Sam Allardyce believes it is absolutely imperative for the Whites to make the most of the summer transfer window if they are to re-attain Premier League football by getting promoted back from the Championship next season.
The Leeds United boss came in for the final four games of the season with the club sitting outside the bottom three on goal difference but was only able to lead his players to taking a single point, resulting in a 19th-placed finish, five points adrift of safety.
Allardyce feels that there is only so much any manager can do with a given set of tools at their disposal, suggesting both that Leeds had recruited poorly for the current squad and that they will need to do better ahead of the new second-tier season.
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After lamenting that he was unable to oversee an improvement to the side’s performances or results, Allardyce added: “I’ll talk in general: general recruitment is the number one factor for any manager, coach or head coach or any club, to be successful.
“Without top level recruitment, a manager and a coach are only as good as the players they have. When you have coaches telling you how much better they make them, it is a factor, you can – [but] it’s only small percentages, it's probably one or two or three [percent].
“If you look at the whole package, actual quality is all about recruitment, because better players make you a better coach, make the coaches better, make everyone at the club better, a happy club going forward. It's a much easier responsibility to coach good players: they get it, and do very little wrong.”
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