As it could do today, Sam Allardyce’s last coaching stint ended at Elland Road. Leeds United confidently sent an already-relegated West Bromwich Albion packing with a 3-1 win on a day devoted to the tears and service of Pablo Hernandez and Gaetano Berardi.
There may be more May tears from the Spaniard and Swiss today if they have been able to bring themselves to watch the sad demise of the house they helped build to its zenith in 2021. Allardyce could only stroppily chew his gum as Marcelo Bielsa put his condemned men to the sword.
Allardyce might have consoled himself that day with the knowledge Leeds were finishing that season like a Champions League train. Twenty-three points came from the final 10 matches of their first season back in the top flight.
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Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur were beaten, while there were credible draws with Liverpool and Manchester United at Elland Road. If you applied that 2.3 points per game average to an entire season, Leeds would have been guaranteed Champions League football, if not a title tilt in an open campaign.
Nobody is suggesting Leeds would have kept up that rate of return across a full term, but even if you took 10 to 15 per cent off that level of performance you could see a well-established future in the top half of the top flight. That was the high water mark of this administration, this era.
If only everyone knew that then. In the 24 months since that May day farewell the project has crumbled, credit in the bank has been exhausted, icons have been dismissed, pretenders have been given too much time and squads have been left underpowered.
From 2021’s lacklustre summer transfer window to last month’s Marc Guehi equaliser, the road has been littered with the flashpoints and sliding doors moments which have Leeds back where they started under Andrea Radrizzani. The good times were astonishing, life-changing periods in our lives, but the Italian has overseen a project with net gains off the field, but ultimately back at square one on it.
While this campaign deserves its own attention as a tale of woe, it is impossible to ignore the connection with 2021/22’s demise. It was a warning sign, a threat of what would come calling for the Whites if they did not learn from their mistakes. In the weeks after the West Brom win, all of the sound bites from Radrizzani and Victor Orta about returning Leeds to the European table they deserved had begun to seem unexpectedly realistic.
This was a team which had finished ninth in its first season after promotion and then ended that campaign with top-four momentum. It felt like an unstoppable train, but the Premier League does not allow that kind of progress to go unmarked. While the rest of the division was reloading and weaponising, the Whites were standing still. There would be just two senior faces added to a squad which was still dominated by Championship title winners.
Of the 12 players to play the most minutes in 2020/21, Raphinha was the only one who had not been in the second tier with Leeds. This was a group which had been taken to its limits by Bielsa. It needed refreshing. The Argentine needed fresh meat to mould, but all he got was Junior Firpo and Daniel James. Jack Harrison would sign permanently, but he was far from an addition to what was already in the building.
Firpo was a downgrade on the inconsistent Ezgjan Alioski and the latest in a long line of problematic left-backs. Stuart Dallas would be required to play there for much of the season and pulled from the midfield area he had thrived in one year earlier.
That only compounded the problems in the engine room. Kalvin Phillips had no natural, capable deputy when he was missing between December and April. Adam Forshaw, as Radrizzani memorably tweeted, was their solution in midfield, despite missing the two previous years of football.
These were errors in judgement committed long ago now, but all important in the chain of events which has Leeds now back in the Championship. Radrizzani, Angus Kinnear and Orta, regardless of the finances committed to 2020’s splurge, should have done more to strengthen from a position of strength that summer.
Do not forget 49ers Enteprises in all of this either. The American investment vehicle was well on board by this point and they must surely have some regrets over not pushing through with their takeover sooner, or even in that summer. They may well have wanted to, but found Radrizzani obstinate and knee-deep in the riches of the Premier League’s top half. If Radrizzani was unable to fund a summer 2021 recruitment drive, the Americans should have acted.
Laurels were rested on. Injuries hammered the squad that season and January inexplicably passed without a single senior soul joining the squad. Nine players had been missing from the team in the last game before the January deadline passed, for example.
“Many January options, requiring an eight-figure investment, would not be a material improvement on the current performances of emerging players such as [Lewis] Bate, [Leo] Hjelde and Joe Gelhardt,” Kinnear would say. Bielsa’s future was being staked on three kids and a few miracles from head of medicine and performance Rob Price.
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The club’s greatest head coach in decades, an icon, a unifying figure who stood for something would be gone within a month of deadline day. His replacement, Jesse Marsch, would prove to be a mistake arguably even greater than summer 2021’s hubris.
This was Orta’s man in every regard. The time spent courting the American would be talked up, as would his record in competitions like Major League Soccer and Austria’s Bundesliga, as well as that tactical philosophy naturally evolved from Bielsa’s.
Despite the haphazard, chaotic nature of Marsch’s victories over Norwich City, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Brentford, Orta and Leeds had some residual credit in the bank. It would only be fair Marsch was given his own transfer window and own pre-season before real judgement could be passed.
There is no denying the inaction of 2021 was not repeated last summer. Yes, money was spent, largely funded by the sales of the remaining family jewels, but, not wisely. Orta’s absolute commitment to Marsch would bury the squad even further into the mire.
Joel Robles, the back-up goalkeeper, was the only addition made with Premier League experience. Everyone else was 25 or under. The potential for some of the names was undoubted and many would even say now, if they can stay fit, Tyler Adams and Luis Sinisterra should go far in the game.
The inability to again sign a proven, established centre forward tested fans’ patience as Patrick Bamford’s fitness raised question marks before the window had even closed. The failed, publicised chases for Charles De Ketelaere and Cody Gakpo prompted Kinnear’s, now infamous, programme notes.
“The rationale is straightforward: we believe we have three striking options that are better than the majority of our peers (two proven international number nines and a player widely regarded as the best emerging young striking talent in the league) and will only supplement this with an exceptional addition rather than just a warm body,” he said.
What Leeds would have given for a warm body when their strikers were either injured or misfiring. Even the additions of Wilfried Gnonto and Georginio Rutter were still not natural number nines, but yet more players at their best out wide.
Perhaps the biggest error, and clinching moment in this relegation, was keeping Marsch through the World Cup break. Leeds were winless in eight with the fans calling for the head coach’s head when they dug out two miraculous, and again, chaotic wins. Beating Liverpool and Bournemouth were the turning points which saved the American’s job and thus ensured Leeds missed the open goal gifted by FIFA. There was a ready-made six-week break with which to fire and hire before preparing the players for a new project.
The subsequent seven-match winless run after the World Cup would prove to be the final nails in both United’s and Marsch’s coffins. Javi Gracia would restore some sort of pulse and hope before Adams ended his season in mid-March and that inexplicable half-time collapse to Palace butchered his resurrection attempt. This, we hope, will be nothing like the death of 2004. The club is on a sound financial footing, parachute payments will keep them competitive and then there is the carrot of fresh investment, an oven-ready new vision.
49ers Enterprises are ready and waiting, with time dwindling, to begin this new chapter and propel United back for a second time in four years. Radrizzani, as his Sampdoria overtures suggest, must know he is at the end of his road with the Whites. The club is undeniably in better health than it was when he walked through the doors in 2017. The academy has been salvaged, the infrastructure restored, the women’s team has a future, the accounts are in good shape and with dependable hands, after five years in the boardroom, ready to take it on.
The prospects may be better now than they were in 2004, but it does not take much when you reflect on the circus Peter Ridsdale was presiding over. Is that even the right comparison to be making? Surely the more balanced comparison is of what Radrizzani and his board had in the palm of their hands 24 months ago. They had the foundation, figurehead, momentum and public support to establish Leeds at the top table once more.
They allowed it to slip through their fingers with the expectation Bielsa could keep working miracles with a group of mid-table Championship players he had already taken to the well as often as he could. As Luke Ayling finally admitted last weekend, “it just doesn't feel like it's there.”
The Elland Road plans may stall. The fair weather hunters on the season ticket waiting list may evaporate. The Bielsa what-ifs may circle, but the city is alive and awaiting this next chapter. The respect Leeds now deserve is a quick transition of power.
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