Failure. What else can you call it?

 

The dust settles on a Leeds United Bank Holiday in Bournemouth, 33 years after that last one.

 

The usual unrealistic optimism took hold just before 2pm yesterday, happily forgetting the Palace collapse, setting aside the Liverpool smash, and ignoring the galling efforts against Fulham and Leicester. But in truth we can’t forget these, because they are the form – made up of lack of confidence, lack of genuine talent, lack of desire and fight – with which we approached this game. Unsurprisingly they continued where they left off, leading us to insipid defeat. And they will continue in the remaining four games prior to what feels like our inevitable relegation.

 

Andrea Radrizzani took us out from Massimo Cellino’s lunacy, predicated on Bates and GFH, and with an outstretched wallet laid a foundation on which Marcelo Bielsa landed, performed miracles, and returned us to the Premier League.  I’m wise enough to appreciate the difference between Radrizzani and the utter horrors which preceded him, and I will always be grateful particularly for what we achieved between 2018 and 2021, not in the sense that Radrizzani personally achieved it, but that it was done under his stewardship.

 

Here, in May 2023, as the owner of Leeds United, Radrizzani has failed. He has failed to address that the principal executioners (pardon the pun) of his “five year project” to have European football at Elland Road (i.e. by now) – his CEO Angus Kinnear and his Director of Football Victor Orta – have simply not delivered, not by any measurable standard.

 

As this fifth year draws to a depressing close, the latest Bank Holiday trip to Bournemouth provides a telling snapshot. An expensive, disjointed and irredeemable mess of playing and coaching staff, soundly beaten by a side who in direct contrast want to work and battle for every first and second ball. To complete the picture, layer on top of this an undeserved arrogance which has no greater illustration than the video of the players leaving the hotel, ignoring a smattering of loyal fans eager to wave off the players for the most important game of the season. No-one was more disgracefully snubbed than the full-kitted wide-eyed kid (who we’ve all been and even in mid-life may still be) who just wanted a smile, a high-five, a nod, any form of acknowledgment that he had made the effort to see his heroes. This was exacerbated by the club steward who deliberately stood in front of him to block his view. Quiet astonishing really.

 

It is not a pretty picture, so it is important to recognise that each of these two elements – the abjectness on the pitch and the arrogance at the hotel - are each directly attributable to the CEO (PR) and the DoF (all things football). Since Radrizzani has given a level of faith and loyalty to them which belies their lack of achievement, he has failed in his responsibilities as steward of the club to remove them at and appoint a CEO and DoF with the necessary talent and gravitas to help the club evolve into a stable, upwardly mobile Premier League club.

 

The 9^th place finish in 2021, achieved predominantly with the players Bielsa took to promotion and in large part (Raphina aside) despite the recruitment in the summer of 2020, was treated like “job done”. It really wasn’t. Analogously, it was the very last drop of water from an oversqueezed sponge which needed to be fully replenished and renewed.

 

At that time, the entire culture of the club from top to bottom had been overhauled to something wonderful. That overhaul was the sole achievement of a manager with honesty and integrity and a love for the purity of football as the lifeblood for people, the escape from real life or the dream to aspire to, and the genuine appreciation of supporters as everything they truly are and not the blindly loyal cash-cow they are so often seen. Our supporters will always love Leeds despite the heartbreak and abuse, but Bielsa made people love the club in a way I had never seen before. It’s of course ultimately about football. Football that comes from a philosophy impervious to cynicism and greed, football that wants to succeed but only on its own terms, fragile and fantastic football that brings incredible memories that will last a lifetime and, on occasion, some absolute pummellings.

 

I always took the view that Bielsa’s sacking was a mistake, and that view hasn’t changed. However despite my devotion to him I always accepted that there were perfectly valid criticisms of the position we were in and the results and I’m not stupid enough to think that longer term the status quo was sustainable, especially the uncertainty created by a year-on-year contract. The Premier League is mercilessly unforgiving and, aside from the top 7/8 clubs, is an annual depressing fight for everyone else against relegation and the financial and structural devastation that can now bring to clubs. There is logic in the view that chasing gold rather than entertaining is at odds with Bielsa’s philosophy. I don’t share that view because I’ll always believe that with the right backing, a Bielsa team with wall-to-wall premier league players will be quite a sight to see.  

 

There is no greater evidence of the lack of understanding of this than the attitude of the board in summer 2020 that they could invest at that time for two years. There is no such thing as standing still in the Premier League and you either move forward or you fall behind. Bielsa made his honest appraisal in summer 2021 that the squad needed a complete overhaul, that these players he loved and had dragged miracles out of could no longer sustain Leeds in the top flight. He was ignored that summer and offered unworkable scraps (Van de Beek and Delle Ali anyone?) in January. By February, decimated by injuries, he was sacked. We had fallen behind and we haven’t recovered.

 

Orta has his messianic complex that he brought us Bielsa and therefore takes responsibility and credit for our PL status. But truly Bielsa was our Director of Football. He was also a phenomenal (if unintentional) PR machine. He succeeded despite Kinnear and Orta and not because of them. Radrizzani failed to understand this and, hundreds of millions of pounds, many new players and two coaches later (neither of whom have been anything like the kind of evolution from Bielsa we were promised) lay bare this fact.

 

Symmetrically, Radrizzani has been the steward of Leeds for 18 months before and after Bielsa. Take Bielsa’s time out of the equation and what are you left with? Consistently poor recruitment of players and coaches, consistently poor PR, and disconnect between the board and the supporters which is now irreconcilable. Bielsa has had much criticism levelled at him for the poor player recruitment (or lack of it) but this pattern started before him and has continued since he was sacked so those arguments ring hollow. That criticism extended to Bielsa’s rejection of players he was offered. Is there any wonder why? Who offered them?

 

It's about football. Victor Orta is the Director of it. This means that he is ultimately responsible for the recruitment and selection of players, and the appointment of managers to get the best out of the players he has managed to recruit. He’s not a bad person, he is phenomenally passionate about his work and no doubt the club, even if his vitriolic responses to supporters do little for that now dissolved relationship with the board.

 

He’s just not good enough at his job. Yes, the appointment of Bielsa was indeed his idea. Bielsa sat and watched every minute of every game of the Christiansen-Heckinbottom experiment, and still said yes. I’m more than happy for Orta to take credit for the idea of Bielsa managing at Leeds, but not for the actual management itself. He also of course brought us Raphinha, and deserves credit for this. But he also brought Brenden Aaronson, Marc Roca, Weston McKennie, Rasmus Christiansen. Yes he brought us Gnonto, but this was the “flowers from the petrol shop” purchase at the eleventh hour after the previous disasters of Gakpo, not to mention the other one who left us hanging in the French hanger. His chosen coach, Marsch, told us that Gnonto was nowhere near PL ready. The fact that he has succeeded for Leeds is despite all of the circumstances and attitude surrounding his arrival. Let’s not forget the pursuit of terrific young talent, declared by PR guru Kinnear in 2021 to be the reason we had no need to spend 8 figure sums. With the exception of Summerville, these players are all out on loan, we spent the 8 figures sums anyway, and we’re worse off.

 

What are we left with at Premier League level?  A playing squad which is devoid of the necessary talent to survive in the division despite the sums spent on them, and a succession of managers post-Bielsa who have done nothing but to make us worse. It is about the football. Bielsa made it brilliant. At Orta’s direction, the club sacked him despite three phenomenal years and replaced him after 5 difficult months with a man so underqualified to “evolve Bielsa’s legacy” – another PR disaster for Kinnear - that 18 months later and after the complete and unforgivable dismantling of everything that Bielsa did for the club we are plummeting back to the Championship as if it were all for nothing.

 

This is failure. The last two seasons in the Premier League have been grim and it is likely to be over soon. I remember vividly the devastation of 2004 after the joys of 1998-2001. I still remember the great Champions League nights and competing for the Premier League title of course, but all of that is tainted by the avoidable collapse that followed due to the gross mismanagement of the club at board level. That’s why I can sit here as a follower of Leeds for 35 years, and say that at this moment the players have failed, the managers have failed, the Directors ultimately responsible for the football on the pitch and the way in which the club deals with its loyal supporters have failed and, ultimately, Andrea Radrizzani, the steward of our club and the man with the responsibility to ensure from the top that those failures don’t occur, has failed.