The appointment of Garry Monk and signing of Kemar Roofe has people taking notice of Leeds once more, but can this giant ever be woken while Massimo Cellino is in charge of the medication?
For 364 days a year I pay for my dinner, and on the 365th I get a free pizza.
My day job, God bless it, necessitates me to relocate to Cannes in the South of France every year for a week in April and another one in October. ‘First world problems’ I hear you cry and indeed there’s a good deal of eye-rolling and ‘get-her’ looks from my friends (both of them) every time I start on about what a thoroughly ball-aching hardship this is for me.
But for those who’ve been to Cannes there are knowing looks. For this is not the glamourous location on the French Riviera, famed for its glamourous film festival, that it’s made out to be in the brochure. It’s a conference town, dominated by a conference centre — a fact they try and disguise by calling it "The Palais”. I go for the television conferences and the week after there’s a conference for advertising people, and the week after that one for the concrete industry, then one for the medical dressings industry and so on. The entire town is built to host work conferences, full of overpriced restaurants and hotels looking to take advantage of people on work expense accounts not checking/caring about the bill, or the quality of what they’re being served.
Beggars stretch along the "Croissette” (another clever piece of marketing, it’s a seafront wall for a place without a natural beach) and plead their case then at the end of the day you can see them congregating en masse with a couple of suits to pool their takings and discuss tomorrow’s tactics. Strip clubs offer happy endings to the less-discerning businessmen on every back street. The karaoke bar stays open until 6am and is the only place I’ve ever had my credit card cloned and striped. Twice.
This purgatory, which is made all the worse by everybody I know refusing to believe it’s anything other than a week-long jolly in a tropical paradise (it frequently pisses it down), is made more bearable by an annual event at the imaginatively titled "La Pizza”. This restaurant (menu self-explanatory) is parked by the quayside at what is essentially Birmingham-NEC-on-Sea and two Leeds fans and I decamp there once a year in April to discuss our teams’ respective fortunes.
Now Leeds fans are inherently a fairly confident bunch. That’s partly because their team has had some proper highs through history, partly because it’s obviously a big club with a lot of potential, and partly because everybody from Yorkshire believes everything from Yorkshire is streets ahead of everything else, or if it’s not at the moment it surely soon will be.
Despite Peter Ridsdale, despite Seth Johnson’s contract, despite a typically ruinous stint with Peter ‘Reidy’ Reid in charge, despite the financial collapse of the club, despite years under the draining reign of Ken Bates, despite that outrageous dip into administration that essentially let Bates buy his own club back a day later for a quid and wipe out all the money he owed to creditors in the process, despite a recent stint in League One, despite everything Massimo Cellino has done, despite the various chancers and shitehawks that came before him and despite Dave fucking Hockaday being the manager for a couple of weeks… despite it all, this is still a fan base that collectively twirls scraves around in the air and sings about being "the champions, champions of Europe” during midweek league games against Doncaster Rovers because of perceived refereeing injustices in a match in 1975.
Cellino’s Leeds managers >>> Brian McDermott 52 days to May 2014 >>> Dave Hockaday, 70 days to August 2014 >>> Darko Milanic, 32 days to October 2014 >>> Neil Redfearn, 200 days to May 2015 >>> Uwe Rosler, 152 days to October 2015 >>> Steve Evans, 211 days to May 2016 >>> Garry Monk, 62 days and counting
You’ve got to doff your cap to them really, lesser men would have been taking a length of hose out to the garage long ago. This is a Championship club Neil Warnock couldn’t do anything with for goodness sake — the Leeds faithful blame him for that, but his record suggests the fault may lie closer to home.
So we sit in La Pizza and through wry smiles and "you’ve got to laugh really” sentiments we survey the wreckage of another Leeds season. Since Cellino arrived, in 2014, there have been eight different managers. The ludicrous Hockaday stint (70 days) is the most infamous but anybody remember Darko Milanic who was given 32 days in early 2014/15? You’re forgiven, blink and you missed it. As academy boss, Neil Redfearn oversaw one of the most productive youth set ups in this country despite the persistent shambles above him — one of his students, Lewis Cook, fetched north of £10m when he moved to Bournemouth this summer. Promoted into football’s hottest seat, he too was sacked prematurely and lost to the club forever. His partner, Lucy Ward, successfully took the club to employment tribunal to the tune of £290,000 over her own unfair dismissal and sexual harassment.
Leeds Outs >>> Lewis Cook, Bournemouth, £7m up front >>> Casper Sloth, Aalborg, £600k >>> Tommaso Bianchi, Ascoli, Undisclosed >>> Mirco Antenucci, Spal, free >>> Ross Killock, Chester, free >>> Giuseppe Bellusci, Empoli, loan >>> Lee Erwin, Oldham, loan >>> Scott Wootton, released
Cellino, who has gone through 43 managers in 24 years as an owner of Cagliari in his homeland and now Leeds as well, has twice been banned by the Football League under the Fit and Proper Person test. As we know ourselves, that test is not difficult to pass. Gianni Paladini is a fit and proper person to own a football club. Flavio Briatore is a fit and proper person to own a football club. Mike Ashley, Assem Allam…
Amidst fan protests, Cellino is publicly keen to sell, while at the same time telling any perspective buyers it will cost them several million pounds just to look at the books. Leeds United’s ticket prices, in a large but decaying and usually half empty Elland Road, are extortionate and were raised in parts of the home stands midway through last season under a meal-voucher con that was dubbed a ‘pie tax’.
It is a national disgrace that such foreign chancers are allowed to come and buy historic community assets in this country and run them appallingly as their play things, but that’s a rant I’ve had before and will save for another day, if only for word count purposes.
But still, as the wood-fired oven sparks into life, I’m told it’s Leeds’ year next year. It’ll be different.
"Says a QPR fan” is the standard Twitter reaction to articles like this. Well, yes, says a QPR fan. We know a farce when we see one, God knows we’ve followed a few and two of them were Italian inflicted in exactly the same way Cellino is now "running” Leeds.
And so I sit and listen patiently and place my bet, that Leeds will make no significant movement up the league and go through at least two managers in the process. If I’m wrong, I’ll foot the bill next April, if I’m right they buy my pizza. I like the one with the fresh tuna mixed in with the cheese.
Leeds Ins: >>> Kemar Roofe, Oxford, £3m >>> Marcus Antonsson, Kalmar, £2m >>> Rob Green, QPR, Free >>> Kyle Bartley, Swansea, loan >>> Matt Grimes, Swansea, loan >>> Hadi Sacko, Bordeaux, loan >>> Pablo Hernandez, Al Arabi, loan
Those who remember the Elland Road of old, and the flying coin welcome the away fans used to receive there, will have little sympathy. But honestly, when they appointed Steve Evans, even I started to feel a bit sorry for them. I feared for the tortured aorta of the man deemed not good enough to manage Rotherham United when his ridiculously square, high, slow back four was torn asunder to the tune of 4-0 by half time in a televised match at Brighton last season. Cellino left after 45 minutes. It was difficult to really fathom why he expected things to go any different/better given the way he was running the place. The thankless, impossible job of managing this club, with this chairman, was summed up best by even Steve ‘pink champagne’ Evans losing half of his substantial bodyweight trying. He looked like a Steve Evans costume you could rent and wear to a fancy dress party by the time he was sacked this summer.
Nom nom nom, tuna pizza.
But wait a minute, what’s this? Garry Monk? Bright, promising, great white hope of British football management Garry Monk? Harshly sacked (Swansea fans disagree) by a Swansea team he was happily help steer to profit and Premier League consolidation and linked with every top flight job that’s come up since Garry Monk? What on earth is he doing here? A statement of intent if ever there was one, and there was more to come with Kemar Roofe — the outstanding talent in the bottom two divisions by a country mile — choosing Leeds as his next destination, albeit for a reasonably hefty £3m.
Maybe the pizzas are going to be on me next April.
Journalist Michael Calvin wrote The Nowhere Men about football scouts a couple of years ago and honestly if you haven’t read it yet you need to give your head a bang. His follow up, Living on the Volcano, gives the same treatment to football managers. The likes of Aidy Boothroyd and Brendan Rodgers come across as awfully as you would anticipate, the likes of Kenny Jackett and Gareth Ainsworth meet expectations in the other direction, the Ian Holloway chapter (written during his time at Millwall) is rather upsetting in a Gary Linekar checking in on a tearful Gazza at Italia 90 kind of way. Arguably the most impressive, learned, forward-thinking, down to earth… is Monk. And now he’s at Leeds.
Monk, who spent his five months of unemployment travelling the training grounds of Spain seeking enlightenment and education, says he doesn’t fear the sack. Monk told the Guardian: "I can honestly tell you that I don’t worry about that. If you worry about all of that, you’ll never take a job anywhere and I want to be challenged. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the country.”
Pre Season Results >>> Shelbourne 1-2 Leeds >>> Shamrock Rovers 0-3 Leeds >>> Guiseley 3-4 Leeds >>> Peterborough 2-1 Leeds >>> Leeds 2-1 Atalanta
So are Leeds finally getting their act together? Our regular correspondent David Watkins, whose thoughts you can read here, is sceptical. Another long-term Leeds friend of mine who I met for a pint before the Rugby League semi-final in Doncaster last weekend similarly doesn’t expect much for his season ticket outlay — Cellino has promised a % return on the cost if they don’t make the top six this season.
They’re hamstrung by having no parachute payments in a division where the likes of Newcastle, Villa and Norwich are bringing nuclear weapons to a knife fight. The academy graduates who could help bridge that gap are able to be picked off by Premier League sides for whom the new television deal means £10m+ for 19-year-old Lewis Cook doesn’t represent much of a gamble for Bournemouth in their 12,000 capacity stadium. Sam Byram went to West Ham the window before that and Charlie Taylor, a talented left back with a contract up next summer and little interest in signing a new one, is probably going to move to Burnley for less than he’s worth in today’s mad market.
Pre-season offers few clues. Beaten 2-1 at Peterborough, victorious by the same score against Italy’s Atalanta. The decision to add an expensive, ageing goalkeeper who was costing QPR a goal a month over the final year of his stay in W12 could go either way.
Monk, who let’s not forget has only had one job in his career, at arguably the best-run club in the country, but has an excellent reputation all the same, says: "It was nice to sit down and speak with someone who understands football. He’s been a chairman and owner for over 30 years so he knows a lot about football. He understood how I worked. It just felt right.” His mad move may not be so mad after all — fail and people will pin it on Cellino anyway, succeed and his stock will rocket as people wonder how on earth he did it in such trying circumstances.
Time will tell and if the club’s biggest problem stays true to form, it won’t be much time either.
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