. This would mitigate the financial damage. Leeds also recorded the sixth-highest commercial revenue in the Premier League last season, while merchandise sales came in at an impressive £25million. In addition, while the club’s recruitment model has been criticised this season, Leeds have not signed an outfield player aged over 25 during the past two years, with insiders believing that around £150m-200m worth of players could be sold if necessary to release funds to reshape a squad for the Championship.

In the cold light of day, therefore, relegation should not be anywhere near as damaging as the club’s last demotion from the top flight in 2004, but it would amount to bruised egos and missed opportunities. And the past 14 months have been pockmarked by misfortune, mishaps and misjudgments, all of which have accumulated to leave Leeds in a perilous position.

At Leeds’ Thorp Arch training ground, changes have been afoot this season. When Bielsa arrived, his exacting training schedule, in which he imposed double or even triple sessions, meant he desired a space within the facilities for his players to recharge. As such, Leeds implemented dormitories for players. Now, however, those sleeping quarters have been ripped out; instead, Leeds have a media suite suitable for a Premier League club.

At first reading, this may indicate a club breaking away from Bielsa’s legacy. The appointment of Allardyce, a cultural antidote to Bielsa, would appear to underline the theory. Some of Bielsa’s methods and idiosyncrasies have been erased, most notably the Murderball training sessions which were lapped up in the good times but seen as contributing to fatigue and injuries in the bad.

Bielsa’s attention to detail at the training ground was ferocious. He had no interest in hobnobbing with boardroom superiors; his only desire was to create an environment for his players to succeed. This meant drawing up architectural blueprints for the training ground in his first meeting with chief executive Angus Kinnear. It meant an obsession over the length of grass on the training pitches, at one point even suspending the goals off the ground to offer a better angle of sunlight on certain patches. It meant re-opening the swimming pool (cut by a previous owner as a cost-cutting measure), introducing a games room, including a fireplace, where the players could relax and socialise and it also meant inserting more car park spaces into the complex to reduce stress for the players at the start of their day.

Bielsa’s opinion, enhanced by several trips to view the facilities at Leicester City’s industry-leading training ground, was clear. It was the job of the club to create the best possible environment for a footballer to develop and flourish. The reality, however, is that while some of Bielsa’s initiatives worked well, most notably his daily weigh-ins for players and his razor-sharp focus on their diet and gym routines, not all of his ideas flew. The games and relaxation room ended up being used more often by academy players than the first team, while the dormitories were rarely used at all.

Results and performances vindicated so many of Bielsa’s peculiarities. Leeds indulged his spying missions which brought complaints from Championship rivals because his players were motivated and results were impressive. Leeds tolerated the fact he tended to go from one season to another on a single-year contract, refusing to sign his renewal until the day before pre-season, which left his club anxious as to whether he would actually be there. In short, Bielsa had achieved Messiah status at Leeds and the club bent over backwards for him. He was by far the highest-paid coach in the Championship and he was among the highest earners when the club were promoted to the Premier League.

To the club and his supporters, he was worth every penny and every sleepless night. When the club fell at the Championship play-off stage against Derby in his first season, director of football Orta convinced the Leeds hierarchy to double down in their faith, which was justified when Leeds were promoted as champions in 2020. Leeds appeared to be a club operating in perfect harmony, with Radrizzani as owner, Orta as director of football, Angus Kinnear as chief executive and Bielsa as head coach.

In the immediate term, Leeds prioritised success. They spent around £130million on incoming transfers in their first two summers in the Premier League and did not cash in on anyone.

Yet medium-term, Leeds had what seemed to many to be a smart business model, in which Orta would seek to recruit young talent at low cost, which would then be developed by Bielsa, allowing the club to sell players on and reinvest. Orta could point to Sevilla in Spain or Leicester City in England as prototypes of this sustainable way to run a club. A player such as the Brazilian Raphinha represented the high watermark of this concept, recruited for £17million from French club Rennes in 2020 and sold to Barcelona for triple that in 2022. Kalvin Phillips had been remodelled by Bielsa from a toiling Leeds academy product into an England international who impressed sufficiently for Manchester City to buy him for £45m last summer. It would be wrong, therefore, to describe Leeds as a club without a plan, or a club run by a disengaged ownership.

The problems for Leeds, however, came when the form under Bielsa fell off a cliff. During his fourth season, the methods that captivated the players previously grew tiresome. Many of those who worked for Bielsa or played under him were now exhausted. There is a temptation among Leeds supporters to view Bielsa’s era through rose-tinted glasses, which is entirely understandable given the success, but this can ignore the extent to which Leeds had become a shadow of their former selves by the final part of his reign. They lost eight of his final 11 Premier League matches in charge, conceding 34 goals. During conversations with those who worked under him, or those who represent Leeds players, everybody agreed Bielsa’s race at Leeds was run.

Most crucially, there had never been an indication that Bielsa would stay beyond the end of the 2021-22 Premier League season. As such it was highly improbable, at best, that Bielsa would remain with the club in the event of relegation and steer them to promotion. Leeds came to a view that he would be leaving the club in any case that summer and the form was so bad and the defeats so heavy that they had lost faith in his capacity to turn things around.

Besides, life under Bielsa had not always been easy. Take recruitment: the Argentinian had extremely specific requirements of players, most significantly that any player must be able to cope with his high-intensity style of football and fit the character of the group. That led to him sometimes rejecting suggestions out-of-hand, or even dismissing players after they had been signed. Eddie Nketiah, who has become an important striker at Arsenal, could barely get a game during a loan spell at Leeds under Bielsa. When his loan was curtailed, his replacement, Jean-Kevin Augustin, signed on loan from RB Leipzig with a view to a permanent £18million transfer, played only three times because Bielsa did not approve of his physicality. Leeds sought to wriggle out of the move before eventually settling with Leipzig for £15.5m and being ordered to pay a further £24.5m in wages to the player earlier this year, which remains under appeal.

For Leeds, the good times under Bielsa were worth all this hassle and so much more. But they also knew Bielsa would not be around forever. In the background, Orta had been studying who might replace Bielsa since as far back as the first COVID-19 lockdown, owing to the Argentinian’s reluctance to commit to a long-term deal, which meant Leeds needed to be ready in the event of a change. Orta scrutinised the merits of over 40 coaches and landed upon Jesse Marsch. It was the beginning of the end of Orta’s reign at Leeds.

The exit of Bielsa altered the relationship between the Leeds support and the board. In the eyes of Bielsa’s subjects, Leeds had committed treason by deposing the Argentinian. In the first home game after his exit, a 3-0 defeat by Aston Villa, supporters directed vitriol at the director’s box and sang Bielsa’s name.

It created a troublesome environment for Marsch, who was, in many ways, the polar opposite of Bielsa both in his personality and approach to the game.

Bielsa was an introvert, Marsch was an extrovert. Bielsa’s football stretched the pitch, using width to the extreme, while Marsch squeezed the play, ordering his wingers to consider themselves as No 10s. The pair did share an obsession over physical output, but while Bielsa focused on endurance, Marsch concentrated on short sprints.

Marsch, who inherited a long injury list, did not help his case by appearing to criticise the man he replaced. “These players were overtrained,” he said. “It led to them being physically, mentally, psychologically and emotionally in a difficult place to recover from week to week, from game to game.”

In truth, plenty of people close to Leeds players did not disagree with this verdict, but the rhetoric was not what fans wanted to hear while they were still grieving for their fallen hero.

Marsch did what he was hired to do. He kept Leeds up, winning four matches and drawing three of his 12 Premier League fixtures at the end of last season. Yet few were truly convinced. There were concerns that Marsch over-pumped up his team when disciplinary issues pockmarked the run-in and even the good results were not entirely convincing. Last-gasp goals were needed against Brighton and Norwich in home games, while Leeds beat a Brentford team reduced to nine men on the final day.

It was hoped that a pre-season and squad rebuild would allow a major reset. Raphinha and Phillips left for almost £100million combined. Leeds acquired players who appeared suited to Marsch’s vision, including four players — Rasmus Kristensen, Brenden Aaronson, Tyler Adams, Max Wober — from the Red Bull Group. Leeds also added Luis Sinisterra, Weston McKennie, Wilfried Gnonto and Marc Roca. Aaronson is often cast as a Marsch recruit, but the deal for the USMNT international was actually first approved by Bielsa in January 2022, only for his club Red Bull Salzburg to prefer a summer transfer, which is why the deal was announced so quickly at the end of last season.

While the squad was redesigned in the image of Marsch, the coach demonstrated little evidence to say he had the ability to make the best of it. Behind the scenes, concerns developed. His backroom staff lacked top-level experience and Leeds were particularly concerned by this after first-team coach Mark Jackson left the club for MK Dons. The Athletic has been told that some within the club, who wished not to be named when speaking without permission, were not impressed by the quality of the team’s physical preparation or training sessions, with the drills, in the view of these people, excessively predicated around recovery of the ball rather than educating players in what to do once Leeds had possession.

Some players came to see Marsch as more of a motivator than a tactician and his performative nature on the sidelines, which repeatedly exasperated referees, further enhanced this view and brought a call for calm internally. Some within the building at Thorp Arch were staggered when reports emerged after Marsch’s exit to say that he subsequently held talks with both Southampton and Leicester. The counter-point is that Leeds’ non-penalty expected goals figures were better from both a defensive and attacking perspective before the American’s sacking than after he left. The cold hard facts, however, are that Leeds won two of their final 17 Premier League matches with Marsch in charge.

The trigger was finally pulled when Leeds lost at Nottingham Forest at the start of February, but there had been disagreements between Radrizzani and Orta over Marsch’s suitability.

Radrizzani first came close to sacking Marsch in October, when Leeds fans had appeared to turn on the coach during a 2-0 defeat at Leicester before a 3-2 home defeat by Fulham. Yet Radrizzani was talked down and he sought to bring the club together by delivering a training ground speech that was so effusive about Marsch that some players were even left with the impression the coach may end up with a new contract. A response came with back-to-back wins at Liverpool and at home against Bournemouth, preventing Leeds from making a change ahead of the World Cup, which may have been the wisest timing in retrospect.

Another flashpoint occurred in January when Leeds lost against Aston Villa and Radrizzani once again believed Marsch should be sacked. By now, the Italian’s reservations were an open secret within the club, but Orta, who also had the former Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde on a shortlist before appointing Marsch, was determined to stand by his man, to the extent he would even have considered his own position had a change been made.

It was not the only disagreement between Radrizzani and Orta in January. On transfer deadline day, tensions simmered when the owner decided the club should cash in on the winger Jack Harrison, whose contract was due to expire in the summer of 2024. Leicester offered £22million but Orta was not prepared to lose Harrison and the matter was further complicated because the 49ers representatives were operating in US working hours. It all led to a clumsy situation where Harrison even went to the Leicester training ground with a view to completing the deal, only for the 49ers to eventually come down on the side of Orta. They persuaded Radrizzani to keep Harrison, who later signed a new long-term contract with the club.

Leeds resist the idea that this kind of wrangling has become common between Radrizzani and the 49ers, but it is the case that time-consuming conversations have been necessary. This is because transfer commitments are often paid for down the line, so should the 49ers complete the takeover in the summer, then they become liable, as became the case when Leeds signed Georginio Rutter for a record fee from German club Hoffenheim.

Rutter could cost £35million if all incentives in the deal are met, but Leeds stagger payments for their new arrivals, paying transfer fees over the course of the player’s contract (in Rutter’s case, he has been signed until the summer of 2028). As such, if the 49ers buy the club in the next six months, it will fall to them to meet most of the cost of the 20-year-old French forward’s transfer. At one stage, Leeds considered taking Rutter on an initial loan and putting in place an obligation to take him permanently in the summer, but the willingness of 49ers Enterprises to back a full transfer in this January window and accept future liabilities was a sign of its commitment to taking charge at Elland Road. The value of Rutter as a long-term asset outweighed any concerns about the price or the structure of the deal.

Unfortunately for Leeds, Rutter, aged only 21, has not proved an instant hit, starting only one Premier League game since signing. Rutter remains a young talent, who may or may not provide value when he adapts to English football, but it has led supporters to question whether Orta was being too clever for his own good when deciding how to spend the club’s money in January in the midst of a relegation battle.

Leeds have spent in excess of £80million on Aaronson, Sinisterra, Rutter and Gnonto, but the foursome, all aged 23 or below, have scored a combined eight Premier League goals this season. The good news is that Gnonto, already an Italian senior international at the age of 18, will provide vast resale value on a transfer fee worth less than £4m, while Sinisterra’s £21m transfer should also easily be recouped. Players such as Illan Meslier, Tyler Adams, Robin Koch and Jack Harrison would also command generous fees.

Aaronson has shown glimpses of skill and nobody behind the scenes at Leeds has anything but warm words for a young player who one staff member described as the “ideal son-in-law”, adding that he stays after training every day to rehearse set pieces and finishing. The staff member added, however, that the emotional toll of the season has weighed heavily on his shoulders and he has, at times, overthought matters as confidence ebbed away from his play.

The striking department is the one position, along with centre-back, where Marsch felt understocked last summer.

Leeds did try to sign forward players but this is where the mishaps sometimes appeared amateurish. Leeds spent a long time last summer pursuing Charles De Ketelaere. Radrizzani told The Athletic Leeds were in agreement with Club Bruges over a £33.5million fee and that at one stage, the player’s decision between Leeds and AC Milan was “50-50”.

“He was our icing on the cake, the special player,” Radrizzani says. “But we were competing with AC Milan. They won the title, they have the Champions League. The fact that he was watching our documentary and was 50-50 about Milan or Leeds for a period makes me proud that we are in the right direction. Maybe I should have gone to Belgium 10 days (earlier) to close the deal. We had a period when I knew Milan were sleeping because of the change of ownership and I hesitated. We agreed with Bruges on €40million.”

He went to Milan but Leeds continued to be ambitious. Late in the summer window, they moved for the Dutch striker Cody Gakpo, who was by then playing at PSV Eindhoven. Leeds believed they had agreed a deal with the player and his father. Orta flew to the Netherlands and arranged a private jet to take the player back to Leeds after offering a higher fee to his club and higher wages to the player than Southampton earlier in the same week. On the face of it, therefore, it all looked a bit ridiculous when Orta landed back in England alone and without a striker the next day.

Yet behind the scenes, the Dutch national team manager Louis van Gaal had made a surprise intervention, in which he warned Gakpo that his place in the Netherlands side at the winter World Cup would be less certain if he interrupted the continuity and form he had developed at PSV. The Dutch club and the player called off the transfer and Leeds resolved to go again for Gakpo in January, but by then, his star had risen so fast that he was destined for Liverpool. Orta was not helped when Radrizzani confirmed on Twitter that Leeds had tried for Gakpo and encouraged fans to “welcome Bamba Dieng” from Marseille, only for Dieng to change his mind on an airport runway and head for Nice, where the striker failed a medical. Leeds had wanted the player to undergo medical checks with their own team before approving any deal.

It left Leeds short of forward options and they instead brought forward the deal for Gnonto, but the 18-year-old, albeit of huge potential, was not oven-ready for the Premier League and made only one league start before the World Cup.

For Leeds, the perception of disarray intensified when the club finally relieved Marsch of his duties at the start of February. It had appeared particularly peculiar because Leeds had given the impression of standing by him when they recruited the American midfielder McKennie from Juventus at the end of January, while assistant coach Chris Armas was added to the coaching staff only 12 days before Marsch lost his job. Marsch had added Rene Maric to his staff as an assistant last summer, but Maric did not always feel entirely listened to by Marsch while other members of staff felt Maric failed to impose himself sufficiently on the training ground.

Leeds, as became a pattern under Orta, went ambitious with their targets and, as had also become an unfortunate pattern, interest leaked out. Leeds pursued Arne Slot from Feyenoord and Andoni Iraola from Rayo Vallecano, but neither coach was prepared to force their way out of contracts at clubs enjoying good seasons in the Dutch and Spanish leagues. West Brom coach and former Bielsa assistant Carlos Corberan was linked with the job but instead signed a new deal at Championship West Brom. Patrick Vieira was also an option but at the time he preferred to stay at Crystal Palace, although he too eventually lost his job. This left Leeds in a strange void where it briefly seemed Skubala may remain as interim coach beyond a couple of games, but after a 1-0 defeat at relegation rivals Everton, Leeds then hired Javi Gracia.

Gracia was out of work and his most recent job was at Al-Sadd in the Middle East, but he had previously impressed in the Premier League with Watford and in the Spanish La Liga at Malaga in challenging circumstances. His initial work seemed positive, recording 10 points from his first six Premier League games, but a disastrous April saw Leeds lose five of their next seven, with five conceded against Crystal Palace, six against Liverpool and four against both Arsenal and Bournemouth.

Goalkeeper Illan Meslier, who has previously been scouted heavily by Tottenham, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester United, lost form at a terrible time and eventually lost his place in Allardyce’s first match in charge. Confidence drained away from the squad and the drubbings that had become familiar towards the end of the Bielsa reign returned. Leeds had sought to challenge the fragility in the squad earlier this season by hiring a psychologist, who is available for players if they wish.

Gracia was one of several out-of-work candidates suggested by Orta to see Leeds through to the end of the campaign, along with the former Dutch international Giovanni van Bronckhorst and his compatriot Alfred Schreuder. He had met with Orta to discuss the job and he was in attendance to watch Leeds lose 2-0 against Manchester United in February at Elland Road when his route to see Orta after the game took him past the media seats in the ground and alerted attention. His poor season at Ajax, where he was sacked in January after replacing Erik ten Hag, also provoked an online backlash to his possible hire that Leeds appeared to take on board, although the club insist it had never gone so far as contracts being drawn up.

In the end, Gracia, who had presented to Orta, Radrizzani and representatives from the 49ers, got the job. Speaking to The Athletic, he gave mitigation by way of injuries to key players such as midfielder Adams, defender Wober and also pointed to a lack of confidence infecting a very young squad, which perhaps indicates the plan of prioritising young talent needed to be supplemented with greater experience. At the training ground, Gracia’s sessions were praised by players, but he did not possess the motivational skills to salvage the club’s season while backroom staff members also felt the team’s obsession with winning the ball back under Marsch meant they had lost sight of how to manage the tempo of games through possession.

Ahead of the visit to Bournemouth, Leeds players went for a bonding trip to local Italian restaurant Flying Pizza, but any hopes of greater unity were shattered by a 4-1 defeat that signalled the end for Gracia and, by extension, Orta. By now, the accumulation of misfortune or misjudgments by Orta had begun to outweigh the positives he had brought to the club, such as Bielsa, and he previously became involved with spats at Elland Road with Leeds fans.

The Spaniard, genuinely popular with staff and the players he recruited at Leeds, to the extent some were reduced to tears during a training ground farewell last week, had no part in the decision to appoint Allardyce. Instead, Allardyce was recommended by chief executive Kinnear, who had worked with Allardyce previously at West Ham.

Allardyce is to be paid £500,000 to coach Leeds for the final four games of the season and he will be paid a multi-million-pound bonus if Leeds remain in the top flight. Leeds were swimming in more modest pools as they scrambled for Premier League safety, with former Leeds player Lee Bowyer and former manager Simon Grayson among the other candidates.

Marsch, meanwhile, is still living in nearby Harrogate with his family, while Gracia, sacked on his 53rd birthday by Radrizzani, is already back in Spain. Bielsa, meanwhile, is said to be dragging his feet over finalising a deal to manage the Uruguayan national team. He is still to reply to Radrizzani’s public offer to name the Leeds training ground after him.

As for Radrizzani’s own future, the coming weeks will decide.