Re: Zebbys Leeds United General discussion
Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2023 7:29 am
49ers reportedly held a zoom call with Bielsa before he took the Uruguay job
The meeting which took place at Elland Road on Tuesday, reassuring Leeds United’s non-playing staff that the weekend’s relegation from the Premier League would not prompt redundancies or wage cuts, showed that the club, despite everything, were still able to make certain operational decisions.
The message was passed on by chief executive Angus Kinnear but the decision itself will have come from people above him, from an ownership structure which is otherwise preventing major strategic calls from happening. Clarity for general employees, which there needed to be, is not being matched by clarity on other fronts. This week found Leeds with their hands tied, unable to react to their fall back into the EFL with much in the way of decisive action.
Neither majority shareholder Andrea Radrizzani nor officials from minority-stake group 49ers Enterprises were in town to watch Leeds go down with a 4-1 home loss to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday, and the wrangling over a takeover between them has created a situation which is close to rudderless.
Contact with Radrizzani has been limited amid his effort to buy Sampdoria, newly-relegated themselves to the second tier in Italy. Attempts at planning by 49ers Enterprises are constrained by the fact none of what it would require as the club’s new owner — a head coach/manager, a director of football, a coach and horses to drive through the present first-team squad — can be realised while Radrizzani waits to either sell to the US group or dig his heels in and remain in charge.
A statement issued by Radrizzani on Wednesday evening, apologising for the club’s relegation, did not have the tone of a goodbye message and gave no indication he had resolved to walk away, even after the failure of the season now behind him.
The impasse at boardroom level has become increasingly fraught amid frustration on the part of 49ers Enterprises and The Athletic’s revelation that Leeds’ Elland Road stadium had been offered as security for a £26million bank loan intended to fund the bid for Sampdoria which Radrizzani is part of.
The current status of the proposed loan and the extent to which it has progressed beyond a heads of terms agreement is unclear, but no charge has been registered, at the time of publication, on Companies House, the executive agency of the UK government that maintains the register of businesses.
The fallout from that story was fractious: fierce criticism of Radrizzani among the club’s supporters and fresh friction between him and 49ers Enterprises. Officials from the US firm were unaware of the stadium’s involvement in a proposed loan to buy Sampdoria until questions were put to them about it by The Athletic on Wednesday evening. Kinnear was also in the dark, despite him being a member of both Leeds’ board and the board of the company which owns Elland Road. In a period where the club has looked dysfunctional and devoid of direction, few developments have made their board look more at odds — or more dependent on change.
Time is of acute importance because Leeds do not have much to spare.
The players went their separate ways after Sunday’s season finale, with fitness plans drawn up by the club’s medical department and a return date for pre-season testing pencilled in for the first week of July. That date was set in the knowledge some of this season’s squad will not be back at the club and that many of them will be gone before the transfer window closes on September 1. Permanent exits from the dressing room post-relegation are expected to run into double figures, relinquishing many of the more prominent names on Leeds’ books, and the club find themselves in a summer where they need literally everything, from movement in the boardroom to an appointment in the dugout and beyond.
The EFL fixtures are released in 20 days’ time.
For the past five days, control over much of what was able to happen at Leeds fell to Kinnear, the CEO Radrizzani appointed in the spring of 2017. Kinnear is and has been heavily involved in efforts to bring a takeover by 49ers Enterprises to fruition and despite the Americans’ desire for a clean sweep which removes Radrizzani’s influence on operations, and despite his long association with his Italian boss, they intend to keep Kinnear involved an executive level if their buy-out goes through.
The hope on the US end was that Radrizzani setting up a deal to acquire Sampdoria, which was announced as agreed on Tuesday evening, would break the dam in allowing them to finalise a price for his 56 per cent stake in Leeds — 49ers Enterprises has no intention of walking away from the club this summer but wants the authority a strong majority position would give it.
Kinnear has been tasked with opening dialogue with prospective head coaches, beginning the process of lining up options which the club can formalise, depending on how the ownership saga resolves itself.
He met incumbent head coach Sam Allardyce — who is at the end of his contract after his four-game stint — on Thursday to hear his observations about the squad and get his take on how to address their failings. Leeds did not immediately rule the 68-year-old former England manager out of the running for the permanent job in the wake of their relegation on Sunday, but Allardyce will not continue in the role and the club are provisionally looking at alternatives.
49ers Enterprises has itself been active in browsing the market.
It discussed the possibility of going back to former head coach Marcelo Bielsa, sacked by Leeds in February last year, a few weeks ago and held at least one Zoom call with him, shortly before the Argentinian decided to take the job of managing Uruguay’s national team. Brendan Rodgers, out of work after leaving Leicester City in mid-April, shortly before their own relegation on Sunday, appeals but it is feasible that he will also receive offers from Premier League sides. Leeds’ former under-21s coach Carlos Corberan, now in charge at Championship club West Bromwich Albion, has been looked at before and is being again.
But Leeds, as yet, are not in a position to make a final choice.
They are minus a director of football too, having parted company with Victor Orta last month, and The Athletic revealed a week ago how Norwich City’s Stuart Webber and Middlesbrough counterpart Kieran Scott are two names who had already discussed by the hierarchy at Elland Road. But while some of Orta’s most senior scouting staff left with him, including head of European scouting Gaby Ruiz, the core of that department remains in place, giving Leeds scope to conduct an audit of their squad and begin considering which players they might retain and which they might sell or move on. A meeting with the players was held last week to distribute fitness plans and map out a schedule for the summer.
Kinnear has overseen much of the work, in the absence of concerted leadership above him.
At this point, the club have one public pre-season friendly in the diary, against Manchester United in the Norwegian capital Oslo on July 12 — a fixture certain players might miss as they take an extended break following international duty later this month. Leeds’ provisional inclusion in a Premier League tournament in the US in the final week of July ended in their eventual omission last month as the prospect of relegation grew rapidly. Instead, a behind-closed-doors game is arranged for when the bulk of the squad first returns and Leeds are discussing a training camp on the continent, a trip which would have friendlies rolled into it.
In a typical summer, this would be the bread-and-butter of close-season planning, the logistics of pre-season football mixed in with organised player recruitment and squad churn. But in the present circumstances, the weeks ahead are being arranged blind, tentatively set up for whoever has their hands on the wheel at ownership, recruitment and dressing-room level.
Kinnear and the staff around him have spent the past five days trying to take provisional steps forward.
But it is only the sight of white smoke on the boardroom front which will allow anyone to actually start pushing the buttons.