George Overhill

Thu 2 March 2023 20:10, UK

Angus Kinnear and Andrea Radrizzani managed to both publicly prove they have learned nothing from the latest mess at Leeds United within the space of just three days in the past week.

Leeds United fans have spent very little time over the past 18-months not fearing for the future at the club and the men in charge are heavily responsible for the direction things have been headed.

There is plenty of blame to go around and a certain amount has to be apportioned to the players and the coaching staff, but the buck stops with those running the operation who appear to be incapable of grasping reality or accepting blame.

The Whites may be bang in the middle of another relegation battle that threatens to derail all the progress that was made during the heady days of the Marcelo Bielsa era, and have just presided over a ridiculous attempt to switch managers midseason, but judging by the subsequent public comments from the managing director and the chairman all is well at Elland Road.

Victor Orta’s role in the actual decision-making in West Yorkshire deserves its fair share of scrutiny, but while he is no stranger to sarcastically shouting “sack the board” at fans [Telegraph, 7 November] he has at least managed not to say anything to make the situation worse since Javi Gracia was finally appointed.

On the contrary, Kinnear has proven he hasn’t got any mirrors in his house and gone on the offensive, suggesting it was everyone else’s fault that the club spent over a fortnight lurching from one unworkable solution to another before landing on the former Watford boss.

Meanwhile Radrizzani, who came out on Twitter a day after Marsch’s sacking to suggest a new boss could be in place as early as that night (7 February), has been happily espousing the many misses in the transfer market and dismissing criticism of his ownership as coming from “keyboard cowards”.

Leeds United of course had ample opportunity to come up with a succession plan for Jesse Marsch, having come close to sacking him prior to the six-week gap for the World Cup in Qatar [i News, 6 February], but instead decided to wait until the week after the transfer window closed before getting rid of the American.

That is hardly the optimum time to make a change in itself, but the fact that there was no plan and the replacement process started at the point was bewildering.

To the surprise of nobody outside the Whites boardroom it proved difficult to pull off, with Carlos Corberan, Andoni Iraola, Arne Slot, and Marcelo Gallardo all decent candidates who proved out of reach.

From there the club appeared to come close to appointing former Ajax boss Alfred Schreuder before backing away amid a backlash from the fans, and hoped for the best with caretaker boss Michael Skubala.

That plan swiftly went out the window as the decision-makers panicked in the wake of the abject 1-0 defeat at Everton on 18 February, and finally Gracia, who actually appears to be a solid option, was turned to.

Even that had an unwelcome twist involved, in that he almost missed the crucial Southampton game on 25 February due to a delay in receiving a work permit, despite the club having first spoken to him two weeks earlier [Sky Sports, 21 February] and the delay always being likely.

But Kinnear was pointing the finger elsewhere just a day after the Spaniard’s belated appointment rather than accepting mistakes had been made.

BBC journalist Adam Pope shared Kinnear’s programme notes ahead of the Southampton win via Twitter on 25 February, where he commented on the bungled manager search, saying: “[Gracia’s] commitment was not shared by everyone else.

“There was a definite mismatch between the profile of candidates that some sections of the fan-base and the media perceived would be willing to join Leeds, and the reality.

“We fully understand the frustration that supporters felt during the process, but the reality is these appointments normally take one to two weeks, so being at the longer end of that range is not unreasonable.”

Obviously fans don’t know all the inner workings of a club but they aren’t stupid, and Kinnear pretending that the whole episode was in line with expectations is as dismissive as it is ridiculous.

Even if the likes of Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino were unrealistic, what is his answer to the long list of aforementioned names the club failed to land?

And just three days after that (28 February), Radrizzani was speaking to DAZN in Italy and, as well as suggesting he has a great relationship with the fans (via Tutto Mercato Web, 28 February), spent time discussing missed deals for the likes of Nicolo Zaniolo, Bamba Dieng, Charles De Ketelaere and Cody Gakpo.

He was happy to blame the failure to land the Dutchman on Louis van Gaal [via Yorkshire Post, 1 March], and the Italian on Roma’s lack of EU squad places.

Dieng, De Ketelaere, and Gakpo were all supposed to be the attacking answer late in the summer window, with Radrizzani even Tweeting his welcome for the Senegalese forward on deadline day (1 September) in another example of jumping the gun on social media.

And it is only due to the fact that Willy Gnonto has become a force sooner than expected that the board were bailed out of that failure.

Running a football club is a complicated and difficult thing to do, and some of these mistakes could be accepted in isolation, but when they come so thick and fast while the club hovers above oblivion the whole time then it becomes time to take responsibility.

And yet in the space of just three days after finally dodging another bullet with Gracia’s work permit to get a 1-0 win over Southampton both Kinnear and Radrizzani have shown an unwillingness or an inability to accept plenty of fault lies with them.

The 49ers takeover can’t come soon enough for fans at this stage, but having got to this point even that is on the line in its expected form if Gracia can’t rescue the operation from here [Guardian, 21 February], so it will be a very nervous final few months of the season.

In other Leeds United news, a Championship captain has offered his assistance to Gracia in starting life at Elland Road.

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