I wont lie, I toyed with the idea of doing an open letter to Neil Warnock instead of this, but after practically begging Snodgrass to stay in the open letter I wrote to him, days before he sharply took off from Elland Road, I decided against it.
The reason I had the idea to write one to Warnock came about after listening to his post match interview after the game against Brighton. To me, he couldn’t have sounded more fed up.
And who could blame him?
When he signed up to take over (sigh, those words again) at Leeds last season even he couldn’t have imagined how things would go. Sure, he probably didn’t quite believe Bates’ ‘warchest’ promises but I doubt he expected there to be this much work involved.
Not only that, but mid summer he probably couldn’t believe his luck when the club confirmed they were in takeover talks, for a man that only wants one more year in the game to achieve a record breaking number of promotions, this would’ve been absolute music to his ears. What he didn’t realise was that good things don’t come easy at Leeds, in fact most of the time they don’t come at all.
Cue half a year of takeover nonsense. It’s on, it’s off, they’ve gone, they haven’t gone, have they gone? They’ve gone, have they? They have gone but kind of haven’t gone. Etc.
And here we are now, with the talks still going on and a squad in serious need of a touch up.
For me, the current team and Warnock are doing a good job under the circumstances. Before the season kicked off I hoped that if the takeover was going to drag on past the transfer window that we’d at least be hovering around the play offs come January, ready for a full on assault with new recruits brought in with our fancy new GFH style credit cards.
Hovering around the play offs pretty much sums up our current position, even if we are a little lower than we would’ve liked.
What we could really do with is giving Warnock a little pick me up, just to remind him that we do actually all understand and appreciate how frustrating this must be for him. Regardless of whether you like his style of football or whether you’re happy with the players he’s brought in, you have to admit that if he was given the financial muscle required in the first place to make a real go of this division, that he’d be doing just that.
So here it is, Neil, if you’re reading this (and why wouldn’t you be?) keep up the good work. Nobody envy’s you having to work under the almost unbearable conditions that you’re in, but we do appreciate that what we’re seeing at the minute isn’t quite what you were promised when you came here.
Oh and sign Beckford and Max Gradel please. Thanks.
(Not telling you how to do your job, but they’re really quite good)
No matter what happens over the next few weeks, takeover, no takeover, it’s massively important that we all try and stay ‘united’ behind Neil and the players, there’s a good squad there and for once I do feel like we’re watching a team that genuinely want to play for us.
Other than Varney who still seems to need a bit of time, not a single player looks like they cant handle the pressure of playing for Leeds, that can only bode well for the future.
Twitter – @giddy_goose
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