Becchio, Byram & Lees....

[weasel]

Blaker

In July 2011, Graham transferred to newly promoted Premier League team Swansea City for £3.5 million.

So there you go Swansea actually spent £1.75m prior to getting promoted to the prem. They received £2m at the end of the League 1 promotion winning 2008- 2009 season for selling Jason Scotland, their top scorer, to Wigan. So they sold a player, despite getting promoted, who had 12 months left on his contract.

So there you go Swansea were a selling club. They only splashed the big cash after they had got promoted to the Prem. Yes they spent a bit of the money they had received for Jason Scotland but also had other stuff such as the compensation they got when Martinez left for Wigan. You yourself seem to contradict your own argument by saying they went up despite the lesser infrastructure and worse youth academy. guess what having less infrastructure and a worse academy saves them a lot of money, They also don't have to pay rent for their stadium and training ground. As such yes they have less income but also considerably less expenses.

Norwich didn't spend a fortune to go up. A couple of decent signings but not loads of money. Southampton went up. Like Norwich they signed a couple of players but don't forget they had the money from selling the likes of Walcott, Bale and Oxlade-Chamberlain - guess what they were a selling club too.

And I am far from happy with everything at the club. Yes I would like to see us bring in a couple of decent signings that might make the difference and I would be upset if we sold Byram (unless he had just months left on his contract). I am however realistic enough to know that as a business Leeds can't afford to keep letting good players leave for free - as in the case of Beckford then Johnson, - and that no matter what Howson and Snodgrass might have said to the public they were not going to sign unless we were in the prem. They had to be sold. A huge shame but that is football now and the Bosman rule is a horrible rule that totally perverts what it was meant to be originally.

[DynamiteKid]

What happened to signing Tonge? I thought there was only a nominal fee required and that he was a big piece of our plans. And nothing. We must surely have the cash for this one????

[weasel]

Interesting Blake...the other factor is Swansea, Reading, Norwich & the Saints employed up & coming managers with the necessary nous required to do the job

I guess anything that has an incorrect fact (the Graham transfer) at the centre of its argument could be deemed as interesting....

Norwich and Saints both to some degree got lucky. Norwich had done disastrously with the previous manager selected by the board who had got a team that wasn't long out of the Premiership relegated to League 1. Southampton had lumbered along with Pardew and gone nowhere after the previous manager had got them relegated. In selecting Adkins they weren't really going for the up and coming manager but a manager that had success at getting teams out of league 1 having guided Scunthorpe up twice. I'm sure even in their wildest dreams they wouldn't have been expecting back to back promotions.

[Norm]

I'm sort of on the fence about all this.
There have been some good arguments made both ways and, naturally, emotions are high, more so with each 'revelation'.
I think I agree more with weasel's summation however.
Moreover, we can forget promotion this season - it's not tenable and could be disastrous if we came straight back down. As the team stands we're only just a reasonable Championship side.
I think we're going to have to have patience with GFH - another year's not going to make too much difference - at least in this league we can survive and (hopefully) improve to the point where we are serious challengers.
My pint's half full.

[1964white]

I guess anything that has an incorrect fact (the Graham transfer) at the centre of its argument could be deemed as interesting....

Norwich and Saints both to some degree got lucky. Norwich had done disastrously with the previous manager selected by the board who had got a team that wasn't long out of the Premiership relegated to League 1. Southampton had lumbered along with Pardew and gone nowhere after the previous manager had got them relegated. In selecting Adkins they weren't really going for the up and coming manager but a manager that had success at getting teams out of league 1 having guided Scunthorpe up twice. I'm sure even in their wildest dreams they wouldn't have been expecting back to back promotions.

You can gloss over it all you like Weasel.....the key to success is good management from top to bottom, using the best players from your academy, making the correct/shrewd signings to improve the squad when necessary/retaining your best players as long as possible. These are the reasons why the less fashionable clubs such as Reading/Swansea/Norwich/Southampton/Wigan/etc have achieved promotion to the premiership & why we have failed miserably !

[lufc1304]

You can gloss over it all you like Weasel.....the key to success is good management from top to bottom, using the best players from your academy, making the correct/shrewd signings to improve the squad when necessary/retaining your best players as long as possible. These are the reasons why the less fashionable clubs such as Reading/Swansea/Norwich/Southampton/Wigan/etc have achieved promotion to the premiership & why we have failed miserably !

Spot on, Leon but Weasel has a point; for as long as we languish in the championship, we will always be vulnerable to the Prem predators who can offer higher wages and, in the majority of cases, a better standard of football.

It's a balancing act between 'going for it' as Leicester seem to be doing this season, and insuring the financial safety, and future of your club. Given the somewhat profligate spending the crisps have indulged in over the last couple of seasons, I'm not convinced that particular business model is sustainable for much longer without Prem money - big risk. Haigh and, in particular, Patel seem like shrewd guys who know the value of a pound. I, for one, don't expect to see a plethora of signings in January, but neither do I see any of our better players being sold, as has been the case over recent seasons. I think we'll see one marquee signing, our better loan players 're-loaned' and perhaps a couple of Prem cast-offs. January is a tricky window; never really value for money and, on the back of the takeover and the perception that we have money, clubs are reportedly sticking an extra whack onto player valuations when we come calling. As such, I think it will be in the summer that we start to do 'real' business

[The Subhuman]

I'm sort of on the fence about all this.
There have been some good arguments made both ways and, naturally, emotions are high, more so with each 'revelation'.
I think I agree more with weasel's summation however.
Moreover, we can forget promotion this season - it's not tenable and could be disastrous if we came straight back down. As the team stands we're only just a reasonable Championship side.
I think we're going to have to have patience with GFH - another year's not going to make too much difference - at least in this league we can survive and (hopefully) improve to the point where we are serious challengers.
My pint's half full.

but would mean, for the umpteenth season running, getting rid of all the crap at the club and starting again. No way to move the club forward. NW has done us no favours unless he gets promoted this season.

[The Subhuman]

players I'd definitely keep for next season btw

Byram
Becchio
Pearce
Lees
Austin

players worth hanging onto for squad depth

Green
Hall
Ashdown
Somma

[Drs.Dad]

players I'd definitely keep for next season btw

Byram
Becchio
Pearce
Lees
Austin

players worth hanging onto for squad depth

Green
Hall
Ashdown
Somma

No room for Diouf on either list?

[weasel]

You can gloss over it all you like Weasel.....the key to success is good management from top to bottom, using the best players from your academy, making the correct/shrewd signings to improve the squad when necessary/retaining your best players as long as possible. These are the reasons why the less fashionable clubs such as Reading/Swansea/Norwich/Southampton/Wigan/etc have achieved promotion to the premiership & why we have failed miserably !

Using the best players from the academy - Delph, Howson, Lees & Byram - not done too bad there

Making the correct/shrewd signings to improve the squad when necessary - Club definitely missed the chance there when refusing to give SG funds for a centreback in January 2012. Might have made the difference. Likewise the January previous.

Retaining your best players as long as possible - Club did this. They kept JB and BJ to the bitter end and sold JH and RS when it was clear they were not going to sign.

[1964white]

Using the best players from the academy - Delph, Howson, Lees & Byram - not done too bad there

Making the correct/shrewd signings to improve the squad when necessary - Club definitely missed the chance there when refusing to give SG funds for a centreback in January 2012. Might have made the difference. Likewise the January previous.

Retaining your best players as long as possible - Club did this. They kept JB and BJ to the bitter end and sold JH and RS when it was clear they were not going to sign.

Shame about the management from top to bottom of our club

[The Subhuman]

No room for Diouf on either list?

nope

[weasel]

Shame about the management from top to bottom of our club

Always a balancing act and I do think the club has got more right than wrong. Stuff like the overhaul of the youth academy was good, especially given the horror stories people on here were relating about friend's kids turning away from our academy. Obviously costs have had to be cut but we have still got a good academy and it shows the long term planning (i.e. spending £2m on the youth academy or spending it on the first team now) which is also the thinking presumably with improving the stadium. It all gives us a chance to succeed in the long term rather than simply being a yo-yo club. Clubs like Norwich, Reading & Southampton will come and go along with likes of Blackpool and Burnley who have a couple of good years but don't have the infrastructure to be able to push on once they get to the premier league. Those sort of things will always happen where a club will have a purple patch as they suddenly get 2 or 3 youth players suddenly come through, or they simply get on a roll. Just look at Watford when Aidy Boothroyd took the job there - they had Marlon King on fire (after being abysmal on the wing at Leeds), Ashley Young emerging, a couple of other emerging etc - was Aidy a good manager or did he simply go there at the right time? Was Watford a well run club or simply a club that got lucky for a year?

MU a well run club - or did Martin Edwards get lucky? A couple of years before they started winning stuff he was trying to sell for £10m. If Fergie had lost to Notts Forest in the FA Cup 3rd round in 1990 would he have been judged as a failure as he'd have been sacked at MU. If Cantona had returned home to France instead of moving there etc. If Schmeichel hadn't have played a blinder in Newcastle's 1-0 loss to MU Keegan's Newcastle would have probably gone on to win the league and Keegan been lorded as a fantastic manager.

I think a lot of the infrastructure at Leeds is in good shape meaning that now the new owners are in a great position to be able to invest in the first team.

[Norm]

faaip wrote:
but would mean, for the umpteenth season running, getting rid of all the crap at the club and starting again. No way to move the club forward. NW has done us no favours unless he gets promoted this season.

I'm not arguing with that, just pointing out that we need (collectively) to moderate our immediate promotion wishes. Unless someone or something takes off - more likely to be happenstance rather than planning - we're stuck here for now.

Weasel's right about Norwich, Southampton, etc. - they're mid-table Prem league teams at best - they'll have their purple patches and then fade. Yes, Howson and Snodgrass are having a reasonable season and, yes, they've got premiership football and Norwich are doing well. However, when they get tired of being beaten by the top teams they might realise they're never going to win the league, or maybe get into Europe, win a cup. I know at the moment we're nothing to write home about but it's possible, just possible, that if they'd stayed with us, we could have become one of the few clubs who would have slaked their ambitions. This paragraph ignores reality I know - where we are, prem clubs are always going to poach. However, it is what it is and we are where we are for a reason. We're not good enough. We don't need to get a 'lucky' run in via the playoffs, only to find out what we already knew - we're just not good enough yet.

That could change, then it's our turn, but it won't happen 'til it happens. My pint's still half full.