Did Rosler have enough time?

I had started to wonder after Saturday’s defeat to Brighton why there seemed to be little pressure on Uwe Rosler from Massimo Cellino. It’s only a couple of weeks since he was given a vote of confidence from Cellino who said that Rosler would have the time he needed to implement his new style of plat at the club. But football is a results business and today Rosler has paid the price for Leeds sitting eighteenth in the Championship table in a season when we were supposed to be building towards promotion we are being dragged towards relegation.

The stats speak for themselves though, just two wins in eleven league games this season. Conceded fifteen goals and only scored ten in eleven games. No home wins at all this season. Knocked out of the League Cup by Doncaster. With a win percentage of 16.67% Rosler sits third bottom of our permanent managers, only Brian Clough and Darko Milanic have a worse record. With a success rate in terms of points of 33.33% he is on a par with the great Dave Hockaday.

But it’s not just the stats, it’s the style of play. Rosler has been keen to bring his ‘Heavy Metal Football’ to his Leeds team but the system he has tried to implement is one that seems not to fit with the players he has at his disposal. Heavy Metal football at its best is supposed to be about fighting for the ball, hounding the opposition all around the pitch, counterattacking and playing a high line. Roslers teams have looked static, the high line has looked stagnant, we’ve failed to make runs in behind or use the space in midfield and worse of all we’ve been completely vulnerable on the counter attack. It’s not been pretty, enjoyable or successful, most importantly it’s not been Leeds.

Ultimately I don’t think Rosler was the right man for the job but there is still the question of giving a manager time. Did he have enough time to develop his style? Probably not. Did he have enough opportunity to bring in the players he wanted to fit his system? Definitely not. Have we been that bad? Probably not, it’s not been good to watch but we have lost by small margins. Convert some of those draws into wins and one goal losses into draws and we are sitting in the play-off positions.

You have to think long term though, you have to have systems in place, you have to have a philosophy at the club and you need to recruit both players and managers to fit that. With Cellino in charge that is never going to be the case. In twenty months of the Cellino era he has seen the back of five managers. We are never going to have consistency, we are never going to develop a philosophy from bottom to top. The only time that threatened to happen was under Redfearn and Thompson but Cellino soon put pay to that.

Rosler may not have been the man for the job, given the chance he may have shone but ultimately one man is responsible, one man is culpable; Massimo Cellino. He has made all these appointments and he needs to back at least one of them but he has no vision. He chops and changes coaches on a whim, the next coach in has a totally different style to the last and that can’t be good for a group of players. Our bright young things need to be the basis of our style, the youth coming through should be developed to that style and the manger that comes in should fit into that system too.

Hopefully Cellino will carefully consider his next appointment to instil a distinct style, oh wait a minute he’s appointed Steve Evans.