Excellent Post
Manager of both team DIRTY, DIRTY LEEDS
By David Stringer
Date: 6/9/2007
QUITE often the soul of a football club can transcend the individuals involved. Ideologies and styles of play introduced in one generation set the standard that successors will be judged by, players and managers are appointed partially because they fit the idea of what that club's player should be.
Liverpool from Shankly to Dalgleish, playing smooth, creative incisive football, the Arsenal teams from Chapman to Rioch based around hardworking, well organised journeymen, and on the other side of the scale, there's plenty of clubs, (including Pools up till about a decade ago) who believe they're going to fail simply because that's what they do.
One of the most infamous examples of this is Leeds, judged in relation to the team of Bremner and Giles, footballers who could play a bit but often chose not to. The Chelsea of their day, in effect.
Of course, the soul of a club can change a little over time, leaving the next generation of fans a little confused over a club's reputation.
Being a relatively young fan, the first Leeds team that made a strong impression on me was David O'Leary's; the fast paced, tough and skilful team made up of young British players. There were plenty of televised matches where I enjoyed their successes, was downhearted at their failures, and enjoyed their play.
For this reason I've always quite liked Leeds, while some older fans will have rejoiced in the financial collapse brought on by Ridsdale, my feelings were that this was a shame, not something to celebrate. They were always a team I liked.
However, that's changed over the last year or so; ever since the unholy alliance of Bates and Wise was reformed at Elland Road.
I've never liked Wise.
As a player he was a thug and a bully, and in interviews he's always struck me as someone who just loves to be praised, probably more than he loves the game itself.
This is a man who is so sure of his own greatness, that he promised the Leeds fans he'd stay even if they were relegated, not seeming to understand he was the main reason for their relegation. (Leeds may have been at the wrong end of the table when Wise took over, but so were Sunderland when Keane was brought in), less than two months before Wise's appointment.
When you consider that Leeds had reached the playoff final the year before, that despite their financial situation, have had far greater financial resources than Barnsley, Burnley and Southend, their relegation rivals, and two months to plan for the opening of the transfer window, that, he had a decent amount of prior experience both as a manager and as a presence in a dressing room full of big egos, I can't see how his performance can be interpreted as anything other than gross incompetence. Yet this didn't even seem to cross Wise's mind.
There's the way he organised his Millwall team for the 2002 FA Cup Final. Fortune gave his side a place in the final without having to play a single top flight team, surely a dream opportunity for any aspirational young manager.
Some fierce tackling, a bit of brains, and the flair of Tim Cahill, it could have been one of the great Cup final upsets, at least the equal of Sunderland's three decades earlier. Yet, for some reason he didn't bother.
Then there's all his whinging this season. Talking about the Football League's decision not to allow Leeds to abuse loopholes in the competition's rule book he said "We'd like to know deep down the real reasons…everyone wants to get a head start, so 23 teams in our league have got a very good head start on us."
The idea that the 55 other clubs in the league have a moral objection to their richest member abusing the rules, again, doesn't dawn on him.
In fact, the sixteen clubs that voted in their favour included Bradford, Forest Ipswich and Wednesday, all clubs who are lower than they have been historically, and Darlington, QPR and Wrexham, who have all had financial problems in recent years. Rather than their enemies setting aside their sense of morality in favour of self-interest, it appears to be their supporters who have done this.
In terms of his competence, he managed to alienate his captain (who he appointed to the role) to such an extent that he wanted to return to his former club, in a similar position in the league, and far less long-term potential. And, of course there's the fact that Wise had to go and watch Northern Ireland to figure out why David Healy wasn't scoring many goals for Leeds. Turns out, if you play a striker on the wing, he won't get as many opportunities to score. Who knew?
Ken Bates is hardly any better. He left Chelsea in about forty million pounds of debt, but blames Ridsdale's financial management for events that happened half a decade after he left. He's a man with so little decency that last season he published the address of a former director he was in conflict with, and encouraged fans to bombard him with abuse. And there's his contempt for the fans, claiming the majority of them are behind him, despite the fact that 'Shoes off if you hate Ken Bates' has apparently been a popular chant during pre-season.
Of course, having the two most influential people at the club sharing the same classless egotistical personality type will inevitably influence the rest of the team.
Gus Poyet, someone I always liked during his playing days, has claimed that Andy D'Urso had a vendetta against him and Wise, which influenced his performance in their league cup match, something which is self-evidently stupid. If referees do have even slight biases against players, managers or teams, it's always inevitably because the person in question is a nasty piece of work, and so the referee dreads having to referee them.
And those of us who buy a programme down at Leeds will be treated to the 'real' league table, which doesn't include their fifteen point deduction. (A slightly unorthodox use of the word .)
Some will argue that this kind of attitude is the right way to go; an 'ends justify the means' approach. But the flipside of that attitude is that rival fans will want them to lose, not just out of self-interest, to remove a potential rival, but because they despise what the club stands for.
Pools have beaten Sheffield Wednesday twice in two different competitions in the past few years, and Forest in our penultimate home game of 05-06, which all fill me with pride.
While that sounds like I'm playing into the old cliché that these kind of games are 'our cup finals', it genuinely is an achievement for a club with our resources to beat a much better equipped club. I would feel the same if we beat Forest this year.
With Leeds though, it would be different; I want them to lose. Not out of envy, not because I want what they have, and not because I'm jealous of their history, simply because I don't like what they stand for. At the moment Leeds have a one hundred per cent record, but as Wise seems to be encouraging egotism and self-indulgence, I'd imagine the team spirit won't stand up well to bad results.
My main concern this weekend will of course be on continuing our impressive start to the season, but if we can help sow the seeds of Leeds United's downfall, for a change I'll enjoy another team's failure.
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FAQ
) But it really makes my blood boil seeing the likes of Bates and Wise treated with adoration by the media, and refusing to even contemplate they might be wrong; unfortunately my dislike of those two is stronger than my soft spot for your club, and for as long as they're in charge, I don't want to see anything that would feed their self-indulgent egos further.
