Leeds United has since the 2003-04 season been a team in the 2nd and 3rd tier of English football. A very similar situation to the one between great periods especially under the management of Don Revie and Howard Wilkinson.
The introduction of Mercelo Bialsa was one looked up on with great optimism and he almost managed to bring the club back to the holy land, but stumbled a lot during the latter months of the season and in the play-off’s.
The team that played their first season under the management of Marcelo Bielsa was not a new set up all together put in bits and pieces put together by a few new signings such as Patrick Bamford and Barry Douglas. Goalkeeper Kiko Cassilla was introduced in January replacing Bailey Peacock-Farrell.
The young N Ireland international did well in the first 29 games, and a bit strange to see that Marcelo Bielsa wanted a change. The fact that Kemar Roofe had to see the end of the season from the sidelines might have been a bigger factor.
Patrick Bamford missed a lot of the season and the £7million signing scored 9 goals in 24 league games, which is a good tally, but sadly not enough to secure a promotion. The experienced Pablo Hernandez is a player that is highly rated and hopefully will go on for another two or three seasons now at the age of 34.
Marcelo Bielsa might have to go out in the transfer market as Howard Wilkinson did to secure a promotion, because no one has managed to promote Leeds United back to the top since the days of HW.
If you want to look at the promotion campaign before that, you have to go back to the Don Revie days and the early 60’s to find the next promotion, so it’s not often Leeds United takes the steps to get promoted to the top flight.
Watching Leeds United against Derby County, having everything in their hands, was really difficult and to see players stumble and get into awkward situations shows that this group wasn’t really ready for a new life in the Premier League and with that 11 in mind they might had to sign so many players that they would have disturbed the balance.
Fulham made that mistake this season going for a quick fix, but the way to do it is exactly what Newcastle and Burnley have done with clever management, climbing a bit day after day and maybe also see the relegation fear and keep calm, instead of going for that deadly idea to sack the manager, that took you up. Only idiots does that and will over time destroy their structure and balance.
Very little should be done at Leeds and the players coming in must be those who fit the bill, hopefully Marcelo Bielsa will be able to see that and just add maybe one to three players with a great U.23 set up also pushing through at the club.
We will be following Leeds United during next season and see how the progress with a new season under the management of the thorough Marcelo Bielsa. There is no doubt that the current manager is the biggest star by far at Leeds United.
